My bum is sore ><;;

This morning, I walked 15km around Melbourne’s south eastern suburbs as part of the Ampersand Walk, a yearly event for people who want to raise money for a cause, but aren’t fit enough to do any running. So instead, they walk. Usually clad in Harry Potter costume or fluoro lycra outfits from the 70s. Well, if you can’t run, might as well create pain some other way. I was part of the Melbourne Journal of International Law team, and we raised 1000 for Bahay Tuluyan, a charity which seeks to provide advocacy and child protection services for street kids in the Phillipines. If you’d like to help us raise even more, you can visit https://www.onlinegiving.com.au/pages/MJIL.aspx where donations will be open until 31 October. You can also click appropriately to learn more about Bahay Tuluyan or The Ampersand Network, who sponsors the walk.

Doing the walk, though, I realised how many of the participants were Melbourne University students – there was a Law Students’ Society team, a Melbourne University Law Review team, an Edmund Rice Camps team with a heavy concentration of student volunteers, my own MJIL team, and a bunch of students whose names/organisations I don’t really remember but whom I recognise from SALP and volunteer fairs; the Ampersand Network itself was founded and run by students.

Not surprising, really. Uni’s the one time in your life you’ll have both the time to volunteer and the skills to organise events; the former disappears as you grow older, the latter hasn’t really developed when you’re younger.