mentors, volunteer work and life after the Mc

A long time that I posted, anyways here is a little update.....

Life after the MC: the black hole
Well, a while ago I closed an important chapter in my life: being in the national board of AIESEC The Netherlands. During this year I discovered many things about myself, friends, family and other acquaintances. A month ago I finished and it was actually quite hard to get everything back on track again. I found myself lost in the amount of spare time I had on my hands and decided the only solution was structure. Every day I got up at 8 (as I did during the yeas as well) went to the library and worked on my thesis. This definitely helped to keep me occupied but also relax and absorb all experiences I had during the year.

Now I am in the process of researching the job market and in a month or so send out application. If anyone has useful tips, please feel free to let me know.

Working for NGOs
Since I now only have school to focus on, I decided to pursue a long time ambition: do volunteers work. A former MC-member has established an NGO recently; Atma Mumbai (http://www.atmamumbai.org/, please enroll for the newsletter, we are dependent on our addresses for funding opportunities; so far the commercial J) and I decided to help her built it. That means that I am now exploring the fascinating world of entrepreneurship in non-governmental organizations, which is exhilarating and annoying at the same time.

Furthermore, Rotterdam is a city with many underdeveloped areas. Another NGO, called weekend school, opened up a school on Sunday to teach children from these neighborhoods a broader career perspective. I volunteer there on Sundays and I am writing a stakeholder engagement plan for them. In AIESEC I have worked with some valuable concepts, like creating champions and so on, which many NGOs could very much use, but do not know about. This is definitely a gap in the market and very briefly I considered building a business on it but I feel I need more experience first.

After Tsunami shock
Last weekend I waited tables on a fundraising diner for Atma Mumbai. It was a very successful diner with 24 people from various ages and professions attending. Reactions were absolutely outstanding! I have to give you a bit of background on this, The Netherlands did a big fundraise for the Tsunami that was very successful. I think they got 100 million euros from the public. After the event much bad press was published and people lost their faith in NGOs in general. This resulted in people being very cautious with supporting initiatives and wanting to know directly where the money is going.

Since the founder of Atma, Adrienne was telling personal stories of her experiences in Mumbai and the people could hear and see her passion, the diner lived up to its potential. People were not just paying money to sit in at the diner, but were actually discussing action they could take to support this NGO. This all happened spontaneously and was very cool to see.

cheers,

Floor