SUYS May Challenge

This month at SUYS we have a sketch challenge created by SUYS boss Vicki.

Here's my take on the sketch.

I used a landscape pic so I moved some of the elements around to suit that change. This a very special photo as it is of my daughter, Zoe in a helicopter flying into Pentecost, Vanuatu to deliver aid to the Level School community who had been without food and water since TC Pam flattened their villages and school. You can read more about Zoe's adventure and our continued fundraising efforts on the SUYS blog or leave me a message below and I'll happily add you to our Facebook page.

Here are a couple of close ups of my LO. I used the D-lish Scraps March Just Add Paper Kit - Caribbean Skies and added a Charm's Creation mini super star.

As you can see I also re-purposed the kit's tag to read Vanuatu skies - it was perfect! My photo was a bit lost against the pale background so I added a bolder piece of paper but then it seemed too bright so I toned it down with some gesso.

I really wanted to include a hashtag in my title as we were part of the #renegadeaid effort that was being discussed on social media but after going through almost all my packets of thickers and assorted alphas I was beginning to despair at finding one, But I did, at last, and I now know only the newer thicker packs include hashtags...

Raising money for our aid delivery was the easy part - as the result of a post on Facebook our family and friends donated over $8000 in less than three days. Actually getting the aid delivered was far trickier in part because I was in Australia and the aid and the helicopter company were in Vanuatu and communications were still up and down. During this time I also learnt a lot about Pacific nation politics. Most importantly I learnt that aid is about power and that the Ni-Van Government was determined to show Australia and New Zealand that it was in control even though the aid and personnel to deliver it was being supplied by those countries. This desire for power put a choke-hold on aid deliveries and many remote communities waited for almost a month for official aid to arrive.

Meanwhile the #renegade aid providers sprang up, kindhearted people who slipped through the red tape to help those in need. And that's why using the hashtag was really important to me. Our aid, whilst provided by an sanctioned Australian aid partner was not part of the NDMO aid effort - their aid did not arrive in Zoe's village for another two weeks after ours (more than three weeks after the cyclone). Without the help of many people our aid would not have delivered. We felt firsthand Vangov's attempts to control the aid effort when the President's men threatened our helicopter company and then took our helicopter so that our aid delivery was delayed by a further day. But we got there in the end and our rice and water sustained an entire community for the weeks until official aid arrived.

Zoe leaves us to return to Vanuatu on 3 May for another 10 weeks and she is weighed down with proof that we are a generous society who care about our neighbours. Her bags contain rice, flour, sugar, school and medical supplies, water purification tablets, seeds and clothing - all the things her community needs to rebuild their lives. Zoe is also taking enough money to keep a quarter of the Level School kids in school for the rest of the year. Hopefully when her Dad goes to visit her in a month he can take a further donation that will see all 45 kids' education paid for. One less burden for the families of Level to bear.

Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings - if you're interested I intend to blog some more about Vanuatu and to also provide the back story about before the cyclone and what we were really feeling during those crazy eight days while we waited for word that Zoe and her community had survived TC Pam and were all ok.

In the meantime, I really hope you join us at SUYS this month. Don't forget to link your LO back to the blog.