By Sven
First update from the Frontline DTS
Hey all who read this, I am hoping that this article gets the website views up, my friend Adam who leads the Music DTS has been monitoring how many visits our site gets, so I am hoping there is a spike when this article is posted...we will see.
This is the first official news article for the FrontLine DTS, as it is very new. I have been leading the Megacities DTS which in my own words has gone through a metamorphosis and become the the FrontLine DTS. Quick little blurb, we want to go the hard places and the frontiers, for me this could spell out to be remote villages as well as big intimidating slums. Did you know there is an abandoned 20 story building in Caracas that has been informally settled by at least hundreds of people? I also love the intro to Slumdog Millionaire where it zooms out on the Mumbai slum, so big and yet often people in these places feel isolated and cut off from the rest of the world, with this school I am hoping we can be a sort of bridge to many people out there, all over the world.
Having said all that, right now I am an office worker here at the Perth base, but one of the perks of this is that I have been helping set up an upcoming outreach to the far north of Western Australia, an area called the Kimberly's. There are many isolated indigenous communities out here, some of them only accessible if you are driving a 4x4. Also home to many crocodiles and other "fun" aussie reptiles. Working on this I am noticing the obvious, but there is so much need and opportunity right here in Australia for those adventurous spirits out there to make an impact and difference in people's lives. In my last outreach which finished in March we got to help out with the flood relief work in the interior of Queensland, it was so much fun!!! A local NGO gave us two 4x4s and all the tools and we headed out to different farms everyday and helped the landowners clear their properties. The area was mainly small communities, often quite closed, but we had such open doors the whole time we were there. It was a lot of driving to get there, last minute and unplanned, (can't really plan on natural disasters) we slept on the floor the whole time shared with cockroaches and mice, shared 2 showers between 30 of us, cooked all our meals with a BBQ and a pot (we ended up having really good food) and honestly al of us had the time of our lives. Interesting note, there was lots of volunteer workers for Brisbane and other towns, but not much for the really isolated spots...
Having said all of this, I am really excited over this new school and can't wait to see what happens with it, if you're interested in finding out to, let me know.
