Quick note for those who had a heart sink moment when you saw the length of this page. Whilst I’d love for you to sample all of my literary genius, if you only read one part of this, make it the bit in BOLD

This September I will heading to Nepal for 3 months as a
volunteer medic with Raleigh International. “Who are Raleigh International?”, I hear you say. “What will you be doing there?”. “Why are you putting questions in our mouths?” and “This sounds suspiciously like the run up to a plea for money…”. These are all valid points and I would be delighted to answer them, thank you for asking.

Raleigh is a charity that works in less advantaged communities throughout the world, currently in Nepal, Tanzania and Costa Rica,
focusing on access to safe water and sanitation, protecting vulnerable
environments and helping empower young people (both volunteers and those in local communities). Currently in Nepal they are focusing on assisting with ongoing recovery after the 2015 earthquake. I will be acting as a medic to look after the groups of volunteers throughout Nepal, whether in headquarters receiving calls for advice, out on project sites looking after a group or out on a trek (yes, there is also some down time). When not needed for medic duties I’ll be mucking in with the rest of the group.

So, now is the time to feed the ego of that cynic sitting in the back of your head, who has slowly been narrowing their eyes throughout this
whilst muttering “it’s a trap, there must be money involved somewhere”. Yes, this is a fundraising plea (“A-hah!, I KNEW it!”).

Raleigh have set a target of £2400 for this trip. This will get added to individual and corporate donations and grants to cover the costs
of running their programmes around the world, maintaining their in-country offices and staff, provide bursaries to both international and local volunteers and evaluate their programmes’ impact to better develop them towards the needs of local people.

It will also help cover the practicalities of keeping me alive over the 3 months (a guy’s got to eat, though from what I hear, it will be a lot of rice…like, a lot). To reduce costs, and integrate us more into the
communities we are helping, they try and organise home stays with local people. I need to pay for my own flights, insurance, medical indemnity etc.

Now, despite the above, I realise that it has the potential to look like I’m asking for money to send me away on a 3 month working holiday.
For this (and other) reasons, I was originally planning on self-funding.
However Raleigh benefit from fundraising activities to spread knowledge of the work they do to a wider audience, so this is preferred and encouraged.

Therefore, in the nature of charity, I am aiming to fundraise as much of the £2400 for Raleigh International as I can. To appeal to cynicism, I am still putting my own money into it, doubling whatever is raised. If you give £1, I will double it to £2, up to a maximum of £4800 (though if we get that far I’ll be so delighted that I’ll top it up to £5000 to make it a nice round number). Sound good?

Anything you can give will be very much appreciated and will be a great help to less advantaged communities in Nepal.

Thank you.

P.S. For those of you astute enough to realise that I didn’t reply to the “Why are you putting questions in our mouths?” part of the pre-amble (you know who you are), here’s your bonus answer, which will come as no surprise to anyone. I like questions. Both posing and trying to answer them, the more absurd the better. And as you are rapidly discovering, if you find me in the right mood and there’s something daft enough for me to ramble on about, I can continue for quite a long time, frequently long after everyone has already stopped paying atten……I SAID……paying attention.