So this is how it all started

The year was 2004 I needed to find a web address that a friend was involved with, he was currently half way around the world racing a yacht for someone with more money than sense, so I thought I would Google his name.

I couldn't believe the amount of information displayed before me. Most of it was listings from yacht clubs around the world, placings that he and his crew had attained in various classes of race. There was page after page. I eventualy found the information I required and moved on. But it set me thinking, wondering about how much information there was out there about me, not that I had attained the heady heights of fame as a master yachtsman or anything else for that matter.

My life had been quite dull up to that point, businessman, father, (not a very good one) married twice, (first one doesn't count as we were both too young) and one partner, or at least at that time in my life, I had a partner.

I was to be proved correct, there wasn't a lot in cyberspace about yours truly. I got a mentione in my company website which I subsiquently removed.  There's more than enough information available for public viewing, I didn't need more added to it. There were a few other entries under the same surname but unrelated to me. Then there was an entry entitled "The Fowell Street Project". Well that one caught my eye. I just had to link in and take a look.

What I found was to change my life forever. For a number of years I had wanted to take part in international voluntary work. But as most organisations require you to sign up for six months, a year or even three years, it was a non starter. I still had a business to run and required an income so as to live. There was also the problem of not having a trade or qualification that these voluntary organisations needed. I had built and run my own business, sold it, worked as operations director for a national company and then moved into the property management business. None of this qualified me for a post with an NGO.

But then I found the "Fowell Street Project".  Fowell Street is in Georgias America. The project was  housing. The organisation behind the project was Habitat for Humanity. I read with interest what they were doing, using short term volunteers to assist in building homes with families so as to improve their life, to lift them out of poverty housing and into the home owner sector of society. Improving family security, health and education. Giving these families a hand up, not a hand out.

From that project, I delved into the pages of Habitat for Humanity's own web site. I was lost in there for days, reading everything I could about them, watching their online videos and soaking up as much information as I could.

Here is a charity that works all over the world. Offers short term voluntary projects of fifteen days at a time. This was just what I had been looking for. A chance at last to give back to a world that up to this point, all I had done was take.

Habitat for Humanity was a Christian based charity and as I was not of that faith, my first question, and only question was, "am I acceptable as a volunteer" the answer was a definite yes. HFH is in fact a multi faithed organisation and works with people of all relegions and even no relegion. So that was the start, all I needed to do was decide where I would work and when.