Where to begin?
These last months have been full of craziness. After I took upon the challenge to become Vice President of the functional area incoming Global Community Development Program (iGCDP) early April, my team and I worked our butts of to get the project on its feet. From day 1 it has been a intensive, especially around exam period and after that in which we had one month with preparation seminars for the exchange participants. At one point we created a new summercamp and hired 10 campleaders!
Boy am I super proud of what we managed to accomplish together.
Boy am I super proud of what we managed to accomplish together.
Two summercamps. 19 participants. Over 60 kids. 1 award.
Two weeks ago, during the conference Excel in Bergen we in AIESEC UiO won an award for the summer peak and the great results we had of sending people abroad with the outgoing exchange team and receiving people in my team's project called Aktiv Sommer. It is nice to get acknowledged for our hard work. We got such a great response, from the kids, the partners, the parents. The real prize wasn't the awards, but it was the experience we got and the impact we made.
What I sit left with is the memory of this alone mother who has been applying for becoming a norwegian citizen for years. She came to talk to me and wanted to show how much she appreciated our work. She didn't have much, and still, she wanted to give us something because the effort that we put in making this summer camp happen. What we did was important she said. Every day her son would go home with a big smile and tell her all about what happened during the summer camp. He couldn't stop talking about it she said. He even packed his bag the evening before, and in the morning, he stressed her out of the door and to the summer camp because he didn't want to come late. She told about the conditions in the asylum center; that you don't get to work, and that the money they get is too little and far from enough to give her son the summer vacation aligned with what Norwegian children is used to = going to "Syden" or the Medditeran area. Sometimes her son would be sad about something, and he couldn't even put words on it. Other times he talked about wanting to go to a vacation like "the others". As a mother not being able to give the son what he wants is heartbreaking she says. When talking further about the conditions she shed tears. It was heartbreaking for me to her about her situation, surrealstic that our effort had such big impact - something I can't really understand to this day. I think I never will be able too, but one thing I know for sure is that our work is truly important for someone, and that I would continue my work to create a summer camp and give children for lower socio-economic background the chance to have a worthy and unforgettable summer camp.
