Well, the bags are packed, the car is ready. “All systems are go” to travel to Zanzibar. By the time you are reading this I (Dan) will be on my way to Heathrow (Terminal 4 – just checked).
Not a Nile Swimmers project this time – but still working hard on drowning prevention in Africa.
Tom (as part of the team from the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) and Dan (as a volunteer for Royal Life Saving Society Commonwealth (RLSSC)) are heading to Zanzibar as trainers on the Future Leaders programme.
This amazing programme is bringing together 30 Africans, from (in alphabetical order) Botswana, Cameroon, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mauritius, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda. These guys are all part of developing lifesaving organisations – and the purpose of the Future Leaders is to provide them with the support and training that they want to accelerate the progress of their organisation – in other words, capacity building. A similar programme has happened in the UK for the past couple of years, but the decision was taken that it would be more effective to take the training to Africa – and so a plan with an NGO in Zanzibar (the Panje Project) was developed.
There are three separate streams to the training programme;
- Beach Lifeguard – this stream will train the participants to be able to deliver the RNLI International Beach Lifeguard training programme to people in their home communities.
- Aquatic Survival – this stream will train the participants to be able to deliver the RNLI Aquatic Survival Programme to children in their local communities.
- Organisational Development – this stream will train the participants in the soft management skills to be able to develop the administrative functions of their developing lifesaving organisation.
As Nile Swimmers, we are really proud to have played a part in the development and writing of these resources. Currently, there is nobody else, doing anything else, on a scale like this. We will do our best to blog and update the Facebook page with photos – but who knows what the internet access will be like in Nungwi.
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