Nearly made a thousand pounds in seven days - mainly it's whoopiedoo with a bit of aaaagghhhh thrown in to express the frustration that I couldn't drum up another 49 quid this afternoon. I was looking after both kids today and it felt a bit unfair to them to be tweeting madly and sending emails off to whoever I know who I've not tapped for cash yet. All the same, I was in front of the computer for far too long on a day when the sun shone and two small and lovely people were stuck in front of YouTube while I tap-tapped away.
The generosity of people I know very well, a bit, and not at all has been fantastic this past week, not to mention everyone who gave prizes. But I know that to reach the target of £10,000 is going to need a really big publicity push. And I'm not too sure how to do it.... so any ideas welcome.
Signing off till tomorrow.
Monday, 23 July 2012
Friday, 20 July 2012
Syria Raffleblog Day 3 - £613
Look! Look! Over twice as much since Raffleblog last checked in! Morning all. Sore throat grumbles have just been offset by finding out that by the end of last night we'd reached £614. Am grinning like a loon - thank you all very much indeed, and a big hug to Ellen Burney who has tweeted prolifically over the last two days to raise awareness and direct people to the page.
It's my last day shifting at the Guardian today, so I'll be on the train back home tonight doing some jobs like writing copy for Hand in Hand for Syria who want to explain about the raffle to their local press. I also want to drum up a few more prizes from favourite brands, and think of some new ways to publicise the fundraiser.
Right. Am off into the rain with no coat, so my next report on Twitter will likely be somewhat damper than this one. I do just wonder if we might get to £1000 in the first week... any suggestions for how to get there by end of play on Monday, let me know in the comments section! And if you'd like to pass on the JustGiving page, it's here: http://www.justgiving.com/Syriamedicalaid
It's my last day shifting at the Guardian today, so I'll be on the train back home tonight doing some jobs like writing copy for Hand in Hand for Syria who want to explain about the raffle to their local press. I also want to drum up a few more prizes from favourite brands, and think of some new ways to publicise the fundraiser.
Right. Am off into the rain with no coat, so my next report on Twitter will likely be somewhat damper than this one. I do just wonder if we might get to £1000 in the first week... any suggestions for how to get there by end of play on Monday, let me know in the comments section! And if you'd like to pass on the JustGiving page, it's here: http://www.justgiving.com/Syriamedicalaid
Wednesday, 18 July 2012
Syria Raffleblog: Day 2 - £254
Just a quick update tonight: am a bit shattered after a night on a friend's sofa (working in London till Friday, so two more of those to come) and an early false start on the Metropolitan line that took me way out of my way and made me late and flustered.
Today has seen two more fab prizes given for the raffle - a hamper of Fairtrade Divine chocolate from my very kind employer of ten years ago, and a weekend stay at possibly the most luxurious self-catering property I've ever seen, Rock Mill Estate in Membury Devon. So to Charlotte Borger, PR director for Divine and Jane, who owns Rock Mill Estate, a massive thank you. I must also say a heartfelt thank you to Lex Thornely (tweets under @LexPRnMarketing), PR supremo who has been so helpful in easing the way for me to ask his very generous clients for prizes.
I've been following today's extraordinary events in Damascus on Twitter, and from the reports of microbloggers on the ground and mainstream news organisations' reporting, there seems little doubt that a lot of people have been killed and terribly injured today. It always feels so odd to me to be sitting safely on one bit of the planet while some lives are changed utterly and others destroyed on another bit. It reminds me of a poem a foreign correspondent introduced me to when I mused on the same theme to him some years ago. Here it is - it's worth reading:
Musee des Beaux Arts, by WH Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on
So, we're up to £254 today. The money goes directly to Hand in Hand for Syria, who I think I'll be meeting up with for the first time in the next few weeks to find out more about how they work on the ground and how they get medical supplies into the areas under attack.
Please, please keep reading, keep retweeting my tweets and sharing the JustGiving details on your Facebook pages . Here's the link to the JustGiving page if you'd like to give some money and enter the raffle (make sure NOT to Gift Aid the money if you want to enter, and to put 'yes' to the question about whether your donation is in exchange for a raffle ticket). Right, that definitely is it for tonight. Cup of tea. Then glass of wine. Then sofa.
Tuesday, 17 July 2012
Syria Raffle Blog: Day One - £214
Decided to pop a few thoughts down every day til the
JustGiving page gets to £10,000. Who am I kidding – course I won’t keep it up.
But given that this is the first time in my life I’ve tried to raise money for
anything other than my own shoe fund, it might be amusing to see some of the
mistakes I make as I attempt to drum up the dosh. I’m sure there are all sorts
of tried and tested fundraisers’ tricks to milking people for money (since I
had kids I’m a sap for quite a few of them) but as I’ve got just a few
minutes each day to source prizes and inviegle people into coughing up, I rather suspect I won’t be following the handbook.
First possible mistake – was it a terrible idea to do a raffle? Of course
I didn’t check the tax rules before deciding to ask for prizes, and
at the last minute discovered that you can't buy a raffle ticket
and allow the charity to reclaim Gift Aid on your money.
On discovering this I hit the ‘edit’ button on the JustGiving page and wrote
a bit of blurb explaining that it was a raffle fundraiser and there were all
these fab prizes on offer, then added a P.S. to the effect that if you wanted to Gift
Aid your donation you could opt out of the raffle. I didn’t think
everyone would… but turns out that all the amazing people who have
donated so far have Gift Aided their money.
Which means, if everyone else follows suit, that there will be a lot of
verrrrrrrry nice stuff going begging. Hmm. What to do? Maybe I get the £250 haircut? It’s a bit of a dilemma. I’d love to know just how good a
£250 haircut is...
The upshot of all this, however, is that I want to say to anyone who donates: the very
fact that you’re giving is fantastic. For years and years I didn’t give a
single penny to any cause, and was all “please, I work for a charity, that’s my
contribution.” (I’m not referring to The Guardian here; I actually did work for
charities). Honestly, I was such a selfish idiot. So please, don’t feel guilty about
entering the raffle. This whole shebang has been designed as a raffle
and you know, ravishing though I hope I’d
look with a stonkingly expensive haircut, me nabbing the prizes isn’t quite in
the spirit of the project. So, please donate, but please do also feel just as good about your donation when you tick "yes" to the bit about "have you given money in exchange for a raffle ticket".
To bring this bang up to date: we’re just over 24 hours since launch, and friends who I love dearly, people I know professionally and individuals who
I don’t know at all have already given £214 – I'm so grateful and touched that you've cared enough to do that.
Under JustGiving’s system, the money goes directly to Hand in Hand for Syria to buy drugs
and medical equipment to help people who are being terribly injured every day.
There are children, women and men who will live because of it.
Friday, 1 June 2012
Why look at pictures of slaughtered children?
What do you do when you see a picture of a toddler with his hands tied together and his throat cut? I shook, sobbed, but I kept looking. There is huge controversy about whether newspapers and broadcast media should publish this kind of picture - and in this country, they don't - but images and footage of Houla's dead children are available now on YouTube and via Twitter, and I think people should look.
I look out of respect, because that child felt terror and pain: for me to look at that image is to acknowledge what they went through, to treasure their humanity, to remember that until minutes before they had been laughing and squabbling and refusing to eat their tea just as my children do, and to value the incalculably precious life that has been so violently stolen from them. My pain on looking at such pictures is, by comparison, of no relevance.
Except in what such feelings might galvanise someone to do. It has to prompt something, looking at pictures of children's broken, slashed, bloodied bodies, else it becomes not only emotionally devastating but ultimately pornographic and disrespectful.
I've not known what to do for months now, but on Saturday night, I knew I had to do something or I would always be ashamed.
I woke my partner up, and told him that I was going to organise a protest against the systematic killing of children, and that it didn't matter if no-one came and it was just him and me and our two small boys standing there. We were going to do it anyway. And we are - together with all the amazing people who have contacted me to say they'll join us with their own children.
On Sunday 10 June, at noon till 2pm, the 'Stop Killing Children' protest will be held outside the Syrian embassy, 8 Belgrave Square, London. Please join us. Bring your kids. And if you can, wear something red to symbolise the blood spilt by the 49 children who were killed in Houla last weekend, the children who have died in the days since that atrocity, and the thousands more who have been slaughtered over the past 15 months.
It's not enough. I don't know what is. But doing something must be better than doing nothing. This is my something.
If you're going to join us, please let me know: louise@louisetickle.co.uk, and follow updates about the protest on the Twitter hashtag #stopkillingSyrianchildren
Friday, 30 December 2011
A journalistic dilemma
When I write on social affairs I often wonder if the resulting article helps in any way at all. Can journalism make a difference, or am I essentially being exploitative?
It's hardly an original dilemma, and is surely experienced by every journalist and photographer. It feels a bit naive and studenty to still be asking myself the question, to be honest, but all the same.... it niggles. I make some of my living interviewing people in pretty desperate situations. An assignment I was commissioned to do for a national children's charity campaign illustrates the issue.
I'm asked to drive to south Wales to interview one of the charity's clients, a single mum with five kids. I'm pleased to get the work. It's well paid and interesting. Arriving, I find that she lives in a house where black mould spreads thickly across the kitchen ceiling and down the back wall... where one of her daughters, a little girl with asthma, sleeps in a pink bedroom so icily cold I feel my skin shrink when we look in... where the picture of a baby lost to cot death is unobtrusively placed among the many, many photos of her other children proudly displayed in the front room.
There’s a housing association building site at the end of the little terraced row, but this woman can’t get hold of the £400 deposit she needs to secure one of the warm, dry family houses that will soon be available. I leave feeling angry and hopeless. I write my piece, and still feel angry and hopeless. My fee for this work is more than the money she needs for the deposit. I wrestle with the thought that I should give it to her. I don't. A year on I still wonder if I should have done.
That £400 would have helped her family more immediately than any charity campaign. This is hardly war reporting, but these are people living on a front line. Does this kind of journalism change anything about this woman's life? I don’t know. It’s what I do, what I can do, what I have time to do. It’s not enough.
It's hardly an original dilemma, and is surely experienced by every journalist and photographer. It feels a bit naive and studenty to still be asking myself the question, to be honest, but all the same.... it niggles. I make some of my living interviewing people in pretty desperate situations. An assignment I was commissioned to do for a national children's charity campaign illustrates the issue.
I'm asked to drive to south Wales to interview one of the charity's clients, a single mum with five kids. I'm pleased to get the work. It's well paid and interesting. Arriving, I find that she lives in a house where black mould spreads thickly across the kitchen ceiling and down the back wall... where one of her daughters, a little girl with asthma, sleeps in a pink bedroom so icily cold I feel my skin shrink when we look in... where the picture of a baby lost to cot death is unobtrusively placed among the many, many photos of her other children proudly displayed in the front room.
There’s a housing association building site at the end of the little terraced row, but this woman can’t get hold of the £400 deposit she needs to secure one of the warm, dry family houses that will soon be available. I leave feeling angry and hopeless. I write my piece, and still feel angry and hopeless. My fee for this work is more than the money she needs for the deposit. I wrestle with the thought that I should give it to her. I don't. A year on I still wonder if I should have done.
That £400 would have helped her family more immediately than any charity campaign. This is hardly war reporting, but these are people living on a front line. Does this kind of journalism change anything about this woman's life? I don’t know. It’s what I do, what I can do, what I have time to do. It’s not enough.
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Why I wanted a Caesarian
In September last year, I was seven months pregnant. I had given birth to my first baby two years previously at 33 weeks by fast, frightening emergency section. Second time round I knew I wanted a calm, planned elective Caesarian. According to NICE guidelines, this was my right, as there are small but significant extra risks associated with vaginal birth after caesarian. But I had to argue hard and consistently over a number of weeks to make my case, and was reduced to tears by a consultant obstetrician who was clearly opposed to me having any choice at all in the matter.
The business of how you give birth seems to be all very ideological for those who aren't in the position of having to go through it. What makes me angry still is that the guidance cited by NICE - if you read the long version on the website, rather than the short leaflet you're given by the midwife - states in the very first sentence of its recommendations that "the risks and benefits of vaginal birth after c-section compared with repeat c-sections are uncertain." This statement comes after pages of detailed evaluation of the evidence from many studies.
So why did I have to find myself sitting in front of the consultant feeling furious and increasingly upset at her patronising refusal to allow me to make a choice over the kind of birth I wanted? It didn't matter how much detailed explanation I gave of my reasons for not wanting to risk another emergency section. She and the midwife seemed determined that I would give birth naturally.
My fears were not irrational: around a quarter of women who attempt a vaginal birth after a c-section end up with an emergency Caesarian, which inevitably holds greater risks than a planned one. Having experienced the emergency variety I wasn't keen on a one in four risk of another. But my midwife and obstetrician weren't going to bother giving me the full picture of risks associated with each method of giving birth; they simply trotted out the mantra that a natural delivery is better for mum and baby.
It feels to me that, whereas in years not so long gone, women who'd had sections were bossily told they couldn't attempt a natural birth, now, through cost pressures and natural birth targets, someone with good reasons for preferring a planned section over a very reasonable chance of ending up with an emergency one may well have their wishes pooh poohed. Worse, I was at no stage informed of any of the risks of a vaginal birth after a section, only told about the possible benefits of a faster recovery time. Nobody ever mentioned, for instance, that the death rate for babies delivered by vaginal birth after caesarian, while still very small, is ten times that of babies delivered by repeat c-section. Given my previous experience of giving birth to a very poorly premmie, that was a particularly salient factor in my decision-making.
It feels like when you're pregnant, nobody listens to you - presumably they think you're too emotional, too confused or not well enough informed to make a sensible choice. I'm appalled that my consultant and midwife didn't give me full information - instead they pushed their preference at me despite that preference holding undisclosed risks of its own.
Obstetricians and midwives simply cannot rely on all women having the support, resilience and wherewithal to research and argue their case; the vulnerability I felt trying to express myself in the face of an obdurate consultant badly upset and stressed me until I got myself referred to another who understood my concerns. That's why I'm glad that women in future won't have to battle to give birth in the way that's right for them. Whatever my consultant would prefer, it wasn't ever going to be her giving birth to my baby and having to choose from a variety of risks - it was me.
The business of how you give birth seems to be all very ideological for those who aren't in the position of having to go through it. What makes me angry still is that the guidance cited by NICE - if you read the long version on the website, rather than the short leaflet you're given by the midwife - states in the very first sentence of its recommendations that "the risks and benefits of vaginal birth after c-section compared with repeat c-sections are uncertain." This statement comes after pages of detailed evaluation of the evidence from many studies.
So why did I have to find myself sitting in front of the consultant feeling furious and increasingly upset at her patronising refusal to allow me to make a choice over the kind of birth I wanted? It didn't matter how much detailed explanation I gave of my reasons for not wanting to risk another emergency section. She and the midwife seemed determined that I would give birth naturally.
My fears were not irrational: around a quarter of women who attempt a vaginal birth after a c-section end up with an emergency Caesarian, which inevitably holds greater risks than a planned one. Having experienced the emergency variety I wasn't keen on a one in four risk of another. But my midwife and obstetrician weren't going to bother giving me the full picture of risks associated with each method of giving birth; they simply trotted out the mantra that a natural delivery is better for mum and baby.
It feels to me that, whereas in years not so long gone, women who'd had sections were bossily told they couldn't attempt a natural birth, now, through cost pressures and natural birth targets, someone with good reasons for preferring a planned section over a very reasonable chance of ending up with an emergency one may well have their wishes pooh poohed. Worse, I was at no stage informed of any of the risks of a vaginal birth after a section, only told about the possible benefits of a faster recovery time. Nobody ever mentioned, for instance, that the death rate for babies delivered by vaginal birth after caesarian, while still very small, is ten times that of babies delivered by repeat c-section. Given my previous experience of giving birth to a very poorly premmie, that was a particularly salient factor in my decision-making.
It feels like when you're pregnant, nobody listens to you - presumably they think you're too emotional, too confused or not well enough informed to make a sensible choice. I'm appalled that my consultant and midwife didn't give me full information - instead they pushed their preference at me despite that preference holding undisclosed risks of its own.
Obstetricians and midwives simply cannot rely on all women having the support, resilience and wherewithal to research and argue their case; the vulnerability I felt trying to express myself in the face of an obdurate consultant badly upset and stressed me until I got myself referred to another who understood my concerns. That's why I'm glad that women in future won't have to battle to give birth in the way that's right for them. Whatever my consultant would prefer, it wasn't ever going to be her giving birth to my baby and having to choose from a variety of risks - it was me.
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