 My name is Andrew Flynn and I'm on a one-year placement with the Australian Volunteers for International Development. My role is with the Special Olympics Salmon as their Marketing and Communications Advisor. I've been in country for eight months now and the role has seen me work with the staff on being able to share their story with the people of Salmon. Whether it's in the office or out in the field, my role always varies so you have to be very flexible. One day I might be doing one thing, the next day I might be actually driving the cars around for an event or help prepare the food for a different sporting event. The key thing is we're work as a team and so everyone supports each other and if you need to be doing one thing outside of your role then you put your hand up and support the rest of the team. Special Olympics Salmon run sporting programs for people with disabilities. Across the board they do sports on both islands, survive in a polo and those sporting programs take into account botchy, modified cricket, soccer and athletics. We've been running programs around the islands including mini games, national games and regional games. That all leads up into the world games which are being held in LA. Our organisation we're trying to promote fitness and health so we go out and play sport. Generally we play a bit of volleyball, a bit of basketball and soccer and my idea of it is if we're going to teach people how to play sport we need to know how to play sport and be good at ourselves so that people want to follow us. One of my highlights of working with the Special Olympics Salmon in the last eight months would definitely be the national torch run. We carried the flame of hope around the country visiting every village to raise both awareness and funds for the association. I was humbled by the absolute giving of every Salmon that we met along the way. We ran around with buckets and each family would run out with two Tala or maybe five Tala. Churches would put in a little bit more as the congregation would come together and give and it was really humbling to see how much each Salmon was willing to give for a good cause. People asked me why I did come to Salmon and straight away I tell them it was a chance for me to share my knowledge with the Salmon culture and the people here but also for me to learn a lot about the culture and have a cultural exchange. It's seriously changed my life and being one of the best experiences I could ever ask for. I've been lucky enough to find a different way of life than the Australian life that we currently have and I think I've changed and opened myself to a real world that's out there rather than just the Australia that we live in.