Jamie Sainsbury
My name is Jamie, I'm sixteen, and I've been volunteering with Porridge and Rice for just over a year. I'm a member of the Porridge and Rice Young Volunteers who perform supportive tasks like cleaning and caring for all the animals in Ken's urban farm. I also help out at the charity's fairs and fundraisers.
I attend Waldgrave School where I'm studying A levels in Geography, Sociology and Psychology. In my spare time (when I'm not helping Ken) I'm usually doing something football related. I'm a season ticket holder at Brentford and play on Saturday mornings for a local team.
I would like to travel to Kenya next summer with the charity and I'm guessing football coaching would be something I could do with the kids. I'd also like to link the trip to my Geography A level in some way.
Jamie Sainsbury
Porridge and Rice combats poverty in the Nairobi slums, home to some of the poorest people in the world, by enabling pupils at partner schools to obtain a sound education.
Jamie's Blog
Jamie is an A Level student and an active supporter of Porridge and Rice with thoughts on everything from sport to travel that he will share.
Crafting for PaR
19 December 2019
As November progressed and the weather worsened, the Young Volunteers moved from outdoors to indoors and started helping the Crafting Group. Who knew we'd be so good at making homespun goods for the Porridge and Rice Christmas Market Stall!! Felt Tree Decorations, banners, boxes, and badges were all constructed, and one brave person even took a crochet lesson from Emma.
On December 8th, the Volunteers gave up their entire Sunday to man the two stalls that Ken had booked at the Church Street Fair in Twickenham. One stall was devoted to a little petting zoo with guinea pigs, hedgehogs, chickens and ducks, and the other was given over to gifts. Despite the chilly weather, business was good and the adults liked the fact that we were located next door to the mulled wine stall! I was just happy we were close to KFC for my lunch. By 5pm we had made just over £700 and we packed up happy but tired.
Young Volunteers
9 September 2019
Every Sunday morning at ten I'll generally be hard at work at Porridge and Rice. I might be cleaning out a guinea pig cage, feeding the chickens, transferring baby quails from the incubator back to the mothers, planting seedlings into pots, watering the garden, collecting chicken eggs or digging scrapings from the animal cages into the soil to improve it. It's hard work, but good fun.
If I'm indoors, the work is completely different. The teaching room at Porridge and Rice is a mini second-hand bookshop as the charity has a permanent call-out on social media for books. My job would be to work out which titles can be sold at one of our fairs, which should be sent straight to World of Books, and to keep my eye out for anything valuable that could be sold on Amazon.
The sorting of clothes follows a similar pattern. Cheap stuff goes straight to the clothing bank to be sold by weight, the branded items get packed ready to be sent to Kenya, and any hidden gems are photographed and sold on eBay. This week we've found five good items which we hope will raise enough money for a new gazebo for the round of Christmas fairs.
