April 11 2006

NEWS ITEM - WHAT A LOVELY JOB

Quite a few people when they learn what job we do will pass the comment that it sounds like a dream job to them. They'd love it. But, as with many such jobs, they only see the outside. Of course it's nice travelling to different places, meeting different people and seeing new sites. But you don't get much time to relax each day, you have to write everything up and you are pretty regulated by what you can do during your working hours, which often mean the whole of every waking day.

And then there is the other side of things, namely making sure that you can upload the files each week while you travel and, as of now, spending rather too much time trying to persuade sponsors to support your dream, your vision. In New Zealand that has been even harder. Most companies appear to think that education and the funding of such projects as ours is the role of the Ministry of Education.

We have approached many of the big companies and had a mixed response. In some cases we had no response at all. Even when we chased them up and asked whether they had got the email, they would say yes and then we would never hear from them again. In other cases we would send the email, even meet the guy, and discover a few months down the road that he had either left the company or was the wrong person to be talking to or, in one case, both. It's true that some companies are very helpful even if the answer is eventually, no.

And then you get the others who really depress me. Until a few days ago that is. I was watching the Breakfast TV show on TV One. Everyone should do this at least once a week and I recommend the Friday show, probably on April 21st. They had a story about a woman in Oz who had run the same bar for 50 years and was still pulling the pints at, I think, 87. They said she also gave to charity and she told them that if you lived in a community you should contribute to it as much as you could. It wasn't all about what you get from what you give.

That same day I phoned Thai Airways to ask if they would like to be our airline partner. After a short conversation the woman I was talking to, called rather conveniently, with this type of article, Sue, said "well, what's in it for us". No interest at all in how we were opening up the world to young people, improving their lives and their knowledge and engaging them in learning material. No, just what's in it for me. I accept that companies would like some return and we always put those who have helped us on our site and link to anything they have, so people can find out about them. We were asking Thai Airways to give us two Round-the-world airlines tickets each year so as we could go back to Europe and talk to our Polish schools and meet our families. You see we don't see them very often either. Anyway following her question I curtailed our conversation. To be honest I couldn't be bothered to talk to her.

Then, the same day, we popped along to Fat Camel where we had stayed last year. Initially we had been sponsored in full and then after a few weeks they had given us a 30% discount for the rest of our stay. Seemed pretty generous to me and we were very happy with this. While we were there they also had some offers like a $1 cup of coffee in their bar. We still had a flyer for this so along we went. When you are trying to do everything for as little as possible, and don't forget we haven't taken a salary ourselves for this "job" for over three years, every dollar saved is useful. So we presented the voucher and were told, no it's finished. There was no "valid until" date on the token so we queried this.

Since we had stayed there they had a new manager, Justin, and when we wanted to come back earlier this year he first offered us a few days for free, then charged us for being in a dorm room. I then spoke with him on a Friday night and he agreed that if they weren't full we could have a double room free but if they were full we would pay the full charge. I was relying on his honesty to tell me whether he was full or not but was happy with the deal. Imagine my surprise when we spoke on Monday and he said the deal was off. Yes, he could remember the conversation but he was drunk and he probably would have agreed to anything that night. We left Fat Camel and their 'occasionally too drunk to know what he was talking about' manager. When he heard about us asking for this $1 coffee he said, after telling us he doesn't accept the vouchers anymore, you're from One World aren't you, we gave you enough anyway". Well little Justin, you gave us exactly what you wanted. You can say no any time as you eventually did. Of course we prefer decisions from sober managers but we can't control that. You and your Fat Camel have been on our website since July last year and been seen by literally thousands of people.

As I said, sometimes it's not such a lovely job. But the ultimate objective, the aims of our Foundation, will always be more important to me than having the perfect job. To be honest Sue and Justin, there's not a lot in this for me apart from what I believe I am giving to kids and others around the world. I'm old enough to decide to sit back and retire. Why should I pack up my belonging each week, spend hours writing for the webiste and have to travel to all sorts of different countries. The answer is that when I get to 87, I would like to say I have given something back to my community and it just happens to be a global one.