About Me

Mark Coull

I'm a software developer by trade, now the Research and Development Director of a software company (HD Clinical). As a company we write cardiology and maternity software for the NHS. 

I left school at 16 and served 8 years as a Royal Marine Commando before moving into the IT world. I started out supporting software then quite quickly found myself doing project management, delivering some quite large projects for the BBC in the late nineties.

I had been sponsoring a young lad named Donatien in Burundi with Action Aid for some time when I began inquiries into going out to visit him in his community. First question is why? Why should I go and visit him? I'm not sure, and the money which I am spending on flights could be donated to his community. That would make more sense right? I'm not so sure on that either.. so... I decided to go over to give myself some focus on what the situation is over there and to see if there is anything I could do from a fund raising point of view after seeing the situation first hand.

Alright, that's the easy bit deciding to go... how do I actually get there?

I started off by emailing Action Aid in the UK. I've been talking to a lovely lady named Debs who had been passing on my details onto the team in Burundi, specifically to a chap named Josias who is the Sponsorship Manager.

I had initially suggested some dates in the middle of June but Josias has come back and said that it will be a good opportunity for me to participate in school competitions that are organized for all children in the programme impact area. The final competitions are played on 16^th June during the celebration of the day of African child. During this day, sponsored children, none sponsored children, parents and community leaders gather together to commemorate the day of the African child. And, it is an opportunity to promote development initiatives that can help to address issues affecting the well being of children. I wasn't going to miss this opportunity so I changed my dates and decided to head out on the 8th June 2013 and stay for 10 days.

After a few days I had an email back from Debs at Action Aid UK. They were forwarding my flight details onto Josias in Burundi so he could confirm they were OK, they seemed pretty confident they would be fine, and they were.