Getting involved

It's not going to come as a huge surprise to the majority of you when I tell you that for quite some time my work has been rather rubbish. It's been at least 5 years since I've felt satisfied with my role or challenged by my daily tasks, and it's pants. Truly it is. But unfortunately I'm stuck as there are really and truly no jobs around this region at the moment. The job pages have shrunk to about 4 adverts and all my trusty websites bring no joy either. But as I said, none of this is new. What is new is my determination to get past this and actually feel like I'm doing some good in there. Which coincides with my new year resolution of the year of the do. In this case, the do involves charity and good causes.

I've long been a lover of the charities. I get the majority of my wardrobe from charity shops and for the past 2 years I have only purchased books second hand but I wanted to go a bit bigger - so I've involved my team at work. Start small I reckon then take over libraryland! The first thing we're going to do is take part in Fairtrade Fortnight and for this we're going to be celebrating something called The Big Brew. This is a way of raising money for all the good peeps out there who grow and farm all the products we consume daily - in this case all the ingredients for a good brew of all varieties: tea, coffee, sugar and honey. There's packs of cookies in there too but I'm not so sure that they grow on trees...although imagine how awesome a cookie tree would be?! During Fairtrade Fortnight we will be using all this stock instead of the usual teabags etc, and everytime someone has a cuppa we're going to drop some pennies in the box. And believe me when I say that a team of about 18 people consume a whole lot of brews! And I think T is going to use the honey to put together some delicious cakes and biscuits which of course will have to be paid for. I think it's going to be really exciting!

I wasn't sure how 'on board' people would be when I sent out the initial email. I injected the usual comedy line of how I wouldn't hold it against anyone if they didn't support my cause...but there was really a lot of interest and some really nice emails back. It feels good to know that peeps support the same causes and that because of us, even if we only raise a few pennies, we'll be helping the farmers who work really really hard in difficult circumstances.

I've got plans for some more stuff later in the year involving many more people hopefully but as I said, start off small and see how this goes before venturing out there. I'll try and get some photos once we're up and running and post them on the blog. The year of the do was definitely a good decision!