"During this summer holiday I spent a month out in Camp Kenya taking part in a sports development expedition, we travelled to two different schools during the stay, Bugatuta and Sasenyi Primary schools. Both a part of the private school system out there where they offer the chance for children to get the best education they can to help develop the local community with more educated citizens. We started at the school which neither had any developed pitches or courts so we began to mark, dig and paint the pitches so that after our time there had finished they could continue to develop their sporting abilities. As the new school term began we were introduced to their netball, volleyball and football teams and we all quickly gathered a strong bond to the players, gaining their trust and understanding each others ways of learning. I mainly coached netball as I am a keen player myself, seeing the two different schools show huge improvement over the 3 weeks of coaching made me feel very proud and grateful for the opportunity to be out there. At the end of the 3 weeks the two schools came together to have a community sports day and to see the overall winners in each event. Netball saw Sasenyi win withscore of 6-2 both schools showing the different techniques and drills we had taught.

During my stay out in Kenya, I gained new life-long friends, confidence in myself to know that I can achieve anything I put my mind to and the chance to meet the most inspirational and motivating children and adults even though they didn’t have the best home life and some had to walk 3 hours every morning to get to school, the happiness our Camp Kenya sports team were able to bring to the children at the school and to the community made me feel proud to have taken this whole step in my life and without your help I wouldn’t have had to the chance to experience this!

The netball team was a special part of my stay in Kenya as they welcomed us with open arms, watching them play the different sports barefoot and in their school uniform was hard comparing to the school life I had and the huge difference in equipment and sports kit we had at hand, I decided to leave my trainers out there for one of our netball players called Chip who had some great improvement while we coached and seeing how much she improved in a month gave us huge confidence in what she could achieve in her life, to be able to give her my trainers as a gift she was over the moon and said how she could never be too grateful for what I had done for her.

I was also able to experience the traditional Kenyan safari in which I saw wild elephants, lions and my favourite - giraffes, which was a once in a life time experience that I will never forget. Leaving Kenya was a said day but I am glad to say I have left a great impact on the schools and local community to which I hope they continue to develop and achieve in their life and maybe one day I will be able to go back in the future.

Without the help from the John Thornton Foundation I would have never been able to achieve my dream goal to help out in Kenya and now I can continue my life to University with the memories and achievements in my heart."