As the New Year kicks off here at World Vision, it is also kicking off at the University of Manchester. I'm really excited as since I was granted the year sabbatical from my job there, I've been trying to think of ways that I might be able to link some of my work at the University with my placement here. One aspect of my job there (as a Volunteering and Community Engagement Executive) was to support students running their own volunteering projects, a really fun...

The World Vision office where I am placed is an extremely busy office, where the very committed staff work all hours of the day and night to deliver their programmes and reach the communities that are very much in need. Their targets are as high as a mountain, and I can honestly say that the staff motivation is as it has to be - as high as the sky! Because no matter what, no matter how much pressure they are under, they always work hard and with integrity to ...

In the midst of the whole galore of things that have been going on in the last few weeks, I thought it was about time for me to write about some of the work that I have been doing, to give some kind of a flavour of what exactly it is that has been keeping me so busy placement-wise. My volunteering placement has really taken off, and true to what everyone says, the 6 months of relationship building is now finally producing some really lovely fruitful result...

So the new volunteers have arrived, and it's great to finally have company!! They arrived here last Sunday, completed exhausted and utterly dishevelled from the tumultuous journey that they had been on to get here, both practically and emotionally! So the first few days were all about rest and recuperation - I remember my first few days and it really does take some time to catch your breath and absorb what's going on around you, before you start to feel like ...

We are approaching the end of World Vision's operational year, and it's time to run the last of the programmes and wrap things up before the New Year begins. A couple of days ago I was asked to help out with the Good News Clubs training, a three day workshop for the teachers and children running Good News Clubs in their schools, by supporting the facilitators to make sure it was child friendly and engaging for the 80+ children that would be attending. The Goo...