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.

Shannon offers advice on volunteering overseas

Shannon is offering potential volunteers some worthy words of advice:

How to Enhance Your Volunteering Abroad Experience
It’s not only a way to help other people, it’s also a great way to see more of the world and broaden your horizons.

In short, volunteering abroad is a two-way street that generates as many advantages for you as it does for the community you’re volunteering in. You get to learn about new cultures and experience the lives of people who belong to those cultures; you’re able to travel and visit new places and countries and meet new people who will change your life in various ways; and besides all this, you’re making a positive difference in the lives of the people you choose to live amongst.

If you’ve decided to be a volunteer abroad and are looking to make your volunteering experience more fruitful and enjoyable, here’s what you could do:
· Choose a country you’re comfortable with:
Don’t go somewhere just because your friends are going or because it’s the in thing to do. Rather, choose to volunteer at a location where you’ll be comfortable – with the weather, the way of life, the culture, the language, and the people. When you’re at ease in your environment, you find it easier to be a better volunteer and be of help to the community you’ve chosen to live amongst.
· Learn about the country and people you will be visiting:
It’s not that hard to learn about the ways and customs of any country and people today, what with the Internet throwing open to us a world of resources that were not available easily a few decades ago. So before you board that plane, take some time to know the country and people you’re going to visit and volunteer in, not just to broaden your knowledge, but also to find ways to improve your volunteering services and customize them to the needs of the locals.
· Respect their culture and customs:
You may find their culture and customs strange and even weird at times, but even if you don’t agree with their way of life or adapt to it, respect it. Don’t make fun of their ways of doing things or look down on them. And even if you cannot bring yourself to do as Romans do in Rome, be tolerant and understanding and remember that you are the stranger there, not them.
· Learn a little of their language:
You don’t have to go the whole hog and become fluent in their native tongue, but it would help if you learned a few words and phrases that are used often. This will help you bond better with the people you’re living amongst and make you a better volunteer in the long run.
· Keep an open mind:
And last, but certainly not the least, keep an open mind when it comes to new experiences and trying out something that seems strange to you. When you’re open to change, you not only adapt to it better and faster; you also become more mature and more knowledgeable because of your experiences.

Thanks Shannon.

By-line:
This guest post is contributed by Shannon Wills, she writes on the topic of Online Engineering Degree . She welcomes your comments at her email id: shannonwills23@gmail.com.

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!

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!

October 2009 Newsletter

Here is the latest from the news desk at Changing Worlds.

Click on: http://www.changingworlds.co.uk/Home.aspx?vurl=%2f%2fRoot%2fContent%2fNewsletterOctober2009

Congratulations to Azafady

Congratulations to Mark Jacob and the Azafady team on this news!

Dear Friend of Azafady,
We wanted to give you a short update on everything going on with Azafady this October. We have some exciting developments with Pictet & Cie, a leading private Swiss Bank, who have chosen to support Azafady as part of their commitment to the Pictet photography prize and global sustainability. The Prix Pictet is an annual search for photographs which communicate powerful messages of global environmental significance under the theme, this year, of 'Earth'. And, for 2009, Pictet & Cie will support Azafady's Voly Hazo project that aims to preserve the earth from degradation and the eventual desertification that is seen so widely in Madagascar, with a programme of tree planting and conservation of the natural forest.

Mark and his team

One of the short listed photographers for the Prix Pictet, Ed Kashi, has been commissioned to visit Madagascar with the Azafady team in order to produce a series of photographs that will highlight many of the issues that we are focusing on in this unique and endangered environment. Ed Kashi will visit Madagascar in January with an exhibition of his work following in the Spring. Please see the press release below for more information on the Prix Pictet.

This is really exciting news for everyone at Azafady, so we hope you will share in our excitement and keep in touch with everything going in Madagascar and with Azafady. We have recently launched a new blog at: www.azafady.us/blog and, if you are not already, please do become a facebook fan of Azafady at: www.facebook.com/AzafadyMadagascar - where there are lots of updates, pictures and news from our projects in Madagascar.

Finally, thank you all for your continued support of Azafady and our work in Madagascar.

Best wishes,

Mark

Mark Jacobs
Managing Director

Azafady Studio 7 1a Beethoven Street London, W10 4LG Telephone +44 (0) 20 8960 6629 Fax +44 (0) 20 8962 0126 Email mark@azafady.org Internet www.madagascar.co.uk
Skype Azafadyoffice

Become a fan of Azafady on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AzafadyMadagascar

Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/azafady

Mark and his team are working really hard to improve the quality of life for the peoples of Madagascar. To find out more about their volunteering options do hit:
http://www.changingworlds.co.uk/default.aspx?qlink=MadagascarOverview

Adam wants to encourage you to come to Queenstown in New Zealand

Adam, who went out to Queenstown in New Zealand in September of this year writes to say he is having the time of his life. He writes:
Hello David Again!
Just another update for you!!Sorry its been a while but using the internet is the last thing i want to do here! haha!

I'm still loving it here, its such a cool place and i feel very at home! Living with Debbie is still going well too, it has its bad points sharing room ect but i expected this when i came so I'm not letting it get in my way of enjoying NZ!

Works going really well too! Its Work for Skyline Gondola which you know of course, in their Photographic Department, its a new department for skyline as they always contracted a company in to take the photos and sell them, before aug this year so its all very much still work in progress, but its interesting to be in a development of a new department!

Basicly my job role is Being a photographer, developer,sales person and customer service rep roled into on big job!We basic are the first person the customers meet as they board the gondola, we make a bit of chitchat anwser questions and then offer to take their photo, sounds easy but we have to do this before the gondola doors close ad whilst the gondola is still moving!

We rotate as well into developing photos then selling the photos as guest leave again!I really enjoy it as i love talking to people and you know i love the tourist industry so fits me perfect!!!

I do appricate the hard work changing worlds does and was sad to hear some of the other boys had reservastions! I'm still glad i came with changing worlds as it gave me the confidence i needed to come here!

Just obvously the job situation cocerned us all! But we are all sorted now and life goes on!I do have photos on my facebook profile if u can access it via the changing worlds group? The car is also still going great and a great way of saving money compared to busses!If anyoe looking at coming to NZ has any questions send them my way!

I'm happy to helpp too!Thanks david!
adam dobinson

Adam would be delighted to tell you more. Contact him via his e-mail at:
adam.dobinson@hotmail.co.uk. Do check out his Facebook entries too!

David's monthly newsletter update

Do have a read of my monthly newsletter...to bring you up to speed on what's going on at Changing Worlds.

The link to my latest newsletter is found at:
http://www.changingworlds.co.uk/Home.aspx?vurl=%2f%2fRoot%2fContent%2fNewsletterSeptember2009

I hope you enjoy it!

David

Take a healthy break

In a recent article listing the top 10 healthy holiday Australia at 81.2 years came out 6th!
"Known as a nation of sports fanatics, Australians’ enthusiasm for health and fitness ensures them a place in the top ten. The climate certainly helps visitors to enjoy the great outdoors too, with surfing, scuba diving and sun tanning popular pastimes."

Read the whole article, click here






We know from over a decade of sending Gappies to work on farms in the outback, zoo's in Brisbane and to help with outdoor education teaching at schools in Melbourne that Australia is a great place to live, even if only for a few months.

Don't just take our word for it, join our Facebook group and ask ex-volunteers about their experiences.

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

Superb Twitter Application for Travellers

This looks like it would be a great way to gather together peoples opinions on a holiday destination, find out things to do there or even meet up with fellow Twitterers when you're there!

I wil be recommending it to our volunteers to stay in touch with a quick soundbite about what they're getting up to, as well as when they head off backpacking after their placement ends.

Completely free as well!

I'll use it next time I go away.

http://twttrip.com/

David