Another day another depressing story in the media about how rubbish it is to be young in 2010. The government has announced that it's cutting University budgets for the first time in years. £449Million less then last year. £449million!! No Jobs and now it seems no Uni places!

Well I'm sick of reading stories about how it's not fun to be young anymore. It doesn't have to be like this. Yes times are hard and I'm not suggesting that it isn't a darker world out there but it doesn’t mean that everyone has given up! We're lucky to have loads of great Bollocks to Poverty supporters who put on Tour events, jump out of planes and volunteer at festivals. If you check out this short film you can see just how fun life can be!!

Bollocks to Poverty is really excited to have just got on board with Vinspired. Vinspired is a brilliant website which lists loads of volunteering opportunities that are aimed at people aged between 16-25 years old. What this means is that the types of volunteering opportunities they advertise are much more exciting and appropriate for younger people. So rather then giving up your Saturdays trying to have friendly banter with grannies in Age Concern why not check out Vinspired and you could find yourself volunteering at festivals with Bollocks to Poverty!

So if you'd rather not live the depressing life mapped out for you in the papers today, get on board with Bollocks to Poverty, do something you love and have some fun! What's more you can put it on your cv /ucas form and not only will you be a happier person but you're more likely to get into Uni /work!

On Sunday our fearless heroes (or nutcases depending on how you look at it!) took to the sky in the name of Bollocks to Poverty and raised an amazing £5,294 for ActionAid!

Crazy fools? possibly. But according to Jake "Skydiving was like drowning in a bath of liquid adrenaline.  Flying through the air at 120mph was amazing” Hmm almost tempts me to give it a go. Plus Jake reminds us there’s the feel good factor “I was glad to do it for an amazing charity as part of the Bollocks to Poverty campaign. I hope to volunteer to do more work with the team at festivals this summer" Oh yes, did we mentioned it could earn you brownie points for your festival volunteering application?

Here are some photos to get you in the mood...

The team in all their glory.

Training was rigorous.

and the heights were high

but our fearless crew went for it

and even managed a thumbs up for the camera – impressive!

This is Ollie preparing to land

And this is him still in one piece!

We asked Ollie to tell us about his experiences and he said:

"Skydiving for ActionAid was absolutely incredible. I can't think of any words to describe the experience itself, but knowing that I raised quite a substantial amount individually, and a lot more as a group makes me feel like we've really contributed! As I jumped out the plane I remember thinking, amongst other things, that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. For young girls in the third world though, who have more chance of getting raped than they do of ever learning to read, even the most basic of things are life-changing. All in all, it was the best thing that I've ever done, and exhilarating beyond belief, and I'm glad we chose the BTP campaign :)"

Find out more about skydiving for ActionAid

Windy conditions meant not everyone in the group could skydive on Sunday and some of them will be jumping in a week. So if you’re too scared to jump out of a plane (like me!) there’s still time to donate and show your support.

Working for an organisation whose aim is to end global poverty is an amazing privilege.  But I’ll be honest, there are days when it all feels a bit ambitious, like trying to paddle a leaky canoe upstream using spoons.  

You paddle away furiously, knowing that lots of people out there are supporting you, but there are big corporate-shaped rocks in your way and something in the river is punching holes in your boat to try and sink you.

But then every so often the hard work pays off and someone lends you a new boat and proper paddles, and everything seems possible.  The government has just announced there will now be a minister responsible for global violence against women, which is definitely something to celebrate.

ActionAid has been pestering the government about exactly this for a while now because we believe ending violence against women is a vital step in ending global poverty.  Having a UK minister who can push this issue up the agenda and get other countries supporting dignity and equality for all women should really help.  

So for now the government gets a quick high five from us as we wave our paddles in the air.  But as always there will be more rocks and rough water heading our way, so heads down people and don’t stop paddling.

Read about the new minister for global violence against women here.

Find out why women are so important to ending poverty and what you can do to help here.

In the run up to the summer festivals the youth team have been working on a big hunger campaign. We're going to be joining together with Activista, ActionAid's global youth network, to make a huge noise about about the fact that 1 billion people are going hungry in the world.

When we sat down to think about how we want to do this, we realised that its going to be difficult in the UK. Our generation has grown up with horrific images of hunger, and big events like Live Aid haven't seemed to be able to stop the problem getting worse. Its left a lot of us feeling like hunger is too huge a problem to ever be solved.

Of course, at ActionAid we feel pretty passionately that that's wrong. There is enough food to feed everyone in the world, and the problem is man made, so very solvable. The people we work with are the solution to hunger. They don't need hand outs, or big companies to take control of their land and crops. Local farmers and families in poor countries just need support to grow their own food

In short, what we want to communicate is that where we work, hunger looks less like this:

...and more like this:

So if you have opinions, please please fill in our survey, and send it on to your friends. Its only 3 questions, and you could even win some free MP3s for your trouble.

Click here to fill in our survey

Click here to find out more about ActionAid's views on hunger

If you're interested in finding out how to effectively pester your MP into doing positive things for the world, then there are some places left on our free campaigns training.

The focus is mainly going to be on the Robin Hood tax campaign, which is a really big deal right now (if you haven't seen the video, you need to get with the program) and a brilliant idea.

10th of April in East London, its 3 hours and you even get a free lunch. You can't say fairer then that!

Find out all the details here

This week the sun came out for oh, all of 2 minutes, and put me in a right good mood. Why? Well it must be nearly festival time, surely!? Okay so it might have gone back in but what with all the festival line up announcements made this week I can't help but  dream of drinking cider, watching a kaleidoscope of bands and of course getting thousands of festival goers to take action with Bollocks to Poverty at this summer's festivals!

During the summer Bollocks to Poverty will be hitting the road and crashing into the following festivals:
Beach Break Live, 14th - 19th June
Underage, 1st August
Reading Festival, 26th - 30th August
Freeze, 29th - 31st October

It's far to early to announce what we'll be doing at the festivals - I've got to keep somethings secret for a little longer! But if you fancy joining us in a field somewhere then get your application in now and I'll be in touch whenever we're looking for volunteers to help us shout Bollocks to Poverty at this summer's knock out events.

Go here. Download the form (be patient and give it a minute - it takes it's little time) Fill in. Send it back to me at: Lucy Lyall, Hamlyn House, Macdonald Road, London, N19 5PG. Simples!