Guinea Worm

This week was really affected by photogrpahs from Ben Stirton depicting the ravishes of Guinea worm.

Naked for Climate Change in Copenhagen

Sunbathers took to the Streets of Copenhagen this week for Climate Change and for project
"HOPE IN HAGEN".

"When the whistle blew, the green and white towels were spread out and the clothes were dropped! The sudden happening came as some surprise to the many bystanders who stared in amazement as the 50-something people between 11 and 71 years of age who apparently enjoyed lying on the square, naked in 9 degrees celsius."

Filmed beautifullly by Soren of @KADAVER

"The world’s climate issues need to be approached with creative thinking and alternative means. According to the city and the people of Copenhagen that also applies to the way we communicate the message." ~ Soren

I have been really inspired by the energy of this team. Søren Bo Steendahl and crew, recently drove an ambulance from Copenhagen to Sierra Leone to raise awareness for the needs of the Masanga hospital there. Their projects to bring about social awareness and highlight injustice are original and sustainable. People who TRULY affect change...

Best Inovation I've seen in Years.

Support the poor and Marginalised via the Iphone
~from Samasource/GIVEWORK

"Samasource and Crowdflower present Give Work, their new iPhone application. Give Work lets you support refugees in Dadaab, Kenya—the world’s largest refugee site—in minutes by completing short, on-screen tasks. The refugees are training to complete these same tasks and, by volunteering to tag a video or trace a road, you will generate money to support their training as well as valuable data to help focus future training programs."


Samasource derives its name from the Sanskrit word sama, which means equal. Their mission is to reduce poverty by connecting people to dignified, computer-based work.

View a video of their project work here

Help Needed

Lesego Semenya
is 21 years old, from Johannesburg, South Africa
Grew up in Soweto, South Africa, through the peak of the freedom struggle. Lived through the defeat of Apartheid and has been writing since 12 years of age.

Help needed

I heard her cry last night

Her tears drowned by drumbeats

She doesn't even fight

Her body used to atrocities

What is one more wound?

She's had millions before

What can some more pain do?

Murderers have run through her door



I saw her dying last night

It was clear in the moon light

Her chest taking its last breath

Her body depleted of all strength

She saw me watching from behind the tree

Her forlorn stare reaching out for me

Like a tired lion she rested her soul

Even eternal lives have their time to go



I saw her dead last night

Murdered by neglect

Over her wealth others would fight

Her lands a cause of conflicts

But she just lay, stripped of all pride

Her welcoming ways forgotten

Even when abused, she still smiled

But now her body lay rottenI saw a light last night I

t blinked at me through the nights' clouds

It showed me something I'd never seen

Her heart still beat inside

I ran miles last night

Fetched water to revive her

To bring her back to her lost mightS

he breathed again but to awake her will take time

©2007, Poets against war

The Dangers of a Single Story

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie of Nigeria, author of Half of a Yellow Sun, makes reference to the need for a TV channel for diverse stories of the people of Africa to enhance dignity and bring social awareness ~ the need for "a balance" of stories from Africa...
Stories to empower, heal and humanise.

This is why the project at "hillsidedigital" is so important.



"There is never a single story about any place....when we get that, we gain a kind of paradise"

The Story of Charity : Water

Never doubt a small group of thoughtful, commited citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

– Margaret Mead

Just A Band

Love this new single & video from Kenyan group JUST A BAND.
Thier second album "82" releases this week.

Prelaunch

Friday, October 2, 2009 at 10:00pm
End Time:	Saturday, October 3, 2009 at 3:00am
Location:	The Blue Times Lounge, Museum Hill
Street:	Junction of Museum Hill Road and Westlands Road
City/Town:	Nairobi, Kenya

Dear Mandela

Dear Mandela (5 min cut) from Sleeping Giant on Vimeo.

Dear Mandela is an upcoming documentary film due for completion in June 2010. It describes South Africa's "new apartheid", where forced evictions and extreme poverty are an ongoing way of life, where no longer the country is divided into black and white but rather the increasing margins between rich and poor. At present about one million people live in shack developments in Durban, South africa. In time for the World Cup 2010, the city has been aiming to "erradicate the slums". Sadly much of this has been happening at gun point and people are being fined up to 20 000 rand if they don't evict their properties.

Often shackdwellers are left homless and in fear of their life.

Abahlali baseMjondolo, The Shack Dwellers Movement, has been facing considerable opression in trying to affect such change. In recent weeks some members have have had to go into hiding for fear of their lives.

Last weekend, residents of Kennedy Road settlement, in Durban, were attacked by a 40 strong crowd of men, with knifes and guns. The target was a meeting of the Kennedy Road Development Committee (KRDC).
Shots were fired and several were killed. Over thirty shacks were rampaged and destroyed.

Calls to the police were ignored. Thousands fled the community overnight.

See witness reports...

The Shackdwellers are upset at the thought that the World Cup simply symbolises a demolition of their own homes. This event at Kennedy Road marks a turning point. It signals that the concept of a 'rainbow nation' is now ending and, sadly political unrest due to this opression of the poor may become a defining fracture in the country.

The film, Dear Mandela follows the life of three young shackdwellers who have joined The Shackdwellers Movement to try to bring about a grassroots change in the Constitution in how shackdwellers are being treated.

International crew in the making of the film "Dear Mandela" are believed to have witnessed the attack.

A voice for the voiceless

I have been really impressed by a project taken on by Hillside Digital in South Africa which enables and trains impoverished, marginalised communities to use new media and basic journalism skills to access funding and communicate at a grassroots level with local business as well as the international community.



Kids playing with Danny's Camera in Alexandra TownShip, South Africa

See Danny Lurie, founder of the project explain how this works in practice.

Voice of the people

I am hoping at some point soon to link in person with the project at Hillside Digital, to support the people in training there on the ground & also to unite them with local community networks I link to here in Northern Ireland, who are willing to support both online and financially.

You can follow the project also on twitter www.twitter.com/hillsidedigital

Please take a look at this project ~ I have been so inspired and know for sure that giving people a voice empowers many and will be paramount in enabling change.

The flutter of a butterfly's wings can cause a hurricane on the otherside of the world.

A new journey

Just a little note to those of you who follow me here.
I have embarked recently on a new journey... that of documentary making!

You may wish to follow some of my progress here

Journey into Film


The last number of weeks have been hectic. But I do wish to thank so much those of you who have believed, supported and inspired me to this point. You have made such things possible...things that three months ago were not even a dream.

I will be writing shortly about how this journey started ~

And will continue to write here too about causes and people who inspire me.

Thanks,

Eva X

Women who Live Their Dream

A film by Gemma Cubero and Celeste Carrasco

There is no greater joy....

"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."

— Chris McCandless

Traffickers Exploit Global Downturn

The Peace of Wild things

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life
and my childrens lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world,
and am free.

— Wendell Berry

Thina Simunye ~ We are Together

Afew months ago I met this young man called Paul in a small one shop village called Gortahork in the Gaeltacht, the South of Ireland. Little did I know that his film was having such an impact throughout the world. I believe he was still at college when he volunteered to help at the Agape orphanage South Africa. ... this movie is the butterfly effect of what he saw there & filmed.

Thina Simunye ~ We are together

And as for Slindile ~ well.... one only has too look at her smile to see the beauty that transcends and will continue to affect peoples lives for many years to come....

Orphaned by AIDS ~ her story & that of her family, told here very simply but beautifully through the songs of the children of the Agape Orphanage, in KwaZulu Natal, reached the streets of New York and all around the world.

District 9

Released this week internationally is a science fiction film, written by Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell, located in Johannesburg, South Africa.

District 9 is based on Alive in Joburg, a short film also directed by Neill Blomkamp.





Official Page for District 9

what's Important

It's not about having everything go right;
~ its facing whatever goes wrong.

It's not about living without fear;
~it's about having the determination to go on in spite of it.

It's not about where you stand,
but the direction you're going in.

Remember to live just this one day
and not add tomorrow's troubles to today's load.

Remember that everyday ends and will bring a new tomorrow
full of exciting new things.

Love what you do,

do the best you can

and always remember

how much you are loved.
~ Vickie M. Worsham

Eva Cassidy ~ true colours

Lantern's Of Memories

“Kae Goh Ogura was just a little girl playing in the streets of Hiroshima, when she heard an ominous sound coming from the sky. She looked up to see a tiny airplane, an American B-29. She watched as a small black spot dropped out of the airplane. All of a sudden, the black spot exploded in the air.

I also was also moved this week by watching this video "Lantern's of Memory", taken in Hiroshima by my friend Velcrow Ripper, a filmmaker from Toronto.

“People need to tell their stories. They need to be heard. It’s a critical phase of the healing process. For the Hibakusha, like so many survivors I have met, their greatest hope is that what has happened to them, not happen to anyone else. They told me, “We know the pain we have been through, and we would not even want our enemies to suffer that way.” The act of speaking out is a way to transform tragedy, into a force of change. Today, Kae Goh Ogura travels constantly, telling her story around the world. She has made an inspiring leap, allowing the pain she has experienced to open her heart” ~ Velcrow Ripper

Why should we love our enemies? ~ Martin Luther King

“I shall write peace on your wings and you shall fly "

This week was the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. I visited the place with my friend from there some 11 years ago. I saw the palm of a child embedded into stone. Silently we hung origami cranes on the shrines.

A Japanese legend teaches that anyone folding 1,000 paper cranes (a bird believed to live 1,000 years) is granted a wish.

In 1955 a 12-year-old Japanese girl named Sadako Sasaki developed leukemia 10 years after the bombing of Hiroshima. She began folding 1,000 cranes so she could make a wish to get well. She also wrote the Haiku – “I shall write peace on your wings and you shall fly around the world.” ~ Sadako died October 25, 1955.

But, Sadako’s story did “fly around the world”. Her friends came together and raised funds to build a memorial to her and to all the children who died from the effects of the atomic bomb. In 1958, her statue was unveiled in the Hiroshima Peace Park with this plaque:

“This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world.”

Cranes adorning the peace memorial Hirsohima Peace Park, Japan

Emmanuel Jal

"sometimes you gotta lose to win, Neve give up, never give in"

Offical page war child


film trailer ~ I put my fight into the music