University of Leeds Takeover

Today the blog post comes from Katie and Lizzie...

Hi! We’re Lizzie and Katie, two of the 6 students currently in South Africa with GAGA UK.

The trip was organised though the Food Science department at the University of Leeds. We each sent in an application of why we wanted to be chosen to come to South Africa and just a few months later we were all meeting at the airport with our suitcases packed! Time flew!

The flight was long but was great for getting to know the rest of the group a bit better. When we finally arrived, we had an early night ready to start exploring South Africa the next day.

Our first day at a project was Tuesday, where we had our first visit to First Step Right school. The children were all so welcoming and as soon as we open the doors of the cars we were met with floods of students wanting hugs. We spent the first day getting a feel for the running of the school and chatting with the teachers, before returning home for a night of lesson planning. The next two days were filled with teaching children of all ages, from getting to know your fruit and veg with the crèche, to making your own Eatwell plate with grade 5. We even led a class with the teachers on healthy diets and easy exercises to fit into their busy lives. It wasn’t all work though, as we enjoyed our break-times playing with the kids and dancing with the teachers. We were sad to say goodbye at the end of the week.

On Friday we visited the HOLAH baby home. It was lovely to have a morning of cuddles, but also emotional hearing their stories and learning how they came to be in the home. They were all so cute! Afterwards we split in two; half of the group dropping off packages of donations of hats and food to other baby homes, whilst the rest of us worked in the Hop Shop (the charity shop set up by HOLAH.) it’s amazing to see how well the shop has developed in the past few months, and we were proud to know that GAGA had had a big helping hand in this. Now Leanne and Kim from HOLAH can rely on income from the shop to provide care for the babies.

We have enjoyed this action packed first week and it’s been great to finally see how money raised by GAGA is helping so many projects here in South Africa! Next week we’ll have another update from others in the group about what we get up to in more projects in the area!