Celebrating National Volunteer Week
Thinking About Visiting SEGA? Read This Firsthand Account!
This week, during National Volunteer Week, we celebrate and honor the volunteers that make Nurturing Minds and SEGA the amazing organization that it is. Volunteers give their time, energy, expertise and compassion on projects of all sizes and scopes. One area of volunteer work that is rewarding and life-changing for volunteers and students alike is visiting and teaching English at SEGA. Below is one account of two young women who recently spent time at SEGA. Be inspired and let info@nurturingmindsinafrica.org if you have time or talents you’d like to volunteer!
Our names are Charlotte and Grace. We have just come back from our travels in Africa, including an amazing two-week stay at SEGA. This was our first time in Tanzania but I can already tell you it won’t be our last. The two of us became friends at our boarding school in the states, where we first learned about SEGA. We have been lucky enough to be able to take a year off before we start university. Inspired by Polly Dolan’s talk at our school about SEGA a few years previously, we knew we definitely wanted to visit and give time to an amazing school that didn’t seem that different from ours. The stories of these girls inspired us enough to want to make the trip and meet all of them.
One of our favorite parts of our stay on campus was working with the standard 7 class (the youngest grade) in the afternoons. Every day for an hour we would get to spend time teaching English and playing games with the girls. Despite these girls not having experienced an education like SEGA before, these girls’ enthusiasm and open-mindedness encouraged us to bring new challenges to class every day. This isn’t to say that we also didn’t get silly and we had fun dressing up and playing games such as Telephone. We formed strong bonds with the girls very quickly which made it hard to say goodbye at the end of our short stay.
After seeing how enthusiastic the girls were to new visitors and how much the stay impacted us, we would encourage anyone who is thinking about visiting SEGA to make the trip. Getting to see the positivity and energy that the girls brought to every activity in their packed day gave us new perspectives on what it means to be happy, and how much of that comes from within. This experience has now made us sure that we want to stay involved with Nurturing Minds in any way possible!
Thank you so much to all the girls as well as the staff. You all made our stay an unforgettable experience and we will treasure the memories we made forever.
— Charlotte and Grace