What My Sight Means to Me

June 16, 2014 By DorkyMum in Activism Tags: campaigning, charity, seeing, sight, sightsavers 28 Comments

What are the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen?

The beaches of Harris. The churches of Prague. That view you get of the Tyne as you cross the rail bridge heading north into Newcastle. An Arctic sunrise. A Greek sea. Every painting by Alison Watt. The way petrol in a puddle makes rainbows, and how it sidewinds slowly across a yard. Johnny Depp’s cheekbones. Fireflies. The Edinburgh Meadows in late afternoon, hazy with smoke from all those barbecues. My husband’s hands. My son’s smile. An angel’s wing icicle hanging from a wire. Flowers on the machair. White umbrellas in a crowd. Beckham’s goal from the halfway line in 96.

Continue reading →

Celebrate Lasting Change for IWD 2014

March 8, 2014 By DorkyMum in Activism Tags: #Lastingchange, International Women's Day, IWD, IWD 2014, Sport Relief, Tanzania, Team Honk, The Gatsby Trust 4 Comments

This lady with a big, sweet smile is Eliafura. She lives and works in Tanzania, making beautiful batiks and tie-dyed materials. With the support of The Gatsby Trust – an organisation funded by Sport Relief – Eliafura has registered her business and learned important health and safety rules around the chemicals she uses. She also now trains other women in her village – they bring her material and she teaches them how to make the colourful patterns. Eliafura’s fabrics sell well, both locally (especially in nearby schools, where teachers like to buy them) and overseas. Continue reading →

Activism not Slacktivism

June 14, 2013 By DorkyMum in Activism Tags: Activism, Adam Ramsay, Edinburgh University, Edinburgh University Students Association, EUSA, NUS, People and Planet, slacktivism, student campaigning, student campaigns, student politics 16 Comments

My good friend Adam Ramsay had a piece in the Guardian the other day about student activism, putting forward his view that the main job of students is to save the world and have fun. Despite what many people think the two are not mutually exclusive.

I credit my time at university, and the people I met in that period of my life, with shaping my politics quite substantially. The groundwork may have been laid earlier – by compassionate parents and dinner table discussions – but uni was the time when I became more able to articulate what I believe in, and why. Continue reading →

Food for Thought

May 28, 2013 By DorkyMum in Activism Tags: #foodforthought, Enough Food IF, Food for Thought, nutrition and literacy, Nutrition campaign, Save the Children 2 Comments

I love it when nice people do good things. Nothing makes me happier. So when I saw that several of my very favourite children’s writers are backing the latest campaign from Save the Children, it put a huge smile on my face.

More than 25 children’s writers and illustrators, including David Walliams, Oliver Jeffers, Michael Morpugo and Philip Pullman have come together to warn of a global literacy crisis, ahead of the G8 nutrition summit on June 8^th.

‘Eh?’ I can hear you saying. ‘What have literacy and nutrition got to do with each other?’

Well the answer to that is ‘quite a lot, actually’. Continue reading →

Volunteer Champions

May 20, 2013 By DorkyMum in Activism Tags: Activism, art, Blogging, campaigning, charity, competition, CSV, design, V&A, Volunteer Champions, volunteering, volunteers, young people, youth 4 Comments

CSV, the UK’s Volunteering and Learning charity, have just launched a lovely campaign that I wanted to share with you.

The campaign is called Volunteer Champions, and has been launched to celebrate the people all over the country (and indeed the world) who quietly give up their time to try and make the world a better place.

Continue reading →

Dorkymum | Stories from Tasmania

Stories from our family home in Tasmania

Category Archives: Activism