New Year, Same Us, But Stronger Than Ever

New Year, Same Us, But Stronger Than Ever 

By Sarah Dean

Every January, the majority of us sit down, reflect on what we learned the year before and set some new goals for the year to come. Maybe you want to exercise once a week, or challenge yourself to read 50 books. Well for us our mission is still the same.  

Don’t get us wrong, how we get there has very much changed, and we are working in different ways to achieve our goals, but at the end of the day all we want to do, is to ignite passion and create a new generation of global citizens who care.  

We couldn’t have imagined the year 2020 and while it has given us many setbacks, we want to take the positives out of a bad situation. We grew in ways we never could have without the challenges of COVID19 and we are now more equipped (and still learning) to ensure we can support our communities overseas while continuing to educate the minds of young university students.  

In 2020 we launched our Virtual Internship Program. An academic experience like no other from the safety of your home. We are so grateful and excited for those who embarked on this experience and continued to make a difference with us in a very different setting.   

Earlier in the year we also had the freedom to run webinars for our global community. These webinars helped us to connect with our community online, as face-to-face connections became much more difficult. It was absolutely amazing to hear the ideas and opinions of you all! Thanks for participating in those! If you didn’t catch them, we have them all recorded on our website here.  

So, what is happening in our hubs while our volunteer trips are on hold... 

2021 Initiatives – What are we doing now?  

India -  

Schools remain closed in India to prevent the spread of COVID19. Our charity’s education box initiative was so successful, a second round will now be sent out. This is the best way to continue student's engagement in their studies, with 96% of students engaging with the resources. While there are still challenges from 2020 lurking, we are still actively supporting our partner schools in India. If you would like to support our charity’s work, you can sponsor a program here.  

Cambodia -  

Supplementary Education Program centres are now open and classes are running as usual in Cambodia. FutureSense have ten classes in total, three classes per SEC centre and a kindergarten class. Our chairty was also delivering Teacher Training over two months with SEC teachers.

Nepal -  

Schools are slowly staring to reopen in Nepal; classes are taken in shifts and there are some measures in place to try and prevent transmissions. In December we had an intern complete her Virtual Internship Program with us in Nepal. While we have been unable to have volunteers on the ground, our virtual internship program has helped immensely in our work. The internship held focus to the issues of (mal)nutrition among children and adolescents. Her work outlined curriculum which included practical activities for children in school, comparative analysis of nutritional issues as well as resources created by the intern. This will all be used to further develop global curricula and deliver sessions/workshops at partner schools. If you’re wanting to make a difference, while staying at home please check out our virtual internship program here.  

Thailand -  

Thailand has been fortunate to open up their schools and our charity was able to visit our partner schools in the hill tribes. Our monthly clean up with the students was able to start up again and our charity is very determined to continue this activity, because the small changes will make a larger impact within the community. It is very exciting to have the students engaged and inspiring others around environment sustainability. Currently, it is important we improve health learning materials for students in lieu of the pandemic and need to continue washing hands.  

Peru - 

Unfortunately, due to the severity of the situation in Peru, our activities have been limited. However, flights have now resumed (with quarantine requirements) and we are very excited to resume in-country activities mid 2021. We are looking forward to welcoming back our volunteers soon!

Tanzania -

In Tanzania our charity is running very successful workshops and are planning for more this February! Found in each hub, culture plays a crucial role in how educational lessons can respect those foundational norms. The FutureSense Foundation work extremely hard to provide students with an education on reproductive health, menstruation, STD’s and drug abuse. In Tanzania, our charity is successfully delivering these workshops, and receiving many questions from the interested students.  

While we cannot wait to embrace every single one of our future volunteers for summer 2021, we give thanks and appreciation to the challenges of 2020 and the members of our community who stuck by us through it all! We know we’re not out of the woods yet, but we are extremely excited for the future. Check out our programs on offer here and have the most wonderful year, reclaiming the opportunities you missed out on in 2021.