Today, former Toybox employee Nicola Sanders won a Silver medal for the women’s 400m in the World Athletics Championships. We’re pretty proud to say that a couple of years ago, this young lady was packing boxes of Latin American crafts in our back room. )

Her race time – 49.65 seconds – was her personal best. Congratulations Nicola!

Amazing ladies
I have to give a big high-five to Lesley Roberts and Gill Peters, two of our volunteers who come into the office every week. These amazing ladies pretty much run the Toybox Child Sponsorship Scheme. They’re incredible!

Lesley is a qualified pyschiatrist, so we’re always a little worried she’s psycho-analysing us! She’s specifically in charge of the birthday scheme, which means she makes sure every child gets a birthday card and balloon for their birthday! And she takes it so seriously! It’s great to see how dedicated she is to a job she doesn’t even get paid to do. She’s really inspiring.

We recently received updates and letters from all the children in Guatemala and Bolivia. Lesley has been printing out copies of every single document, getting them organized and ready to send out to their sponsors so these special people can keep up-to-date with the children they help. She’s even come in for extra hours to get more done.

All work and no play? No way.
But don’t be fooled. It’s not all ‘work, work, work.’ This lady has been known to stop at Marks and Spencer on the way in for a tub of chocolate-y treats. And lucky me: this summer I’m usually the only one in the upstairs office when she comes!

If you’d like to share our mini swiss rolls and help the children, why not become a volunteer?

And, if you don’t sponsor a child yet – there’s no time like the present!

Singin’ in the Rain
I usually work upstairs in the Communications office, but the summer is a funny time. Out of the five people on the Comms team, 2 are on holiday, and 2 work sporadic hours during the summer because they have young children. If you’re any good at math(s) – sorry, I’m American – you’ll know that that just leaves one: Me.

So, most of the Summer, I’ve been alone in our little office on the third floor. Today I decided to come down and work on the bottom floor in Supporter Care with the lovely Jenni Dyason and the lovely Di Parry.

Our Amersham offices, for those of you who’ve never had the privilege to visit, are attached to a storefront where we sell our Latin American handicrafts. So those who work in Supporter Care not only do a million and one things for our supporters, they’re also constantly on retail duty.

Di, who usually works upstairs (is this getting confusing?), is in quite a chirpy mood. So after lunch, as she was working diligently, began singing a song that said something about ‘living in a land of make-believe’ – quite loudly – when she realized there were two ladies browsing in the shop.

Thankfully, they were understanding. In fact, they said they’d just heard the organic veg man in the high street singing as well! It must be that kind of day…

I’m personally thankful Di’s having a good enough time at work to be moved to sing!

New Wine B
Last Thursday and Friday, I spent some time at New Wine B in Somerset with the Toybox team. A group of volunteers led by Angela Murray, our Advocacy Coordinator, did an amazing job running the Rendezvous Cafe, the Pamper Corner, and the Toybox gifts and sponsorship stand in the New Wine Marketplace.

On Friday, I spent several hours in the Pamper Corner, the brainchild of Toybox supporter Rosie Seamark. Volunteers in the Corner rubbed feet, massaged shoulders, painted fingernails, and talked to New Wine-goers about Toybox and the children we help in Latin America.

I have to say, the thought of rubbing feet that had been camping out and trudging through dirt in flip-flops for days on end was not appealing. But the reality was better than the idea. I had an amazing time serving the people who came to our stand. It was a really humbling experience – I had to remind myself that Jesus had rubbed the feet of his friends: people who had been roaming in the desert for weeks! And I felt really blessed to have amazing conversations with people about the things they were learning at the festival.

I also got the chance to talk a lot about our children in Latin America. People were so curious about the work we do: they wanted to know how we work, how long the children can stay in the homes, and where child sponsorship money goes. It was great to be able to answer their questions – I’ve been learning a lot about Toybox myself over the past few months!

Getting out of the office for a couple of days and doing some hands-on(literally!), face-to-face work was encouraging, and helped me come back to the office this week feeling really connected to our supporters.