15/10/2008 by nicola.

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

In the UK one of the key facts from 2006-07 is that a fifth of the population are living in households below the low-income threshold. It still seems astonishing that 1 in 5 in the UK are living in poverty.

We have a huge amount of resources, a huge amount of non-government organisations and willing people in the UK who are working to improve people’s lives and prospects. The research review by the Joseph Roundtree foundation, looks at the links between education and poverty in the UK. It looks at the individual, social contexts and the broader social structures and inequalities.

It suggests that for sustainable and meaningful impact it is not about large scale or small scale interventions that can work by themselves but by connecting initiatives, connecting interventions, connecting people, connecting ideas.

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22/07/2008 by nicola.

I have recently decided to spend a few hours a week volunteering with Kiwanja.net and Frontline SMS:

“FrontlineSMS is free software that turns a laptop and a mobile phone into a central communications hub. Once installed, the program enables users to send and receive text messages with large groups of people through mobile phones. What you communicate is up to you, making FrontlineSMS useful in many different ways.”

More info about the mobility project and plans for Frontline SMS

I am fairly new to this side of online volunteering, having only done website design / reports / publication work before so I do not have contacts with a lot of NGOs, although will be progressing this over next week or so. I wondered if you also may know of any who might be interested and/or you would like to join in too, please could you let me know via

n.avery@surrey.ac.uk

Thanks !

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