Peace Ambassador Mission

I need your help.

Those four words are often the hardest four to say. I am so determined, strong willed and stubborn that I often believe that I can do absolutely anything and everything, all by myself. I seem to believe that I don’t NEED anyone and assimilate my capabilities to being Wonder Woman. Because that is who my mum was for me growing up.

But now I have to drop my walls and lower my guard, because I do need your help, otherwise I am going to miss out on an opportunity of a life-time.

I have been invited to take part in a Peace Summit of Emerging Leaders at the United Nations in Bangkok, Thailand, at the end of November – an initiative to mobilise young leaders to promote peace. As part of this Peace Summit, I have been chosen to take on the role of a Humanitarian Affairs Peace Ambassador, to play an active role in building inclusive and harmonious societies and lead initiatives of my own that will contribute to sustainable peace over the following 12 months. The summit will be bringing notable speakers from around the world to equip and inspire us to be international Peace Ambassadors.

I was so very honoured and humbled to be chosen for this role…but the reality is that this trip is outside my capacity to afford. I am asking for you to believe in me and what I stand for, to get me to this conference to mobilise my true potential. This is something I have been working towards for over a decade, and it is my dream to make the world a more peaceful place.

I truly believe in the prospect of a more peaceful world. A world where people are not forcefully displaced, where all girls are educated, and where children are not forced into marriages or child labour. A world where conflicts can be reconciled without violence, and where every individual has the freedom of thought, the freedom of speech, and the right to live in a world without fear. There are such grave consequences of war and social injustices, and in today’s increasingly interconnected world, we must come together more than ever before, to make the world a more peaceful and sustainable place. We must care for others, uphold social structures, build networks, foster communication, breathe hope, and spread love. For we are one humanity, one race, and we have only one planet.

I remember, like it was yesterday, the first time I truly released I wanted to dedicate myself to helping others. I was standing in rural Cambodia. I had just finished three weeks of interviews with one member of each family in a community that was stricken with illness and disease. Children were vomiting and had diarrhea on a fortnightly basis. There were no walls to the homes, no electricity or running water. I was compiling a qualitative analysis of the community members’ practices and belief systems to inform hygiene and sanitation workshops I was preparing. As I was leaving, a mother with her child in her arms came up to me. We didn’t speak the same language and I although I cannot be sure of the exact words that were said, I was sure of their meaning. She grabbed my hand and was thanking me for coming to her community to help reduce the disease incidence for her and her children. It was the first time I had witnessed pure sincerity and gratitude in my life. There was no hidden agenda, no ulterior motive. Just pure gratitude. That apparent urge inside of me to have a dozen children was somehow just satisfied with that single moment. I knew that I didn’t have to have my own children to feel complete in life, and instead, I could feel completely fulfilled and feel true happiness from giving back to others. This is when I realised my true calling.

During my stay I created four workshops that were specifically tailored and age-appropriate for the preschool, orphanage, parents and teachers. The topics covered hygiene and sanitation importance, its link to disease prevalence, stages of disease transmission, and steps for control and management. The workshops were interactive and were constructed to gain active participation from the community members and children. I also ran a behaviour modification seminar with the NGO’s(Whatis an NGO?)project staff, after key behavioural problems presenting in the local orphanage and preschool were identified. I disseminated information pertaining to developmental milestones, basic operant conditioning principles of behavior modification, and concepts of the Triple P Parenting program to help reduce risk with the young Cambodian children.

Working for this newly established NGO was not my first humanitarian trip, and it certainly wasn’t my last. I spent months in Addis Abba, Ethiopia, where I worked with children in an orphanage, teaching educational activities, and working day-to-day on the improvement of standards of living. During my stay I saw that there were many rooms of beds that were broken, rusty, and leaning off the walls. The children kept getting their fingers caught in the rusty latches and they would climb over the 1.5m rail and almost hang off these wobbly cribs. So I contracted and paid for local trades men to build 14 new wooden beds and baby’s cribs to replace a whole room of broken beds in the Orphanage, and donated these along with new bedding and blankets at the end of my placement.

The following summer semester I worked in Vietnam, researching parental beliefs and practices surrounding infant settling as a part of an international research team at Hue University. This was to help identify potential modifiable risk factors for Vietnamese mothers’ maternal mental health conditions, to inform primary health care initiatives and parental information programs. The research and written material I produced, formed the foundation of a Journal Article which was accepted for publication in April 2017, in the Journal of Child: Care, Health, and Development.

I have spent over 10 years at University and have attained a Bachelor of Psychology with Class 1 Honours, a Master of Public Health majoring in Environmental and Health Sciences, and a Master of International Relations. During my Masters programs I was approached to be a Supplementary Academic Support Tutor for international students in Masters programs, assisting with students’ comprehension, development of ideas, guiding research questions, and proof reading assignments. This was so important to me, because these students all came from less-developed countries, had few resources, and spoke English as a second language, and I did not want these social differences to result in fewer opportunities for them. I have also been a Research Assistant working for the Queensland University of Technology, working on the longest longitudinal study in Australia on refugee resettlement outcomes over a 7 year period. The research tracked newly arrived refugee adolescents, examining the factors that contributed to their wellbeing and subjective social status overtime. This role gave me first-hand experience of the individual struggles and gross human rights violations many refugees and asylum seekers experience during their cross-border migration, and my research gave me a deeper understanding of the factors that contribute to positive resettlement outcomes in refugees migrating internationally.

I am committed to protecting and upholding the rights of every child, and continue to actively work to reduce inequalities in disadvantaged youth, to save their lives and assist them in fulfilling their potential. I currently run a Children’s Charity, ICANIWILL, where I work to promote inclusion and anti-bullying for youth suicide prevention. I have a strong focus on building awareness in our community surrounding discrimination and inclusive environments, and am currently helping to launch a nation-wide competition to empower students to do Acts of Kindness for one another to target the bullying culture in Australian schools. I believe that empowering young people to stand up for each will build their self-esteem, emotional independence and resilience, giving them the tools to be able to adequately deal with adversity, challenges, and set-backs themselves, whilst also reducing their risk of mental illness and suicide later in life.

I know that I am on this earth for a purpose, not simply to serve my own selfish desires, but to serve those who were not given the same opportunities that I was so privileged to have received. Please help me to realise my full potential, and start this journey by becoming a Humanitarian Affairs Peace Ambassador for the UN.

The total cost for flights, accommodation, Conference and workshop fees, and insurance is over $3500.00.

If I am able to raise more than the amount needed to cover these expenses, then every dollar over will be put into creating my own peace initiative with the skills learnt from this conference to help bring about sustainable peace.

I am not asking you to believe in this role, or this organisation, but I am asking you to believe in me and what I am going to achieve in making this world a better place.


Warmest Regards,

Lauren