X Factor Allocations – “Your Phase One starts right here” ...

Allocations are always hot topic on Raleigh – “where am I going, what am I going to be doing, who am I going with and what am I going to be sleeping in?!”.

The buzz of nervous excitement was in the air and so in order to throw the Venturers off the scent they’d been told that allocations were going to be announced on Friday morning. Instead they were told that after two days of intensive training they were being treated to an X Factor karaoke party last night.

So the Venturers pulled on their glad rags (including some dashing outfits some of them had picked up in Mysore earlier in the day) and headed to the Fieldbase roof terrace which had been transformed into a karaoke disco for the evening.

DJ Doctor Luke was on the decks spinning the floorfillers and Raja and Ajeesh, two of the expedition’s Host Country Venturers displayed his dancing skills and taught the group some Indian moves.

The PMs were first up on the mic with ‘I Gotta Feeling’ by Black Eyed Peas to get the party started. They followed this up with an ear screechingly terrible rendition of The Police’s Roxanne.

The Ventureres were then split into ‘bootcamp groups’ and each given a karaoke classic to sing:

• We Built This City by Starship for the Coummunity group who will be building houses for a tribal village
• Eye of the Tiger by Survivor and Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and The Waves for the Environmental groups who will providing solar panelled elephant proof fences for rural communities
• I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers and Is this the way to Amarillo? by Tony Christie for the Adventure groups who will be going out trekking.

Admittedly the links were quite tenuous, but the penny didn’t seem to drop within any of the groups that this was actually allocation announcements.

The ‘bootcamp groups’ had 10 minutes to come up with their routines to their songs before performing in front of our ‘Raleigh Factor’ Judges and the crowd. We were treated to high energy performances with some great dance routines (and slightly suspect singing), however Judges ‘Simon’ and ‘Louis’ were true to form and not too kind on them!


Raleigh Factor Judges
Louis, Cheryl, Simon & Danni



After all the performances, the Volunteer Managers huddled together to argue over who had given the best performances, but for some reason they couldn’t all agree on who was the winner! Dramatics ensued as the Project Managers each aligned themselves with their favourite ‘bootcamp group’ ... and still the penny didn’t drop!

So it was Compére Anna that revealed to the Venturers that their ‘bootcamp groups’ were actually their Alpha groups on Phase One! Despite the unexpected shock of allocations being revealed the group were delighted to form their Phase One groups.

 And so, here are the group allocations for Phase One:

Charlie One
Aimee Welch
Anupama
James Rowantree
Narthan
Irene Yiu
Owen Duffin
Philip Smith
Rosie Ward
Ryan Heeley
Tessa Nooteboom
Elisabeth van der Zee

Echo Three
Ajeesh
Amy Gannon
David Frattinger
Fiona Marchbank
Hubertus Kramer
James Mcintosh
Jess Norgrove
Kavita Shah
Kirsten Elliot
Simon Majtlis

Echo Four
Basil
George Miller
Jack Phillips
Jonny Womack
Justine Stuart
Kimberley Delamare
Laura Hulley
Natalie Gordon
Ros Page
Shanelle Ward
Shaun Green

Tango Five
Isabelle Wijsmuller
Arthur Fane
Coen de Mol van Otterloo
Denise Stoelzel
Erdinch Yigitce
Katarzyna Ulichnowska
Katharine Studley
Lucy Flint
Raja
Robert Dwyer
Sean edlin

Tango Six
Anniek Akerboom
Iain Hood
Jennifer Rimmer
Kane Grennan
Katie Macnaughton
Michiel Kruize
Olivia Ferrari
Reghu
Samuel Mason
Sarah Ward

For full details on each of Alpha groups projects and to meet their Project Managers click here.

Everyone deploys tomorrow for the first Phase, returning on Wednesday 3rd November. Check back to this blog regularly to hear updates of how each alpha group is getting on out on Phase.

If you’d like to send a message to anyone out on Phase you can add a comment to the bottom of any blog entry by clicking the link. Don't forget to tell us who the message is for including their full name and project group. Then select name/URL from the dropdown menu to tell us who it's from (URL can be left blank). Please be aware that we might not be able to publish all personal messages but we will make sure they are distributed via 'Radio Raleigh' or sent out to the project sites with all the supplies.

On a personal note, I'm deploying out with Tango 5 for the first week of their trek. In the meantime Susan and Doug at Fieldbase will be holding the blog fort and providing an update early next week.

All text by Polly Carpenter and photos by Polly Baldwin http://www.dynamicpictures.co.uk/ (unless stated otherwise).