My Kokoda Journey: Leadership and Community Activities

As well as my Kokoda journey being about getting to Kokoda it is also about leadership and being a positive part of the community. As such there have been a variety of activities we have been a part of as young leaders to help us in our journey. A big part of this was raising funds for the Menari Medical Centre along the Kokoda track and doing several different things to give back to the track we were going to complete in a matter of months (now days to me as I am writing this but actually happening as this is being published). We had a number of fundraising activities that we all completed amongst our schools and as a group. At our school myself and Caroline (the other person from my school going) organised a casual clothes day and raffle where we raised well over $600 for the Menari Medical Centre. As a group we had two separate chocolate drives where we each sold four boxes of Cadbury fundraising chocolates which also raised our total up a bit. Aside from that we also had a lot of barbecues to help us raise money. We had barbecues at the local Twilight market, Woolworths, Masters (along with a car wash) and Bunnings. This was another major money-raiser which again raised our total a lot. As a group we have currently raised over $13,000 for the Menari Medical Centre which will provide a fully-trained nurse for 12 months as well as some much needed medical equipment (that hopefully we will not need while we are over there).

Original Image Source (no text): http://www.ylead.com.au/travel/kokoda/

Aside from this fundraising we took part in a number of other community events. We took part in Rotary's Donations in Kind which I wrote a post about back in September of 2013 which you can read by clicking here. Basically, Donations in Kind is a charity run by the Rotary which packages unwanted goods (clothes, chairs, tables etc) and sends them over to impoverished countries and places. The first Donations in Kind we did was actually our first activity together as a group so it was a great opportunity for us to get to know each other. Even though there was still some awkward conversations on the bus ride home it was a lot more friendlier than when we all first met and barely anyone actually spoke. Aside from this Donations in Kind was actually a great way to give back to the wider community rather than just our local community. We had a second one of these just last month which was also a lot more fun and a lot less awkward as we all knew each other. I think we also managed to get a lot more done because of that and our communication to each other was an improvement ten-fold of what it was originally. Another aspect of our leadership activities was volunteering our time as supervisors at the local Wynbay Blue-Light Discos which are discos organised by the police for local primary-school-aged children who want to have fun in a safe environment. I went twice and both times I had a lot of fun doing it even though some of the kids could be a little energetic after having a slushy drink. A big event on our calendars which occurred just last month was the Soldier On Gala. Soldier On are one of our sponsors and they are a group of retired servicemen and women who assist those physically and emotionally scarred by their time in the armed forces. As part of their support, we supported them by helping them run a gala night they had organised to raise money for their organisation and for our program. On the night they had silent-auctions, live auctions, raffles, other mini-fundraisers, a celebrity comedian guest (Lehmo) and an ex-footballer (Justin Koschitzke [I had to Google how to spell that one]). It was a lot of fun and I helped out with Merchandise on the night as well as inputting all the information from the auctions and raffles. In total they raised over $20,000 on the night which was a great effort.

Being involved in this program has certainly opened me up to so many new and exciting opportunities. See you tomorrow.