Rich and his trusty stead

By Richard Clowes

Starting on Sunday 1st June I’ll be cycling 1,000 miles from Lands End to John O’Groats (the southern tip to the northern tip of Great Britain) to raise money for Addis Ababa Safe House.

Every £150 Pounds I raise pays for an Ethiopian child to be brought in off the streets and given basic housing, food and education for a year.

You can read more about the project and see daily updates and photos of the trip at: http://richardclowes.blogspot.com/

Any sponsorship you can give will be matched by Projects Abroad so all will be greatly appreciated. Thanks to Peter for Projects Abroad’s support.

Rich in Ethiopia

Kristina, Peter Slowe, Ian Birbeck and Manon Oliver, our 20,000th volunteer!

By Ian Birbeck,

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was setting off nervously as a volunteer to teach in Moldova. I had just graduated and really wanted to go and work somewhere different. I saw an advert to go teaching in Moldova and before I knew it I was at the bus station in London meeting Peter Slowe the Director of Projects Abroad before travelling to Chisinau. I didn’t imagine that 16 years later I would have an office next to him and be the Recruitment Director for Projects Abroad. I was within the first twenty volunteers to join Projects Abroad.

A couple of weeks ago we had the 20,000th volunteer join us. Manon Oliver has joined one of our two week programmes in India this summer. She will be on the programme with her brother who is the 20,003rd volunteer. It is amazing to think that a football stadium’s worth of volunteers have been away on programmes with us since my time volunteering in 1992.

Kristina and Manon

At the end of last week Peter Slowe and myself met up with Manon. It was great to be able to meet up with her and her mother at ACS International School in Cobham. Also present was Kristina Johansson who helped persuade Manon to join us. Kristina was away on a two week programme with Projects Abroad in Ghana last summer.

I had given a talk alongside Kristina in the middle of March. Kristina had called me to ask if I would mind coming and giving a presentation alongside her. She didn’t tell me that there would be 300 students in the audience! I think it was Kristina’s enthusiasm that persuaded Manon and her brother to join Projects Abroad this summer.

It is a strange coincidence that Manon has chosen to join our India programme. This is the very destination where Peter took his own gap year. On his gap year he met up with Chinasammy Rajendran who is now the Director of our India programme.

Peter and Manon

My colleague Kelsy getting acquainted with an elephant as a volunteer in India

I am notorious in the office for having the messiest desk. It is my claim to fame. But in an effort to clean it up a little I found a newspaper clipping I saved from Earth Day. It was about this company called Mr Ellie Pooh which makes paper from 75% Sri Lankan elephant dung and 25% recycled paper. Sri Lanka has a sizable portion of Asian Elephants but their habitat it becoming smaller and smaller and these great beasts are clashing with the interests of agriculture much more than ever before. Mr. Ellie Pooh is hoping that elephant dung paper will help lessen the human-elephant conflict as people see the economic resource that these elephants can be. On a side note, I just learned that an adult elephant on average produces about 500 pounds of dung a day! That is crazy!

Although we don’t have programs working with elephants in Sri Lanka if you take part in any of our other programs you will certainly see a lot of elephants and please check out Mr Ellie Pooh and all their cool products.

There will be a record amount of volunteers in Ghana this summer taking part in a wide variety of projects across the country. Most have heard of Accra, the capital, or read about Kumasi in a guidebook. But the Akuapem Hills? Where is that?

Of the four regions our volunteers work in the least well known would probably be the Akuapem Hills, a rural area an hour and a half outside of Accra. But once they are there they fall in love with it! Since having a visual helps with going to any new place, I have posted two videos that will give volunteers headed there this summer a sense of the area and will hopefully bring back some memories for alumni. Enjoy!

The drive from the Projects Abroad office in Accra to the Akuapem Hills. Every volunteer in the Hills will make this drive after they first arrive in the country.

A great video of an assembly at the Holy Hills school in Kwamoso, Akuapem Hills. I just love all the smiles and energy of the kids!