What are they up to now?
Find out who's up to what, where, when and why?
People come away from their time as a volunteer with Quest inspired and enthused from the experience and we love to shout about what our ex-vols are getting up to.
Lucy King
Anyone having gone away with Quest between 2000 and 2006 will probably remember Lucy King. She helped to setup the entire Quest Africa operations and brought some much needed sanity to the until then all male office!
She has now moved onto academia, and has been spending the past few years doing a PhD at Oxford Uni, studying the relationship between elephants and bees! Believe it or not, there is one, in that elephants are scared of them, so Lucy has been working out how best to take advantage of this situation by using bee hives to prevent elephants from entering farmers' plantations and destroying their crops (previously when this happened, farmers would often just shoot the elephants to protect their livelihoods).
Her latest paper has made a bit of a breakthrough. During her studies out in the Samburu National Park in Kenya, she has observed that, when elephants hear the buzz of bees, they actually communicate to other elephants about the danger. This sort of communication has previously mainly been seen in mammal species, so quite a revelation!
Rob Harris
Rob will be a familiar face for many of you, as he led a number of our projects and expeditions in Africa. Rob first volunteered in Bolivia back in 2004 after university and loved it so much he applied to work for Quest soon after, particularly having a bond with our past Swaziland Wildlife Project. His passion for wildlife has led him to his current work for Fauna and Fauna International as their Rapid Response Facility Programme Manager. His work has taken him to such places as Borneo to work with the orang-utans, but he is also known as the FFI Gorilla, getting involved in visiting schools and cycling from London to Cambridge to raise money!
Lucy Lapere's cycle challenge
Lucy cycled from London to Paris in September 2009 to raise money for Quest4Change. Last year she worked with Quest4Change building a primary school in rural Mozambique and says she was inspired to support Quest4Change because "having seen personally the benefits this brought, I know for a fact that this is a worthwhile cause. Quest4Change doesn't only focus on education projects; their work is far-reaching and varied, they problem-solve with communities, and also help protect endangered habitats and the plants and animals that rely on them."
Lucy raised over £1,000 which is amazing - thank you for all your hard work!
Yosuk
e Matsumiya Kili challenge
Yosuke Matsumiya climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in 2010 in aid of the Village Education Project Kilimanjaro in Tanzania this August. He worked as a Quest volunteer with VEPK in his Gap Year and says "We have chosen to raise money for VEPK because it is a charity which does fantastic work local to the area where we will be staying; we will be able to see directly where the money that we raise is being used, and some of us will be able to do voluntary work for VEPK after the climb." We wish him and his team loads of luck with the climb. Find out more.
Helen Lloyd takes on Africa
Helen Lloyd was a quest volunteer at the Macquipacuna project (Ecuador) in 2000 and after 4yrs working as an Engineer she has decided to embark upon the challenge of a lifetime. On July 20th Helen set off from Poole on the start of an epic 2yr, 20,000mile bike ride to Cape Town, South Africa.
Her journey will take her through some of the most exciting and challenging environments, from Desert to Mountains Helen will be pushing her body and soul to the very limit. Helen hopes to raise£5,000 for the Welbodi Partnership, a UK charity supporting the provision of paediatric care in Sierra Leone, where child health statistics are among the worst in the world. Good luck Helen.
Jane Keenan in Rwanda
Jane Keenan was a volunteer at our Yachana project (Ecuador) in 2001. She has spent the last two years working as a volunteer with VSO in rural Rwanda. She has lived without running water, electricity and is now a master of the motorbike
What are you up to? Writing the dissertation of a lifetime? Working in rural Africa? Training to be a lawyer? Training for the Marathon? Get in touch let us know, and if we can help you out we will.
Zoe Driscoll in Kenya
Zoe volunteered in 2005 with Quest and project partners VEPK in Tanzania. After completing a degree in Geography and an MSc in Environment & Development, Zoe interned for the Malaria Consortium in London for six months. She is now living in Ndhiwa in western Kenya, having landed a job as a Project Officer for the education charity Teach a Man to Fish. Her work now involves doing training work at a school to help them become self-sufficient through businesses such as growing fruit trees, and gender intiatives to increase girls' participation.
Read TAMTF's blog on the work in Kenya here.
