First time CWB volunteer Annabel Kibble talks about how she made the most of her volunteering days from the Body Shop to volunteer on the first CWB trip to Cameroon.

'In November, I used my Volunteering Days to travel out to Cameroon in Africa on a two week project with amazing HIV/Aids Charity Cricket Without Boundaries (CWB).

The aim of the charity is to use sport to educate children and re-iterate the key messages about HIV/AIDS prevention. In African countries children are taught ABC – Abstain, Be faithful to your partner, and use a Condom. The charity uses simple cricket coaching exercises to reinforce these messages through sport.

During the 2 weeks, we went to 2 different areas in Cameroon. At the start of each week, we held a coaching day with all of the local teachers training them how to run the coaching sessions – this meant that when we went to each school, we could support and help the teachers to run the sessions giving them the skills to continue the coaching after we left.

At the end of each week we held a cricket festival between the different schools that we had been to. These competitions were such a great way to end each week; seeing the children using the skills we had taught them, how the teachers had grown in confidence and making connections with the other teachers to continue the competitions.

In Africa, women are still very much discriminated against in many situations. For me personally, it was brilliant to see how the sport empowered girls and boys to play as equals. You don’t need to be physically strong to be successful and a huge number of girls were excellent. It was interesting to see how the boys suddenly ‘upped their game’ when the girls started to get a lot of runs!

During the trip, we trained 60 teachers to become cricket coaches, and taught over 3,000 children. It was an incredible trip and I feel that we really made a difference. Without being able to use the Volunteering Days I would never have done it, so thank you to The Body Shop!'

To read more about the Cameroon trip visit http://cwbblogs.com/cameroon12/