Box coordinator

Collection Organiser

GDA Appeal coordinator

Momentum soon gathered as the mummy blogging community - and beyond - caught wind of what was happening and what we are trying to achieve.  In just a few hours we reached an incredible 40,000 people.

I was humbled by how quick the community were to express their support - they were re-tweeting, sending messages of support, writing their own blog posts, hosting our badge, asking celebrities to get on board, asking how they could help and even offering to wear #Blogladesh t-shirts on sponsored runs!

But the one message that came across loud and clear was a firm belief that together we can change things for children around the world.

We stopped children dying from basic illnesses in rich countries a century ago. With your help, we can end it for good in poor countries too.

Every year nine million children die before they reach their fifth birthday. They die from preventable and treatable diseases like diarrhoea, pneumonia, measles and complications during pregnancy.

And children who are malnourished are at far greater risk of dying from these causes because they’re too weak to fight disease.

Proven, low-tech and inexpensive solutions exist but they’re simply not being deployed on the scale needed to tackle the problem.

What we need is the will - from politicians, the public, aid agencies, companies, EVERY ONE - to make it happen on a global scale.

At the end of September Nick Clegg will be at the UN Summit in New York. Ten years ago world leaders set targets, called Millennium Development Goals , to reduce poverty, hunger and disease.

At the moment these child health targets are way off track. Nick Clegg has a crucial opportunity to ensure world leaders commit to reaching these goals - we need to make sure he understands how much we care and that it’s vital he holds world leaders to account.

When people who believe in something come together, when they stick their heads above the parapet and shout, “ENOUGH,” that’s when change begins.

Every time someone re-tweets, shares a blog post or video from our trip, puts our badge on their blog or uses our twibbon, tells a friend in the supermarket or a colleague at work - they create a ripple - that ripple becomes a wave and before we know it together we have created a sea of change.

We want future generations to be stunned to learn that children would die from diarrhoea, malaria or pneumonia. We want to be able to tell them that together, we stopped it.

To everybody out there supporting #blogladesh

Ladies and Gentlemen: we salute you!

I’m working on a really exciting project with three brilliant mummy bloggers for Save the Children. Here is the press release…more to follow…

Mummy bloggers head to Bangladesh with Save the Children- the first trip of its kind.

Friday 13 August 2010

At the beginning of September, Save the Children is taking three of the UK’s best known mummy bloggers to Bangladesh to meet other mums. They will hear women talk of losing their children to illnesses like malaria and pneumonia and find out what measures the country has taken to stop these needless deaths.

The bloggers trip will kick off a campaign to put pressure on the world leaders gathered at the UN Summit in New York to deliver their promises for mums and children around the world.

As social media swiftly becomes the new face of campaigning for change, the bloggers are hoping to find out and convey through their networks how it can be that almost 9 million children are dying every year before their fifth birthday. Passionate about their work and ready to flex their multimedia skills to campaign for change, the three bloggers will be tweeting, creating video and photo galleries and writing about their experiences live and direct from Bangladesh.

Liz Scarff, Digital media manager at Save the Children who designed this trip said “Real change happens when people come together. There’s been a ripple created by the incredible army of mummy bloggers creating content on the net. This #blogladesh trip is Save the Children taking note and recognising that we are passionate about saving children’s lives, and mummy bloggers can link with that emotionally just by being who they are.”

“We’ve asked Eva, Sian and Josie to come and find out for themselves that motherhood is universal. One mother’s fears and worries for her child can be heard the world over, whether they’re from Bangladesh or Bangor in Wales. The challenge is for these bloggers to tell the story in their own words - real people giving their voices to poor mothers in Bangladesh who don’t get a chance to get their opinions heard.”

Unable to keep the lid on their upcoming trip, the three bloggers have already let rip on twitter and their blogs, reaching 40,000 about #blogladesh in the first morning. And they’re not even on the plane yet!

The challenge set to the bloggers by Save the Children is to keep Nick Clegg in check as he takes the global stage for the first time at a UN Summit in New York during Cameron’s paternity leave. There, World leaders will be looking at child health targets which are all way off track. Watch @mummytips, @porridgebrain and @nixdminx as they do their best to make sure he understands how much we care and that it’s vital he holds world leaders to account.

How can you help?

Follow:

Josie George at www.sleepisfortheweak.org.uk / www.twitter.com/porridgebrain

Sian To at www.mummy-tips.com / www.twitter.com/mummytips

Eva Keogan at www.nixdminx.com/ www.twitter.com/nixdminx

We need your voice to make as much noise about this as possible. Follow our bloggers on their journey, read their reports, watch their videos and help us to re-tweet their story. Comment on their blogs.  Or write your own blog on #blogladesh to join the campaign and put a badge on your blogs that you can grab from our website.

And if you want to do more, become a campaigner for Save the Children and sign our petition. We’re aiming to collect 100,000 signatures. Ambitious? Yes - but with your help we know we can do it. Go to www.savethechildren.org.uk/en/mummy-bloggers-head-to-bangladesh.htm to find out more.

So I set up a newroom at Everest basecamp and filed video, photographs and copy direct from the mountain…

To date Sir Ranulph Fiennes has raised a staggering £15 million for charity. His goal was to not only reach the summit of the world’s highest mountain in the world, but also to raise £3 million for Marie Curie Cancer Care and highlight the essential end of life care the charity provides.

It was an ambitious and challenging project and involved strategic planning, project management, editorial production including video, pictures and copy, sourcing major sponsorship deals, managing the design and production of the Everest Challenge blog and producing and directing editorial coverage from basecamp.

I set up a newsroom at Everest base camp and worked with cameramen David Carter and Rob Casserley, filing daily video reports, photographs and written blogs direct from the mountain to the blog www.everestchallenge.org.uk and to the media partner The Telegraph.

Although Sir Ranulph didn’t reach the summit the challenge was a success because Marie Curie reached its £3million target and the media and editorial coverage has brought the work of this fantastic charity to many more people.

Here  is a collection of my photographs from the challenge. You can watch some high resolution videos at the top of this page,  visit the blog at www.everestchallenge.org.uk (this has been modified) or view  all of the videos on the Everest Challenge You Tube channel.

Thanks to Marie Curie Cancer Care, all the sponsors, those who helped at basecamp (in particular the incredible sherpas) and everybody else involved in the project – it was a privilege to work with you all.

And to Sir Ranulph Fiennes – Sir, we salute you.

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The Brixon Pound, launched in September 2009,  was the UK’s first independent urban currency.

The BBC writes…

Brixton, South London is famous for its street life, nightlife and all too often, its crime.

September 2009 will see the launch of the Brixton Pound, making it the third place in the country to have its own local currency.

Brixton currency

The scheme is being launched by Transition Town Brixton and works a bit like a gift voucher.

The idea is that you buy Brixton Pounds (for the price of £1 each) and spend them in the local independent shops that have signed up.

The shopkeepers will keep them and offer them as change to those who want them, keeping the money circulating through the area.

For every Brixton Pound that has been bought, £1 in Sterling will be kept at the Lambeth Savings and Credit Union.

You can change the local currency back into normal cash at certain designated places.

Spend locally

The idea behind the scheme is to support local business, encourage people away from large chain stores and hopefully to help the environment by making people travel less.

But some are sceptical about the scheme, accusing it of being protectionist – putting up a trade barrier that means less money will be spent in the surrounding areas such as Streatham or Peckham.

Some shopkeepers we spoke to were also concerned that they could end up with hundreds of Brixton Pounds in the till that people would not want to take in change.

Rather than simply put them in the bank, they will they have to go to the effort of changing the notes back into Sterling.

There are currently thousands of local currencies in operation over the world.

For some they represent a new more sustainable way of living.

For others, they are a route back to the middle ages, when every town had its own currency.