Community Involvement

Mission Work

• 2007- Travelled to Papua New Guinea for two and a half weeks in September as part of a relationship forming mission team from St. Columban’s College. We visited churches, hospitals and schools and formed friendships with the local youth in preparation for World Youth Day 2008 where the St. Columban’s College hosted almost 100 Papua New Guinean students for the pilgrimage down to Sydney.
• 2009- Travelled to Uganda for three weeks in September as part of a building team from Mission Watoto Australia. We fundraised over $20,000 to pay for the primary school classroom that we helped to build in the Watoto Childcare Ministries village of Suubi 2. We also attended Watoto church sessions, visited the other Watoto villages of Suubi and Bbira, visited the Bullrushes babies home, had lunch with a family living in Bbira village. I also travelled with a few other team members to Gulu in Northern Uganda and witnessed the work of Watoto up there with their Living Hope program, children’s village of Laminadera and the new babies home that was being built. We also got to see bomber ground and learnt of the history of the area.
• 2011- Travelled to Uganda for two and a half weeks in September as part of a building team from Mission Watoto Australia. We fundraised over $40,000 to pay for the engineering workshop classroom that we helped to build in the Watoto Childcare Ministries village of Suubi. Again, we attended Watoto church services, visited the villages of Suubi 2 and Bbira, the Bullrushes babies home and the new babies home in Suubi, the new goat farm that has just begun production, and had lunch with a family in Suubi.

Volunteer Work

From 2009 to present I have been volunteering with Mission Watoto Australia. After my first mission trip with them in September of 2009 I was invited to become part of the management committee and take on the role of Co-ordinator of Information Technology. As part of this role I have:

• Developed and maintained their website.
• Set-up official email addresses to match the website and provided technical support for those email accounts.
• Created 3 travelling team blogs that enabled teams who travelled over to Uganda to keep in contact with friends and family back home.
• Created and maintained a presence in social media through Facebook and Twitter.
• Assisted with the production of promotional materials such as videos, flyers and souvenir ”blog books”.
• Provided technical support for various issues to all members of Mission Watoto Australia.
• Assisted with fundraising and information evenings.

Why I’ve Got (Almost) No Hair

In 2008, my last year of high-school, I decided I was going to shave my head. I hadn’t had a hair cut since 2005 and my hair, hanging half a metre down my back, was long overdue. The Leukaemia Foundation’s World’s Greatest Shave happened to be merely weeks before my school formal and so I set about raising money for the foundation. I threatened my school, suggesting that if I did not raise $2,000 I simply would not shave my head for them. So many of my class mates wanted to see me hairless at the formal that I raised a total of $2,250.20 and on April 1st, 2008, on school assembly in front of the entire college, my mother shaved my head. It was hilarious. And as my hair grew back, I fell in love with how it looked. I’ve let it grow again and cut it back again and I’m really glad I was brave enough to do it in the first place! For my efforts, I was also nominated by one of my teachers for the Quest Community Paper’s Young Star Award for Community Service, which I won for the March/April round of awards in 2008.