I am very excited to be travelling with a friend, William-Ross Anderson to Panama for a week to voluntarily work with the charity 'Business Brigades' (BB) to offer help and support within an impoverished rural community. We'll be helping BB with finance & business development applying our backgrounds in Economics and Global Sustainable Development. We will be able to make a real, positive impact on the lives of those living in the community.

The Business Brigades programme, partnered with Deloitte, has been helping communities across the world since 2004. Each expedition focuses on helping under-resourced areas develop in a sustainable and self sufficient way.

As BB volunteers in Panama, we will offer consulting to local families and businesses ranging from helping small businesses identify investment opportunities to maximise their current business' capacity, providing support in finding loans, advising families on saving and borrowing, and more. Please take a look at the Global Brigades website here.

To pay for the trip, William-Ross and I are working on a building site in September and have self funded our costs. In addition to this, we are required to fundraise to directly provide capital for BB to help support these local rural communities, overseen by Deloittes.

If you would like to contribute toward our target donation of £1000 for BB, the selected rural communities within Panama will massively benefit! Thank you!