As you will probably assume…my interview was a success and I was accepted onto the programme. I’m not going to talk in much detail about the interview day other than by saying it was actually quite a lot of fun, the best part being meeting all the other ‘candidates’ and realising that we could all talk forever, everybody was interesting and interested in one another!! It lasted a whole day which links back to my previous post…on the contrary to other programmes I had applied for which didn’t even have an interview, this interview day was great and I (we) left feeling like we had fully expressed ourselves, our hopes, motivations, ambitions and expectations for this project as well as finding out a lot more about what we could potentially be involved in!
As a commitment to ICS & Lattitude, all volunteers must commit to raising a minimum of £800….although we were reassured that this was a managable target I couldn’t help but shreak (literally)!
I was in a in cafe with two wonderful Amsterdam friends, Krisztina and Maria, when I had my very simple eureka moment. I was doing the typical Stef thing of over complicating things, I was thinking up ridiculous ideas like cycling from Amsterdam to Leicester…in my year spent as a Dutchy where I conducted most of my life on a bike it seemed to make total sense…for about 5 minutes. Or the idea of shaving off my newly grown hair (I don’t have the cheekbones or jawline to pull it off I can assure you)!! Of course, there’s a place for all of these challenges but with the timescale that I had and the fact that a very cold winter was on it’s way the bike ride was never going to work (or the shaved head for that matter).
I was worried that living in Amsterdam meant that I was not surrounded by a network of supportive people like the one I have in the UK, I thought that this would hinder my success. How wrong was I? My first port of call was the internet. It started with a justgiving account which I shared on my facebook page. As soon as the first donation came in they flooded in. From family, to school teachers, to university friends, school friends, old friends, distant friends, employers, family friends etc etc. It was actually quite overwhelming to see how many people were willing to back me.
Alongside this I decided to make the most of the social groups that I did have around me…au pairs. With the help of some incredible friends, I arranged an au pair social. We decided to hold it in the infamous Vondel Park where a lot of us spend most of our time with our children!! We provided lots of baked goodness (lemon cake, chocolate cake, victoria sponges, cookies, brownies), tea, coffee and cold drinks. We had a suggested donation of 3 euros and in return for this not only would we provide the refreshments but a place where au pairs old and new could come to meet other au pairs within the city (from Amsterdam and the surrounding cities). I owe a lot of the success to the Amsterdam girls and families that attended the event, and a special thank you to everyone that helped me with the baking!! It was such a lovely day, and so many people attended. I think it helped because when you move to be an au pair, you usually move to a country by yourself. Everybody that is there is in the same position as you in that sense and I found that this made people incredible open, warm and inclusive…for me this meant that girls I had known for a year, just met, or had never met took a great interest in what I had set out to do.
My fundraising ‘phase’ has been motivating; it has been the catalyst for an immeasurable amount of conversation about Lattitude, ICS and surrounding topics of develpoment, voluntary work etc. It made me feel very proactive and excited about everything that was about to unfold!
