Meet the team 2024 - Chris

Hi, I am Chris and I work for the RSPB as a Technology Solution Architect.  In my spare time I have always been a willing volunteer and I am involved with Scouting as a Deputy Group Scout Leader with Biggleswade Scout Group.  I am also a Freemason having joined Ivel Lodge in 2003, Ivel Chapter in 2008 and mostly recently Stuart Lodge of Mark Mason's this year.   I have been going to St Andrews Church since I moved to Biggleswade in 2001.  I have been volunteering with the Church Summer Holiday Club for more than 10 years as well as supporting other Church activities like the annual Country Fayre.

 

I have never been to South Africa or any of the other sub-Saharan countries.  This will also be my first time volunteering outside of the UK and also my first experience of supporting orphans or working within very poor communities.  This will be a trip of many new experiences for me.  I can only hope that some of the skills I have learnt through Scouting and through Church Holiday Club will prove useful and allow me to make worthwhile contribution while I am there. 

 

I am looking forward to meeting both the care workers and the young people in their care.  I am in the fortunate position of having a stable job that affords me both the time and the money to support the volunteering I do.  I believe that most of the care workers we meet in South Africa will be struggling themselves - both in terms of their ability to earn money, having access to the facilities they need in their voluntary roles and the time required to care for the children 5 days a week.  While I have done a lot of work with young people in the UK, they have generally been in a stable and secure family home and been able to afford uniforms and the activities we have offered them.  The young people we are going to be working with in South Africa will be in a very different situation.

 

I am not sure how I feel about the trip.  Those who have been before have tried to set our expectations for what we will experience and for the conditions in the communities we are visiting.  However, I expect that nothing can really prepare you for how different it will be to what we are used to here in the UK.  I am looking forward to sharing his experience with my wife Sally and my children Adam and Pippa.  

 

Over the past 12 months we have done lots of fundraising towards the costs of taking 5 young people on this trip - including my children. I am very grateful to everyone who has supported our fundraising efforts - but especially to my family and friends who have been extremely generous in their support and also to the many freemasons I know who have made their own personal donations as well as then Lodges and Chapters who have supported us.