Planting seeds for


change ‘


Last year I was feeling a bit lost, so I filled in an online application


form ... an action that I think may have changed my life! I had


dropped out of university and thus plunged myself into an accidental gap year. I had no plan, no one that I could go travelling with and I was working in a job that


was driving me insane. Then I found a leaflet for VSO


(Voluntary Service Overseas) amongst a pile of things and thought ‘Hell, why not?’. Six months down the line I was in Nepal living and working with the most amazing people and tackling issues like corporal punishment, water and hygiene and a child’s right to a physical education. I lived with a host family and another volunteer, Nitesh, who was from Nepal. Our host family was quite large ~ a Mother, her four daughters, her baby and her eldest sister’s baby. The house was pretty loud all the time, but it was also very kind and inviting and was an amazing place to live. Nitesh, my counterpart, was a


recent graduate of a University in Kathmandu where he studied pharmacy. He hopes to go to Australia to do a Master’s course


and then one day return to Nepal to set up an NGO to provide free health care to poorer areas of the country. He is one of the wisest and most mature people I have ever met. We lived together for three months and it was very difficult when we had to say goodbye. One of the important things about these types of placements is that they bring together young people from different countries, and backgrounds and get them discussing the world. I can honestly say that we both came out of the experience with our worldviews changed for ever. My work in Nepal took place


mainly in the lower school in our community where we introduced the concept of after school clubs ... something that is not the norm in rural areas. The children loved our sessions on origami and drawing and one of the great things to


Sometimes the path we choose to tread doesn’t necessarily take us in the direction we should be going. Quaker faith & practice 21:12 tells us: ‘Trouble of soul can teach us things that raptures never could – not only patience and perseverance, but humility and sympathy with others.’ Thomas Meredith joined Sibford School in September 2008 as a pupil in Year7. He continued into Sixth Form, took his A Levels and in September 2015 got a place at Cardiff University to study Social Policy and Criminology. But things didn’t go according to plan. University life wasn’t for Thomas and he dropped out ... and stepped into an adventure that changed his life. Thomas returned to Sibford in May 2017 to share some of his experiences with current Sixth Form students.


come out of it was a big fair, put on by our team-mates in another village, where we displayed our kids’ artwork for it to be judged in a competition. It was


fantastic to see our children taking some of the top prizes. Development work is not easy. One of the main things you learn is that you can’t change someone’s mind by telling them the way they do something is wrong! You have to try to understand why they do things in a certain way and then show them an alternative ... in the hope that they will come round to your point of view ... although that doesn’t always happen, at least not straight away. One example was when Nitesh and I spent an evening talking to teachers about why they beat their students. We tried to point out that we had been working with the children with no major problems for weeks and hadn’t had to resort to physical violence, but they didn’t agree. And that’s the thing about doing this work, even if they don’t agree, at least you have planted the seeds for change.


The Sibfordian / 39


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