Dinner, debate, Obama and a whole lot of giving

Last night, Lucy and I were privileged and honoured to attend one of The Spectator Digital Dinners hosted by the editor Matthew d’Ancona (our Child’s i Foundation patron), held in their offices in Old Queen Street – right in the middle of Westminster. As well as some key members of The Spectator digital team, we shared a table with an interesting mix of some amazing political minds, media gurus, music movers’n’shakers and advertising industry impresarios.

Our patron Matthew d’Ancona previously gave a bit of background on why he holds these events:

Link to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8PYABLDViw

Last night’s focus was a discussion with Ian Leslie, author of To be President: Quest for the White House 2008 and influential blog Marbury.

Leslie gave us a summary of his understanding of Obama’s groundbreaking and hugely successful victory. A victory enabled by the technologies the web has given us to build a community, but driven by a deftly controlled team of passionate people who planned their campaign with meticulous exactitude.  The whole campaign was also cleverly documented and visualised from day one and became a real life political entertainment show.

But the true brilliance of Obama’s campaign was that he enabled participation at a grassroots level. He (and his team of campaigners) asked people directly for help and made it clear to his community that this potentially astonishing victory was entirely in their hands.

Lucy and I kept winking and nodding at each other from opposite sides of the table with the general excitement of all of this. We believe our charity is a micro-version of Obama’s campaign – well you know, sort of!

Importantly, we know that we need every donation of time, love or money our community of supporters can give us. Our belief is that all of our supporters are stakeholders in our success and the combined force of our drive for this success will build a babies’ home in Uganda and will ensure our home has a sustainable future.

So after dinner, as is our way, we promptly got to work letting people know about our charity and that we needed their help. As has become a regular and heartwarming feature of our campaign and our astonishing story to date is that they all truly wanted to “give” in some way.

If you want to help our campaign, find out how you can give love and time by getting involved or how you can give money.

Matthew d’Ancona, editor of The Spectator, our Child’s i Foundation patron

Part 1. Matthew d’Ancona on becoming a patron for Child’s i Foundation

Link: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_tsKIWaUPUM

Well, our (not just for Christmas) wish has come true – Matthew d’Ancona, editor of The Spectator, has agreed to become our Patron.

It’s a sensational honour for us to have him on board, and even more of an honour is how much he cares about what we are doing and what we are trying to achieve.

We wanted to hear first-hand just why Matthew wanted to get involved with the Child’s i Foundation, so we popped into The Spectator HQ yesterday for a chat.

Matthew talks about how a project like ours, building a home for abandoned babies in one of the poorest places on Earth, may just be one small step, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s one that will resonate in more ways than we can imagine. Getting everyone involved, creating our own community and using the web to allow everyone in it to watch our babies thrive and grow – that’s the heart of what we are doing, and why he thinks we will triumph.

Matthew also gave us more background on his interest and belief in the digital revolution, which forms the foundation of our project, and how it is changing the world as we speak.  Changing the world is no easy task – but if we do it one step at a time, it can be done.

Part 2.  Matthew d’Ancona on The Spectator digital dinners

Link: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=D8PYABLDViw

We thank him so much for giving up his time and we are honoured he is part of our team.

Now, in his own words… “I want you out there to do stuff. Help Lucy with her to do list. After you’ve clicked on this, click on the to do list now. That’s the Geldof moment…”

Read our earlier posts on how Matthew came to be involved:
Digital Dinner at The Spectator
Here comes everybody

Digital Dinner at The Spectator

Yesterday we launched our website and went to a Digital Dinner at The Spectator magazine, hosted by Matthew D’Ancona.

Spectator Debate

On my way up to London, I was desperately trying not have a panic attack at the thought of my life being on the world wide web and going to The Spectator to dine with very influential people. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to discuss the Child’s i Foundation with Matthew D’Ancona, Simon Andrews, Amelia Torode, Deb Khan, James Forsyth, Don Boyd, Matthew Knight, Kirsty Stephenson and Richard Osman.

I didn’t have to worry, we had a wonderful time and everyone really liked the idea and discussed how we could make the project a ‘charity 2.0’ collaborative proposition. I wanted to capture the moment for all our Supporters so asked our friends at Flip to lend us a camera so you can see the evening for yourselves.

Previous post about Matthew d’Ancona and The Spectator.

*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