|
| |
Harriet (far right) and other
members of the team, seen
unpacking vital provisions for
the school children in Ethiopia
|
Travel broadens the mind
In the last 12 months the Royal Masonic
Trust for Girls and Boys (RMTGB) has
awarded 119 travel grants to beneficiaries.
These were in addition to their regular
maintenance grants.
Many travel grants are given to enable
beneficiaries to go on school trips. Gone
are the days of school outings to Blackpool
or Bognor. Today’s schoolchildren are
more likely to go to the battlefields of France
or even on a rugby tour in South Africa.
The cost of the trips can be substantial.
Parents do not want their children to miss
out on the opportunity, especially if most
of their friends are going, but participating
would not be possible in many cases without
additional help from the Trust.
Students also have wider opportunities
for travel. It is not unusual for them to spend
a gap year working with disadvantaged
children in Uganda or trekking across the
less hospitable tracts of South America.
Increasingly, such trips, whether for
schoolchildren or students, have become the
norm and there is no denying the benefits
they bring – experiencing different cultures
and religions, understanding the incredible
diversity that makes up the global village,
seeing famous places previously only photos
in a guide book, learning self-sufficiency and
developing self-confidence.
Some of the Trust’s subsidiary charities
also make travel grants to Masonic children
and young people, not all of whom have to
be full beneficiaries of the Trust. The
Empire Lodge Centenary Travelling
Fellowship and the Prince of Wales’s Lodge
Bicentenary Fund award travel grants to
young men and women in their final year
at school.
The Globe Lodge 275th Anniversary
Fund encourages students to study abroad,
Croydon Lodge of Endeavour Travelling
Fellowship promotes general foreign travel
and, as one might expect, the Canada Lodge
Travelling Fellowship gives grants for travel
to Canada.
All the Trust’s travel grants, whether to
existing beneficiaries or not, are meanstested
in the sense that each family has to
demonstrate that it is unable to meet the cost
from its own resources. Older children and
young people in particular are expected to
show personal commitment to their trip by
raising some of the money themselves – the
Trust rarely pays the full cost.
Additionally, the Trust likes to see that a
project has real educational value, but this
can sometimes be hard to assess – especially
since EuroDisney established its own
education centre!
Harriet was a recent recipient of a
subsidiary fund grant. She is a senior pupil
in a secondary school in Derby. In July
this year she joined 12 other pupils and
two teachers on a highly successful trip
to Ethiopia.
Harriet’s arrival in Ethiopia was not quite
what she expected. It was two o’clock in the
morning, dark, cold and pouring with rain.
But this was entirely outweighed by the
warm welcome they received next day from
St Matthew’s Church in Addis Ababa and
from the children in the church’s school.
During her fortnight at St Matthew’s,
Harriet taught maths, science, English, art,
drama and music to the children. They
especially enjoyed the drama and music
lessons. The image of young Ethiopian
children singing ring-a-ring-a-roses and
dancing the conga is hard to dispel from
the mind.
In her time off from teaching, Harriet
visited an Orthodox Church and a hospital
run by Mother Theresa’s Sisters of Charity,
joined a local family in their home and
travelled through the stunning Ethiopian
countryside.
Harriet’s verdict?
She said: “It was a fantastic trip which
neither I nor the other members of the
team will ever forget”.
|
|
Copyright 2002-2007
MQ Magazine
Web site created by Mark Griffin
|
|
Next Page
