My name is Scott Thrush and thanks to Platform2 I was able to spend 3 months as a volunteer at a child’s home called Othandweni in Johannesburg, South Africa. One of the highlights of my trip was going to a school awards ceremony in Kliptown where I got to meet Winnie Mandela!
I didn’t know what to expect of South Africa before I got there. When I first got there we were taken to a hostel in Johannesburg, the next day we went on a tour of Soweto where we saw where Desmond Tutu used to live, the Hector Pieterson museum and Nelson Mandela’s old house. There are eleven official languages in South Africa, the most commonly used languages in the areas I worked in were English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Sesotho - I managed to learn some basic Zulu, Sesotho and Afrikaans!
 
During my time in South Africa I worked at a day centre called the Elton John Masibambisane centre. I worked with 15 other volunteers from England and Wales. We had various jobs which included working at Othandweni nursery or helping with various jobs such as gardening or working at the library. Half of us worked at the Masibambisane centre during the day. We swapped after 5 weeks. We worked Monday to Friday and on Saturday we had our weekly meeting. We also went on 3 weekends away; we went to a lion park, an African cultural experience at Lesedi where there was traditional African dancing. We also went to a theme park as well as this we went to a show in gold reef city.
 
I also learnt a lot about the developing world. I learnt that there are still problems with racism in South Africa and of course I saw the effects of poverty - there is big gap between the rich and the poor.
 
My time in South Africa was amazing and hopefully I made a difference to the lives of the people that I met. To people out there reading this and thinking of applying to become a volunteer -apply online now. It could make your year!!