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Things are continuing to move at a great pace, and on Tuesday night our cause received a huge boost when a whopping 55 TV professionals came to our open evening. The aim was to tell them more about our charity and, of course, pick their brains for even more exciting, innovative ideas on how we can raise the money to build a home for abandoned babies in Uganda.
I felt quite daunted to begin with – we didn’t have a clue how many people would turn up, and I was so nervous at the thought of standing in front of my former peers and doing a presentation. But I needn’t have worried – Producer’s, AP’s, Editors, and Researchers from Big Brother, The Friday/Sunday Night Project, Richard & Judy, MTV, Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor turned up in force, giving us their time and their love.
It was the perfect opportunity to talk about the Child’s i Foundation, and work out how best we can utilise their invaluable skills of creating engaging content to help us build our worldwide community of supporters. We had amazing offers of not only coming out to Uganda to film video updates, but also to join our ever-growing team and help us with contacting celebrities, copy writing, PR and organising events, including a treasure hunt and even a speed-dating evening. We also drummed up volunteers for Aunty Pat’s knit-in, and a couple of brave souls will actually be running the 4800 miles from London to Kampala (it will take 10 months… we’ll keep you posted!)
All in all it was a hugely successful evening, and we can’t wait to get started on even more brilliant ideas.
Pictures of the evening were kindly taken by Colette (see them in the Flickr group) and a video filmed by Miranda and Ros will follow shortly…
What a day. Yesterday properly shifted into gear with Clay Shirky’s lunchtime talk at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts).
The talk was one of the ICA’s “Feedback” season events and as part of their investigation into the effects of networked and social media, they actively encourage the use of recording equipment during talks. So, rather than summarise Shirky’s talk we have uploaded two snippets recorded on the Flip (see our YouTube Channel).
We were dying to ask Shirky, in this changing world, how non-profits and charities could exploit the tools available to us. The microphone didn’t get to us but Lucy did catch up with him as he left the lecture theatre. He showed interest in our charity model and then mentioned his current writing about generosity within community. This will surely change third sector thinking or at least accelerate the change that has started to happen. We hold our breath in anticipation.
Clay Shirky talking at the ICA Feedback session in London
Our inaugural Child’s i Foundation meetup the Old Bank of England last night was testament to Shirky’s thinking that social tools – the internet, mobile phones, applications built on top of those “have provided an antidote to the hassle factor when you try to get a group of people to do something”. We used meetup.com to invite a group of “social innovators and supporters” to join us, to present our plans and ideas to them face-to-face and to ask for their feedback and involvement.
Link to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKXqB9pD-gQ
The evening was just so enjoyable. A group of 40 interesting and varied people offered us their time, helped us understand how to recruit and organise better, they committed to sporting and community fundraising events, offered us their expert technical expertise, architectural skills and marketing ideas. It didn’t even end at pub closing time. Several meetup community members have written to us today with ideas and incredible offers such as donating percentage profits from their new business to the charity and expert social work advice.
Talking, listening, collaborating, interacting at meetup
People travelled into London from other parts of the country for this event, people who didn’t previously know us personally but have connected with us online and understand our cause.
We are truly grateful to be able to collaborate and receive direct feedback from our community and look forward together to making this a really enjoyable venture to be part of.
The slideshow presentation from the evening is here on SlideShare.com
Our first ever meetup
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