Making a Splash to Raise Cash

March 21st 2019

OC Sam Warner will be returning to Churcher’s College swimming pool on Saturday 6th April to raise money for ‘Voluntary Service Overseas’ who helps fight poverty in developing countries.

Sam recently contacted the school to say:

“I've recently graduated top of the year with a first in Biology from University of Bristol and I've now been accepted to undertake a PhD with the John Innes Centre in Norwich to study plant and microbial science! But before this I wanted to take some time out and do something worthwhile, so later this year I will be off for 3 months as part of the government run International Citizen Service (ICS) programme with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in Machakos County, Kenya, to work with local charities and businesses on a youth empowerment project. The project will help get more young people into work and education, thereby helping to reduce some of the poverty the region faces.

“Because of this I've been inspired to raise money for VSO ICS. To do this, I knew I needed to challenge myself. As swimming is something I've always really struggled with, having only ever managed a few lengths, I am currently training to complete a sponsored swim of 1500m (a 300X increase on my childhood record of 5m) to ensure VSO can continue training and sending volunteers like me, through programmes such as ICS, to the developing world in order to tackle poverty across the globe.

“Please have a look at my justgiving page: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/sam-warner-vso.”

We wish Sam all the very best with the swim and his fundraising efforts.

More About ICS

ICS is a development programme that brings together young people from the UK and developing countries to volunteer in some of the poorest communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The programme launched in 2011 and since then more than 30,000 young people have volunteered across the world.