Tag: blogging

21st May 2008

Simon Berry’s Coca-Cola idea makes it onto the BBC iPM blog – interview here.

Remember this post earlier this week encouraging you lot to join Simon Berry in his campaign to get Coca Cola to start using it’s distribution network to save lives by transporting re-hydration tablets to remote areas of Africa. One in Five children in Africa die before they are 5 because of diarrheoa.

Simon tweeted that the BBC is interested in his idea and this is what the iPM blog makes of what he is doing:

Simon Berry and others on the blog have been keen for iPM to to hear more about his big idea.
For more than ten years, Simon worked all over the world as part of the
British aid effort. He thinks there is a simple way to help the one in five children in Africa who die from simple causes – usually diarrhoea. And the answer is Coca-Cola.
Not the product – but its distribution network. We’ve asked Coca-Cola
to debate, but in the meantime Eddie has been speaking to Simon about
him and his idea.

Listen to Simon’s interview here.

18th May 2008

Coca Cola's Life saving compartment. An idea from Simon Berry Inspired by Annie Lennox

My friend Simon Berry is onto something. After listening to Annie Lennox on Desert Island Disc he blogged this:

By some miracle my PC and Radio Shark did record last Sunday’s
(11/5/08) Desert Island Discs. Unfortunately it’s a very poor recording
but this is what Annie Lennox said.

Just to put it into context, after talking about her passion for
AIDS campaigns in South Africa and the fact that she’s set up her own
campaign ‘Sing’. She then talked about that fact that she would have
shared, with her father, the sense of injustice in the World. Then she
said:

We can distribute Coca Cola all around the
World but we can’t seem to get medication to save a child from
something as simple as diarrhoea and I think that that is wrong. You
know, you have a choice you either get involved with an issue or you
walk away from it. I think it’s a human rights issue and I feel very
passionately about human rights.

Simon is a very practical man. Now he’s asking Coca-Cola to “use their distribution channels (which are amazing in
developing countries) to distribute rehydration salts. Maybe by
dedicating one compartment in every 10 crates as ‘the life saving’
compartment?”

If you think that makes sense you can lend weight to the argument by joining this facebook group.

11th May 2008

Jazz is Gangster: Soweto Kinch as Active Citizen.

A Clare Edwards tweet alerted me to the video above which is promoting Soweto Kinch‘s Flyover Show (May 31st underneath the Hockley Flyover in Birmingham (and its free). The fact that this is happening is proof of Soweto’s credentials as an active citizen – one of those leaders who’s persistence makes sure a vision comes together. In this case he’s using music and the space under the flyover (and border between gang territories?) to bring together a community.

He talked about his frustration with trying to make unique things happen in his neighbourhood when I interviewed him on the Grassroots Channel from his home overlooking the flyover. (click here for the mp3 or scroll down to listen)