This Thursday is World Humanitarian Day.

I wanted to share this email with you. It's from Mike Penrose, Director of Emergency Programmes, Save the Children. It's so moving for me to work in an organisation like Save the Children. People I work with have lost friends and colleagues, and it's made even sadder because they were all making a stand for the world... making a positive difference.

Mike writes and speaks really well (if you ever get a chance to hear him speak I recommend it). He's been 'there' and seen 'that'. Horrors we can't even imagine. Today and yesterday I was working on the creation of Emergency Appeal ads for the Pakistan Floodings Appeal. I have spent hours looking at images from the last few days. Heartbreaking imagery, and the quotes are devastatingly sad. It's been a tough couple of days, sitting at my computer being moved to sadness by these images. I wonder, what would it be like 'on the field', in real life when all the senses are involved.

Oh boy. Just put my really hectic couple of workdays into perspective.

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World Humanitarian Day was created a year ago to celebrate the successes of global humanitarian action and to remind the world of the risks that emergency humanitarian workers face each day.

Last year we lost 109 colleagues and friends to violence (more than UN peacekeeping), that is one of us every three and a half days, and another 92 were kidnapped, but despite these risks we delivered life saving assistance to millions of hungry, displaced and vulnerable people.

By the end of this week the Save the Children Australia emergencies team will have 5 staff members in Pakistan responding to the devastating floods currently affecting 20 million people. Over the past year we have directly responded with people, technical support and money to disasters in Indonesia, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan, Haiti, Samoa, Sudan, The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia to name a few.

Most of us in SCA Emergencies who have been in this profession for a long period of time have lost colleagues and friends, and some of us have experienced violence first hand, but all directly or indirectly involved have made a difference. We are all part of this.

Can I ask that you go to the attached website, watch the video and read the factsheets to remind yourselves what we do, and why we do it. It is easy to get lost in statistics of disasters and the requirements of day to day life, so please remember, these are real people we talk about, real children we work with, and all have the same hopes dreams and fears as you and I.

http://ochaonline.un.org/whd/


Thank you very much for your ongoing support, and can I urge you to continue to work hard to ensure that the millions of children we serve, in Pakistan and elsewhere, are given a chance to life, happiness and opportunity.

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Going West, Maurice Gee. Stunning.

This is a short film made for the New Zealand Book Council, featuring an excerpt from Maurice Gee's novel Going West. It's very beautiful.

FYI. Maurice Gee is one of New Zealand’s ten greatest living artists (according to Arts Foundation of New Zealand 2003).

Before I saw this I didn't know there was a genre called 'cut paper animation'. But apparently there is. And this film was awarded plenty of glint, winning an international prize for paper cut animation by New York’s Museum of Art and Design,the grand prize award at Moving Paper, an international film festival of cut paper animation and two Axis Gold awards.

So, if you are not one of the 840,000 youtube viewings that've gone before, I highly recommend the experience. The 2minutes is well worth it.

A real human interface. I love creative people.

I watched this about a year ago...so it's not exactly new. But it sure did make me smile.

It's another of those simple but very cool little movies that inspires me so, mostly because any of us could make something like this, no film crew necessary. Love it!!

Hi from Multitouch Barcelona on Vimeo.

The Esther Benjamins Trust. Doing some real good work in Nepal.

Driven to Rescue. from Vicki Lines on Vimeo.

Very poor parents are being promised their children will receive education and money, when in truth they are being trafficked into Indian circuses, or brothels.

These families are poor, undernourished, covered in lice. They think they are sending their children to a better life. Most often they can't read or write so they make their mark on the contracts that they can't read.

Fortunately for the kids in this video (who live in at-risk areas) they were driven away to a better life through Esther Benjamins Trust.

http:///www.ebtrust.org.uk/

What really matters is how smart the collective brain is.

Imagine what you'd need to do if you had to create your own reading light to read a book tonight?

Fascinating (as Ted always is) here is a talk about innovation through collaborative thinking... ideas that are born of many other ideas. Or as British author Matt Ridley puts it, what's happening is that "ideas are having sex with each other."

An intersting take on how society is as it is...

Trade is older than farming. Exchange caused specialisation. Does lack of exchange reverse innovation?

So we, society, are neurons in a bigger collective brain. Another exmaple of the spiritual wisdom that tells us we are part of the whole. A part of the matrix of totality.

24,000 Children will DIE today. We can do something to STOP THIS.

Every year children like Tamba die needlessly from easily treatable causes, like diarrhoea. We believe every child deserves to live. And we know the difference you can make. Your $10 dollars a month can save the life of a child today.

24,000 CHILDREN WILL DIE TODAY.
THAT IS 17 PER MINUTE.
MOST COULD HAVE BEEN SAVED.

FIND OUT MORE.savethechildren.org.au/everyone

Is it true we learn from the challenges we face?

The most beautiful stones have been tossed by the wind & washed by water & polished to brilliance by lifes strongest storms.

I wanted to share this quote. I heard it recently whilst listening to an audio book by Dr Wayne W Dyer. He got it in a card from a friend.


...Lovely. True.