Immersions help to put a face to poverty. An immersion brings together people committed to eradicating poverty with people who directly experience it, and it does so in an informal and highly personal way.

Participants in an ActionAid-facilitated immersion spend a minimum of three days and nights staying with a family in a village and living, as far as possible, how that family lives. The idea is that by sharing, however briefly, in the lives of their hosts they will start to understand those lives – their richness and their challenges – in new ways.

The AAI Immersions programme is designed for development professionals and the staff of aid agencies and governments. It offers an experiential learning route to understand poverty in a less structured, more flexible way than the sometimes heavily planned itineraries, meetings or workshops held in capital cities.

These week-long facilitated learning workshops are centred around the individual participant and his or her individual learning needs and outcomes. The essence of the immersion is that the visitor is not an important person, but a fellow human being. She or he spends nights living in a community, taking part and helping in life, and experiencing and learning as a participant.

ActionAid is offering facilitated immersions on a regular basis, hosted by its country programmes and partners in African and Asia. ActionAid’s own staff will also take part, as a way of motivating and periodically re-connecting them with the people to whom they are ultimately accountable.

Immersion Calendar
If you are interested in taking part, please contact the person listed below.

• Nigeria 3-9 February 2007
  deadline for applications 1/12/06
  contact: olanrewaju.odunlami@actionaid.org
• Malawi March 2007
  contact: martha.khonje@actionaid.org
• India 12-16 March 2007 & 5-9 November 2007 contact: damodharam.k@actionaid.org
• Uganda 25-30 March 2007 & October 2007
  contact: delphine.mugisha@actionaid.org
• Pakistan April 2007
  contact: lubna.javed@actionaid.org
  
• Sierra Leone April 2007
  contact: marie.deen-nyarkoh@actionaid.org
• Ghana TBC
  contact: alex.kala@actionaid.org

photo : ©ActionAid