Keep It In The Ground

May 18, 2015 By DorkyMum in Activism Tags: campaigning, climate change, divestment, environment, Guardian, Keep It In the Ground 5 Comments

I’ve been saying to myself for a while that I need to get back into some kind of campaigning again, but it has been hard to know what. As a non-voter in Australia I feel a bit odd about getting involved with a political party across here, and obviously I can grumble about UK politics as much as I like but I’m not really in a position to do much about it. There doesn’t seem to be as much of a lively NGO sector here as there was in Scotland, and family life means that I feel less inclined to spend my weekends waving placards and shimmying up lampposts. Although somewhat ironically having a family means that I’m now keener than ever to see a world which is safe and happy for DorkySon to grow up in. Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

Take Action: Nestle and Danone

April 1, 2013 By DorkyMum in Activism Tags: Activism, breastfeeding, Breastfeeding campaign, breastmilk substitute companies, campaigning, Danone, Nestle, Nestle boycott, Power of the First Hour, Save the Children, Superfood for Babies 4 Comments

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the launch of Save the Children’s campaign on breastfeeding, and their report Superfood for Babies, which details some of the barriers to breastfeeding in the developed world.

The focus of the campaign has now shifted to concentrate on one of those barriers in more details; the marketing tactics of multinational breastmilk substitute companies.

Despite 30 years of guidelines, there are continued reports of some breast milk substitute companies marketing their products in an unethical manner.

You can read Save the Children’s full briefing on Nestlé and Danone here, along with this article in the Guardian from Zoe Williams which details the situation in Indonesia, but I also wanted to pick out a couple of things from the report that really shocked me and highlight them in a post. Continue reading →

Stories for Our Not So Distant Future

March 14, 2013 By DorkyMum in Activism Tags: AL Kennedy, Alasdair Gray, Beacons, Beacons Stories for Our Not So Distant Future, books, books about climate change, campaigning, climate change, climate change campaigning, environment, environment books, green issues, Gregory Norminton, Joanne Harris, Mike Robinson, Stop Climate Chaos, Toby Litt 6 Comments

This time six years ago I was not a blogger. I was not a mum. I was not even married.

Six years ago, I worked full time for a coalition called Stop Climate Chaos. I would describe it to people as the climate change equivalent of Make Poverty History – a large, diverse group of development charities, environmental NGOs, churches, trade unions, student societies and many others – working together to campaign on issues around climate change. Continue reading →

Dorkymum | Stories from Tasmania

Stories from our family home in Tasmania

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