SAVE offers a variety of projects which makes it possible to work at all kinds of places. You can work with children, disabled and healthy, help building a garden in a settlement or build a jungle gym; everything is possible.
During the surfproject I participated in, you start the mornings by working at a creche with children from the age of 2-6 years. If you want you can always ask to go to another project in the mornings. So if you think another project suits you better, or if you just want to work with disabled people for once in your life; SAVE offers it all. This variety of projects gave me the opportunity to learn working with (disabled and healthy) children and do some communitywork once in a while.
During the afternoon I went back to the volunteerhouse, ate a delicious lunch made by Yussef (awesome guy eventhough you cannot hear a word he says), grabbed a wetsuit and surfboard and left to the beach. At the beach you learn to surf yourself after which you can help teach children from a township to surf. If the weather or the waves are dissapointing, volunteers can think of any other sport to do with the children. You learn them some life lessons and the importance of being healthy!
When all the experiences become too much there are enough possibilities to relax. We used to go out to grab some drinks and dance in the evenings or just relax together. When you have the weekends off you have enough time to do whatever you want, a safari, shark cage diving, the movies, mzoli's (awesome!). Whatever you want to do, there is always someone that wants to join you and your programleaders will be happy to call you a cab or just join them yourselves.
To summarize; SAVE is an amazing organization driven by the right enthusiastic people who will join you in great and bad times. You will become part of their family and you will want to go back the second you set foot home.
What would you improve about this program?
In my view SAVE can do a better job with (online) marketing by using things like Facebook or twitter more efficient.
Since SAVE is based on donations it is running as good as it possibly can. The only way the program(s) can be improved is to gather more resources. The SAVE team is always listening to the volunteers' ideas for improvement and if possible use these ideas to improve the programs.
Response from SAVE Volunteering
Hi Bonnie.
Thanks so much for the very valuable feedback.
We are here to ensure the volunteers and projects benefit in the best way possible.
I apologise for the project leader not assisting and we have put into place further structures to ensure this does not happen in the future.
Elundini is one of the hardest projects we have, it is emotionally as well as physically draining.
The school is currently being licensed as a fully registered care centre by the government. This means that structures and curriculum are now enforced by the education department.
We look forward to a great 2015 with the school and kids and thank you for you support and time on the project.
Thanks Carla