Blogging to make a difference

This week’s guest post is the start of something really special. If you’ve heard about this campaign, or seen it elsewhere great, but read again so you don’t forget. If you haven’t take your time and read and digest, then think about what difference you can make to someone’s life today.

I’ve been keeping a secret from you. It’s a bit of a big one and it’s going to take me to the other side of the world. But first we need to back-track a little. First we need to do some Maths.

It’s always a bit hard to get your head round big numbers, I guess. When you start talking about nine million children, nine million children a year dying from preventable, poverty-related illnesses, it’s hard to engage which such a huge, impersonal number.

So, let’s start with one child. One mother. Whose child gets sick. Something simple like a tummy bug, most of which us parents have dealt with at one point or another with our own children. And the treatment that will cure it? Costs a couple of quid. Except THIS mother comes from one of the poorest countries in the world, one of 86% of the world’s population surviving on less than two dollars a day, or even one of 36% of the world’s population surviving on less than ONE dollar a day. If you’re this mother you’re probably dependent on your own young children to work and help bring in enough money to survive. Chances are your sick child is already severely underweight, and watching Kai go through a horrendous tummy bug earlier in the year I know how quickly even fit, chunky toddlers can lose weight and get dehydrated.

Your child needs help fast. But you can’t pay the doctor’s fees. And so you watch your child die. From something entirely preventable. You watch your child die not because they had a tummy bug, but because they were poor.

NOW times that by nine million. Every year.

Not good, is it? There is no way that can be right.

A couple of weeks ago, I and two other bloggers were approached by Save the Children UK. As a global organisation they’re doing more than almost any other charity to fight to make the above scenario a thing of the past, pushing the world’s leaders to meet the Millennium Development Goals they pledged their commitment to ten years ago.

These are achievable goals. We’re not talking huge amounts of money here, even in the economic down-turn of many countries. It’s less about money and far more about priorities. It’s about making the fact that so many poor children are dying every year a priority.

Not a lot to ask.

And they want the British Parent Blogging community, and our friends and supporters, to help them do it. To help raise awareness of their work and spread the word. To be able to tell our children that once it was normal for children to die of easily treatable illnesses but that WE CHANGED THAT.

To launch the campaign, in two weeks, Save the Children are flying myself, Sian from Mummy Tips and Eva from NixdMinx out to Bangladesh for a week, one of the most poverty-stricken countries in the world. We will be seeing their work first-hand, seeing what a difference just tiny amounts of intervention can make, talking to the mothers and children there and hearing their stories, and feeding the whole thing back to you, live, through our writing via our blogs, and via Twitter, photos, video, podcasts and other multi-media channels. It is an incredible opportunity, one we are hugely honoured to be a part of.

We hope that, with your support, we can reach a huge number of people through our work, spread our message far and wide and really make a difference, really start something special, and drive this campaign.

We hope you’ll join us on that journey.

For more information on our project see our webpage on the Save The Children website and pledge your support by adding the badge to your blog. And don’t forget to  read our blogs,  follow us individually on Twitter and via the #blogladesh hashtag for all the latest developments, and re-tweet what you can.

We are:

Josie, that’s me! @porridgebrain

Eva, NixdMinx, @nixdminx

Sian, Mummy Tips, @mummytips

@SaveChildrenPR

We’re going to have an amazing adventure. We can’t wait to share it with you and use it to do something extraordinary.

Thank you.

There are a lot of challenges being sent our way at the moment. These are in no particular order, but all important in different ways.

Colour for a grey day

Haiti – this massive disaster challenges us all. Not just for our money and support, but our faith, and our belief in our own God. Why has it happened? How can our God allow this amount of death and destruction? How can little insignificant me help?

Well, I’m no theologian, but I guess this natural disaster is just one of those things. We, whatever faith we are, we all share our sense of responsibility towards our neighbours around the world. That’s why I guess it’s more difficult for us to accept. Here in the cosy UK, we do have poverty, but not on the scale of Haiti. But what we do have is our way of praying, and of giving. So, lots of people are doing what they can to help the survivors of the Haiti earthquake. Here’s a few ways you can help:

1. Become a Facebook fan of bras4mums, who will give 10% of their January profits to the Haiti appeal if they get 100 fans by 31st Jan. This doesn’t cost you a penny!
2. Give a little. Jane Hopkins @mumsclub has set up a JustGiving page for Mums to give £2.50 each. Can any of us imagine how it would feel to lose our own child/ren in a natural disaster?
3. Donate direct at the Disaster Emergency Committee Just Giving page
4. If you have your own blog, then pass the word on and tell the world that they can do something. You don’t have to just sit and watch.

This may not seem as challenging as our thoughts and response to Haiti, but most of set ourselves some challenges for 2010. Maybe we called them New Year’s resolutions, or business plans, or just things we wanted to achieve. Mine are set out in a previous post. @clairelancaster set me a challenge last week. Summing up my forthcoming year in a word – or

Themeword. Well, as a new blogger I had no idea what a themeword was. But as you can see from Claire’s post, it’s one single word that sums up the year you want to have – your theme for the year.

After much thought (and I think I would have liked to share Claire’s ENJOY), I think that my word my be FOCUS. Focus on my business, my leadership course, my websites and my customer’s needs. Focus on my family, my children’s activities and homework and their development. Focus on my friends who often need my support and care. Focus on my responsibility in the redevelopment group of thc church I’m involved in.

Quite a lot really requires my focus this year. But where there’s a will there’s a way. I’m using a few techniques and courses to help me, including Antonia Chitty’s Mumpreneurial Guide, which is taking me step by simple step to some actions for the year to keep me FOCUSED.

The final Challenge I’m setting at the moment, is that from @mumstheboss. She has challenged us to support business women in the developing world. Our focus on Haiti will naturally take away focus from other parts of the world that need our support. So, it’s all the more important to look outside our own sphere and help others. I’m sure there’s a quote somewhere saying “Give a little, receive a lot”. Must look it up!

We must all do what we can in 2010 to challenge ourselves in our own family lives, our business lives and our personal lives. We may have set goals for sport, business or income in 2010. But we must also take up the challenge our changing world is setting us – look wider; give what we can when we can; take note of everything that we do (from lightbulbs and washing powders) and change what we can. It all makes a difference, however small we think we are in this massive world of ours.

Not only would I like the weather to change, to start getting back to normal without being sidetracked into sledging or making snowmen, but I would like to change some other things.

Be like a penguin

I was recently lent a book “Our Iceberg is Melting”, by John Kotter, (no, I’m not trying to be funny!), to show me how similar the penguin characters situation was to the church I’m involved in. There were 2 Methodist Churches in Chorley (Trinity and Park Road) and in October we became one on paper. The challenge now is physically become one church, so a major change management process is needed to intregrate congregations, activities, buildings and look at developing our community work.

The book is fab. It’s sub-titled “Changing and Succeeding under any conditions”, and I’ve started planning in my head how we can go about affecting change within the Redevelopment Group that is leading the process at church. It sets out through the story of penguins on a melting iceberg how they go about looking for somewhere new to live. The eight step process to successful change is clear, concise and makes total sense in my community setting:

Set the stage

• Create a Sense of Urgency
• Pull together the Guiding Team

Decide what to do

• Develop the Change Vision and Strategy

Make it happen

• Communicate for Understanding and Buy In
• Empower Others to Act
• Produce Short Term Wins
• Don’t Let Up

Make it Stick

• Create a New Culture

It was only this week though, with the change of plans to my work schedule (should have been away running training courses and been stuck playing snow with my boys!), that I actually thought that this is what I need to follow for my business as well.

I know, I’m not very clever am I? I hadn’t put the scenario and list of things I need to do together with my business objectives for this year! But as @mumstheboss said recently “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got” <I’ve used this a lot in my training courses over the years, but it’s so true!

I’m starting a 10 month Leadership course, LEAD, on Monday with UCLAN, funded by NWDA. I wasn’t looking forward to being a trainee instead of a trainer – it’s not always easy as you can see the techniques the trainers are using, or you know the games they’re playing as you’ve used them yourself in sessions. But I need to change the way I’m thinking.

1. I’ve created a sense of urgency in my business with knowing that I need to focus and do things differently if I’m going to survive this next year
2. As an owner/manager with one employee I haven’t really got a team. But, I identified LEAD with the use of Action Learning Sets as my Guiding Team
3. I’m working on developing the change vision and strategy which to be honest is another area I’m looking for support from LEAD via the business coaches that we’re allocated. But I have started on my SEO work that is vital to keeping my websites in the forefront of people’s minds. (I’m using SEO Training Club with @alisonrothwell).

So, with my Penguin head on, I’m now looking forward to the start of a course in a different way, and I’m going to focus on this 8 point list to implement the change I need in my business, as well as in my church. All that will be left to do is change at home with my family! We did start by doing our list of what we’d like to do and how we’d like to do it in 2010 as per a few people’s suggestions, including @JennyFlintoft.

Wish me luck. I hope this helps you as well. I haven’t used them yet, but there are further tools to support the book online: www.ouricebergismelting.com. I’m sure I’ll keep you updated of progress during the year! Any comments or suggestions you have for church, business or family change management would be great!