Mozambique: Xitata Lutheria Africana

About the local hosting organization

XITATA is a project that provides practical knowledge and experiences related to the sonorous universe of the African continent. It aims to retrieve local, traditional soundtracks and instruments that are getting lost due to external influences. The organisation wants to democratize and decolonize musical artistic production, and resist globalisation that causes local traditions to disappear. XITATA thereby contributes to the conservation of the musical memory of people. Nature is their source of inspiration and provides the raw materials that allow them to produce musical instruments. XITATA has a profound respect for nature and a strong commitment to the sustainability of natural resources, striving for productions with the lowest possible ecological damage. XITATA’s purpose is in making known the traditional African musical instruments, their languages and sounds, as well as promoting the art of building the instruments in an artisan way, claiming back the value of manual work and care outside the production in series. XITATA offers different courses and workshops to approach the African culture through its musical instruments. They use social medias to spread and document their knowledge and to create spaces of dialog and exchange beyond our geographic boundaries.

Presentation of the programme

The placement offers a wide range of activities for the volunteers. This included e.g.: Teaching and/or delivering trainings recycling used material to produce several artefacts, Sewing, painting, crafts and other vocational art; Working with children at public schools in the community (teaching about cultural diversity, how to produce end play the MBIRA).

About the accomodation

Mozambican Host Family

About the location

The project is situated in the central and urban area of Maputo. In this area you find diverse kind of facilities like banks, including ATM, internet access, hospitals/ health care centres, local transport from one place to another (especially between home and work placements), shops and entertainment. The volunteer will be working in this site on the schedules of the work planned.

Requirements

All types of volunteers are accepted, as long as they are willing to cooperate with the project and believe in their purpose. Additionally, the project would be happy to have someone who: is very communicative no matter the language; has manual skills (painting, drawing, crafting skills, etc); is preferably between 23 to 35 years old shows passion for community work is open to learn and to share personal experiences is active and creative is interested in learning about the social and community context.