My 2 week placement volunteering in a Sri Lankan hospital, including visiting the orphanage

What is my project?

Hi, I'm Sacha, a third year student midwife. I love what I am doing as I can empower women and be their advocate. I feel privileged to be invited into their lives at such an intitmate time.

As part of my three year studies, I am going to Sri Lanka in August 2014 to volunteer in a hospital in Ambalangoda. I aim to share my learning and experiences from the UK and learn how the Sri Lankans cope with such limited resources and funding. I want to learn about their culture and the difficulties that they face to help me enhance the care that I will provide throughout the rest of my career. When I am not working in the hospital, I will visit the Tsunami project orphange, working with children whose lives were changed by the Tsunami in 2004.

The Million Dollar Question - why am I fundraising?

I am raising money to cover the costs for completing this placement with a reputable organisation ("Plan My Gap Year"). PMGY will provide accommodation in a volunteer house with a host family who will also give me meals and enhance my experience being in the heart of the community. I will need to fund insurance, visa, flights and any additional living expenses (eg. transport). Additionally, I intend to take items with me such as ancillary supplies from the hospital in the UK that would be deeply valued in this less economically developed country and colouring books/toys for the orphanage.

Fundraising in the past

I have done fundraising before, but not on such a personal scale! In 2012, following a burgulary at the local county hospital, I managed to run a social-media campaign to promote donations for the cancer ward. This was especially close to my heart as my grandmother had passed away there a few months previously. I was amazed by the genorosity of people and was touched that they all wanted to help me replace a TV for the ward which had been stolen by an opportunist theif. This resulted in almost £600 being raised in a couple of weeks through Twitter/Facebook campaigns, newspaper support, radio interviews etc! I hope with your help I can be as successful with this fundrasing mission!

You can watch a video with images of all the work I did, played to my interview with Essex FM here-

Money Isn't Everything

Any help you can give will help! Be it sharing this page on your Twitter or Facebook, providing me with a fundraising idea or a venue for an event, a reward for pledgers, donating gifts for the orphanage etc. Perhaps if you would like to help in a sense other than donating money, it would be great to hear your ideas on how we could fundraise together or help the community.