Today is a special anniversary for me. Exactly six years ago, on Saturday the 13th of July 2013, I started my first volunteering shift for Save the Children. That day, and year, was a turning point for me – introducing me to new possible pathways and experiences. To commemorate this occasion, I am looking back to that first day and reflecting on these last six years.
My fourteenth year marked a lot of firsts for me. I joined Twitter and Linkedin, and created my blog determined to develop a writing style and research new issues – which led to me starting to write for my school magazine, and write guest articles for different media outlets and blogs.
Future published poet: RISE by YWCA Scotland – The Young Women’s Movement (2018)
Not long after, I started volunteering for a nearby Save the Children shop, splitting my time between charity retail, and events and marketing as a Brand Ambassador. On my first day, I was shown the ropes, and started learning new skills from steaming clothes to pricing goods and organising them on the shop floor, to managing the till, dressing up the mannequins, updating the wall and window displays, and advising and serving customers. Working at the shop every Saturday afternoon was one of the highlights of my high school experience. I learnt more about Save the Children’s work, developed new skills once I was a shift leader – training up in team leadership, data entry and financial reconciliation – and I formed meaningful connections with my team and the other volunteers. Although my team had changed around over the years, with some graduating from university, finding new jobs in different cities and countries – and in my case, finishing high school, the girls I met and worked with every week continue to be my close friends. No matter which city we are in, we always take the time to send a postcard, meet up for dinner or have a city break, and I am forever grateful that my ‘spontaneous’ decision to volunteer for Save the Children one summer introduced me to them, and to my future career.
Half of the Saturday dream team (2014)
This was the year I also completed my Bronze DofE award and finished up working in my local library – giving back to a community that so readily accepted me when I moved into the area seven years before, and would spend long summers making my way through each bookshelf. The steps I took and the decisions I made opened a lot of doors for me, and I’m continuing to follow the path I started then. That year I decided it was time for a change – and I am still benefiting from the work I put in. Had I not gone through those experiences, I can say with complete certainty that I would not be in the position I am in now – I wouldn’t have travelled as much or lived abroad in the same places, I wouldn’t have the same life or work experiences, I wouldn’t have the same personality, and perhaps I wouldn’t have studied International Relations at Edinburgh or Toronto.
Volunteering in my childhood library (2012)
It can sometimes be difficult pulling out a significant moment in your life when everything began to change, but for me that was 2013. And when I turned 15 that same year, I decided to follow the footsteps of Olivia Pope (Scandal) – my icon at the time – and work in a PR firm. Six years later, I finally visited DC – her home ground – and saw the monuments and streets that so inspired me all those years ago. Now, I’m living in Japan (and will be writing about it in my forthcoming blog!), I have lived in China and Canada, I followed up my Bronze DofE award with Silver, Gold and Diamond, and those volunteering experiences I started as a teenager have pushed me to the field of international development and working in NGOs.
Living out my DC dream (2019)
Volunteering allowed me to engage deeper in the social issues I was studying at school, and gave me an opportunity to connect to my local community and shine a light on other communities around the world. In finding a passion for outreach and development work at a young age, I was able to spend my free time learning about new organisations and their diverse projects. My communications experiences introduced me to YWCA Scotland – The Young Women’s Movement, where I started off as a blogger in their new Feminist Fest team, reviewing shows related to equality at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I went on to review shows on several other occasions, and I was fortunate enough to write a few poems along with some amazing writers, in a published pamphlet called RISE. Those festival experiences pushed me to seek similar work, and a couple of years later, I was a festival volunteer at the Edinburgh Art Festival, and Amnesty International.
Volunteering at the Edinburgh Art Festival (2016)
At Save the Children, I started investing more time into organising events relating to information awareness, fundraising and campaigns. These events connected me to important issues, and interesting speakers, and I built on from these experiences when I started university three years ago. Since then, I have organised dozens of events on a wide range of issues for different charities like Mercy Corps, Ashinaga and Deaf Action, and I am currently planning a new set of events for my final year.
Volunteering at an Edinburgh University Save the Children Society stall (2018)
So, what will happen in the next six years? Will the moves I make now lead me to a new path or new discoveries? I’m one year away from being a university graduate, and it feels like everything is open to me. I can live anywhere I want and work somewhere that makes me happy, and where I can make a difference. The struggles I have gone through and the walls of self-doubt I have pushed through are but obstacles I need to overcome in order to be the person who I am meant to be. My twenties will no doubt be rattled and chaotic, but I hope it will bring me love and passion and happiness too. And fingers crossed, I’ll learn a new language and master French. I just need to conjugate those verbs and wrap my tongue around new syllabus. Che pas what will happen in the next half decade but it’s a road I’m looking forward to take.
Diary of a Secret Journalist 