“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.”
[Robert Louis Stevenson]
“There are deeper reasons to travel – itches and tickles on the underbelly of the unconscious mind. We go where we need to go, and then try to figure out what we’re doing there.”
I got an email this week to say my personal Dopplr report for 2008 was ready for me… It’s the first full year I’ve been using Dopplr, and having traveled a lot this year, I was looking forward to seeing how it might look.
Maybe you’re saying,
“Dopplr? What’s Dopplr?”
Dopplr is a free social networking service, launched in 2007, that allows users to create itineraries of their travel plans and spot correlations with their contacts’ travel plans in order to arrange meetings at any point on their journey. Additional features include allowing the user to calculate the carbon footprint their journeys have produced. The site is named after Christian Doppler, discoverer of the Doppler effect. [via Wikipedia]
Basically, if you want to keep a track of where in the world I am, check out my Dopplr!
According to my report, I was on the road for 154 days in 2008, and at home for 212 – I don’t think even I had been aware it was almost half & half. It’s been an incredible privilege to travel so much last year, to capture moments, whether through a lens or in a Moleskine.
And to live them. Oh my, so many sacred moments spent with family, friends & strangers all over this world. Thanks for being a part of my world!
One of the programs I’m involved with through work is Platform2, a fantastic volunteering opportunity. We’re still recruiting, so check out the spiel below, and if you’re interested/know someone who might be, either get in touch or pass the details on!
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Platform2 is fully funded by the Department for International Development and does not cost anything for the volunteers who take part. In short, Platform2 is a 10 week fully paid placement on a project in a developing country. It is specifically directed to 18-25 year olds who would otherwise not be able to afford such an opportunity. Check out our website: www.myplatform2.com for details of the program.
At the moment we are recruiting for the trip leaving on the 17th March ‘09. If someone were to apply now they could be away to Ghana, Peru, India, or South Africa at from mid March (until the end of May)! Applications for this trip must be in by 19th Jan ’09 – less than 100 places left!! There will however be trips leaving regularly over the next 2 years. The next application deadline would be the end of March for trips leaving 26th May ‘09.
Platform2 is a unique opportunity for 18-25 year olds in the UK to volunteer in a developing country for 10 weeks and then come back and creatively express their experience in the UK. Volunteers could be going to countries such as Ghana, South Africa, Peru or India, for a 10 week placement which will make a real difference to the local community – all of the work is locally operated and supervised, and sustainable.
When the volunteers get back, we’ll give them a platform to creatively express their experience – through art, film, photography, blogging – whatever they’re into, they can use it to tell people about their trip and what it’s like to live in a developing country.
Platform2 is different to most overseas volunteering opportunities because it’s aimed at people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to do something like this, so it’s free. The scheme is fully-funded by the Department for International Development and run by Christian Aid, Islamic Relief and BUNAC.
If you’re 18 to 25 (at the time of travel), have / are eligible for a UK passport, and want to make a difference to people in the developing world, here’s your chance.
To find out more, please visit www.myplatform2.com or email Craig at cmccreadie@christian-aid.org.
Just over 2 weeks ago I was in the DR Congo with the rest of the Christian Aid gap year volunteers, visiting some of our partners there. We got to meet a lot of incredibly inspiring people, people who do an awful lot of good with limited resources. One of those partners we meet was Vorsi Congo, a community organization that works through the church to combat AIDS.
They travel across the whole country, training religious leaders, who in turn get their religious communities talking about the issues, often for the first time. Rodger, the technical director, estimated that across the 11 provinces of the DRC, their message has reached about 8million people. They try to break down the stigma surrounding HIV using mediums such as song & drama.
“Before, if you were HIV positive, no-one wanted to sit in the same pew as you at church. Now people are more happy to sit with them & even take communion with them.”
[Rodger]
I meet Nadine when we visited Vorsi Congo. She is the pastor of a church, and also is a woman living with HIV.
At one point as she shared her story with us, she said, “If I hadn’t have worked with Vorsi Congo, I’d be buried.” It really is a matter of life and death for people. The level of stigma surrounding HIV is still massive, and though Nadine is doing well, there are many people who have been shunned by their families and their churches when they find out they are HIV+.
We use this phrase a lot at Christian Aid, about ‘living positively with HIV’, and it’s only after meeting Nadine that I’m starting to understand what that really means. Nadine doesn’t sit around feeling sorry for herself, but instead she’s throwing herself into being a part of the solution. She’s using her story and her position in the church to help educate people.
To find out more about the issues surrounding HIV/AIDS, visit our website here.
To support our DR Congo crisis appeal , click here.
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