Starting work

At the start of the first week we had training with all National/UK volunteers, team leaders, coordinators and a few guys who came to give us Moore and French Lessons. We gained a lot of knowledge on our culture differences, helped each other in teams and presented what we found out about one another. We also found out a lot more information about our placement of work.

Tigoung Nonma is a cooperative of physically disabled Artisans who own an arts and crafts shop in Ouagadougou. All members are very welcoming, polite and friendly people with a lot of smiles and laughs around our workplace. I met the Artisans on the Thursday, they seemed more eager than us to begin planning and was really fun seeing how they work together also with our little mascot who runs around all day, a little boy whom I can’t remember the name of but is only 1 years old.

The power and water was down, the morning we arrived so Achille, our team leader took us a tour around the area to explore the art and music academy and meet some interesting people! Oh and I must mention how friendly the national volunteers are, they are so consistent on bringing us out, showing us around, take us shopping, dancing etc. The boys are Cyrill and Issa with our UK volunteer who I also live with, Oscar. Then there’s Emilie and Fanda with Caitlin, Millie and myself. 

In the 3rd week, just yesterday; we re-arranged the whole shop, the presentation of some products was lacking, and in others you couldn't even find because they were hidden. The store has a wide range of arts and crafts, so we had to catorgarise the accessories from the jewellery to the clothing and the sculptures.
Here is a sneak peek around the shop and what Tigoung Nonma have on offer:

We also went to the Arts & Music Festival which the academy is holding at the moment throughout the month, so we invited all the other volunteers to come down. There were bands playing, rap singers and a lot of dancing for all ages, but there was so many kids!

After the first week of new beginnings, we settled in a lot more and cracked on with our first tasks, a calendar we wrote out for all objectives, events to work towards, language teaching, product advertising, product marketing, meeting the artisans, making interviews and emailing partnerships etc. Then we began with the simple tasks which we will do each week as in update the blog, website and Facebook page. We also have product of the week, which entails anyone who’s liked our Facebook page can see a selection of best items in our arts store, and simply like which one they want to vote for as the best. I started out making a back drop, using a DSLR and taking a few snaps and then with Farida, our model for the afternoon.

Only a spoiler, if you want to see all 5 selected products for this next week which we will announce this Monday, then go on and like our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tigoung-Nonma/355832197760222?ref=ts&fref=ts