The Big Picture – winning photographs from your elective!

Friday, October 8th, 2010

Overall Winner – Graham Stevenson

Prize: £250

Overall Arusha Graham Stevenson 150x150 The Big Picture – winning photographs from your elective!

Graham's winning picture

Again we have had some amazing entries for this year’s competition, but we all agreed that the image that captured the spirit of living in another country was Graham Stevenson’s shot of the wildebeest migration at sunrise.

When we called Graham he had this to say “Corking stuff! I’m delighted people liked the shot. The equatorial sun rises so quickly there are only about 2 or 3 minutes to enjoy that kind of light in the Serengeti, though I feel a bit guilty to have spent it looking through a camera lens. The annual wildebeest migration is a staggering phenomenon and going on safari during my placement in Tanzania I was desperate to see the animals en masse. The picture was taken at about 06.20 in the morning. It was horribly cold. But there the beasts were: from a distance – hump-backed, anonymous creatures, lurching along the same path, at the same rate and rhythm they’d been travelling the evening before. And then we moved in closer….”

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Onam Festival 2010

Friday, August 20th, 2010

Blog 1 150x150 Onam Festival 2010This week the students in India have been celebrating Onam, the harvest festival in Kerala. It falls during the first month of the Malayalam calendar and marks the homecoming of King Mahabali. Lasting for 10 days, the festival embraces the culture and traditions of Kerala.

Our team in Trivandrum tell us that “All the students have participated in the Onam Celebrations at Kannammoola house. They have actively involved in filling flowers in the design drawn by Revathy, our housekeeper. Later, Rashmi wearing the traditional costume of Kerala inaugurated the celebrations by lighting the lamps. Manjusha the yoga teacher and her family was also part of the celebrations.

blog 3 150x150 Onam Festival 2010

The feast!

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News from the Wild East

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
Alison July 10 51 150x150 News from the Wild East

The students in India

As we have approached our peak season, 10th & 11th July marked our busiest weekend in Kerala with 11 new Work the World housemates flying into Trivandrum Airport, plus 7 additional arrivals to join the dental outreach project in Amboori.

I flew in a few days before the big arrivals to work with Jay & John, our Programme Managers in India. Jay was busy confirming and reconfirming the final arrangements for the dental outreach, including checking up on the portable equipments, meetings with Dr Smitha the supervisor for the project, briefing the volunteers and making sure the house is ready in the village. Jay’s meticulous organisation ensured that the project got off to a good start. Back in the city, John and I spent a good couple of days visiting our five key partner hospitals in Trivandrum, both government and privately owned to reconfirm hospital introduction time with supervisors. This is essential as busy doctors sometimes forget!

There are some brilliant supervisors in Kerala, my particular favourites are Dr. Tiny Nair (Cardiologist), Dr. Bobby Moses (General Medicine) and  Dr Shylaja (Neurologist) who have always made me feel welcome whenever I visit their clinic. I also met new supervisors such as Dr. Shiju (A&E) and Dr Shreedevi (Paediatrician) who have quickly bonded with students and have been praised highly for their teaching. During this trip, I also found the time to sit down for dinner with students at the Vanchiyoor house, who were kind enough to teach me a few cheeky drinking games, which I will have to try out on my friends! We also went shopping together to ‘Fabindia’, which is indeed fabulous and a great place to pick up local crafts. Once I made sure all the students were picked up, introduced to other students, given a good orientation of Trivandrum and introduced to their hospital placement, it was time for me to nip across the Laccadive Sea to Sri Lanka, where the pilot programme launched at the end of June.

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Dental Outreach – the first two projects finish!

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

Nepal and India have finished their first dental outreach projects! The teams in Bandipur, Nepal and Amboori, India have been working non-stop for two weeks to try and screen and treat as many people as they can for free. The stats are pretty impressive….

Nepal screened 1047 people, referred 815 and treated 977.  As Nepal was something of an unknown – the schools being closed for the summer – we had no idea whether people would respond to the posters and flyers we placed around the area. In the end, hundreds of people turned up and the team had to close off general screenings from Wednesday onwards so that they could treat all the people who had been referred from earlier days in the project.  The treatment figure ended up higher than the referrals because people were still turning up in severe pain and our kind hearted students felt it better to work through lunchbreaks to screen and treat at the same time.

India had less students than Nepal, but despite working in a new area we knew the schools were open and who would be able to come to the programme, which gave us a better idea of how people would respond. What you never know with India is how bad each area’s teeth are – Kerala has some of the worst oral hygeine in the country and last year saw almost 80% of those screened needing treatment. In the end, the team screened 900 people, referred 513 and treated 343, showing that 57% of the people turned up had problematic teeth. This implies that teeth in the Western Ghats are generally better than the teeth in the coastal towns from last year! 

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Dental Outreach competition winner Fiona prepares to leave….

Friday, June 25th, 2010

Fiona, our dental outreach competition winner, is just two weeks away from her big prize – the chance to join the Kerala Dental Outreach team in India.

For those of you that need reminding, the video competition was launched last year and we had a huge response from people desperate to tell us why taking part in a project like this could benefit their dentistry studies, and why they should be the ones to win the prize. Fiona’s winning movie can be viewed on the facebook groups, or via this link to our youtube page.

With just two weeks to go, we asked Fiona to let us know how she was getting on with preparations for the trip of a lifetime…

Fiona’s blog…… Leaving on a jetplane!

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The weekly question: Where is your favourite hangout?

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Whenever you spend any length of time away you find a favourite hangout. And whether new students found theirs through old students, a mention was made in a guidebook or it was simply discovered one day by an intrepid bunch that went looking for somewhere else to chill out, it is the “favourite hangouts” that crop up time and time again in their feedback of the trips.

Abby Sept 09 16 150x150 The weekly question: Where is your favourite hangout?

W = Work the World at Afrika beach

Joe is really enjoying discussing the weekly questions with his group in Ghana. It helps him get to know the students better, as well as their lifestyle over in Ghana.  This week all his students responded that Berdsack was their favourite spot! It’s “a relatively small local bar right at the bottom of the hill where Work the World house is sitting”. Vanessa and Tania often head down there during the evening and told Joe that  “we have our own DJ who plays our favourite Ghanaian songs for us – the ones we have learnt at the weekly bbq’s.  It means we have the chance to socialise with the local people and have some beers. Just this last monday we spent the whole night partying hard because Tuesday was a holiday“. Tania said “you can’t imagine the fun we had!”.

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Pirannal Aasamsakal! – 3 students celebrate birthdays in India

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

On Wednesday, the 21st of April 2010, we had the weekly barbecue day and a special celebration for the birthday of Ray, Helen and Martin!

Vinod prepared barbecued chicken, fish, potato stew, parotta, samosa, gopi manjoorian, sandwiched bread, fried rice, juice, soft drinks and fruits with ice cream. We won’t provide alcohol during BBQ but students brought it themselves – it was a party after all!

To celebrate the birthdays, WTW bought three high quality cakes from the very famous bakery in Trivandrum “The Ambrosia” with the name of the students written on it. We started off the celebration by lighting the candle on the cakes and sang the birthday song. All three of them stood in front of their own cake and then lit off the candle and cut the cake. Then, we started the food and the tasted the delicious food prepared by our master chef Vinod. It was awesome as usual!

Finally, we tasted the cake and all the students really appreciated its quality. The music was on and a good breeze was blowing – altogether, it was a really good ambience for the celebration and the students took lots of photos!

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Kerala – an economic connundrum!

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Economists and social scientists have been discussing Kerala this week… and the connundrum this lush, green region generates.

East Fort Trivandrum 2007 Emily 9 150x150 Kerala an economic connundrum!

Street life in Trivandrum, one of Kerala's busy centres.

Looking at the social indicators it would seem that this part of India is faring well. Compared to the rest of the country it has some of the highest literacy rates and life expectancy, and amongst the lowest infant mortality and school drop-out rate. It has reached all of it’s UN millenium development goals and should have one of the strongest economies in India. This is not the case.

Beneath the figures there is evidence to show Kerala is struggling. The economy is almost entirely dependent on tourism and remittances sent back by two million of its people who live and work abroad because of the lack of jobs in the region. Unfortunately Kerala’s  high literacy has meant that the vast majority of educated unemployed have to go elsewhere for work.

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Thousands of women gather in Trivandrum to celebrate Attukal Pongala.

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
PONGALA1 150x150 Thousands of women gather in Trivandrum to celebrate Attukal Pongala.

Offering pongala

Work the World students in India have been involved in another another world famous festival – Attukal Pongala.  Lasting 10 days, the festival sees hundreds of women devotees from across India bring offerings to the Goddess and to seek blessings at the Attukal Bhagavathy Temple in Trivandrum. The focal point takes place on 9th day of the festival when the women offer Pongala (rice porridge) in earthenware pots. The rush of women is so intense that the Pongala spreads outside the temple premises and into the public roads. Trivandrum is turned into one big holy ground stretching as far as 5km from the temple, which has twice won the city the accolade of a Guinness World Record for largest gathering of women in the world.

During the ten-day festival there are other ceremonial rituals taking place. Kappukettu begins them, during which the story of Goddess Kannagi is recited. The  musical recitation ends with the part of the Goddess annihilating the Pandya King and signifies victory of good over evil, light over darkness and justice over injustice. Immediately after the end of the recitation,  the rituals for Attukal Pongala begin with the making of a fire in the temple hearth, known as Pandara Aduppu. The fire will then be passed to the women ready to offer pongala – the same fire spreading to all the tens of thousands of women.

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The winner of the dental outreach competition is announced!

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Work the World dental outreach team 2009 found that 76% of children in rural Kerala need dental treatment.  As part of our commitement to providing excellent student placements that also benefit the local communities in which they are based, Work the World are planning two dental outreach projects in the summer of 2010.

We ran a competition at the end of last year to offer one lucky student the opportunity to come with us to a rural village in Kerala and join the dental outreach team. I am absolutely thrilled to let you all know that Fiona Corcoran was our winner – her video of why she would love to join the team was by far and away the most inspiring.

Omar commented “It was great to see so much enthusiasm and creativity in Fiona’s short film. She’s obviously passionate about dental care and is going to be the perfect person to join the other students in July.”

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