Old mobiles are mobilising Littlehampton Josh

Josh Finneran is one of about 20 Littlehampton Academy students planning on travelling to Sri Lanka next year, to volunteer at village schools. Each needs to raise about £800 to do so, as well as another £3,000 between them.

Josh, 18, has been recycling mobile phones in a bid to get his money together, and has even set up his own website to help him along the way.

“I think it’s going to be a life-changing experience,” he said of the trip.

“The culture will just be so far away from anything I have known before.

“The food, the heat, the way of life, everything.”

While in Sri Lanka, a country the 
school developed links with after fund-raising following the 2004 tsunami, the group will be helping with some building works, as well teaching, something that Josh, who volunteers as a language teacher at Flora MacDonald Junior School, is particularly relishing.

“I enjoy teaching, and it’s what I want to do as a career. It will be so different in Sri Lanka though. Children there really want to go to school, and really want to learn.”

So far, Josh has raised about £350, by recycling phones and a sponsored climb earlier this year, which saw about a dozen of the volunteers scale the equivalent of the three tallest mountains in the UK, Snowdon, Ben Nevis and Scarfell Pike, at a climbing centre in Shoreham.

“It was horrible! I am not a sporty person at all, and it really hurt!” he said.

* For details on how to donate your old mobile phone to the fund, e-mail Josh on [email protected]

For more details on the trip, and to keep up-to-date with the fund-raising, go to www.joshuafinneran.wordpress.com