Working for CAFOD

I attended my second talk of Employability and Enterprise week at Leeds Trinity University today, and this one was a little different because it focussed on working in the voluntary sector. The talk was given by Joanna Taylor from CAFOD which stands for Catholic Agency For Overseas Development, CAFOD are a Catholic aid agency for England and Wales, they
battle poverty in a variety of third world countries. 

This was a really interesting talk because I didnt know a lot about CAFOD or the voluntary sector in general so from the first minute of the talk I was learning new things. I liked the fact that the representatives from CAFOD gave out a really interesting hand-out with a list of facts about poverty and other bad things from around the world, the facts on the list really do help you understand the state of the world and how lucky you actually are. The list read:

1) The population of the world is 7 billion 
2) Over 1 billion people live on les than US$1 a day
3) It is estimated 1 child dies every 3 seconds in developing countries due to poverty
4) Each Person in Britain creates 10 times their own weight in household rubbish each year
5) Globally 1 child in 5 does not complete their primary education
6) A woman in sub-Saharan Africa is 100 times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than a woman in Western Europe
7) Most of the 3,000 deaths each day caused by malaria are in Africa
8) Out of 860 million illiterate adults in the world, 2/3 are women
9) Some 40 million people worldwide are living with HIV and AIDS
10) Over 1 billion people do not have safe water to drink
11) 4 out of 10 people in the world do not have access to basic sanitation 
12) Half of the worlds plants and animals could be extinct within 100 years



We then had a discussion about which of the list we though was the worst fact, doing this exercise I thought was genius because people like me who didn't know too much about poverty and the other things CAFOD tackle may have been a bit tentative about speaking up but doing this exercise was a perfect icebreaker. Regarding the question of which was worst I proposed that number 10 was the worst, or most severe  because of the fact that water is needed to live whereas by definition something like money isn't, this sparked a decent discussion on the matter and the other people in the room offered there opinion. 

What I did find interesting was just like in the last talk the amount of roles within CAFOD was above what I expected and I was surprised by how variety the roles was, for example some of the areas you can work within CAFOD are; Research, Fundraising, Marketing, Project Management, Media Work, IT and Political Liaison to name a few. When I said that I studies level 5 Media single honours at Leeds Trinity Joanne told me of some of the thing I could personally do within CAFOD and again the thing that came was "Social Media" this from what I've understood from the talks I've had this week is a key aspect the consider about employability  In relation to CAFOD Joanne said that they need people who can run there Facebook and Twitter, and keep them updated with relevant content to keep people interested, this was good for me because it made me seriously consider the voluntary sector as an option when I graduate university. 

I didn't know what to expect when I went into this talk but I found it quite inspiring  the people from CAFOD seem totally dedicated to a good cause and I feel like I would enjoy working in the voluntary sector more than I would have thought. I've only been to two out of the four talks I'm going to this week but I can already say that the talks have been a massive improvement on last year and I'm looking forward to my next two talks tomorrow.

Useful Links:
www.cafod.org.uk/