City Banker quits to work with orphans

I met James in Uganda when we volunteered at the orphanage in 2005. He had resigned as Vice President of Merrill Lynch and we spent every day together knee-deep in vomit, poo and pee. He helped the home develop some ‘income generation and expense reduction’ projects to help achieve long-term self sustainability.

James & Jacob

James has always been my frrst choice to manage this project. After running his own charity, Mikwano for 2 years in Uganda, he understands more than anyone else in the world the enormity and scale of what we are taking on. We’ve spent the last two years planing the dream home and now James is going to be the Child’s – Project Manager. I’m so relieved – the project, and our money, could not be in safer hands. He’s agreed to write our five-year cost report in his time off. What a legend.

Watch him in action here:

Undress For Uganda

My Mum and her merry team of fundraisers have come up with a brilliant fundraising idea called ‘Undress For Uganda’

Hi Darling,
We had our first Community Fundraising meeting and come up with ‘Undress For Uganda’. What happens is, we start by holding our own party for girlfriends. They each pay £5 for the privilege, and the host provides wine and nibbles.
They also provide a good raffle prize and tickets for these are sold during the evening. Everyone brings 5-10 articles of clothing in good condition that they do not wear anymore. These garments are hung on a rail and they then buy from each other – every garment costing £5.00 – as few or as many as they want.
All the money goes to Child’s i Foundation.
The only proviso is that at the end of the evening, all attendee’s names go into a bucket and at least 2 people are picked out to host their own party. In this way, it gains its own momentum.
We are holding a meeting on Monday, 6th October and will discuss a pack that can be sent to any prospective hostesses.
It would be a good ‘get together social evening’ as well as fundraiser.
Waddya think??
Mum xxx

I think it is a brilliant idea. It’s very ‘now’ – Twiggy has done it recently, so it must be cool! My friends who produce I’m a Celebrity are going to film the evening and make a short VT to put on our website to show everyone else how it’s done. Hopefully, that should inspire others to ‘Undress For Uganda’.

Blue Peter eat your heart out.

*Here comes everybody…

Every day this projects seems to take a life of its own and yesterday I received an email from Matthew D’Ancona, the Editor of The Spectator who called it a ‘sensational idea’ and wants to hold a Spectator digital dinner to discuss the project.

Specator

It’s the opportunity of a lifetime and I am absolutely petrified, especially as he’s asked for a wish list of people I like to invite. Where do I start? Mum’s told me not to worry, she siad if I get really nervous, I should imagine all the guests naked. Hmm. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse?

I’m hoping Matthew might like to be our patron.

*Unashamed reference to Clay Shirky

Digital dream team

The USP of the Child’s I Foundation is that we are harnessing the power of the internet to connect, engage and inform supporters.

As my web skills extend to being able to check the weather and being addicted to Facebook, I urgently needed to put together a team of experts to make this happen. Step forward Kirsty Stephenson, Matthew Knight and Nick Hall at Endemol Digital. They are now our digital team, who will be using open source tools, web 2.0, image hosting, video streaming, community tools, social networking, crowdsourcing and micropatronage. And no, I don’t know what they mean, either – except that, thanks to them, you’ll all soon be able to see exactly where your donations are going and how they are saving lives.

I have a lot to learn and incredibly relieved to have such an amazing team on board.

The cost of a life

I’m in the process of writing a cost report to account for where every penny I raise will be going – now that’s an interesting challenge.

Babies are expensive and abandoned babies are even more expensive. Formula Milk alone will cost up to £20,000 a year. Medical bills are high because most of the babies will need specialised medical care, and we will also be running a social work department as we want to resettle every child into a loving family. We are providing short-term, life-saving intervention, which will ultimately be less expensive than paying for them to live in an institution and be an orphan for the rest of their lives.

I’m estimating the project will cost around £1 million over 5 years, but only time will tell if I’m right and that’s a scary prospect.