Last weekend saw a big first for me – my first ever blogging conference! I was so pleased to head along to a venue in a rather swishy part of London and meet up with dozens of excellent bloggers to hear about Save the Children’s Build it for Babies campaign.
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I saw a wonderful piece of news today about people using social media for good. Take a look at this story about a demonstration of Israeli-Iranian solidarity – started online by ordinary people – that has really taken off.
It has warmed the very cockles of my heart, and provided a very useful reminder that behind almost every news story – good and bad – there are ‘ordinary people’. Every conflict, every crime, and every Government Bill has an impact on folk that more often than not are just like you and me.
I haven’t blogged about this before, but a few years ago I was lucky enough to visit the West Bank – part of the occupied Palestinian Territories. At the time, I was President of my Students’ Association, and the student body had voted to twin our university – Edinburgh – with the University of Birzeit near Ramallah.
Before I became DorkyMum, I worked full time as a climate change campaigner. It was a brilliant job – especially for a recent graduate – as it required me to develop so many different skills. I had to do a bit of fundraising, a bit of media work, some political lobbying, supporting volunteers, organising events and – of course – lots of pretty dull admin stuff too.
Towards the end of my three years there, I started to become a bit disheartened with the work. It felt like the results we were getting from our campaigns were in no way equal to the effort we were all putting in. It was so frustrating to be working full time on something and only ever celebrating the smallest of victories. With all the will in the world, we could organise a hundred postcard campaigns or lobbies of parliament, and we would never achieve our aim of halting human induced climate change.
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I was so chuffed to see my old buddies Ben and Jerry in the news this week, supporting the equal marriage campaign. They have partnered with Stonewall to rename their Oh My Apple Pie flavour Apple-y Ever After. A Ben and Jerry’s Facebook app invites you to ‘marry’ someone of the same sex, and they’ve got a template letter up online for emailing your MP in support of same sex marriage.
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I will confess, I used to be a bit squeamish about calling myself a feminist. I thought it meant that I had to stop shaving my legs and wearing a bra, neither of which I’m prepared to do. But as I’ve grown older and, y’know, grown up a bit, I’ve realised that’s really not the case. Feminism, and women’s rights, are about issues far more fundamental than my personal grooming habits.
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Dorkymum | Stories from Tasmania 