Our final group meeting

This weekend marked our final get together before we embark on our journey to Haiti. I can't believe how quickly it seems to have come around, it seems like just yesterday we were looking at potential destinations!

We decided to spread our meetings around different parts of LaSER so that they could be accessible for all of the participants, so this weekend we headed to camp on one of LaSER’s own sites - Cudham Shaws. I'd never been there before so that's an adventure in itself! One thing you'll quickly learn about me is that many things can be considered an adventure, so you can only imagine how massive an adventure Haiti will be!)

The weekend

I left work at 4.45pm sharp, and got the train straight to Orpington, which is the station nearest to Cudham.

We are lucky that so many people in the group drive, so Eleanor picked myself and Zahra up from Orpington station and drove us to the site. Joyous train delays means that we arrived at the campsite an hour after we had intended, but actually it meant that most of the tents had already been pitched and it was almost dinner time - excellent!

After a fantastic meal of sweet potatoes and a selection of toppings (outdoorsy people, I'd highly recommend it as an option for cooking outside), we sat around catching up and ensuring we all knew what we wanted to get out of the weekend.

On Saturday, Eleanor had very kindly organised for us to do some bag packing at the local supermarket. We were only there from 10am - 12pm, but the people of Orpington were clearly in a very giving mood! Over the course of two hours, we raised £268.32 which was very impressive considering many people just seemed to pay us to hear about the project. Everyone was extremely positive and supportive, in many cases engaging with their own experiences of guiding and. All in all, our morning was very enjoyable - thanks Orpington!

Later, at the campsite, we shared a selection of non-verbal icebreakers and water themed games that we may be able to run with the groups we meet in Haiti. I also found that many of these translate to using with my Rainbows and Brownies, so that's a bonus! Perhaps we’ll share some of them if anyone is interested in some fresh ideas for work/youth groups.

We reviewed the proposed itinerary and have come up with a few questions that we’ll want to ask of the organisation we are volunteering with in Haiti - it's always nice when you realise you're all thinking along the same lines! Hopefully we'll be able to have a Skype call or something similar before we meet at Heathrow.

Saturday evening we sat around the fire, sharing potential songs that we may be able to ‘entertain’ our new friends with in Haiti. It was, surprisingly harder than anticipated! We picked out a couple of favourites, however, will be able to practice them while we wait for our plane transfer from Atlanta. I glad to say I learned a handful of new songs that will be taken back to various campfire events in the future.

We spent Sunday morning striking the tents and tidying the site, before reviewing everything we had talked about over the weekend. There are a few independent tasks that we will need to fit in before the trip, so I may write about those when I get round to them. I would also like to squeeze in another fundraising event but I don't know how feasible that will be as time really is ticking.

Not long now!

There's still time to donate!

Badge Launch

Today marks the official 'launch' day of the badge we have produced as a group fundraiser! 

I honestly never realised how time consuming it would be, so have a new-found admiration for people who write badge activity packs on a regular basis. 

I don't think there was ever a real question as to whether we wanted to write an activity badge or not. In the past, it seems to have become a sort of tradition for people to create a badge to remember their international adventure so it made sense to use it as a money spinner too! 

The resource has been created with a whole host of activities to help Girlguiding members of all ages learn about Haiti. We split the badge syllabus into four topic sections to enable learning across a range of elements, and to appeal to a variety of interests:

• Getting to know Haiti 
• Environment 
• Culture 
• Awareness

If you're interested in downloading the pack, or ordering a badge (just £1+P&P), you can do so here.

Below the line results

Well, it was tricky but I made it to the end of the challenge! Although a lot of sites offer recipes for cheap meals, they invariably require a larger initial spend, e.g. £15 for a range of meals that will last 3 weeks, which is no good if you don’t have £15 to begin with.

I cooked all my meals (apart from breakfast) on the Sunday night, and then portioned them out for the course of the week. They were all vegetarian but to ensure the meals were still all ok to eat, I froze Wednesday, Thursday and Friday's portions and defrosted on the day. This meant I had 3 small meals a day - nothing more - apart from Wednesday when I was at home and had an afternoon snack of rice (I was volunteering in the evening, and knew that if I didn’t eat before then I would be an absolute joy to be around!).

As you can see from the pictures, it seemed like the food was quite beige. It became a way of keeping me ‘healthy’ whereas I am used to food being a pleasurable experience, so I found myself following the same routine everyday in order to have something to look forward to. My favourite meal was the bean stew, so I would have that in the evening.

Although I found myself hungrier than usual, I got into the habit of knowing when meals would be and knowing that I could wait. It was also a good opportunity to remind my body that when I think I'm hungry, I actually need a drink. Each day, I drank at least 3 litres of water having cut all other drink from my diet - I generally don't drink enough water on a daily basis and I found this helped my skin as well as my hunger. In the morning, if I wanted a hot drink I would have a mug of hot water.

Reading this back to myself, I know it doesn't sound as though the week was too difficult, but I'm an everyday carnivore who thoroughly enjoys sugary treats. Throughout the challenge week I was basically a sugar-free vegan and it really had a physical affect on my body. It was a bad week for me to choose as I was recovering from a cold, and had some travel vaccinations on the Tuesday, but I did find that my cold seemed prolonged and I had a headache all week. The connection is purely speculative, but I think the lack of certain vitamins didn't help.

Going back to my normal habits has been tricky. I've found myself considerably cutting down on anything even slightly greasy because it makes me feel ill (I had cooked everything in water over the last week!). In fact, we took the Brownies out to Mcdonald's on Sunday and I ended up having carrot sticks - sad, or what?! It's weird how quickly your body can get used to new habits, though, on Saturday I had a fresh orange juice and my lips came out in a rash (presumably because I hadn't had any sugar or citric acid for 5 days!)

It was difficult to calculate my exact spend because, in reality, if I was living on this budget I may not have access to the cooker (to initially cook my meals), microwave (to reheat my meals), or a hot water heater (at work we have a magic water tap rather than a kettle so it's tricky to work out the precise spends). Despite this, I have tried to work out the basic costs to the best of my ability!

Total spent including water:

£4.33 on food (although I do have some potato soup left - only one portion!)

£1.44 on drink (tap water - 15 litres over the course of the week - based on figures from Thames Water)

= £5.77

To put the costs into perspective, when I went out with my mum on Saturday, we had a lunchtime snack at M&S and it cost £14.90 for the two of us! I have found myself thinking about money increasingly when I look at the costs of food, and it's something that I'm going to bear in mind for as long as I can.

It wasn't the plan, but I am going to try and keep some of the habits I gained from last week for my everyday lifestyle. Avoiding some of the sweet treats at work wouldn't be a bad thing, and neither would eating smaller portions! That said, I'm not going to intentionally force myself into eating beige food because it's cheaper.

Thanks so much to everybody who donated and supported me throughout the week, you helped me raise £180 from this alone, which is incredible! It's not too late to donate if you would still like to, check out my Just Giving page for more info: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Francesca-Jones1

Living below the line

Haiti is widely recognised as a poor country, with the overall incidence of poverty in the country at 77 per cent. In fact, in rural areas, which are home to 52 per cent of Haiti’s population, 88 per cent of people are poor and 67 per cent are extremely poor. Although agriculture is an important sector in the overall economy, Haiti does not produce enough food crops and livestock to feed its people. The country even has to import 60 per cent of the food it needs, including as much as 80 per cent of the rice it consumes.

That is why I have challenged myself to live the next five days (11-15 April 2016) below the poverty line. 5 days, £5. £1-a-day to buy all my food and drink for the week. I'm hungry just thinking about it!

I used to pride myself on being good with money, and whilst at uni I would have easily managed this. But I must admit there are days now (most of the time, in fact!) when I don't think about meal planning in advance and am left buying food last minute. This is especially true for little things like ‘I’m being good, I’ll have that healthy yoghurt at M&S’. There's also often a lot of food at work, and I can’t help feeling it would be cheating a bit (even though someone will have already paid for it!) so I will be avoiding all snacks in the office throughout the 5 days. That's a challenge in itself!

If you would like to support me, please donate to my JustGiving page:

https://www.justgiving.com/Francesca-Jones1

Thanks for reading,

(Data source: http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/country/home/tags/haiti)

You'll never guess where we're going!

This weekend my team met up for the first time since selection, for a two day 'training' (not really training, but I don't know how else to describe it!) event. We had the opportunity to hear from people who had been on other international trips, and quiz them about all things money and prep. It was fantastic to watch videos and see photographs from service trips all over the world, particularly Team Ecuador from 2014 as they are all the same age as us. Younger groups have trips planned for them, whilst older groups plan it themselves which is what we are doing. It was great to see how Team Ecuador found the planning stages, and it helped put our minds at rest as well (we've been feeling rather unprepared!)

Then we spent quite a few hours researching and working out where we will be going. Talk about improving researching skills! 

Before we met up, we had all completed a Survey Monkey to see what part of the world we wanted to go to. This meant that the research was already narrowed down to the Caribbean and South America, but where did we actually want to go?

We examined books and websites, and eventually narrowed our choices down to three possible countries, and took a vote:

Dominican Republic 

Haiti

Puerto Ricco

We completed a tally, voting for two choices each. It took a very long time but we eventually settled on Haiti! 

My knowledge of Haiti is pretty limited, learning a little of the geographical background whilst at college but I am taking the time to find out more about it.

Haiti, an island with a population of 8 million, is the poorest country in the Americas. It's 2015, and the literacy rate is still incredibly low, with 60% of those aged 15 and over being able to read and write. That said, it's gradually increasing and continues to do so. 

The next step is planning the intricate details of our volunteering; we've been looking at an organisation called 'Volunteers for Peace' who specialise in volunteering in Haiti. Their programmes fit in really well with what we would like to do, and we are hoping to work with young people affected by the earthquake in 2010. We would learn and teach them about the environment and ecology of their local area and how to live in harmony with it.

The trip going to cost in the region of £2800, which seems slightly more manageable than the £3000 we initially estimated. I am aiming for £3000 though, as then I have a bit of excess if costs end up being a bit more than we anticipate. Still not entirely sure how I'm going to get so much money together, but hoping there will be lots of opportunities! 

So, it's all systems go on the fundraising front now! 

Until another time, 

*this post was copied over from my other site. To read the original, click here.