We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. // Tom Howell, Disaster Relief Australia

Summary: Back in your ears again, beautiful people, how time is flying by! It's been another crazy week of a crazy year and in amongst the madness, the yayborhood has truly kept me going. A few days ago was the anniversary of the Seize the Yay book coming out (which I still can't believe is a thing) and again, some of you sent the loveliest heartfelt messages about how it's impacted your lives sharing your a-ha moments or back stories. I know I say it all the time but the only thing that's hard about podcasting is that I don't get to interact with you WHILE you're listening to see what you think or how the show lands, so when you take the time to send messages separately it really makes my day. As for our guest, as you all know I've zipping around in the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross aka the yay-mobile to bring you some incredible stories from yayborhood heroes and we have another fascinating guest today here to share bit more about one of Mitsubishi's partnerships that makes me so proud to have them as one of our partners. Mitsubishi renewed its partnership with Disaster Relief Australia earlier this year providing SUV and all-terrain vehicles to help DRA in its mission to provide rapid disaster response in the wake of natural disasters. You may have seen some of DRA's work during the catastrophic bushfires last year during which the Mitsubishi fleet helped deploy volunteers to five operations across three states. And today we're joined by the National Director of Field Operations, Tom Howell to tell us a bit more about it, along with his own fascinating story. Tom served in the Australian Army as a company medic with operational experience in the middle east, predominantly Afghanistan. He completed his paramedicine studies with the Army and upon discharging worked over in Papua New Guinea as a paramedic for a few years specialising in remote area trauma. Alongside his work with DRA, he is also a full-time firefighter with Fire Rescue Victoria and has been a member of DRA since 2017, beginning in the training space but now managing the field operations team to facilitate deployment of our members across Australia and wider area of operations. FIND OUT HOW TO VOLUNTEER WITH DRA + Follow Disaster Relief Australia here + Announcements on Insta at @spoonful_of_sarah + Join our Facebook community here + Subscribe to not miss out on the next instalment of YAY!