Day 1: Launch Day

So our trips for 2017 have finally launched! 38 students from 22 different schools across 3 different states. 11 leaders, many of who attended as students previously. Our 7th year of trips and we have 3 trips happening all at capacity. At the conclusion of this year, we would have had over 190 students attend and survive our trips, learning so much along the way and having a lot of fun doing so! So fair to say: we were all pretty excited for today to finally come!

After some flight delays with our interstate team members this morning, we finally were able to all meet each together face to face and how awesome it is to see young people connect well immediately. Everyone made an intentional effort to welcome each other and teams started to bond together even more, with excitement and reality of our trips right upon us.

We started the day off at EV’s Youth Centre in Croydon, where everyone got dropped off and we were joined by parents, family members and the board of HopeBuilders International, our parent organisation. It was great to have everyone there, and after a few final checks and reminders, we prayed together before saying goodbye. It was a special moment, with some tears of course, but an overall sense of great excitement!

Once the parents left we kicked on with our Launch Day plans, reinforcing the culture we want to set in our teams, some of the guidelines we have and reminding everyone what we are all about. We had some fun activities throughout it all and finished off the day with some lovely pizza. We loaded the buses and headed to the airport, where more junk food was consumed (gotta bulk load before 3 weeks without!)

The Uganda team headed off first, heading to Uganda via Dubai. The Cambodia & Philippines team were a little bit more exhausted having to wait until 1am for their flight to Singapore, but everyone left with no issues, a list of movies to watch, a sleep plan prepared and plenty of enthusiasm for the next 3 weeks!

Follow the journey for each trip here, and we look forward to sharing it with you and having the students write each day. Make sure you check out our instagram and Facebook accounts for more photos :)

Joel

Cambodia

Philippines

Uganda