COLLEGIAN EMILY STIRZAKER IN MOZAMBIQUE - Radford College

News Spot Sept ‘10: Collegian Emily Stirzaker in Mozambique 1COLLEGIAN EMILY STIRZAKER IN MOZAMBIQUEEmily Stirzaker, Class of ’09, successfully applied for a Collegians Community OutreachService Award of $2,000, to work at Zimpeto Children’s Centre in Mozambique. She hasbeen there since Febraury, though under difficult circumstances at present, with majorriots in the area.Zimpeto children’s centre is run by Iris Ministries, and is located in Maputo, Mozambique.It is completely staffed by volunteers. The centre provides care for over 300 children, aswell as running a school, clinic, church, and feeding programs that service both the schooland the community. It also has outreach programs into the community and supports thehome-based care of an additional 200 children. 800 children in total receive aid from thecentre.In her application, Emily described the “Radford Connection” with this Centre. DirectorSteve Lazar is a former Head of Mathematics at Radford College. Steve returns regularlyto Radford to talk about the Centre, and in 2008, ten senior students, including Emily,travelled there, and subsequently some financial support was provided for the Centrethrough the Radford Awareness and Service Program (RAS).

News Spot Sept ‘10: Collegian Emily Stirzaker in Mozambique 2Emily visited Zimpeto twice before going there this year, once with the Radford group andonce with her family, and she had also spent time in South Africa with her family whileshe was growing up. She expressed her view of Zimpeto in her application thus:Zimpeto Centre has a holistic approach to their ministry. They effectively provideaid to a whole community. Not only do they look after children, but they also lookafter adults, children from outside the centre and provide Mozambicans withmeaningful employment. Their focus is on empowering people to lead in theircommunity. It is a place with a proud respect for the culture and traditions of thepeople they work with.Emily has been at the Centre since February 2010. She describes her activities as follows:My main responsibility is in the girls’ dorm. There are currently 57 girls aged between 4and 20 who live here at the centre. There are three of us who together run the dorm. Inaddition to this I work in ‘hospitality’, which is the team that works with people who visitthe centre for 2-3 weeks. I also do some administration work for the centre and teachEnglish.At the moment, a typical day would look something like this: Start working at about 8:30.Some days I spend about an hour and a half doing administration for hospitality beforeheading over to the girls’ dorm. Other days instead of doing admin I spend time with a girlwho is very developmentally delayed and has a lot of behavioural issues.At the dorm I spend some time going through the girl’s clothes, cleaning the dorm, sortingout craft supplies, books etc and planning activities for the afternoon.When the girls get home from school at around 12:30 I spend some time with them justchatting and hearing all about their days. Then in the afternoon we do learning activities/art and craft/ cooking/ take the girls to the library/ teach English or give out clothing/sortout shoes/ sheets for beds etc.In the evenings I sometimes help out with showering the littlest girls or cut fingernails anddo the rounds making sure everyone has soap and shampoo. Then there is snack time toorganise for the littlest girls and the HIV+/malnourished children.In reality all this is interrupted a million times- by sick girls needing to be taken to theclinic, phone calls from nurses about kids, girls knocking on the door needing things,relatives of children turning up unannounced... the list goes on. In the end I spend a bigchunk of my time putting on bandaids, cleaning infected scalps and listening to long andinvolved stories about arguments that the girls have had.I also am lucky to have lots of time to just play with the girls. I work most closely with the4-10 age group. I spend a lot of time with them, just listening to stories from school,playing games with them, singing, sorting out arguments and giving hugs. I absolutelylove it!

News Spot Sept ‘10: Collegian Emily Stirzaker in Mozambique 3Everyone here speaks Portuguese, so learning some of the language has been both achallenge and lots of fun. I got a few lessons and have been working through a book, andhave picked up a fair amount. Now I can handle most of the conversations I have on adaily basis in Portuguese. The more of the language I learn the more I enjoy being here.Some things have been really challenging. At the moment one of my little girls is very sickin hospital. She is eight years old but the size of a three year old and has a huge amount ofmedical problems. She has been in and out of hospital for a while, and the prognosis forher is pretty bad. But being able to look after her through it all has been a real privilegeand is a good reminder of why I am here!After being told there was nothing more that could be done for her the doctors at thehospital amazingly decided to operate on her and take her spleen out! (An unheard ofsurgery to be done in Mozambique). After the surgery she contracted infections andcerebral malaria and again we thought she was going to die. But incredibly she pulledthrough and is now happy and healthy and improving so much!Emily has a “blog” if you would like to learn more about her service at Zimpeto.www.mozambiquetwentyten.blogspot.com