Friends, family, strangers, welcome to my fundraising page!

As some of you may know, I will be spending the month of July in Benin in Africa as part of a youth project. I'm participating in this project through the association Le Verso du Miroir, that was set up by a teacher at my school and has taken groups of young people to Benin since 2008 to complete various projects. Since I started secondary school, I've heard about the trips and have always dreamed of taking part, so I couldn't be more excited to finally be setting off just after graduating at the end of June. I can't wait to experience a culture and an environment that is so completely different to the one I'm used to, and to spend a whole month working on a truly meaningful project alongside some great young people.

This year, there are three teams; one will will be freshening up and renovating a school built in 2012, another will be setting up a fish farming project, and the last one, which I am part of, will be finishing a school for which the foundations were set in 2015. And so, I'll be spending a month living with a local family, working on the school in collaboration with the local masons and exploring the country at the weekends.

Needless to say, such a trip requires a lot of money; 8000€ is needed to fund each project, as well as 700€ for flight tickets and 200€ for vaccinations. Less than 3 months away from the trip, we've already come very far in our funding, through organizing bake sales and various fundraising events such as a show and a musical quizz from which all proceeds went straight to the projects. Thanks to hundreds of votes, we also managed to win 1000€ in a contest for associations such as our one back in November!

However, at this stage there is still some way to go. Therefore, I now appeal to any friends and family who might want to help me on my way. If you'd like to make a donation towards the project, however small, it would be very much appreciated. It really is a great cause, and any contributions will be mean the world to me as well as to the locals in Benin who will benefit from your generosity. :)

Here is what a finished school looks like:

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The association's website:

Le Verso du Miroir's website (in French)

Some photos from our first training weekend:

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The point was for us all to get to know each other, to learn about developing countries, the inequalities between north and south, what to expect when we get to Africa (how to react to marriage proposals and to your host parents asking you to take their child back to Belgium with you...), to think seriously about our values and how to happily coexist as a group in Benin.

The next training weekend will be similar, but more focused on manual labour on a farm in order for us to get used to actually working together!

Some videos:

Last year's project

2014 project

Benin Project

The publications