It’s July 30, 2015 and I am currently sitting in my home in Wassenaar, a beautiful suburban area in The Netherlands. Tomorrow evening I will be in the outskirts of Cape Town ready to build The Compass Trust.

The past few months have been an amazing time for everyone involved with TCT. We recently became a registered charity in SA, as well as starting our fundraising efforts for the Cape Town marathon. I also spent my time travelling around Europe as I may not be back for a whole year!

It’s been a lot of work getting this far, but the real work starts now. On arrival in South Africa I will head straight to my accommodation and in the morning, TCT starts to become a reality.

We will use that first week to start a bank account, look for volunteer housing and most importantly looking for schools that need our help. I will also be volunteering at SurfShack Outreach Centre in Muizenberg. Please check them out on Facebook if you haven’t already!

As soon as we find a school to work with, I will go into that school each day running the Sports Development program. In September we will welcome Devyn, a volunteer looking to help build the teaching program.

By January, this will mean that we should have fully fledged programs for volunteers to come into. There is a lot of admin to be done in regards to insurance, bank accounts and tenancy agreements, but we’ve done as much as we could have done prior to my arrival in Cape Town.

It’s now that I want to say a few “thank yous”. I first of all want to thank Mike Hawkey. He built our website for free and helped me get to grips with trying to maintain it! Without Mike we wouldn’t be where we’re at today, nowhere near.

I also want to say a huge thank you to all the Board Members of TCT, Lluis, Mathili, Oliver and soon to be Iva (also our social media coordinator). I believe we’re on to something special with TCT, and I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to be doing this with.

I want to thank Nikie who will be running the marathon with me who has been a massive support in starting TCT. Other volunteers I have met who have given us advise and words of support like Lisa, Sam, Devyn, Carmen, Oliver, Vale, Diego, Simon, Moa…the list goes on and I’m sorry if I missed anyone out!

Another huge thank you goes to my family. To have such supporting parents and an amazing sister is incredible and extremely humbling. After University, they supported me through job applications, made sure I had food and a roof over my head. I love you all incredibly much.

And finally, a big thank you to anyone reading this or taking an interest in TCT, liking us on FB, sharing our posts, reading these self-indulgent blogs, donating money etc. Whatever you have done to help us in any way, thank you.

We haven’t done anything yet, but we’re living a dream starting this organisation up. We hope to make it a success, and we hope to do something that makes a sustainable change in the lives of the people that live in this community.

Everyone has the ability to change the world, and sometimes people forget that. We are always told we can change the world, but then we are left feeling inferior and worthless when we’re told we don’t fit in with the world, or that we aren’t good enough. Cliché as it is, little things make a difference. If everyone does their part, we would have a much better world to live in.

Hopefully, with The Compass Trust, we are doing our part. Please join us on this road, it’s about to get hectic!

Please feel free to contact us if you ever have any questions about what we’re up to and what our plans are. We will need all the help we can get!

Which leads me to our marathon fundraiser! We’ve done well so far, but we’re still looking to reach our target. It really will make a massive difference, no matter how much you can donate.

http://www.gofundme.com/tctmarathon

See you in August you beautiful people.

Always good and love to all.

Matt