Well it's been rather a long time since I last posted and I was a tad remiss in not finishing off with the updates about my travels last year. Needless to say it was all pretty amazing! It's about time that I picked this blog up again, and what better time to do so than after a two week trip to Cambodia? First though, a bit of context...
Since returning to the UK in May 2012 I have moved to London and found myself a job as Community Fundraising Officer for ActionAid. I've been working there for just over a year now and am absolutely loving it. My role is essentially to support anyone who wants to hold a fundraising activity for ActionAid - from cake sales to street collections, cross-continental bike rides, drastic hair cuts and everything in between. On a more proactive rather than reactive note I also come up with ideas for fundraising to encourage more people to get involved with ActionAid. Again, this suits me down to the ground, as those of you who have attended one of my many own fundraising events over the years will know!
I belong to the Events and Community Engagement Team, and one of our team activities are First Hand Experiences, managed by my lovely colleague Miranda. First Hand Experiences are very similar to the different volunteering bits and bobs I've done overseas in my time. The concept is that people fundraise £3000 to join an ActionAid trip to work on a project in one of our 45 countries. A perk (a pretty nice perk actually) of being in my team is that we take it in turns to accompany the First Hand Experiences as the ActionAid representative, and I was lucky enough to join at a time when everyone else had already taken a trip - thus it was my turn! So it was that I found myself in the incredibly privileged position of travelling to Cambodia for work - not something that many people get the chance to do.
I won't lie - I was really quite nervous about the trip before we left the UK. It felt like a lot of responsibility on my little shoulders to make sure that everyone had an amazing experience and I was apprehensive that I wouldn't live up to the expectations that Miranda and other UK colleagues had of me. However, I'm pleased to say that my fears were unnecessary - it went brilliantly! I took 22 supporters with me, ranging from 16 to over 70, from a QC to a child-psychologist, a journalist to an engineer (well, several engineers actually!). With the help of Anthony, our Build Site Manager and Jill, our Tour Operator, our mission was to help with building a library at the Trapieng Por Primary School.
It goes without saying that the week was physically tough. The heat didn't drop below 32 degrees the whole time we were building, and the work we had to do was labour intensive with tasks including moving large piles of sand and earth, mixing concrete and cement by hand, wiring columns together, brick-laying and lots of miscellaneous carrying, shovelling, wheel-barrowing, water-pumping and chain-ganging. Blimey - it makes me a bit tired just typing that list!
In between building everyone interacted with the kids - whether in lessons teaching them anything from maths to Simon Says or in their breaks blowing bubbles for them to pop. It sounds uber cheesy, but I can honestly say that by the end of our week we'd not only built a decent chunk of library (and toilet block), but we'd also built some lovely relationships with the kids - they were simply adorable. It really makes you stop and think when a entire playground of kids are besides themselves with excitement over a few pots of bubbles; they really know how to find joy in the most simple of pleasures.
It made us all really sad to have to say goodbye not only to the kids, but to the builders we'd worked alongside, to the ActionAid Cambodia staff who were fantastic, to our Cambodian tour guides who got as stuck into the building work as anyone - everyone really came together and worked their sweaty socks off to make sure that we made as much of a difference as possible. I for one feel a huge sense of achievement - who'd have thought that group of amateurs could actually be pretty useful on a building site? Actually scrap that - who'd have thought I could be pretty useful on a building site?!
A brilliant week of hard work, friendship-making, cultural enlightenment, cute kids, insightful conversations, emotional moments and (most of all) a whole lotta laughs! I'm a lucky girl indeed.
Since returning to the UK in May 2012 I have moved to London and found myself a job as Community Fundraising Officer for ActionAid. I've been working there for just over a year now and am absolutely loving it. My role is essentially to support anyone who wants to hold a fundraising activity for ActionAid - from cake sales to street collections, cross-continental bike rides, drastic hair cuts and everything in between. On a more proactive rather than reactive note I also come up with ideas for fundraising to encourage more people to get involved with ActionAid. Again, this suits me down to the ground, as those of you who have attended one of my many own fundraising events over the years will know!
I belong to the Events and Community Engagement Team, and one of our team activities are First Hand Experiences, managed by my lovely colleague Miranda. First Hand Experiences are very similar to the different volunteering bits and bobs I've done overseas in my time. The concept is that people fundraise £3000 to join an ActionAid trip to work on a project in one of our 45 countries. A perk (a pretty nice perk actually) of being in my team is that we take it in turns to accompany the First Hand Experiences as the ActionAid representative, and I was lucky enough to join at a time when everyone else had already taken a trip - thus it was my turn! So it was that I found myself in the incredibly privileged position of travelling to Cambodia for work - not something that many people get the chance to do.
I won't lie - I was really quite nervous about the trip before we left the UK. It felt like a lot of responsibility on my little shoulders to make sure that everyone had an amazing experience and I was apprehensive that I wouldn't live up to the expectations that Miranda and other UK colleagues had of me. However, I'm pleased to say that my fears were unnecessary - it went brilliantly! I took 22 supporters with me, ranging from 16 to over 70, from a QC to a child-psychologist, a journalist to an engineer (well, several engineers actually!). With the help of Anthony, our Build Site Manager and Jill, our Tour Operator, our mission was to help with building a library at the Trapieng Por Primary School.
It goes without saying that the week was physically tough. The heat didn't drop below 32 degrees the whole time we were building, and the work we had to do was labour intensive with tasks including moving large piles of sand and earth, mixing concrete and cement by hand, wiring columns together, brick-laying and lots of miscellaneous carrying, shovelling, wheel-barrowing, water-pumping and chain-ganging. Blimey - it makes me a bit tired just typing that list!
In between building everyone interacted with the kids - whether in lessons teaching them anything from maths to Simon Says or in their breaks blowing bubbles for them to pop. It sounds uber cheesy, but I can honestly say that by the end of our week we'd not only built a decent chunk of library (and toilet block), but we'd also built some lovely relationships with the kids - they were simply adorable. It really makes you stop and think when a entire playground of kids are besides themselves with excitement over a few pots of bubbles; they really know how to find joy in the most simple of pleasures.
It made us all really sad to have to say goodbye not only to the kids, but to the builders we'd worked alongside, to the ActionAid Cambodia staff who were fantastic, to our Cambodian tour guides who got as stuck into the building work as anyone - everyone really came together and worked their sweaty socks off to make sure that we made as much of a difference as possible. I for one feel a huge sense of achievement - who'd have thought that group of amateurs could actually be pretty useful on a building site? Actually scrap that - who'd have thought I could be pretty useful on a building site?!
A brilliant week of hard work, friendship-making, cultural enlightenment, cute kids, insightful conversations, emotional moments and (most of all) a whole lotta laughs! I'm a lucky girl indeed.
