Fabiha IslamIt was in 2009, I was a student of Class-V in Summer Field International School, Dhaka, when I got myself admitted in George Mitchell School, UK in year 8, So, basically I had to jump up a few classes since over here people aged 12-13 studies in year 8. Now I am a student of year 11. Our school organises many extra-academic activities that acquaint students with the practical life. One of these activities is ‘The challenge Network Trip’. I had the opportunity to participate in such a trip during the period from 23rd June 2013 to 10th July 2013.Challenge network is a government funded program for the young people to allow them to enjoy and experience fun and challenging activities throughout the 14 days.
My trip was divided into three parts: The personal challenge (5 days), The team challenge ( 5 days) and the Real challenge design(4 days)
1. Personal Challenge:
The first part of the trip was the personal challenge for which we had to travel to countryside in North England called Durham. It was a very long 6 hours journey from London. We stayed in an outdoor residential accommodation called the Wear dale house.
There were 63 young people who came from different parts of London to join this programme. They created 5 groups named after famous people like Team Edward, Team Perham, Team Ward, Team Reiss and Team Sampsons. In each group there were 13 people. I was in team Ward and I met really a lovely bunch of 13 people. We had a mentor (advisor, who was responsible for us)
Day-1: We just arrived and went to sleep.
Day 2: We wake up at 7am and then arrived in the canteen for breakfast at 8.45. At 10 am we had to travel to a really nice place with trees, rocks, mountains surrounding us. The activity was about to do was called ‘Gorge Walking’. I have never thought that one day I will be walking around a waterfall by stepping on the rocks beside. There was a moment where I was in the middle of the water and the mountain. Water from the waterfall was dropping just in front of me and I was behind it. This was really scary, that cannot really be explained. Then we had to stand on the branch of a tree and did a gorge jump into the river. Everyone was wearing float jacket. Still, when I was in the water, I got a panic attack because of the high level of the water. It was too cold to think of taking any action. We came back in the afternoon, took rest and then went to do high ropes activities. We had to walk across a bamboo which was positioned the same as an average tree’s height above the ground level. Then we had to walk across that by balancing our body; however the rope kept us stable. This activity is called the ‘Leap of Faith’. Then we did another activity on high ropes which was called ‘Climbing the Jacobs Ladder’. There was a ladder, each platform of which is about 150 cm gap. As the rope was around us, it helped us to be in a stable position. We had to push ourselves with great force to reach the next platform. If we cannot reach the next platform, then our team can pull the rope from down there to help us go up.
Day 3: We went for rock climbing. Rock climbing isn’t that easy as how it might look like, but still it was a fun and challenging experience. We had to climb up to a 40 ft high cliff.
At the end of the day, we started packing our bags to go for a camping. There, we stayed in an indoor accommodation. The rest of the days except from the day we went for camping, we had to take a big bag pack behind our back. The bag contained utensils i.e bowl because we had to cook for one night, it contained plastic mat, sleeping bag, and another plastic cloth to protect us from rain. We had to do 3 hours hiking (walk), going uphill, and downhill many times. We also had to pass a narrow canal by walking across the rocks. The place of our camping was only 5 minutes away, but just because a farmer didn’t allow us to go through his land, we had to walk all the way round making a 5 minute’s journey to a 3hours long journey. Since it was a countryside, there were a lot of midges (mosquitoes little sister) who are less than a cm in size but their bites are really painful. There were thousands of them, so we even had to cover our faces. They have left their bite marks on my skin. We started to cook our pasta with the portable stove with us. The funny part was that just after eating the pasta, we had to go back because there were too many insects and also the farmers want us not to stay there overnight. So, we had to cancel our plan of sleeping there overnight.
Day 4: We did many team building activities and played games. We had to do activities, where we had relied upon one another in our team. Then we did archery, which was fun since many of us did it for the first time.
Day 5: We cleaned our rooms and packed our bags and then left Durham and were on our way to London.
2.Team Challenge:
After taking rest for two days and we took part in the ‘Team challenge’ which was the second part of the trip. In the team challenge we went to Middlesex University to experience how living in university style accommodation is. We stayed there for 4 days. They had given us keys of our flats, where in each flat 6 girls will be staying and inside the flat we had our individual 6 bedrooms with shared kitchen, which was a quiet fun experience.
This week our aim was to work with a social enterprise and help the helpless people in the community.
Day 1): We were still in our groups of 13 so there were 5 groups and every group had to participate in a talent show. In the talent show we can act in the drama, sing or do some performance. In our group we participated in a drama and song.
Day 2): We were about to go to a refugee camp, but our coach stopped on the highway due to some fault in the engine. So we all were sitting on the highway for 3 hours. It was a fun experience as well; we were all waving at all the passing cars and vans. So finally a police car arrived to help us and we got lift from the police, which was quiet a fun!!
After such a hectic day, we reached the refugee camp. It was a refugee camp for women who are living in this country for a very long time and waiting for their legal live to remain documents, so since they are illegal the government don’t help them and so it’s very hard for them to survive over here since they cannot even go back because their papers are in the home office. So a charity called RAMP helps them by giving them some food every week, those women make handmade embroideries and knitted hats, clothes etc. So RAMP tries to sell their products to the customer. Over here our project was to help those women to sell their products by using our own ideas on planning who may be their customer and target audience should be, where they should sell their products, how they can promote their products and then come up with a conclusion to help them.
Day 3): We started to plan more about this issue and ways we can help those women in the refugee camp and not just that we had to plan a speech which had to tell the others about what we are doing, what this programme is for, and how we can achieve our target.
Day 4) Final day with a showcase ceremony where we actually had to speak in front of many people and deliver the speech we prepared as a team, After that we went back home.
The Real Challenge Design:
After 4 days’ break, we had to participate in the third part of challenge which was called ‘The Real Challenge Design’. However this time we didn’t stay away from home. We just went at 10 am from home to do our community work and returned home at 4pm.
Day 1) we had to do a campaign about something that we want to change in our community. Our initial idea was to do a campaign about making people smile since nowadays in London we don’t really see many smiley faces. So, we decided to conduct a survey and know more about the public opinion on this matter. We went to the high street and started to speak to people in the street. We asked 18 people, but only 10 of them cooperated with us and answered our questions. The questions we asked were very basic and thoughtful:
Question 1) We are doing a campaign about making people smile, so what do you think about our idea?
Question 2) Would you ever smile at someone outside whom you don’t know just like that?
Question 3) Do you think giving out free sweets to people would be a good idea?
Question 4) would you mind giving a friendly hug to people?
Oh, seriously I have never thought doing surveys/questionnaires would be so tough because everyone has a different opinion on our topic. But yes after doing the survey we found out that most people would like to smile at each other even if they don’t know them but the problem is that everyone expects the other person to smile at them first and therefore it ends up no one smiling at each other sometimes.
Day 2): We went to a food bank, the food bank is a place where they supply food to people who don’t have any source of income and are in desperate need. Well, I know that many people who are outside the UK might think that there is no poor or needy people in London but however let me tell you that it’s a fact that the number of unemployed people are increasing in London so more people rely on government benefits therefore the government has also become strict and they are reducing the number of people they give benefits (money for living) to. So many people are not getting support from government, so how will they live now? How are they going to buy food and all essential things for living? There comes the Food bank which supplies these people food, tooth paste and other essential things 3 times in 6 months to these people. When we were at the food bank, we heard a story about a young couple, where the husband used to suffer from domestic violence, his wife used to abuse him both mentally and physically. Well, I know usually it’s the other way round where the husband abuses the wife. But in this case it’s the opposite. So, the husband left the house with his baby, he was fired from his job because he used to be late since he had to take care of his baby. Then he had no support from the government either because in this country no matter what happens the law is always in the women’s side, even if she’s at fault. So the food bank helped the man. Another person was a doctor, but she lost her job and she was helpless and sought help from the food bank.
Day 3): Our team decided to change our campaign idea from making people smile to raising awareness about the food bank, which helps people in an area in London called Newham, so that more people come forward to support the food bank and these people, because any of us can be in this situation. So we decided to name our campaign as ”Lets Feed Newham”. Later on in the day we had to make our speeches in the house of Parliament in front of the MP of the Newham locality Mr. Stephen Timms. Our speech, which carried our message of creating awareness of the situation and how we should all contribute and get involved with the food bank to help those helpless people.
Day 4) since we were doing a campaign we would need some money to uphold the campaign such as to persuade people to listen to us, we would need posters, T shirts where our logo can be printed, badges with our logo, also some money to buy drinks to serve and welcome people to our campaign. We had to make another speech in a show called the Dragons Den where the participant comes up with a product, business idea, or any plan that would help up the community and tries to persuade the three judges to support our idea by giving some money to buy the things we would need to continue with our campaign.
In September we will be carrying out our campaign around Newham area.
(Fabiha Islam is a Student of Year 11, George Mitchell All Through School, UK)
