Thriving too

The Granny Cloud

I came across this story a little while ago, so really this post is just an excuse for me to be able to keep saying 'granny cloud' because I love the expression so much. That and a fascination continuing from my developmental psychology student days. But do read on...

Professor Sugata Mitra, of Newcastle University, is an expert in the ways that children learn in the absence of formal education - through curiosity, play and peer to peer interaction. As shown by his Hole in the Wall project, which gave access to a pc to kids living in a slum in New Delhi and watched how they interacted and shared to learn computing skills.

Following on from that, Mitra found that when asked what the children would most like to use Skype for (free calls over the internet) the response was being read fairytales by British grandmothers. Well, who wouldn't?

Over 200 volunteers got in touch and there is now a 'granny cloud' from the UK reading to and teaching children in Hyderabad. Such a fantastic imaginative use of technology.

Above is a slice of lemon drizzle cake made by my granny - sorry you can't use the internet to eat it but technology doesn't do everything ;)

Holding back the tide

So, what did y'all get up to on Saturday? Bit of a lie-in? Nice warm lazy brunch? Get dressed up in a blue mac and recreate the legend of King Canute on Brighton seafront as part of a worldwide art exhibition to highlight the impact of climate change? Numb toes from the cold, but a great atmostphere and hopefully a few more people thinking a little more about the impact of our lifestyles...
(I'm in the top wave, a few people in from the left)

350eARTh is the world’s first ever global climate art project. In over a dozen places across the globe, citizens and artists will create massive public art installations to show how climate change is already impacting our world as well as offer visions of how we can solve the crisis. Each art installation will be large enough to be seen from space and documented by satellites.

Read more
See the other photos

Oil and Water Don't Mix

Limited edition of 200 posters, screen printed with oil from the Gulf of Mexico disaster by Anthony Burrill. The oil was picked up on the beaches of Grand Isle, Louisiana

Tin Tin

I have a tin can on my desk - into which I have just put £1, written my name and postcode and passed it on.

It's a clever little fundraising idea by another Laura who is trying to replace a fishing trawler for the Chandani family in Sri Lanka. And you can track the progress of the tins, order one yourself and read more online

How Unemployment Hurts us All

 
 In an article in USA Today, Thomas Sander and Robert Putnam have been highlighting some of the important key findings of new research, published by Chaeyoon Lim of the University of Wisconsin and others, into the effects of unemployment.

The findings include:

+ Unemployment badly frays a person's ties with his community, sometimes permanently.

+ Unemployed Americans are significantly less involved in their communities than their employed demographic twins.

+ The jobless are less likely to vote, petition, march, write letters to editors, or even volunteer. 

+ They attend fewer meetings and serve less frequently as leaders in local organizations.

+ Sociologist Cristobal Young's research finds that the unemployed spend most of their increased free time alone.

+ High unemployment rates reduce the social and civic involvement even of those still employed.

+ Americans with jobs who live in states with high unemployment are less civically engaged than workers elsewhere. In fact, most of the civic decay in hard-hit communities is likely due not to the jobless dropping out, but to their still-employed neighbors dropping out.

+ Beyond civic disengagement, places with higher joblessness have more pervasive violence and crimes against property.

+ They have more fragile families with harsher parenting, and higher rates of mental disorder and psychological distress among both the unemployed and the employed. 

+ The jobless shun socializing, shamed that their work was deemed expendable. Economic depression breeds psychological depression. 

+ Above all, in afflicted communities, the contagion of psychic depression and social isolation spreads more rapidly than joblessness itself.

With unemployment in the US just toping 10% for the first time in a quarter century these findings are serious.

Hopenhagen

 We blogged about Hopenhagen in June. Their site now has nearly 450,000 sign ups. COP15 starts in a couple of days... Fingers crossed!

Peace.facebook

Peace.Facebook tracks the connections made between religions, countries and political groups.  It publishes the statistics every day: 

7,047

 Albania-Serbia Connections in the past 24 hours

8,389

 Greece-Turkey Connections in the past 24 hours

5,421

 Israel-Palestine Connections in the past 24 hours

4,924

 India-Pakistan Connections in the past 24 hours

Waste and Hunger

Great new film made by Good and Whole Foods 

Dropping Knowledge Postcards

Dropping Knowledge has created over 100 postcards based on questions people have asked during the project.  The questions and images are very powerful and provocative.  The postcards are free to download, drag and use openly.

John Thackara on Resilience

John Thackara, who is director of Doors of Perception, gave a very interesting talk at the Lift 09 Conference yesterday, about the role of design  in finding solutions to the ecological crisis. After inviting us to avoid terms such as "future" or "sustainable" as they maintain a certain distance to the problem we face, he shows a rich set of projects he participated in. 

Thackara find the word 'resilient' more interesting, as he defines it: 'The capacity of a system, a social one, a natural one or an industrial one, to absorb disturbance and re-organise while undergoing change.'

John Thackara talks through a number of interesting examples where grassroot groups are initiating significant local projects, most notably the Transition Towns movement and an organisation called Monumento in Sao Paulo which is working to make better use of the 4,000 empty buildings in the city.  

He makes the important point that the resources to be put in place already exist and that they might not necessitates complex technological developments.  

Cadbury's Bicycle Factory Program

I am really inspired by what Cadbury is doing in Canada to supply bicycle's to African communities through their Bicycle Factory.

Just a couple of questions:

1. Why are are they only doing this in Canada?

2. Why are they making people eat chocolate and enter codes online? Why don't they just build the bikes and send them!!! You could always have a site where people could log their support.  

Colalife and New Soap, Old Bottle

ColaLife is a campaign to get Coca-Cola to open up its distribution channels in developing countries to save lives, especially children’s lives, by carrying much needed ’social products’ such as oral rehydration salts and high-dose vitamin A tablets.  

Last night Euan Wilmshurst, Stakeholder Engagement Manager, The Coca-Cola Company, gave a qualified YES to trials of the ColaLife idea before the end of the year in Tanzania. Euan made a specific reference to ColaLife and stated that they wanted to go beyond their original intention and look at the opportunities for social marketing and the distribution of  ’social products’. This is a big step for Coca-Cola and the campaign and in the right direction.  Simon Berry describes what was said.

While over at New Soap, Old Bottle they are recycling and reusing plastic bottles, including coke bottles by the look of it!

Via: Good

Progress!!

Open Intellectual Property as Sustainability Accelerator

Alex Steffan of Worldchanging has written a really interesting article about intellectual property. 

"IP is something we've written a lot about here. In general we tend to err on the side of the commons and intellectual freedom, we also recognize that reward for one's labors is a powerful motivator, adding the fuel of interest to the fire of genius as Lincoln put it. Some things ought to be patented and copyrighted.

Some, though, should not, and this is particularly true when we're talking about sustainable innovation diffusion to the developing world. We've already written about the Open Architecture Network as a means of distributing architectural and design innovations through a Creative Commons developing nation license."

Meanwhile Creative Commons has created CC Zero:

"CC0 (read “CC Zero”) is a universal waiver that may be used by anyone wishing to permanently surrender the copyright and database rights they may have in a work, thereby placing it as nearly as possible into the public domain. 

An early adopter of CC0 is the Personal Genome Project, a pioneer in the emerging field of personal genomics technology. The Personal Genome Project is announcing today the release of a large data set containing genomic sequences for ten individuals using CC0, with future planned releases also under CC0. “PersonalGenomes.org is committed to making our research data freely available to the public because we think that is the best way to promote discovery and advance science, and CC0 helps us to state that commitment in a clear and legally accurate way,” said Jason Bobe, Director of Community."

Sexual Health, Religion, the Press and Society

There have been lots of articles very worth reading in the last week or two and while there is much discussion about the demise of newspapers below are some examples of why we need them...

I watched the programme '18 Pregnant Schoolgirls' on the BBC, the documentary looking at events in Gloucester, Massachusetts, when an unusually large number of teenage girls turned up for pregnancy tests at the clinic of a school. Within hours the news of an alleged 'pregnancy pact' had travelled round the world, appearing in newspapers, TV bulletins and chat shows. Town officials denied the rumours.  The documentary focused on the politics, but really most shocking was that the School Doctor and School Nurse felt that they had to resign after suggesting that they make condoms available.  The town is 90% Catholic.

Sexual health education is a major issue in the US as you will know, with 'abstinence-only programmes' being widespread. Later this spring, Congress will have to decide whether to eliminate $176 million of funding for these programmes.  According to Time, a workable compromise might be on hand in the form of comprehensive programmes which discourage early sexual activity, but the war is far from over...

"There is growing evidence that comprehensive sexuality programs like the ones Jordan teaches can be more effective than abstinence-only curriculums at persuading teens to behave more responsibly. Douglas Kirby, a neutral analyst who has studied sex-education programs for more than three decades, says most evaluations of abstinence-only programs have found "no impact on sexual behavior." However, nearly half the comprehensive programs that have been studied reduced sexual risk in three areas: delaying the age at which teens first have sex, reducing the number of sexual partners they have and increasing their use of condoms."

In the UK last week the Daily Mail accused pro-choice campaigners of highjacking the abortion debate - with corresponding mug shots. In response Simon Blake, Chief Exec of Brook, writes on his blog:

"Critics of me and my colleagues point to the increased abortion rate as evidence that we have got it wrong and that all our efforts point to increased sexual activity amongst the young.   In fact it tells us the opposite.   There are young women who are getting pregnant who don't want to be.  And therefore we must help young people feel empowered and confident to only have sex they choose, when they are mature enough to enjoy and take responsibility for their sexual choices.  We must also ensure there are contraceptive services available and they are skilled to access them.  Then we will see a decrease in conception rates."

A C Grayling, wrote with passion on the 20th March about freedom of speech in particular regard to religion,

"At the United Nations Council on Human Rights in Geneva, the OIC [Organisation of the Islamic Conference] is trying again to have "defamation of religion" banned. The aim is a universal gag on free speech, blocking the right of anyone to criticise the too frequently negative effects of religion on individuals and society."

Grayling goes on to talk about about this free speech in the context of the Pope's visit to Africa, where the Pope claimed that condoms could make African Aids crisis worse.

"But the HIV/Aids tragedy of Africa is only the tip of an iceberg. Opposition to control of family size in the poorest part of the world condemns women to endless pregnancies if they are not – as many are – killed or incapacitated by childbearing in difficult circumstances. The difficulty of looking after numerous children in abject poverty is, on its own, a grinding oppression, to say nothing of the immense barriers to the opportunity for decent lives later on for the children."

On the 23rd March Johann Hari wrote an article in the Independent about Jade Goody, highlighting how our collective treatment of Jade exposes some rather deep seated and unpleasant attitudes to social class. An honest and sometimes shockingly direct article, Hari non the less cannot fail to move the reader.  It certainly increased the complexity of my own opinions.

"Her [Jade] mother was a seriously disabled drug addict, so Jade didn't go to school much because she stayed at home to look after her. From the age of five, she was in charge of doing the cooking and ironing and cleaning. ...Her father treated her even worse.  Eventually, after periods in and out of prison, he was found dead from an overdose in the toilet of a Kentucky Fried Chicken."

AA Gill wrote an *amazing* article on the weekend on Old age and care homes 

"The cure for this youth-tormented terror is blindingly simple. Reclaim the old. Include them in our lives. The antibiotic for loneliness is company. I wouldn’t patronise the aged by claiming that everything they say is wise or steeped in the rare tincture of experience. They talk as much repetitive bollocks as the rest of us. But we never listen to them; we’re deaf to the old. We assume they have nothing to tell us, nothing but loopy non sequiturs and circular complaints."

"We should, at the very least, ensure that nobody, none of our kin, compatriots, kith or countrymen, ever sits alone wishing for their own death because they know of nobody who wishes them to live. We will abate our own fears of ageing by ensuring that someone else isn’t fearful and lonely. You get back what you give."

And as if in response (but wasn't) Professor Tanya Byron wrote an impassioned plea for the young, in her article 'We see children as pestilent'

"However, there are many young people who want to make a go of their lives but are blocked at many turns and so give up. Blocked by an education system that narrows the definition of achievement because it is built around targets and testing, and staffed by creatively compromised and disempowered teachers. Blocked by a higher education system that is mostly riven with elitist and narrowly defined notions of academic competence. Blocked by a society that discriminates against youth and so reduces the participation of upcoming generations in the development of the social and cultural landscape."

 

The worst piece of editorial judgement in the last week has to be the Guardian's 'leak' of Jim Rose's proposed plans to incorporate some teaching on social media in his new curriculum.  As Lloyd Shepherd, Head of Future Media Solutions at Channel 4 Television, described it Guardian Education Story FAIL:

"How does this help human understanding? How does this disingenuous attempt to grab some attention on the newsstand help children, teachers or parents? Why is a supposedly intellectual institution like the Guardian succumbing to sub-Daily Mail posturing? What on earth happened here?"

And so to finish this rather long post, I personally think that bloggers don't necessarily make good writers (but it is good to have so much commentary and discussion), that good writers should make good bloggers...... but thinkers should *always* be appreciated, and we are clearly so fortunate to have such good writers and thinkers. They are our National Treasures.

The 60 Years Project

Zara Arshad has created The 60 Years Project.

"The 60 Years project aims to creatively commemorate the 60th anniversary of UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights): the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled.

Designers have been invited to take part by writing or drawing on a mini protest board to exercise their right to free speech and self-expression. The boards have been posted to both established and upcoming designers, to be filled out and sent back to me as soon as possible."

What a great idea! The interesting submissions can be see on the flickr.

Time Magazine's '10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now'

You can read a description of all 10 ideas on Time Magazine's Website.  The 3 I find most interesting personally are below.

1. Jobs Are The New Assets

"Your portfolio is down 50%, your mortgage is worth more than your house, and your savings account is barely visible. The job, meanwhile, is making a roaring comeback. Not in a statistical sense, of course....in terms of the American psyche — and a household's balance sheet — we're rediscovering the job as the most valuable asset a person can have."

2. Recycling the Suburbs

"The American suburb as we know it is dying. The implosion began with the housing bust, which started in and has hit hardest the once vibrant neighborhoods outside the urban core. Shopping malls and big-box retail stores, the commercial anchors of the suburbs, are going dark — an estimated 148,000 stores closed last year, the most since 2001. Environmentalists will celebrate the demise of sprawling suburbs, which left the nation addicted to cars. But all the steel, concrete and asphalt that went into making the suburbs can't simply be tossed out in favor of something new, even if it's perfectly green. That would be worse.  The suburbs need to be remade, and just such a transformation is under way in regions that were known for some of the worst sprawl in the U.S."

10. Ecological Intelligence

"What if we could seamlessly calculate the full lifetime effect of our actions on the earth and on our bodies? Not just carbon footprints but social and biological footprints as well? What if we could think ecologically? That's what psychologist Daniel Goleman describes in his forthcoming book, Ecological Intelligence. Using a young science called industrial ecology, businesses and green activists alike are beginning to compile the environmental and biological impact of our every decision — and delivering that information to consumers in a user-friendly way. That's thinking ecologically — understanding the global environmental consequences of our local choices. "We can know the causes of what we're doing, and we can know the impact of what we're doing," says Goleman, who wrote the 1995 best seller Emotional Intelligence. "It's going to have a radical impact on the way we do business."

Amazing Global Citizenship Opportunity

Two friends, Maggie and Andrew Alexander, have just set up an unique Global Citizenship Project, creating an incredible opportunity for 10 - 12 people.

The project involves:

A preparation week at Schumacher College, Dartington, Devon - October 26th to 30th 2009 - This will consist of a communal experience of inquiry centred on dialogue within an action research model.

 

• Three months in India.
•   
• A reflection week at Schumacher College, Dartington, Devon - April 6th to 10th 2010 - This will be a week of collective and individual reflection at Schumacher College. 

To find out more please Contact Maggie and Andrew.

The World of 100

Toby Ng  has designed a set 20 posters to highlight statistics 'If the world were a village of 100 people.  They are simple and beautiful.

Via: One Floor Up

Go bananas

Spent a very enjoyable day wandering round the Fairtrade Fortnight Launch on London's Southbank, chatting to producers and suppliers and eating a ton weight of samples. Nyom nyom.

"Every time you buy a fairtrade banana you are helping to alleviate poverty on my side of the world"  Fairtrade banana producer

So, what are you up to on 6th March? Think you have time to eat a banana and help the Fairtrade Foundation break a world record? I suspect so...

Go Bananas for Fairtrade

Languages Matter!

Design 21 announced the winners of their latest competition 'Languages Matter!'.  The one above was the overall winner, the one below my favourite from the posters with an 'honourable mention'. Many more beautiful poster designs on their site...

UNESCO’s Director-General, Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, 

“Languages are a strategic factor in advances towards sustainable development and the harmonious coordination of the global and the local. ...They matter when we want to promote cultural diversity, and fight illiteracy, and they matter for quality education, including teaching in the mother language in the first years of schooling. They matter in the fight for greater social inclusion, for creativity, economic development and safeguarding indigenous knowledge.”

Invisible People

Lloyd Davis shot this short video (above) on the 15 October 2008.  Shocking isn't it? We know it happens all the time, but Lloyd's film really highlighted how much we really ignore the homelessness issue.

I was reminded of this film when I was sent a link to Invisible People, which interviews homeless people and posts them on their blog. What they are doing feels really important. 

"The invisible guy didn’t intend to become homeless. I didn’t plan on living on the street. Everyone on the streets has their own story, some made bad decisions, others were victims, but none of them deserve what they have been left with, and it is a reflection of our own society that we just leave them there.

Please always remember, the homeless people you’ll ignore today were much like you not so long ago."

Dropping Knowledge on Climate Change

Dropping Knowledge visited Munich, Mumbai, Beijing, San Francisco, Caracas, New Orleans and Paris to talk about climate change with activists and other organisations.  They have produced a fascinating and meaningful online magazine called Global Warming, Global Warning.

Beautiful, worrying and very inspiring.... 

Young People Vote Obama

The data is out on the voting patterns from the US election. The exit polls had young voters preferring Obama over John McCain by 68 percent to 30 percent, the highest ever since exit polls began reporting Presidential votes in 1976. All the details published in a Pew Research Report

Via: Social Capital

Bicycle Economy

Part of John Thackara's work with City Eco Labis this project with Velowala to communicate the variety and vitality of people selling things from or on bicycles in Delhi. The objective is to sensitise people to the fact that bike-based commerce does not have to be backward looking or boring....

The event in St Etienne as described by John:

"If you know of another event about city-regions and design that includes permaculture, mushrooms, spin-farming, fritzing, open money, peak protein, alternative trade networks, dry toilets, sustainable urban drainage, alternate reality games, watershed planning, seed banks, de-motorisation, and VeloWalas -go to it. That way I won't suffer remorce for my encouragement of long-distance travel. It runs 15-28 November in St Etienne."

Love the poster!

Visualising the Issues

One of the most difficult challenges to addressing serious world concerns that require global co-operation by individual citizens is that they are easy to put out of our minds in our day-to-day lives. The Now Network Widget shows a constant stream of what is happening now, including eggs produced, population size, cars and bikes being produced, heart transplants, emails being sent..... a bit scary. I particularly didn't like the tree shredding visual.