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Shared Planet - the ultimate matchmaking event?
So you’ve tried speed dating, you’ve been to singles bars, you’ve sweated your way through Salsa classes, you’ve even tried getting steaming drunk with your Marvin Gaye trousers on and giving your best rendition of ‘Let’s get it on’…but still Mr/Mrs Right is hiding behind a bend in the road of fate and refusing to reveal themselves?
Gareth and Anna on the Seine
Well we may have just the event for you. It seems Shared Planet, People & Planet’s awesome annual conference, can open your heart as well as your mind. When Gareth Simkins, pictured with fiancee Anna, attended his first Shared Planet in 1999, he came away with rather more than he bargained for:
Shared Planet 1999 party
“People and Planet not only provided me with one of the highlights of my career, developing the highly successful Go Green Campaign to improve the environmental performance of universities but, more importantly, they also led me to my fiancee. In my second year at the University of York, where I was SU Environment Officer, I attended my first Shared Planet at Warwick. For some silly reason I didn´t make the one in 1998 — too much work, I think. On arrival, my friends and I went off to the sports hall to leave our bags and mark out a place to sleep. Having had an informative and very enjoyable evening, I returned to find that my carefully laid out sleeping bag, and my rucksack, had been chucked aside by some inconsiderate fellow. I ended up sleeping next to a girl in the same year as me but whom I didn’t really know called Anna. We talked for a while and eventually she fell asleep. I was soon quite enamoured with her. I worked up the courage to ask her out on the coach back to York but I overheard her talking about her boyfriend. Drat. After a couple of months I heard that they had split, so I asked her out in January 2000. She said no but changed her mind after three weeks. We have been together ever since. I proposed to her on the spot where she asked me out in September 2005. We plan to get married next year.”
And Gareth and Anna aren’t the only People & Planet couple planning on marching down the aisle. We also got this email from Marc Monsarrat:
Marc and Veronica in Croatia
“I just thought I´d let you know that it is thanks to People and Planet that I met my girlfriend Veronica Oakeshott, whilst campaigning for People and Planet in my third year at Newcastle University. We have been together for almost 7 years, and are now engaged to get married next Summer! I now work for a Fairtrade company, and she works for an MP.”
A love match and two great jobs! Many thanks to Gareth and Anna, and Marc and Veronica for their stories and photos. If you or anyone you know met your love through People & Planet we’d love to hear about it, so do get in touch. If you want to help us continue our matchmaking work (as well as empowering young people to take action on global poverty, human rights and the environment of course!) then why not join the FAN Club for as little as £2 a month?
