Closing up, cashing up, and looking forward
Having plateaued at around £3,200 for a while, my fund-raising received a very welcome – and unexpectedly large – kick-start again today: the post arrived with a letter from the Bulkeley-Evans Scholarship Fund, whom I wrote to in February, together with a cheque for £500 – the single biggest donation I’ve received to date. This exceptional generosity is the result of a prestigious fund providing scholarships to pupils from HMC (Headmasters’ Conference) schools going to Commonwealth countries on their gap year, for which Project Trust astutely gave me the details. I have been very fortunate in being the recipient of one of the largest sums they donate – other than two even larger scholarships for candidates in particular financial need – so I am very grateful. (If you are thinking of doing a gap year, then I very much recommend looking at their website, as they have proved very welcoming and helpful, and, of course, generous).
Secondly, I’ve restarted the weekly muffin sales at school (sporadically supported by Ross with his brownies), and so the sum of this for the last two weeks, plus the scholarship from the Bulkeley-Evans Fund, brings me up to a grand total of £3860.51 – within £100 of my target! Given that I’ve been promised a cheque from another education charitable fund for £250 – which has yet to arrive – this effectively means my fund-raising is complete. The excess money from any donations, such as the pending one for £250, plus the muffin sales (which I can hardly stop now as it seems half the school’s population has become dependent on them), will continue to go towards Project Trust, but will be used to help other volunteers who may not have had such luck reaching their target – something which I am very happy to contribute towards, since the seemingly insurmountable terror of fund-raising still lurks in the back of my brain.
As school is drawing to a close and my departure date draws nearer, I’ve been able to focus more on what next year will bring, and I have become increasingly aware – and appreciative of – the true value of donations such as the one mentioned above – and the countless smaller ones throughout the past months – and the generosity of those who share my hopes. It is very difficult, in Oxford, to imagine what it will be like, living day in and day out for 12 months in Guyana, and to imagine all the challenges with which I will be faced: however, while this does serve to increase both my excitement and – to a certain extent – trepidation, I sincerely hope, alongside learning from and helping those with whom I will be sharing a community, to convey an appreciation of the community in which I will be living back to others in the UK, and I believe that keeping in touch with those that are helping me achieve this is an important part in fulfilling these aims.
To this end, this site will now begin to shift its focus from fund-raising, to my immediate preparations for departure, and, thereafter, to life in Guyana and my Project there.
So, what next? The major task, prior to departure, seems to have been accomplished. In the next couple of weeks I should receive confirmation of my project in Guyana. I’ve also (at last!) got offers from universities (conditionals of AAA from Dundee (my first choice) and AAB from Sheffield (my insurance choice)), so the impending grinder of exams – about a month away, now – should be the next thing to set my sights on, but, as always, it will probably take until at least three days before the exams for the pressure really to get going (and as of January I now have an A in biology and an A in maths, so it’s only chemistry that needs hammering away at).
I’ve also been clocking up the jabs – the BCG (for TB), a Hep A jab, a Typhoid jab, and double-checking that I’ve got Polio, Diphtheria/Tetanus, and MMR jabs – so that I’m probably more full of disease than if I actually had any one of them. However, it’s all good; the only two left are probably Yellow Fever, and Hep B – the latter perhaps not essential for Guyana, but it is essential for medical school, and it’s proving a right pain, since it’s a long course and I’ll have to fit it around my gap year.
With regards to this site, I will finally compose some posts on Guyana, my project there, and myself, so that there will be some kind of reference to which all the fund-raising posts below may relate. I’ve been gathering together books to read in preparation, so with the help of Lonely Planet’s South America On A Shoestring, The Gap Year Book, Travel Photography, Travel Writing, and The Rough Guide To South America, as well as information from Project Trust and any relevant websites, I should have enough content to fill a few posts before actually leaving.
Of course, as mentioned above, I have yet to receive Project Trust’s confirmation letter, and this will be the crucial last step, so some of those posts may wait until then; but rest assured, this site will slowly and eventually transform into what its true purpose is: a blog describing my experiences living, teaching, and travelling in Guyana, rather than a dull accounting book.
Secondly, I’ve restarted the weekly muffin sales at school (sporadically supported by Ross with his brownies), and so the sum of this for the last two weeks, plus the scholarship from the Bulkeley-Evans Fund, brings me up to a grand total of £3860.51 – within £100 of my target! Given that I’ve been promised a cheque from another education charitable fund for £250 – which has yet to arrive – this effectively means my fund-raising is complete. The excess money from any donations, such as the pending one for £250, plus the muffin sales (which I can hardly stop now as it seems half the school’s population has become dependent on them), will continue to go towards Project Trust, but will be used to help other volunteers who may not have had such luck reaching their target – something which I am very happy to contribute towards, since the seemingly insurmountable terror of fund-raising still lurks in the back of my brain.
As school is drawing to a close and my departure date draws nearer, I’ve been able to focus more on what next year will bring, and I have become increasingly aware – and appreciative of – the true value of donations such as the one mentioned above – and the countless smaller ones throughout the past months – and the generosity of those who share my hopes. It is very difficult, in Oxford, to imagine what it will be like, living day in and day out for 12 months in Guyana, and to imagine all the challenges with which I will be faced: however, while this does serve to increase both my excitement and – to a certain extent – trepidation, I sincerely hope, alongside learning from and helping those with whom I will be sharing a community, to convey an appreciation of the community in which I will be living back to others in the UK, and I believe that keeping in touch with those that are helping me achieve this is an important part in fulfilling these aims.
To this end, this site will now begin to shift its focus from fund-raising, to my immediate preparations for departure, and, thereafter, to life in Guyana and my Project there.
So, what next? The major task, prior to departure, seems to have been accomplished. In the next couple of weeks I should receive confirmation of my project in Guyana. I’ve also (at last!) got offers from universities (conditionals of AAA from Dundee (my first choice) and AAB from Sheffield (my insurance choice)), so the impending grinder of exams – about a month away, now – should be the next thing to set my sights on, but, as always, it will probably take until at least three days before the exams for the pressure really to get going (and as of January I now have an A in biology and an A in maths, so it’s only chemistry that needs hammering away at).
I’ve also been clocking up the jabs – the BCG (for TB), a Hep A jab, a Typhoid jab, and double-checking that I’ve got Polio, Diphtheria/Tetanus, and MMR jabs – so that I’m probably more full of disease than if I actually had any one of them. However, it’s all good; the only two left are probably Yellow Fever, and Hep B – the latter perhaps not essential for Guyana, but it is essential for medical school, and it’s proving a right pain, since it’s a long course and I’ll have to fit it around my gap year.
With regards to this site, I will finally compose some posts on Guyana, my project there, and myself, so that there will be some kind of reference to which all the fund-raising posts below may relate. I’ve been gathering together books to read in preparation, so with the help of Lonely Planet’s South America On A Shoestring, The Gap Year Book, Travel Photography, Travel Writing, and The Rough Guide To South America, as well as information from Project Trust and any relevant websites, I should have enough content to fill a few posts before actually leaving.
Of course, as mentioned above, I have yet to receive Project Trust’s confirmation letter, and this will be the crucial last step, so some of those posts may wait until then; but rest assured, this site will slowly and eventually transform into what its true purpose is: a blog describing my experiences living, teaching, and travelling in Guyana, rather than a dull accounting book.
Labels: Fund-raising
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