Beccky updates on fundraising for St Stephens orphanage

Becky continues her efforts to raise funds for St. Stephens orphanage in Nakuru in Kenya. Becky and Ben Lock are former volunteers who went away with Changing Worlds last year. Becky writes via Facebook:
Hi David,
hope you are well.
Things are going well with fundrasing now.
Myself, Ben Lock and a few friends and family completed the London-Brighton cycle on sunday, it was good but very tough.
Once i have collected my sponsorship from that as well as another event at church i should have around £1000 which is my target to have by july when i go back to kenya for 4 weeks.
I also know that some of the others have had/ have coming up fundraising events for the orphanage and Zoe's Nakuru workers feeding programme.
The only concern that many of us still have with the orphanage is the issue of running it. We dont want to put a few more thousand into the building if there are going to be no children living there but we definitely dont want to waste the money already gone into it.
It is difficult to communicate with Karanja about this because he is so busy do you know any more about this issue?
In addition to this i am in the process of setting up a link between my mums school in worthing and Kiamaina. I did 2 assemblies there yesterday and hopefully the children are going to write letters and raise a bit of money.
Becky
We wish Becky continued good luck with her fundraising. If you feel you would like to mkae a donation, however small, it would be appreciated. Let me know via e-mail to:
david@changingworlds.co.uk

Read our Newsletter for April 2010

Our latest updates in our April 2010 newsletter.

Features include issues of fundraising, updates on our placements in Brazil and China and an interesting video of one of volunteers playing the part of a pop star whilst in Kenya.

http://www.changingworlds.co.uk/Home.aspx?vurl=%2f%2fRoot%2fContent%2fNewsletterApril2010

Enjoy!

Zoe is jumping from a plane for Kenyan kids!

Zoe Kelland is fund raising for the children at Nakuru Workers. Zoe worked as a volunteer for six months at the school and identified a very important issue.

Zoe writes via Facebook:
Hello!
In May or June I will be skydiving from a plane somewhere above Nottingham and hoping to dear God that I don't just plummet into a tree.
I am doing this for the school in Kenya that I spent 6 months teaching at last year. 70 children at the school only eat one meal a day and I don't think this is fair.

ALL money raised from my skydive will pay for free lunches for these children.

• 25p pays for one child's lunch.
• £15 will feed a child for a term.
• £45 will feed a child for a YEAR.

The kids are the friendliest, loveliest, most hard working people you could ever meet, and they deserve better than one meal per day. The kids who don't eat enough cannot concentrate at school and achieve so much less than they could if fed properly.
Please help them have a fair chance at doing well in school and achieving a better future for themselves.
If you could donate anything you can I, and the children in Kenya, would appreciate that so much. Just the amount we'd spend on a night out makes so much difference. To donate go to http://www.justgiving.com/Zoe-Kelland

Thank you so much :) Zoe xxx

I hope you feel you can make a donation towards Zoe's fundraising efforts. A donation, however small, will be well received.

Zoe is aiming to get UK£1 000 for the children at the school through her sky diving.

Changing Worlds has played our small part by donating UK£45 to the cause - I hope you can too!

I will keep you updated with Zoe's fundraising efforts.

Livvy completes the London Marathon and raises funds for the children in Kenya

Huge congratulations to Livvy Partington for successfully completing the gruelling London Marathon last week.

Livvy writes via Facebook:
Hope you are well, I did the marathon on Sunday and I have got £1000 for the orhanage from it so hopefully with all our fundraising we'll be able to get it off the ground this year! Speak soon, Livvy'

Livvy, a former Rugby School student, went to Nakuru last summer with Changing Worlds. She spent three months working in an orphanage for street children.

Such is the impact these kids had on her life Livvy is determined to not only give her own time but to continue to work for their benefit.

Well done Livvy!

Richard asks for help - starting a pen pal scheme!

Richard went to Kenya in September 2008 with Changing Worlds and did some volunteering. He has since this time returned and clearly is keen to keep links with this East African country.

(This is Rich in Kenya!)

He asks for help from our present volunteers based in Nakuru in Kenya. He writes:
Hello,

'I have been talking to David Gill, I am a past volunteer for Changing Worlds and spent my gap year in Kenya aswell. I was a volunteer at Kagoto Primary school and St. Stephens orphanage. I worked there throughout my time in Kenya and since returning home have decided to set up a pen pal scheme between any of the children you are working with in Kenya and children I work with here.

The children and Young people I work with in the UK are all Looked after and in Foster Care of some form. They have all wrote letters, which I will be sending out to Karanja this weekend again as I have a feeling they may have got lost in the post last time I sent them.

I have attached a letter from myself to those letters with a return envelope in with my business address on. I would really appreciate it if one of you does not mind using the letters and getting the Kenyan children to reply to a specific young person and co-ordinate the returns for me.

One other thing, would anyone of you mind writing a letter that gives the YP an idea of what you are doing in Kenya and what life is like? Could you please post it to Richard Hartley, Access Service, East Durham Education Centre, York Road, Peterlee, SR8 2DP, UK as soon as possible please?

I know that’s a lot to ask as I don't even know any of you, but I am really keen to set up a penpal scheme that will enable children on both sides the chance to learn about another culture. I also know that the Kenyan children are forever interested in talking to people from England.

Whoever is interested in doing this or does not mind, could you please reply directly to this email to let me know?

I will ensure all costs are covered so that you do not incur a penny!

I really do appreciate any help you can offer me, please send on my regards to the family/ children and Karanja.

Thanks,

Richard'


Richard is presently work with disadvantaged children in his home town of Durham in the North East of England.


I await a response from our volunteers - what an exciting projects for all those children wherever they are in the World.


Carry on the good work Rich - help make the World a better place!

News Update - read the Changing Worlds January 2010 newsletter

I am delighted to release our latest newsletter for January 2010.

http://www.changingworlds.co.uk/Home.aspx?vurl=%2f%2fRoot%2fContent%2fNewsletterJanuary2010

It includes some really useful information about fundraising ideas that will be very useful to those looking to find potential sponsors for their gap year.

Regards
David

Ethical Volunteering Overseas

An advertisement for financial assistance has appeared in the Society Guardian section of the The Guardian newspaper on Tuesday 03 February 2010.

The advert writes:
ETHICAL VOLUNTEERING OVERSEAS
£500 bursaries now available!
ICYE is an international volunteering charity organising placements across the World. Two £500 different bursaries are offered. One is towards the programme fee for a voluntary placement to Latin America and the other will go to a placement in Africa.
Placements must begin on or before 21 June 2010 and last for a minimum of eight weeks.
Application deadline: Monday 08 March 2010
Contact short-term@icye.org.uk or call 0207 681 0983

Sergio gives fund raising advice

Sergio recently went over seas.

He is very keen to help others in important development work overseas and kindly produced some excellent advice on fund raising:

Let me start by saying that, no matter how daunting the prospect of fundraising might seem, once you get started it gets easier and easier, to the point where you’ll really enjoy doing it. Once it is all over, you will look back and consider this stage an integral part of your volunteering project.

My partner and I are originally from Spain, where the concept of individuals fundraising for their own cause/charity is virtually non-existent. So you can imagine how we faced the prospect of “having to ask for money”. Even so more considering we were only two and a half months away from starting our stay in Cambodia, and both of us worked full time. “But, hey, even if it is a few quid, it’ll help” we thought. In the end, out of our £5.400 target we managed, in 2 months, to raise… over £7.600!! Never in our wildest dreams could we’ve dreamt such a response…

How did we do it?

Let me start from the basics. After attending a fundraising workshop and reading a couple of books on the subject, my absolute top two tips would be the following:

· Be ready to tell everyone: network, network, network!!
· Base your fundraising events on things you enjoy / your hobbies.
Taking into account these premises, what follows is a set of more or less random thoughts and ideas for fundraising based on our experience.

1) THE BLOG.

First thing, set up a blog, you don’t need any specific web design knowledge for this (I started from scratch, didn’t actually have a clue of what a blog was before giving it a go). However, it pays to spend sometime thinking of the layout and the information you want to include, and to experiment with different add-ons and widgets (a portable chunk of code that can be copy-pasted and executed by you, the end user). It took me a good three weeks before I was happy with the result. Once this is done, the blog is a very easy way of conveying your message, it can become quite interactive and adding/removing information is relatively simple.

The blog serves 3 purposes:

· Before leaving, it helps raising awareness and supports your fundraising efforts.
· During the project, it allows you to stay in touch with friends, family & sponsors back at home, hence also showing that you are delivering on your promises. Keep the blog up-to-date, with a couple of postings a week and lots of pics (internet connectivity in Cambodia was awful, so if we managed, anyone can!) For the photographs, we used links from the blog to picasa web albums. I’d recommend that people take an old laptop with them to their host countries – this way, you can write the postings at your leisure, and leave the laptop to upload them alongside the pics at the cyber-café while you savour the local delicacies!

Picasa web albums: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/
Google Documents: http://docs.google.com/

· When you come back, the information on your blog will help you putting together a presentation with the highlights of your experience. You can then deliver this presentation to friends, family or institutions (Rotary, Lions Club, Round Table, Women’s International…) to thank them for their donations/support, and maybe raise further funds.

Tips for your blog

· Think of a catchy name that people can remember and associate with you. In our case, we named it “ESC-APE!!” which stood for “Elena & Sergio in Cambodia – A Project’s Experiences!!” It just so happens that “to escape” is the same word and has the same meaning in English and in Spanish: “to remove oneself from a familiar environment”.

· Start populating the blog with a section explaining the who, when, what and how. You can do this as a PowerPoint presentation, upload it through Google Documents and then embed it into the blog.

· We imported a widget to show photographs of ourselves, and another to leave a recorded a voice message- all this helped to make the blog more personal, especially towards people who didn’t know us.

· Create a block with links to past and future fundraising events.

· Be clear about the target amount you want raise, what it is for and what will cover. Show your progress: a simple “fundraising thermometer” updated every couple of days is a very visual and effective way of doing this.

· Include a widget that offers the possibility of subscribing to the blog by email or RSS. This way, people will receive one email per day with links to updates / new postings (and only one per day; no postings/ updates, no email)

· We had a “donate directly” through PayPal widget, but I don’t think anyone used it. Most people would transfer money directly into our account, or give it to us in cash.

· It helps if you have a friend who can design a nice banner for the blog’s main header (the first thing visitors to your blog will see!)

· Include a link to your blog in the signature block of all your email accounts, and your social networks.

For our blog, we used “blogger” (formerly known as “blogspot”):
https://www.blogger.com/start

Blog ESC-APE!!: http://elena-sergio-in-cambodia.blogspot.com/


2) THE EMAIL ACCOUNT.

It helps a lot keeping separate your private email from your “project’s” email, especially if you are going to ask professional institutions / business for sponsorship.

Hence open a specific email account for your project – keep it consistent with your blog’s name/theme.


3) THE BUSINESS CARDS.

Get some business cards printed, and hand them out to everyone!! I can’t stress this enough… EVERYONE!! Include your name, email address, blog address and, if you want, your mobile/phone number.

Keep some of them to hand out in your host country.

You can get 250 business cards for free from VistaPrint (you pay only for postage and processing and any product upgrades you select)

VistaPrint : http://www.vistaprint.co.uk/


4) THE LEAFLETS.

Produce a simple leaflet briefly describing the who, what, how, when. Include your contact and bank details. You can then hand them out at your fundraising events / presentations.

5) FUNDRAISING EVENTS.

· As said above, sit down and brainstorm for half an hour about things you enjoy doing, your hobbies: Sports? Dancing? Walking? Photography? Cinema?... Then try to link them together. “Can I organize a sponsored walk, take some photos and then hire a room somewhere to exhibit them, sell them, have a raffle and maybe a wine tasting event?”

· On your list, don’t forget to organize events where people get something in return for their money. It is OK for you to train and run a10km race, but it is much better to have a salsa night.

· Keep up-to-date records of the amounts fundraised (a simple spreadsheet would do) – the more transparent you can be about it, the more people will trust you.

· Use the media! Go to your local newspaper, explain your project, hand them out your business card and your leaflets and ask them to write an article about you.

· You can always have a raffle, anywhere! Go to your local corner-shops, explain your project, hand them out your business card and your leaflets and ask them to contribute with something: a bottle of wine, some cheese, a pair of socks… Tell them you’ll be publicising their business in the upcoming article that the local newspaper is going to write about you, and at the raffle itself.

· Talk to people, explain your project, hand them out your business card and your leaflets… (spot a recurring theme here?). You’ll be surprised how imaginative people can be, and the amount of useful advice they could give, usually from the most unexpected individuals!. Most of our fundraising ideas where shaped by contributions from others. For example, since we play squash, we thought of organizing a squash competition. When we discussed the idea with the board of our local squash club (after handing them out our business cards and leaflets) they agreed to let us use two courts on a Saturday free of charge. Not only that, but they suggested that rather than a competition, we organized a “24 hr squash marathon”: have 2 courts for 12 hours, divide the time into 15min slots, at £2 per slot and person. This way, more players could take part and we wouldn’t have to buy prizes!!

5) FUNDRAISING WHEN YOU COME BACK.

As mentioned above, once you are back from your project it might be worth contacting some of the local institutions that sponsored you and ask them if they’d be interested in a presentation about your project at their monthly meeting. This is a nice way of thanking them, as you can show where they contribution has gone.

But you should also target institutions that haven’t sponsored you. We, for example, delivered a presentation about our experiences to our local Rotary Club, just with the intention of raising awareness. Two days later we received from them a £500 cheque in the post, which we donated to the NGO we worked for in Cambodia.

*********************************************************************

Hope this helps!!

Good luck with your fundraising.

If you have any queries, don’t hesitate to ask. I’m only one email away!!

Kind regards,

Sergio Gallego-Schmid
sergio.gallego.schmid@gmail.com

Do contact Sergio for further help and advice.

Thank you Sergio!

Claire has success with her fundraising

Claire is off to Kenya shortly. She is going to do some teaching and orphanage work in Nakuru. Claire has worked very hard at her fund raising and writes:
Hi David,
I just thought i would send you a little email to keep you updated on my fundraising. Yesterday morning i held a coffee morning at my church with a raffle and cake sale and raised over £500!!

So thankyou very much for the promotional material you sent me a few weeks ago.

Hope all is well, see you on the 26th/27th!

Many Thanks, Claire Stevens

Well done Claire.

If you are after some help and advice about fund raising then do let me know. Drop me a line to david@changingworlds.co.uk and I will reply with lots of useful ideas.

Abby's Christmas plans in Kenya

This is what Abby is doing for Christmas - certainly different!

MERRY CHRISTMAS TOOOO!!!!

thanks so much for everything, got so much to do before i leave.

Will just let you know what we have been up to, we did a huge street feed for 100 boys 2 days ago, we are taking cookies and presents to all the orphanages we know, we redecorated an orphanage a few weeks ago and we babys at 4 orphans for the night from a lady named sherry who has her own orphanage/rescue home, we plan on taking food to the mums and children on ward 6 on christmas eve too!

xxxxxxxxxx

Carry on the good work Abby and have a wonderful Xmas!

Claire has success with her fundraising

Claire is off to Kenya in January 2010. She has been busy raising money for her trip.

Claire writes:
Hi David, I just thought i would send you a little email to keep you updated on my fundraising. Yesterday morning i held a coffee morning at my church with a raffle and cake sale and raised over £500!!

So thankyou very much for the promotional material you sent me a few weeks ago.

Hope all is well, see you on the 26th/27th!

Many Thanks,
Claire Stevens'
Well done Claire....fund raising in these difficult economic times is never easy so your news is very exciting. I know Claire worked hard to put together this event.

Changing Worlds is happy to help where we can. We have a fund raising pack that includes a letter template, background information and relevant websites that we know are successful. Do contact me at: david@changingworlds.co.uk for more details. Equally do contact Claire via clairestevens_577@hotmail.com for her thoughts.

Do be aware that Changing Worlds does offer bursaries to people who need financial assistance - we take each applicaion on its own merits so there is no harm in finding out more.

Do look at http://www.changingworlds.co.uk/default.aspx?qlink=bursaries

Jade succeeds in some incredible fund raising efforts

Jade is off to do some voluntary work in Kenya from September 2009.

As part of her effort to realise her dream she is doing some serious fundraising.

Jade recently completed some fun activities in her local area. If you would like to find out how she did it then access her blog at: http://www.jadeinkenya.co.uk/

Fancy dress to raise Gap Year funds

Hi all,

We have always given our volunteers fundraising tips and a volunteer called James has just had a fancy dress night at work. He's off to Ghana and had a Ghana themed evening.

There's all sorts of things people have done in the past from quiz nights to packing bags in supermarkets.

Gap Years are usually organised at least a year in advance so that gives you plenty of time to work and raise some funds, even cover the whole cost of your trip.

If you can show on your CV that not only did you do something really worthwhile on your Gap Year but you raised all the money yourself then you are given yourself a great boost to a future career as it shows commitment, organisation and desire.

If anyone has any fundraising tips or stories of their own we'd love to hear them.

Have a great weekend,

David

Join the conversation!

As of 11:39 am on the 10th March we had 236 followers on Twitter!

We are delighted by the interest being shown in Changing Worlds and in what we have to say. You can see a feed of our updates on Twitter on the right hand side of our blog page, or follow the link above to view our profile.

This along with 730 fans on our Facebook page puts us very close to having 1000 followers across social networks. If you could tell your friends about us, or mention us on your pages then that would really help get us up to 1000 global followers which would be amazing.

We are planning to start a monthly newsletter that will provide updates about our volunteers all round the world and will feature reports from our reps in the countries we have placements.

Being a small, family run company we are delighted to be in conversation with a global audience and reassured that the current economic climate is not all doom and gloom.

So thank you all for your support and friendship!

Kindest regards,

David

Graduates getting paid to take a Gap Year!

This story just shows that some people get all the luck...what would you do with a year off and £10,000??

http://tinyurl.com/b6boew

You could do a 3-6 month placement with us to do something that will change your life and make a difference somewhere that needs you:

http://changingworlds.co.uk/

Claire is soon to return from volunteering in India

This is an extract from an email we have just received from one of our volunteers, Claire, and it shows how much she has enjoyed her gap year experience:

"Hi guys, Just a little note to remind you that we're coming home!!! YAY! Cannot tell you how mixed up my emotions are right now as are the other two girls. We are so excited to have completed our placement and that we are coming home but at the same time absolutely devastated that we have to leave our new home."

"We are all very attached to India and have huge ties here including friends and new families. I will be returning to SOS (the orphanage) for a day before I leave if possible to say goodbye to my friends there and my Indian mother who took care of me while I was there. I am still in contact with a number of people including several volunteers."

"I cannot begin to tell you how amazing this experience has been. I know you hear it from every single person who becomes part of the team but I do really mean it. Nobody really understands what it means when they say a gap year changes you. Now i understand."

If you want to find out more about our placements in India email david@changingworlds.co.uk or go to our website: http://www.changingworlds.co.uk/default.aspx?qlink=india

Jade is going to Kenya

Hi all,

I have just been sent this link by one of our future volunteers. She is heading out to Kenya for 3 months in 2010. She is being very active on the fundraising front and there are lots of good ideas here if any of you need to raise money for your gap year.

http://tinyurl.com/bdcgk4

If you read the comments on the site you'll see it has obviously sparked some passionate debates!

If anyone has any fundraising ideas of their own it would be great to hear about them.

Thanks guys,

David