Case studies: Kaya Responsible Travel volunteer: Michelle Fraser

Michelle finished her undergraduate degree in Food and Nutrition and wanted to improve her knowledge before doing a Masters in Public Health Nutrition. She took part in a six week project in the Philippines in summer 2011 working on improving nutritional standards.

The project involved working from 8-12 in the morning. We would get on a jeepney (the most scary/exciting/wonderfully odd transport I have ever been on) and head to the market to buy food to feed the kids. We had a P400 budget to work with each day, which works out at about £6 and you'd be surprised what we could buy with that. We would be feeding up to 30 kids but the majority of times the kids would get seconds and even thirds. It helped that we made friends with all of the market sellers and one of them seemed to reduce her price every time we visited.

We'd arrive at the Barangay Hall (community centre) and prepare and cook the meals, play with the kids a bit (singing songs, drawing) and then serve the food. These are the most grateful kids and parents you will ever meet in your life.

Every fortnight we measured and weighed the kids to see if they were growing. It was really great to see their height, weight and upper arm circumference increasing and it made everything worthwhile. The other volunteers and I also gave a few seminars to both children and parents about the importance of good nutrition. These were to try and make the project more sustainable, by giving the parents and children the knowledge so that they could cook nutritious meals on a budget as well.

As well as the nutrition project, I also helped in a local orphanage and did some painting for the Build a Home project. These were also very rewarding, as everyone there was so grateful, even for small things.

We had most weekends off so we went on a few trips away. There were around 10-25 volunteers at a time while I was there. The groups we went away in tended to range from six to eight people which were nice numbers. These weekends were the cheapest weekends I have ever been on - Biliran was the equivalent of £30. I also went to Bohol and Borongan, both of which were lovely, especially Bohol as there were so many beautiful beaches and so much to see. I fell in love with the Tarsiers and also the incredible amount of geckos there were everywhere in the Philippines (I even got a tattoo of the latter so I would remember this trip forever).

I would strongly recommend this project to anyone with a love of nutrition and helping people. You learn so much and I left the project every day with such a huge smile on my face it hurt. I’ve never had a job like that in my life and it has cemented my interest in helping developing countries with their nutrition problems. Apart from the jetlag and the massive culture shock, I have no complaints and even those faded away after a week. I want to go back some day and experience everything all over again.

My nutrition volunteer project with Kaya Responsible Travel  was the most fun I've had in a very long time, as well as being the most rewarding thing I've ever done. I met so many incredible people, both Filipino and the volunteers, each with their own story to tell. I'm still a bit depressed about being back in England.