Clothes Fast update!!

Greetings! I’m almost 2 months into the clothes fast. It’s still going...

When I began this fast, I seemingly had everything I needed for the year. Since then I’ve had 2 pairs of trousers get holes in them, which have had to be repaired with patches and my flip-flops are cracking at the toe bit. I think any further cracks and I’ll be getting the superglue out. I have of course got other sandals/flip-flops, but they’re just not pretty pink ugg ones.

So it’s 2 months down 10 to go!! It’s not that easy, I’m in Tavistock with Abi this week. We went into a few lovely little shops today, where I would normally be thinking, “ooh must get this, I won’t find this anywhere else” etc. well I’m still thinking that! I really wanted to buy a very cool Tavistock hoody, but instead tried to persuade Abi to buy one, but she declined! Then we went to Fat Face where I stroked some pretty jumpers.

To remind anyone as to why I’m doing this, it’s because the money I would have spent buying clothes to satisfy my own self’s needs, is going to be used to help the beautiful Thai children living in big institutions who broke my heart. I’ve decided to specifically use this money now to sponsor a long-term volunteer Julia Valentine, to help her continue the amazing work she does out there at the girls’ home.

For anyone interested in supporting the work in Thailand, there are a few ways to can get involved. Firstly, I’m setting up a BT My Donate page (like Just Giving, but the charity get all the money), for For Life Thailand. This is the UK arm of the Thai Charity CCD, enabling it to continue with its wonderful work. This BT My Donate page is for anyone who wanted to sponsor me to do this, or perhaps if anyone was wanting to have their own clothes fast for a certain amount of time, could donate the money they would have spent to my BT My Donate page. For Life are going to register with this page and then this will be set up in the next few weeks.

Secondly, I’m actually going out to Thailand mid October for 2 weeks to work in the girls’ home where I worked earlier this year. For this there’s lots of ways to help, I'll be taking the girls out on as many trips as I can manage, so trip money is really appreciated. We often take the children swimming, for ice-cream, dinner etc. so money to fund these trips is really helpful. Ten pounds for example would fund a trip for 4-5 girls to go swimming and have dinner. Any trip money not spent will be left with the volunteers out there for future trips.

Another way of helping here is to support the volunteers. All the volunteers work really really hard for free. They have to be completely self-funding and the long-term volunteers especially live on quite a strict budget. Long-term volunteers are vital for keeping projects running smoothly and supporting short-term volunteers. Living in Thailand can be extremely hard. When I was volunteering I found it really important to do social things outside of work, such as going to the cinema, going for dinner, usually western themed (air-con, good coffee etc!). These are things which are on my doorstep at home and that I very much take for granted. When living in Pakkred (which is on the outskirts of Bangkok and very Thai) it’s quite expensive to go to Western places and also quite an effort when you’re so exhausted, but I found it vital to help deal with the emotional rollercoaster that comes with working in the orphanages.

Finally I’m just having a bit of a fund-raise to buy supplies of fortisip, which is a build up drink we give to poorly or very thin girls. The volunteers are almost out of stock of this, so desperately need more supplies. It’s another really good way of supporting the girls, when you can’t be there yourself.

Thank you from everyone’s support and interest so far, the next blog update will likely be whilst I’m in Thailand  with the beautiful girls xx