For ages I’ve wanted to go to Latitude Festival, but I am not a huge music fan and I don’t want to spend hundreds of pounds on it, and to top it off I have no one to go with. I’ve stewarded with Oxfam before but I didn’t really want to do it again because to be honest it was really boring, and I didn’t make fast friends with the people I was working with, so I was really excited when I heard about the opportunity to campaign instead, which sounded both interesting and much more social.
I applied a month or so ago, and was very excited to be told I’d received a place and last Saturday I attended the training. I thought I was going to be campaigning for the IF campaign, a poverty and hunger focused campaign which is really close to my heart following my recent sabbatical year in central America where I saw a lot of extreme poverty, and for which I also did the “Live Below the Line” challenge. So initially I was upset to hear of the change of topic to “Love Syria” which before this weekend meant nothing to me. But, by the end of the day on Saturday I was hugely excited again about the whole thing again.
The day started with a session about Oxfam and their aims, and who they are. I had no idea they started out as Oxford Famine Relief (makes a lot more sense now why I was in Oxford!). Then we moved on to a brain dump about Syria, there was far too much information to take it all in, and am going to have to do lots of reading on the topic to make sure I am an expert before July!
Following these more academic subjects we talked more about what we would be doing as a campaigner, our role, what would happen on site, what we need to bring, how we need to act. We played some education games (and some less education games) and we did some role plays (which I hate; I know they are important but I always feel like cringing).
We also had a session on the “take away thing”. As campaigners we are going to give the festival goers something to take away with them, be it a sticker or a painted face or a fake tattoo, so that they can continue to do our work and spread the work for us; and we did a brain storming session about what this could be. Interesting to think than one of ideas we came up with could be what they use!!
Anyways, I ended super excited about the summer. Can’t wait to get out there at Latitude and started talking to people!!
Addicted to Volunteering 