The road to Penampang

In my last post I told you a little about the place where I'm living in Penampang, Sabah so this time I'm going to try to fill you in a little more on how I got here!

I grew up in central England, spent four years studying mechanical engineering at university and then ended up back in central England, working for a large multinational company.  Four years into working there I felt like it was time to shake things up a bit  - I applied to have some time off and put in an application to Engineers Without Borders UK to be a placement volunteer.

An accelerated autobiography

The charity Engineers Without Borders UK (EWB-UK) work to try and change the face of engineering and use engineering to address global challenges.  They run a whole range of initiatives to meet these aims, including programmes with schools, students and universities, but they also send early-career volunteer engineers (like me!) to partner organisations around the world (like TONIBUNG in Sabah!). You can read more about Engineers Without Borders UK's strategy here (it's not that long and includes lots of stylish infograhics so worth a flick through!).  TONIBUNG have a long relationship with EWB-UK and have hosted volunteers for about 5 years - I'll tell you a bit more about what they do in a future post, but it's good stuff!

Enthusiasm

The process to become a EWB-UK volunteer was pretty much like applying for a job - I filled out an application form, went to an interview day, had a nervous wait for a response until I got a warm acceptance email, signed some forms and went to an enthusiastic induction/training course. One of the main differences was the obligation to do some fundraising.  The charity support volunteers' living costs while they are on placement, on the condition that we fundraise a contribution (£2000 GBP for me). With a lot of help from lots of people (see below) I arranged a number of events which included a pub-quiz night at a curry house, a ceilidh and cake sales.

Putting the fun in fun-draising?

Before you read the next paragraph, take a deep breath... it's about to get cheesy... It is, however, completely genuine.

I know that I've been fortunate in that I was really supported by everyone at work where everyone helped make it possible and easy for me to do this - thank you for your support (and all your sage words of wisdom!).  I should also thank colleagues in Raynesway who put on events themselves to contribute (significantly) to my fundraising. My friends and family (and even friends of friends) also put in significant effort to help me out with sanity-checking my applications, writing quiz questions, attempting (with mixed success) to answer quiz questions, dancing, eating my cakes, storing my stuff, cleaning my room, getting me to the airport and even running a ceilidh! Thank you to you all for your versatile and wide-ranging skills and (largely) enthusiastic support. Local businesses* were also really supportive in my fundraising efforts so thank you for your generous donations. Finally thanks to the team at EWB-UK for their support in the preparation, and who are continuing to support me while I'm here - they deal with all sorts of issues and questions from placement volunteers all over the world and I know that I definitely contribute to their workload! Having said thank you multiple times, I'm now going to act on my British impulse and apologise for having got so soppy when I'm only on the second blog post! I promise the next post will be different - I'm going on a site visit for a few days tomorrow so I'm sure I'll have lots to talk about.

* Some of the Derby businesses who contributed: Smith Hall Farm, The Distillery, Tollgate Brewery, Derventio Brewery
** If you want to make a donation, I've got a justgiving page here