The Day to Irish Aid

On the 2nd of February 2018, six of the Off Grid Members went to Irish Aid along with the other Young Social Innovators project in our school The Icitabo Project (Website link:https://pebw010102.wixsite.com/mysite).

We went to Irish Aid as are Sustainable Development Goals are quite similar to Irish Aid. The goals that were most like ours are "To ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns" and "Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all."

When we arrived we were greeted very kindly and divided into 2 groups.

The first group at the start did a "role-playing game" where we were divided into Malawian families from a town called Khulungira. Each family were given obstacles to decide which crops to give up and which crops to obtain in order to survive.

After this game we all learned that every single thing a family do must be done with all risks in consideration i.e Famine/War as if you do the wrong thing in wrong year it can lead to the worst.

The second group firstly watched a video on Life in Khulungira. In this video we learned very shocking and interesting facts for example the nearest paved road from Khulungira is 27km away.

After the video we were given facts about Irish Aid through a Powerpoint Presentation. We learned about the 17 Irish Aid's goals, that Irish Aid works in over 80 countries and that the government spends usually 723.71 million euro on overseas development per annum - while this sounds like a huge figure, it's actually only a tiny percentage of the Irish Government's budget per annum significantly less than the amount recommended by the UN.

We all really enjoyed this trip as we learned so many new things especially about Sustainable Development Goals and this helped a lot to our YSI project