Back in February, I did a post about the launch of Save the Children’s Name A Day campaign, which called on the Prime Minister David Cameron to name a day when he would host a global summit on child malnutrition.
In May, he did name a day, and now that day has almost come. The Global Hunger Summit will take place next week – on the last day of the Olympics.
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Dear Dorky Mum,
First, thank you for your patience. Me traveling two out of three weeks is not easy on us. The Dorkys like proximity.
I have been to Africa to do my job. Liberia, first, then Mozambique. In both places we drove away from the cities and well into the bush, looking for the outreach and effectiveness of the work Save the Children does.
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Last night was one of those occasions when being a blogger feels like a real honour and a privilege. Along with around 25 other women – bloggers, vloggers and journalists – Save the Children invited me to a dinner in London. Hosted by the Guardian’s Zoe Williams, who has recently travelled to Nepal with Save the Children to learn about family planning there, the event gave us the opportunity to hear from a 17-year-old Ethiopian girl called Aselefe (centre in the photo), along with her interpreter Bethel (left in the picture).
Aselefe’s best friend has gone missing. Her boyfriend left her and she was thrown out by her family after becoming pregnant. Right now, Aselefe doesn’t know where her friend is.
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DorkyDad is a professional fundraiser. You’d think given that I’ve now been married to him for nearly five years, some of those money making skills might have rubbed off on me. But they haven’t. I am completely unimaginative when it comes to fundraising. I hate doing silly things. I hate organising events. And I hate running. That rules out three pretty major income generators right there.
But occasionally a charity will come along that makes me want to do something – however small – to stick a bit of cash in their pocket.
I have been having a bit of a political identity crisis recently, as I question whether I can still call myself green.
I think it’s possible to say that you are ‘life-long Labour’ or ‘a committed Conservative’ even if you’re never been an activist and all you’ve ever done is vote for that party. But I’m not so sure that the same applies to Greens. I think there is an expectation that being Green means putting the politics into practice.
Five years ago I was Green with a capital G. A fully paid up member of the Scottish Party, an occasional candidate, present at every committee meeting. I knew exactly what ‘being Green’ meant. It meant knocking on doors, delivering newsletters, carrying the end of a banner at a demo, street stalls in the rain, boycotting Nestle, working for an environmental charity, wearing anti-war and pro-renewable badges on my jacket… Being Green was about trying to make a better world possible.
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Dorkymum | Stories from Tasmania 