To write a blog, or not to write a blog

I've agonised about the decision to start writing a blog, mostly because I don't want to be a self-aggrandizing, arrogant and indulgent arse. So if I ever become one on this (yeah yeah yeah - I already am one in real life. haha.) , I thought I would write my first blog post about why I want to write one.

The thing that finally pushed me over the edge was Nelson Mandela going into hospital. "Here we go with the name drop" :p As Madiba was all over the news, I was struck with the urge to find out if there was any information out there about his relationship with my grandfather - Oupa Natie. A quick google later and i discovered the picture of a letter Oupa wrote to Madiba when he was president - about corruption in the ANC.

It was so powerful to hold this printout of a letter written by a man who I remember mostly for his enthusiastic chasing of chickens around our back garden in Norfolk (he chased the chickens, the cockerel frequently chased me across the garden). But it was a part of his life that I never heard him talk about and will never have the chance to. It made me think that I've been extraordinarily lucky to have so far lived a life of great experiences (if I were in the Deep South I would describe myself as 'blessed') and I don't want to forget any of them.

I want to live life, but I also want to remember it, so this blog is for me. See - not only am I being indulgent - I'm also being terribly selfish :p. But I'm keeping a watchful eye on the words of the American author Fran Lebowitz once said that "Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try." Which is just the optimistic note that I thought I should start the blog!

So why am I writing a blog rather than a personal diary? Mostly because this way I don't have to save it. Because I like to share my life with others - as I write about thoughts, musings, opinions, if this blog does have an audience (hi mum), then it would be cool if they shared their own thoughts, musings, experiences. Also - for the far simpler reason that I find it easier to write when I think of someone to write to, much like I find it nearly impossible to write a coherent sentence when the font is Times New Roman. So there it is. I'm writing a blog. Let's see how long it lasts.

Day 7: MDG 7 - Ensure Environmental Sustainability

OK so I will be honest. With an hour and eighteen minutes to go til the challenge is over... I have little energy left to keep writing. I don't feel awful or bad - but I think it might be a sign of how busy and intense my life is that the calories just don't give me sufficient energy to keep going at the relentless pace I'm mostly used to.

Especially as I insisted on playing football this morning, which was a little ludicrous of me. Not only did we lose, but in making my best save of the match i managed to land in goose poo - with my face. Not sexy. 

We're up at £1680 donated, which is phenomenal. Tomorrow I'll be writing on MDG 8 and how we've demonstrated that global partnership for development over the last 8 days. BUt today I'm going to copy and paste this very interesting post from the Global Poverty Project:

MDG 7 - Ensure Environmental Sustainability

In the developing world millions of people are dependent on their immediate environment for their food, livelihoods, sanitation and shelter. This makes them very vulnerable when changes in their environment occur. An unpredictable environment can be catastrophic, for example millions of people rely on seasonal rains to water crops, refresh wells, lakes and rivers. When they are late or fail the consequences are widespread and disastrous.

The seventh Millennium Development Goal – ensuring environmental sustainability – is about trying to reduce the control that a person’s environment has over their life, by improving the environment and ensuring that it is preserved for future generations.

An important part of this is about having clean water to drink and sanitation facilities.

The video shows how improving Stidia’s environment, through the provision of clean water to her village, truly changed her life. This Tearfund project meant that, as well as improving her family and community’s access to water, she was no longer open to attack when walking for miles to collect water. The time saved meant she was able to go to school, improving her future prospects immeasurably.

Beyond the time saved by the water-tank, Stidia and her family are also now less at risk of drinking dirty water. Diahorrea caused by dirty water kills almost 2 million children every year.

Clean water and improved sanitation can also mean fewer intestinal parasites – what we often think of as worms. There’s some fascinating research that suggests that worms are one of the biggest factors preventing children from attending school. Therefore, by improving sanitation we would not need to spend so much on antibiotics and medical treatments for such conditions, and we could improve the numbers of children in education significantly.

These examples are an important reminder that one intervention to fight poverty can have important follow-on effects.

The good news is that we are on course to meet the 2015 target of halving the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water. But – the same can’t be said for sanitation, where half the population of developing regions still lack basic sanitation facilities like toilets. Our governments need to know we care about these problems, and that when we target water and sanitation, we make it easier to meet the other MDG goals.

Day 6: MDG 6 - Combat HIV/Aids, Malaria and other diseases

www.justgiving.com/dennis-marcus


First of all - I must apologise to the many many many people who were doubtlessly waiting with bated breath on their Friday night for my blog. But after work I must admit I was just too exhausted to write anything. That's what's really hit me in the last couple of days- there's an inability to focus properly; so it's taken by about one and a half times as long to do the same quantity of work - just as well that I'm such a workaholic!


So fantastic news - the total raised is now at £1600 - which is fantastic for six full days of fund-raising. So thank you so much to all of those who have contributed so far - and if you haven't yet .... please do!


So to today's (yesterday's) topic:

MDG 6 - Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases


So let's start off with some fantastic news, reported yesterday on the BBC: 
"Sub-Saharan Africa leads global decline in new HIV cases". So there has clearly been progress to celebrate, but again there is a need to accelerate our efforts: this is only a decline in new cases - leaving much work still to do.


I think that everyone is aware of the huge death toll of the diseases that are common across areas where extreme poverty is pervasive. But can we even truly understand what statistics in the millions really mean?! I'm not sure we can.


One statistic that always gets me is that one child dies every three seconds of diseases we know how to prevent and treat. Or as I've sometimes described it - think of your time at school or university. Your seminar groups or classes would probably have been about twenty strong. You know the people - you know their names, some of them might be friends and some of them you may never see again - but you know them. Well - diseases we know how to prevent and treat kill a class or seminar group every single minute of the day. And that's just children.


Then think of the impact of those people dying on their communities - it comes in so many forms it's breathtaking:

• the bereavement itself
• children whose parents die not only have to contend with losing that influence and support in their lives but may also have to drop out of school to earn enough money to survive - blighting any prospect for the future 
• businesses lose skilled and trained workers on a regular basis - driving up the costs of running businesses as more people have to be trained, so proving another element restricting potential for prosperity
• medical costs reduce a family's budget massively
• schools lose teachers
• communities lose leaders

And the list could go on and on...


So this is an issue of central importance to lifting communities out of extreme poverty. This brilliant half hour film (sourced as ever faithfully from the brilliant people at the Global Poverty Project) outlines some of the work that's taking place around the world to combat HIV. I know it's long - but trust me - it's well worth watching

Day 5: MDG 5 - Improve Maternal Health

www.justgiving.com/dennis-marcus


I may well be flagging today. I think my body is beginning to notice the lack of food - apart from the three kilos I've lost in the last 5 days (I know I know... I had it to lose!). The response within the company has been sensational. Having posted the challenge on iSite, dunnhumby's intranet, people who I've never talked to from other parts of the company have contacted me and even donated! It seems that what I'm doing is becoming quite the talking point - which is a fantastic tribute to RIch Fleming and the team at Live Below the Line who developed the concept.


All of which has led to the BIG news that the campaign has been so successful I had to revise my target up today from £500 to £750 as we breezed smoothly past £500. Thanks to all the people who have donated so far. It's especially fantastic as every pound counts twice as dunnhumby have agreed to match any money I raise up to £1000.


As I was doing research for today's blog, I came across a post on the Global Poverty Project's blog by Maria Pawlowska. I don't think I can match it - so please read it below:

MDG 5 - Improve Maternal Health

We live in the 21st century, we’ve sent humans to the moon and still every minute a women dies as a result of pregnancy. This video by the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood highlights how a lot of these deaths could be prevented - simply by providing the much needed medical assistance. In the developed world a women is more likely to die in a plane crash, than in childbirth. We’re accustomed to births happening in hospitals, with sterile equipment and in the presence of doctors and midwives wearing clean hospital uniforms. I mean, there’s even a growing movement in America and Europe calling for “demedicalizing birth”!

All this makes the thought that millions of women give birth without ANY assistance almost unbelievable. And sometimes there’s a happy ending to an unattended birth - a healthy mother and baby. But too often their life is in danger, and this movie shows the multitude of reasons why women still don’t get medical assistance even when it’s a matter of life and death.

A lot of times the closest hospital is too far away. Cars are expensive but lack of means of transport to hospital are one of the reasons mothers and their babies die. Villagers in Pitala, Malawi (Southeast Africa) came up with the idea of bicycle ambulances - simple, cost-effective, and it works. Villagers in Pitala are lucky - the hospital is close enough for a bike-ride to be feasible. In a lot of places the closest hospital will be days away.

Sometimes the mother is hemorrhaging and losing a lot of blood - 1 in 4 women who die in childbirth die because of excessive bleeding. Something that almost never happens in the ‘global North’ because there’s a pill, available in every hospital, which can quickly stop the bleeding - Misopostol. It’s a low cost (less than US$2), off-patent, easy to administer drug with few side-effects, which dispensed by a trained birth attendant saves lives. It sounds simple (and it is), but a trained birth attendant with adequate supplies needs to be present. However, globally we are currently lacking 4.3 million health workers - that’s a New Zealand or Croatia worth of doctors, nurses and midwives the world really badly needs to keep women from dying while bringing life into the world!

Lastly, and maybe in some ways most tragically, women all too often die because their families are not willing to pay for their treatment, even when it’s as little as US$3.45. There are still frighteningly many countries, where girls and women are not valued equally to their fathers, brothers and husbands and their health isn’t a priority. This shows that for progress on MDG5 we also need to work towards gender equality.


Published originally on the Global Poverty Project blog

Day 4: MDG 4 - Reduce Child Mortality

www.justgiving.com/dennis-marcus


Halfway!!!! Thinking that most people who have done this challenge have done it for five days, I'm beginning to think I was impossibly ridiculous when brashly saying I would do it for eight. One more day would have been simple - four more stretch ahead like the American roads of the movies. But there was a reason I chose to do eight - to give me the chance to talk about each of the Millennium Development Goal. And today's is incredibly important to me.

MDG 4 - Reduce Child Mortality


When I was in Tanzania in 2007, I got a bad case of Malaria. Let me tell you - it wasn't pretty. There were fevers, there was vomit, there were hallucinations and that was just the start (in not the ideal situation to only have access to drop toilets). Carted to hospital, I was told by the doctor that it was Malaria p.Falciparum - the only type of Malaria that isn't chronic (bonus), but the only type that is potentially fatal. Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact I am rubbish when it comes to being ill. I mean really bad - I whinge and whinge and whinge.


So that night, watching the insulin run into my hand, I was feeling ridiculously sorry for myself. But then I was told about something that happened a couple of weeks before I was there. A woman had gone into labour, so she went to the hospital. She had to share her bed with another pregnant woman as there weren't enough beds to go around. The nurses and doctors do a great job in those hospitals - but pretty, hygienic and comfortable they are not.


The women ended up giving birth within about thirty minutes of each other. Afterwards, the woman was looking across at the other one - who was smiling down at the crying baby in her arms. She then looked back down at the baby in her arms - dead and stillborn.


She was released without therapy and without support.


I stopped feeling sorry for myself pretty damn quickly.


That's why taking action to reduce child mortality is personally very important to me. It's an area where we've actually made a great deal of progress:


The mortality rate dropped from 100 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 72 in 2008. Globally, this means the number of under-fives dying has fallen from 12.5 million to 8.8 million. The greatest progress has been made in some of the world's poorest countries. Immunisation coverage has increased, but access to vaccines is often dependent on social and economic factors. Children from poorer, rural households are less likely to be immunised. Immunisation rates have declined in China and Vietnam, while they have doubled in Cambodia.


So progress is patchy - but there has been significant progress. That's why we should celebrate our successes, but accelerate our efforts towards achieving the MDGs - as so beautifully demonstrated by the video below from the ONE Campaign. Please help me in accelerating by going to www.justgiving.com/dennis-marcus

Day 4: Conversations with myself, youth and the Deputy Prime Minister

www.justgiving.com/dennis-marcus


Much has happened today. First of all - I am proud to say that despite a wobble in the early afternoon, I am still on the wagon. It was walking past Pret a Manger that did it. The sandwich-y goodness.. mmm. So I was tempted to the point of stopping on the pavement, longingly gazing through the window at all the fascists eating their freshly made sandwiches. But I snapped out of it - and hurriedly realised I was running late for my meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and the Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell.


The meeting was part of the work of the Department for International Development's (DFID) Youth Working Group (Apparently I still count despite reaching the big 2-5! The group exists to further the the participation of young people in the development arena. It was a fantastic opportunity to make our case for greater involvement directly to the two people leading the UK delegation to the United Nations Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).


I was part of a group that presented a series of recommendations about empowering youth. This was how I introduced our work:


"Mr Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Secretary


We are here to present to you this paper, which demonstrates the importance of involving, empowering and elevating young people into the MDG process.


Mr Deputy Prime Minister - you campaign and continue to campaign on the issue of fairness. Mr Secretary - you've spoken today and at the Global Poverty Project on Monday about your experience in Ethiopia and your desire to not just take people out of extreme poverty, but actually towards hope and opportunity


Achieving that, and achieving a greater global fairness through the MDGs, is our generation's challenge. Extreme poverty was not rendered in a day and it won't be abolished in a day. That's why it's vital you include and invest in the people - the youth of today - that will have to take this challenge forward."


The team then outlined some of the impact of youth-led development work around the world, including: 

• the work of the Youth Business Network in India, which has enabled more than 2 000 young people establish and run businesses - employing more than 17 000 other people over the last fifteen years.
• a youth-led project by Restless Development in Northern Uganda in which fourteen community peer educators reached 3 365 people over a 10 month period. The dramatic results include a 45% increase in condom use amongst young men.

I concluded the presentation with the following message to 'Nick' and 'Andrew'

"We need you to be our voice at the United Nations. Speak with hope. Speak with purpose. Give voice to the impact of young people that we've shown you. Celebrate it and make it a key part of fight against extreme poverty from now on. Thank you."

Will it make a difference to them? I'm sceptical.  In and of itself - it's an important indication that Clegg and Mitchell actually made the time to see the Youth Working Group. Hopefully they will take the passion and the urgency of the people I stood alongside today and send a clear message to the United Nations next week. Hopefully they will represent our voice - but I'm glad that I got the chance to speak and lend my voice to those of the 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty.

www.justgiving.com/dennis-marcus

Day 3: MDG 3 - Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women

www.justgiving.com/dennis-marcus 


Day Three was a bit easier actually. I say that having just had my Tesco 10p instant chicken noodles, which sufficiently sated my appetite (pour in a LOT of hot water and it soon becomes a hearty soup) for me not to feel too much like whingeing right now.


The most outstanding thing about today has been people's generosity and their willingness to talk about what I'm doing and the issues that have inspired them. As I write, the donations currently total £345, with an additional £80.38 in Gift Aid. That means we currently have enough to enable two girls to go to school on a full scholarship for a year, with school supplies for another 15 girls. That's phenomenal and I'm deeply grateful to everyone who has been generous enough to donate so far - but together we can push even further and do even more, which is also the case regarding progress on MDG 3.

MDG 3 - Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women


My mother is going to be absolutely delighted that I'm about to wax lyrical about how brilliant women are. But it's true. The current situation of women represent both one of the greatest injustices of extreme poverty and also one of the greatest opportunities. As we at dunnhumby say, it all starts with the data, so I'll let the statistics we use in the Global Poverty Project presentation spell out the problem:


Women make up 50% of the world's population, 
but make up three-fifths of those living in extreme poverty.
Women work two-thirds of the world's working hours, 
but earn only one-tenth of the world's income 
and own only 1% of the world's property.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 24 million girls can't afford to go to school. A girl may marry as young as 13 and has a one in 22 chance of dying in childbirth. One in six of her children will die before the age of five

The statistics spell out the lack of justice and fairness with great clarity. But the opportunity lies in the fact that it is so bad. Empowering and educating women is one of the most effective policies to tackle extreme poverty in communities. I can well believe it - the women I met while in Tanzania were strong, capable, full of love and compassion. They kept their families and their communities together. If you educate a girl, she'll end up earning 25% more, of which she will re-invest 90% in her family.


This video shows the power of 'The Girl Effect':





That's why this campaign is in aid of Camfed, who have enabled more than a million girls to go to school since 1993. This is an example of the work they've done:







They say a good writer borrows words from others while great writers steal them outright. To try and stake my claim as an OK scribbler, I can't find better words to make the point than to conclude with the words of Kofi Annan:


"There is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women. 
No other policy is as likely to raise economic productivity, or to reduce infant and maternal mortality. 
No other policy is as sure to improve nutrition and promote health -- including the prevention of HIV/AIDS. 
No other policy is as powerful in increasing the chances of education for the next generation. 
And I would also venture that no policy is more important in preventing conflict, 
or in achieving reconciliation after a conflict has ended."


With an impact that deep and profound, it's time to invest in women.


www.justgiving.com/dennis-marcus