Giving

I received a phone call from a guy at world vision the other day. I'd sent an email to them about a month ago to ask help and advice on how to best promote child sponsorship through our venture. I'm not sure yet of what my legal guidleines are of saying we are now associated with World Vision but the man on the phone told me that they could provide us with a link directly from the A2B site and an amount of traffic our site generates. Most importantly, they can tell us how many people have made the decision to sponsor a child directly through our link. I can't tell you how happy this makes me as we will now be able to measure how effective our promotion of this cause is and how many lives we have helped change for the better.

Child sponsorship is not the only area of charitable promotion we wish to aid in however. It is quite impossible to help everyone, as much as we'd like to, so we have to choose those that we believe in most or simply have a connection to. That said, I plan to approach someone in the areas of wildlife protection, environmental awareness and education; three areas I believe in very much.

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when? - Rabbi Hillel

The Spirit of the Gold Coast

Going back on the boat was absolutely the best thing I could have done. It was sad to leave my other job but since the whale watching season started, it has really hit home to me how much I missed the ocean and just being on a boat. It's where my heart lies. The fresh air, open spaces and let's not forget the unbelievable creatures I see on a daily basis. As far as how it all relates to the journey, it has without doubt inspired me in a way the classroom never could have done. My lifestyle is healthy, I'm going to the gym, eating well and generally happy. It's great!!!!!! The future looks bright, the sponsorship search is going well and things are moving forward in a very positive way.

A small victory

I have some good news and some bad but not terrible news. The good news is that we have received our first offer of support. An adventure clothing company in Japan has offered us a 35% discounted rate on the purchase of their clothing. It's not exactly what we are looking for but it's a start. Our sponsorship drive will continue and hopefully there will be some better news on the horizon. The bad news is that it may be harder than I had hoped to get a Chinese visa any longer than a couple of months. There are current restrictions on visas because of the Olympics which are making research a little difficult and confusing but with any luck, after the Olympics we will start to get a clearer picture of the situation.

Sponsorship

I've spent many hours and many cups of tea preparing our sponsorship proposal letter and it's finally ready. I wanted it to be perfect. I've made a list of companies I think would most likely be interested in this kind of sponsorship deal and also companies whose equipment we need. I sent the first lot off yesterday and there are whole lot more to go today and throughout this week. Mayumi has also sent a Japanese version to companies in Japan. A rather large outdoor adventure clothing company has requested more detail which sounds promising so we'll keep our fingers crossed. I've also created a new logo and come up with what I think is quite a catchy title. Australia 2 Britain, thus making it A2B.

On other fronts, I officially finished my teaching job at the end of May and the whale watching season has begun. The weather has been awful recently but you can't complain when your office is the ocean and your co-workers are giants of the sea. It's a great job!!

We've also been doing a lot of visa research. It seems we shouldn't have too many problems with aquiring visas for all of South East Asia and China but we will need to check how long we'll be able to stay in each country, especially China. More on that to come.