40 hour famine...and a crazy story

2 posts in 2 days.  that must be a record (at least for me this month) and this appears to be a rather long one sorry - so please bear with me - there is a crazy story at the end for those of you I haven't told already.  Anyway this weekend is a slightly different one.  Its the weekend where something I've been involved in for 14 years (only just realised that its been that long!) is taking place.  That event is the 40 hour famine, organised through World vision.  I know I've told a number of you about it before, but for those who don't know or haven't heard of it basically its a time where people (mostly students of all ages) go without something (traditionally food) for either 20 or 40 hours (usually primary age kids do 20 hours and everyone older does 40) and for doing that people sponsor them money, which, when collected, goes towards World Vision's projects overseas.

I guess this is quite a big thing for me to a certain extent, particularly since I did the 20 hour famine 4 times, the 40 hour famine 8 times and was the student organiser for 3 years...plus helped 2 of my schools to get the respective scholarships for their age levels and got selected to go on both scholarship camps.  This year however I'm not playing such a big role. I may go back to it one year in the future but will have to see about that.

Those doing the traditional food famine are allowed just barley sugars and juice/water for the time of their famine, however due to people wanting to participate who were unable to give up food, alternative famines have also been added in that see people giving up technology, living in cardboard boxes or even giving up talking for 40 hours.  The years I was a student organiser, the whole school got behind it with a mufti day, student vs teacher sport, bouncy castle (yes even highschoolers like them) sausage sizzle, spot prizes etc.  We had local businesses donating the prizes and even managed to arrange a pizza lunch for the class who raised the highest total.  other years organised things like pancake breakfasts at the conclusion of the famine and many other different events.

The scholarships are given out at intermediate (middle school) and high school level.  The schools (from those who have been involved for at least 1 year previous) are selected based on a number of criteria such as most money raised total, most money on average per pupil, largest percentage increase in amount raised etc.  The scholarships are funded by sanitarium and are provided to about 20 schools at each of the 2 levels who get to select one senior student representative fly to a location to attend the scholarship camp week.  Its a really fun week of activities that ends with an awards dinner where plaques are presented to the students both for their schools and for themselves. 

my plaque from the high school camp

Personally I found I was more surprised at my selection for the High School camp than the intermediate one, partially because for the intermediate one, it was relatively likely that the school would receive a scholarship (we would have the previous year however that year had been the first time the school had been a part of it and so wasn't eligible) and that was the year I managed to exceed my aim in raising sponsorship (I always aimed to raise $100 more than the previous year - starting from $50 - I'd always just reached those targets right til that year, where the goal was $550 which somehow I managed to exceed by $200.) That I did sorta find funny cause there was a bar graph of what each class had raised displayed in the school...but they'd learned from the previous year (where I'd raised $450) so I sorta had my own colomn for it.  

With the High School camp however,  it was not so clear cut.  During the 3 years that I'd helped organise, the total raised had gone from what I think was a shockingly low figure of about $4000 (for a school of over 1500) to $8000 the following year to $16000 in my final year.  We still weren't sure that that would be good enough for a scholarsip tho - and when we did find out that we got one selection was looking at all of us who organised the event.  In fact we hadn't thought that we'd got a scholarship at all cause it wasn't til the day before nominations of representatives closed that us organisers got called into the principals office and were told that we'd succeeded.  I was thinking the position should go to one of the other organisers since I'd already had the opportunity to go to one camp, however, one by one, they pulled out saying they were busy at the camp time or they were going overseas for the holidays and thought someone else should...and in the end I was the one who got chosen again. I can imagine Mum's surprise when I phoned her from school (since it was the final day I had to get permission right then and there).  I think the thing I found most surprising bout that camp tho was when one of the adults who was helping out mentioned that they had thought my high school would never reach a scholarship.  I guess that just made me realise again the true story behind charities like World Vision - people can make a difference - even those who you think can't do much at all can, with a little effort, play a big role in helping in some way shape or form.

To all those involved in the famine this year - well done on your involvement and good luck with this weekend.

Finally that crazy story I mentioned at the beginning - a bank over here is trying to track down a couple after they took out an overdraft for their business that was struggling financially.  That $100,000 overdraft limit was accidentally incorrectly entered as $10 million.  The couple withdrew about 6 and a half million of that and are on the run.  The bank has since tracked down bout 2.8 million of what the couple had with them and have seized properties belonging to one of them worth approximately 1.9 million, however this still means the bank has currently got about $2 million unaccounted for.  An international manhunt was launched for the couple who are now believed to be somewhere in Hong Kong