Heading to Botswana

The Adventure Begins

With great excitement, nervousness, anxiety and trepidation I am to preparing to leave my family and fly over 10,000 miles to spend the month of July in Maun, Botswana.

The excitement I initially felt about my first trip to the continent bumped into reality when I realized that I would be travelling alone for thirty hours. I DREAD FLYING.  Then the news got a little worse. I will not be able to celebrate my birthday with my family because of commitments in Botswana instead I will spend the day alone in Germany.

Leave For Change

The beginning of this adventure started a few months ago when I was selected by Uniterra to participate in the Leave for Change® Program.  Uniterra is a major Canadian program of international volunteer cooperation that helps reduce poverty and inequalities in 12 countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia.  Leave for Change® is a corporate volunteering initiative that enables employees to demonstrate leadership in corporate social responsibility, put their knowledge and skills to work in an international development project, expand their personal and professional horizons and acquire a deeper understanding of broader global issues. I am honoured to have been selected.

My Mandate: Women Against Rape (WAR)

Why am I doing this?  The simple answer is my firm belief  in a global community we are all responsible for each other. For me going to Botswana is fulfilling a very small part of my social responsibility.

I will be spending one month working at Women Against Rape (WAR) in Maun. It (WAR) is a human rights organization founded in 1993 to primarily support abused women, children and recently men by addressing the issues that contribute to their abuse. Their mission is to reduce the incidence and impact of violence through empowerment, providing support for survivors, public education and legal reform.

My mandate will be to review the operations, policies and procedures of their safe house, then develop a working manual, and implement and test its effective functioning with clients, staff, and stakeholders.

All of this to be done in four weeks, in a new culture with new staff.  Piece of cake, right!

About Botswana

To be honest even after watching and enjoying the television series The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency with Jill Scott I still knew absolutely nothing about Botswana.  So what I have researched so far is that Botswana is situated in the southern African region and about two-thirds of The country lies within the Tropics.

It is a flat land-locked dominated in geographical terms (70%) by the Kalahari Desert.   It is bordered by   South Africa, Namibia , and Zimbabwe. It is one of the most sparsely populated countries with just over two million people, Maun is the gateway to the Okavango Delta. it is over 1000 kilometers from capital Gaborone, and is the fifth largest town in Botswana. It  thrives on a busy tourist trade and for the next four weeks will be my home away from home.