For Tonny and Claudia, a charged phone is the first priority ahead of a busy day volunteering.
Tonny lists his morning tasks, giving us an idea of what his daily to-do list looks like.
“First I travel to the project location, meet the project lead, and prepare to start monitoring a project. I speak to community members and ask them a few questions using an app on my phone.”
Claudia is a young leader in the Kampala area in Uganda and one of Tonny’s fellow volunteers. Her time volunteering has helped her in multiple ways, helping to develop her sense of self.
I have a number of achievements which includes teamwork – I was able to work as a team with my fellow volunteers and project members and this helped us to come up with different fixes to the problems.
Claudia
Tonny saw a similar improvement in his confidence. Both Tonny and Claudia are Restless Development volunteers for Development Alternative. The Development Alternative is a group of organisations trying to change what it means to do development.
I am proud to have achieved a lot during my time as a volunteer. I have developed the courage to talk to different people about issues of my community. We made sure those running the project knew about community feedback.
Tonny
“We want to help shift power to communities and young people so that they can hold development actors to account, and lead the design of solutions to problems they identify.“
When young people take lead, new ideas and opportunities emerge. Taking the lead also makes young people take responsibility for themselves and their communities rather than being receivers of change year in, and year out.
Volunteering with Restless Development has helped Claudia and Tonny to actively participate in creating change rather than waiting for change.
