Lucas Colley
Lucas's page
Fundraising for Voluntary Service Overseas
Story
My name is Lucas Colley and in September 2010 I will be taking part in a voluntary scheme called Global Xchange (GX).
GX is a scheme run for 18-25 year olds that places a team of UK and overseas volunteers in different communities to live and take part in development work as an "exchange" of a six month period. Volunteers live with "host families" in both countries and also live and work with a "counterpart volunteer" from the exchange country. Three months are spent in a UK community and the other three months are spent in an exchange country. The programme is supported by two key organisations: Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) and the British Council. Each exchange has its own core theme and my own particular exchange's theme is Disability.
My exchange will take me to Glasgow for the first three months from September to November, and then to Xi'an in China for the second three months (December to February) with a team of nine UK and nine Chinese volunteers.
I have to raise a minimum of £600 towards the scheme. It costs GX and VSO around £6,000 per volunteer to run the programme, so the amount I need to raise is only a small fraction of the total cost. Ideally, I would like to raise £1,000.
Please please please, do whatever you can to help me out!
Over the course of the summer, depending on how well my broken ankle has healed, I will be taking part in various events to raise the required money. I'm going to be investing some of my own savings, doing car boot sales, hopefully some sporting events, and whatever other wacky ideas come into my head! Someone's suggested doing a parachute jump already - thanks Lucy :) - any ideas are welcome!
Any and all help from you all as individuals will be greatly appreciated, and even just a couple of quid from a lot of people would go a long way. It's something I'm getting really excited about now, and it's such a fantastic cause - Global Xchange has been running for several years now and VSO has been going for decades and has already done so much - let's help them a little bit more!
I will keep you all updated with my progress!
Every little helps ...
Lucas :)