When I started this blog, nearly two years ago, one of my very first posts was titled ‘Breast is Best, but there’s no need to keep shouting about it.’
I stand corrected.
Sometimes, it’s absolutely crucial to shout about it.
Not when you’re talking about the UK – where mothers can make an informed choice, and where babies are likely to grow up healthy and safe whatever choice they make – but in developing countries, where the choice can literally mean the difference between life and death.
Sometimes it’s really nice just to say a very genuine thank you.
Not ‘thank you, and now could you please vote for me again‘.
Not ‘thank you for reading and now could you sign this petition.‘
Just thank you.
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It is hard to believe that it is seven years since the G8 took place in Gleneagles. I was living in Edinburgh and I still remember what an incredible buzz there was around the event that year. Say what you like about the success or otherwise of the Make Poverty History campaign and all that has followed – but being in Edinburgh for the MPH march on that incredibly sunny day in 2005, it really felt like we were part of a moment. I was stewarding the march for the first part of the day, so arrived at the Meadows very early in the morning for a briefing, not knowing if the attendance was going to be 1000 people or 10,000. I remember standing there as crowds started to gather… and they grew, and grew, and grew. In the end a quarter of a million people descended on the city to make their ‘white band’ around Edinburgh Castle. It felt good to be one of them.
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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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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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Dorkymum | Stories from Tasmania 