Nicholas Villalta
Combat Team Challenge Team building events are becoming standard as a way to educate both staff and management in working together to achieve objectives in a fun and neutral environment. With any training though, thought needs to be put in to the costs incurred against what the company and individuals will actually achieve. Nicholas Villalta, a local student who has been involved in the FLIP project sponsored by Credit Suisse and the Bonita Trust has come up with a novel idea to make team building irresistible. The FLIP project is geared towards sixth form students, encouraging them to get involved in local charities, to learn how they are run as well as coming up with ways to involve the community in fund raising. Selected students spend time investigating their chosen Gibraltar charity and learning how they work before organising their own fund raising event to support that charity. Nicholas, who will be studying Law next year in Reading, chose Childine to study and support over the last year. “Childline is a little different to other charities,” he explained. “Most charities are looking at raising money to send somewhere, or to raise funds for research. Childline on the other hand is more about a service and the funds raised are be-
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ing put straight back in to the local community, children who have benefited grow, and it helps investing in our children’s future. the local community to move in a very positive “It’s a project with ongoing benefits as those way towards the future.” What has Nicholas actually gained from his involvement to date with the charity? “It’s been an eye-opener in a lot of ways,” he says. “It’s easy to think of charities as just collecting money, counting it and forwarding it to where it’s needed. But there’s a lot more too it than that. “I’ve been lucky to have Tracy Newton-Blows from Party Gaming as my mentor during the FLIP project and she’s been great in helping me to fix my targets for working with Childline and helping to point me in the right direction. “There’s a lot which goes on behind the scenes
Last year Nicholas investigated in-depth how Childline was working and compared it with it’s UK counterparts such as the RSPCA and others, to come up with his own assessment of the charity
GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE • JUNE 2010 2010 GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE • JANUARY