The adventure begins...

Well, I'm now at orientation in Courtenay on Vancouver Island. I've met the ACTS staff, last year's interns, as well as this year's interns and the other five people who will be forming this year's team to Uganda. The three days of orientation so far has been somewhat long and tiring, with a lot of administrative work, briefings, and training sessions.

Yesterday has been the best so far, as each of the new interns had the afternoon to meet with their corresponding interns from the previous year to be debriefed and to officially be handed over the reins to their respective responsibilities and projects.

Up until now, I wasn't exactly sure what I would doing but it is much clearer now. Though many things often come up unexpectedly which will inevitably force us to adapt our plans and schedules. Though the first and most oft brought up tip by last year's interns is that schedules, and time, for the most part, are near non existent in Uganda, as well as in many other countries in the world today. In these cultures, the concept of time as we know it is not nearly as important, and thus, things happen when they happen.
Regardless, my job will be to team up with one of the other engineer volunteers on the team, as well as a local Ugandan from the ACTS construction team, (we will also have Richard Roberts, an ACTS staff, accompanying us for the first five or so weeks) and we will be traveling to various regions in Uganda and deciding the most appropriate locations for future projects. We will then forward our findings to the ACTS board to be decided upon, and we will then be writing project proposals to be sent to CIDA, the Canadian agency mandated by the federal government to allocate humanitarian aid funds through the channels that will have the greatest chance of creating sustainable international development. (This only sounds so technical because we covered these terms during our intercultural training sessions today!)In short, the large part of our jobs will be to find future projects and then write proposals asking for CIDA funding in order that ACTS will continue to have projects to work on in the next few years.

You can find out more information about ACTS, the organization that I am working for, at acts.ca.