Have a heart this Valentines Day and spread the love! <3

 

Spreading the luuurve baby!

It’s less than two weeks away from Valentines Day so why not take a little bit of time to let cupid’s arrow help you to spread the love in your community.

Whether you are single, or have someone special in your life, you can take this opportunity to make Valentines day about more than just red roses and chocolate.

Grab your loved one, or a group of single friends and make plans to have a heart on February 14th.

Some great ways to spread the love

• Call a nearby childrens home and ask for a list of kids names including gender and age. Buy them “anonymous” Valentines cards and Valentines gift such as boxes of heart chocolates or jewellery for girls, or cologne or other toiletries such as hair gel for boys. Arrange with the home to have the gifts distributed to the kids from “secret admirers” and give their little egos a real boost.

 

 

• Contact your local old age home and organise a Valentines breakfast or lunch for the elderly. If you really wanted to go all out, you could arrange to take them out on “group dates” to a cosy restaurant on this special day as way to remind these special members of society that they are still loved

 

• Visit a hospice or similar organisation caring for terminally ill patients bringing chocolates, red streamers and heart shaped balloons to decorate their rooms to spread the love and add a little bit of joy to the hearts of those who are scared and alone.

 

• Instead of buying your loved one a new watch or pair of shoes, adopt a pet from the SPCA or animal shelter. Not only will you be giving your special someone a special little someone, but you will also be saving an innocent animal from being put down.

 

• Instead of going for a Valentines lunch, call the local shelter or animal rescue organisation and ask how you and your partner can volunteer to help for the day. Cleaning penguins or playing with puppies can make a real unforgettable date that will remind you and your partner of the real meaning of love and affection.

 

If you have any more ideas or suggestions, let me know and we can grow the list together!

Have a fabulous Valentines day and enjoy spreading the love (“,) x

Facebook leads the online mobilisation pack

The SA Times: Facebook leads the online mobilisation pack

Written by Lameez Abrahams

Tuesday, 10 July 2007

Online mobilisation is the new black, and South Africans across the globe are doing their bit for their homeland courtesy of social networking sites such as Facebook.

By the time you read this another group will have started, another cause joined, another donation made.

With 150 000 new members per day, the power of Facebook is putting it ahead of social networking websites such as Myspace, Bebo, Hi5 and Ringo.

The global village is constantly shrinking and just when we think it can’t get any smaller, a friend you last saw sitting on the teacher’s mat when you were both six-years-old, appears on the scene – there’s more shrinkage in store.

For a very long time, when it came to social networking sites, Myspace was leaps and bounds ahead of the pack and rightly so. Its capacity and ability to host videos, music, pictures as well as to give users the best platform to network, is astounding .

Who can forget the Acrtic Monkey’s and Lily Allen’s rise to fame? But rest assurued that Facebook is creeping up fast. Facebook was founded by former-Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg while at university, who initially ran it as a hobby.

Statistics released by Comscore say Facebook traffic is now up to 26-million visitors a month. Despite this figure being lower than Myspace, the potential growth for Facebook is far greater.

Demographics indicate that the over-35 age group make up the largest group, with a whopping 10-million users. This could also be due to the fact that large companies are using Facebook to keep employers’ details such as telephone numbers’ and addresses up-to-date.

Facebook offers users the same features as Myspace, minus the maintenance, plus the feature of only allowing people you know to view your profile. These features are a much welcomed bonus. Storm Buckingham, Editor of BizAssist in Cape Town, like many South Africans on Facebook has turned her sights on having a hand in South Africa’s future.

“With online groups, communities, blogs and social networking sites, our generation has immediate access to people across the country, and around the world, whom we otherwise might have never encountered.

“It is wonderfully exciting to know that you can communicate with people in another city, country or continent by simply using your mouse and keyboard,” she enthuses, while we conduct the interview via Facebook.

Buckingham started the group ‘Let’s do it …for South Africa’ after calls from friends and family wanting to make a difference in South Africa were left wanting with no idea on what to do or who to approach.

“We used Facebook as one of the platforms to communicate with South Africans because we knew that Facebook was a widely used and visited website. More than that, Facebook has become an intergral online communications tool to reach friends, friends of friends, and strangers with common interests, all by the means of one simple interface,” she says.

“Our first goal is to promote and create an awareness for the numerous charities, community projects and drives that need helping hands, cents and rands. Secondly, we want to translate the awareness into action, by encouraging people to do one good deed a week.

“The idea is to make it as easy as possible for South Africans to participate. “What we have done is created a weekly newsletter, which lists three cheap, easy or free things that one can do to help bring about a positive change in South Africa,” she added. “Despite all the negative press, the South African community is in fact one with a strong desire to affect positive change,” she concluded.

Fabio Federico Ronchietto, who is currently doing his Masters in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cape Town, started the group ‘The biggest South African group on Facebook’, initially as something just for fun but also because of his passion for South Africa.

In a mere 145 days the group has gained 10 234 members with 48 ambassadors in 36 countries.

“Initially I hoped just to get as many members as possible. But now the group occupies a lot of my time. I started appointing ministers or ambassadors. South Africans from all corners of the world have requested to be ambassadors – we all have a common love, namely South Africa,” he says.

Another South African group started aims to donate money towards the fight against HIV/Aids while another looks at ways in which to fight crime. No matter what you would like to see changed or improved in South Africa, rest assured that there is a South African somewhere in the world who has started a group on Facebook.

Screw it, lets do it! Fixing South Africa one blog post at a time!

Recently I had an experience that moved me.It made me look at the privileges I take for granted on a daily basis – hot water, electricity, a two bedroom flat all to myself – in a new light. Instead of being miserable that I am twenty-five and renting, as opposed to being a position to own my flat, I realised how awesome it was that I am able to support myself. The luxury of a two bed roomed place – a room for me, and a room for my drum kit and turntables – is the equivalent of a five bed roomed mansion in Bantry Bay, when viewed through the eyes of the homeless living from street to shelter.It made me feel a little bit ill. The more I think about it, the more ashamed I become – that I have the cheek to complain about my tough situation. How I hardly have enough money at the end of the month after paying my rent, the instalments on my 2006 1.4 Fiesta, the R600 monthly instalment to Edgar’s, paying off my 5.1 Samsung digital surround and LG Flatron TV, my cellphone, my food and various other living expenses.Tough life hey. How do I cope.

The sad part is, that there are millions of privileged South African living way above the breadline, who (myself recently included), honestly believe they are being hard done by. That life is hard. Times are tough.

How did we get like this? How did our self-involvement warp our concepts of reality so badly, that even when we are living “the good life”, we are still unhappy? Perhaps the media is partly to blame. Perhaps is the driving force of a capitalist economy. Perhaps it really just boils down to good old-fashioned greed.

Whatever the reason, the sad fact is that for the longest, ugliest part, I just did not care. I didn’t have the resources to. No time, no money, but more truthfully, no interest. Seeing the expressions of happiness on the two faces of the two previously unemployed Walking Bus Drivers, as they saw there photograph in the Bus Buzz newsletter made me realise just how good I actually have it.

Writing about it made me realise that I’m not the only one that has been selfish. And I am not the only one that feels bad about it. Every time I share the story of the Walking Bus with a friend, colleague, or random reader on the Internet, the response has been widely the same.

People do care. They want to change. They want to help.

The wonderful response to this experience has inspired me to want to make a difference. I know that I am not the only one – there are many of us that maybe want to help, but don’t know how. Thus my proposal to you. If each of us has a skill, talent or offering that we are able to donate, we will be able to come up with a great idea to make a difference. Doesn’t matter how big or small. Doing something is way better than doing nothing.

Lets all pool our resources and idea’s and see what happens!

Idea’s, comments and general goodwill are welcome at the end of this post.

Lets stop threatening to make a difference, and actually go ahead and make one.
 

The Ripple Effect

The hustle &bustle of life, the rat race, the bills, the problems and the solutions might seem like mountains we might never be able to climb. It may also send our frenzied and tattered conciousness into a numbness that can really only be revived by something so catastrophic that we are glitched back to into reality.

All the things we ‘hold so dear’ – the job, the car, the clothes come a distant second to the suffering that lie behind the eyes of those very hands that are stretching out to us.

Humanity is numb – no longer in touch with the essence of what makes us human, but rather the essence of what makes Prada and Gucci desirable and living in a bubble the only way we know how to get by.

It’s the same reason as to why we are numb to the fact that 900 people die in South Africa every day due to HIV/Aids; a number that will climb to 5 million by 2010, some of whom will be those very hands that stretch out. I sat for a long while last week trying to find out why we don’t care about Aids … could I find an answer? No. Will I find an answer? Yes.

We are glued to the television screen when a hurricane causes destruction but turn the other way when a homeless person tries to make up his cardboard bed with the little dignity he has left.

We spend 20 minutes chatting about Kate Moss’ latest collection at Top Shop or Britney’s breakdown but not about the real life. Is anyone to blame? The media perhaps who so gleefully guide what we consume or maybe those Freemason’s some us choose to believe rule the world – it could never be us!

That nagging whisper appears when we are in transit between work, parties and taking down the washing. If we listen to it long enough we will realize the devastation not only taking place in Africa but all over the world.

We cannot save the world alone, but what we can do, what we should do, is listen to that nagging whisper that is trying in vain to usher back into the land of the humane.

A smile here, a compliment there causes a ripple effect – that is how we will change the world. We listen to that nagging whispere and force ourselves out of ‘life’ and into the living. We will shed a tear, we will get angry at what we find, we will shout and then we will act.

One man’s R5 is another man’s moment of clarity and reassurance that the world does care.

Lameez

“Lady, do you have a five rand for a pie please?”

 

Life is tough. We, as working class people, are busy. There are bills to pay, deadlines to meet, targets to make. You have to work hard to succeed, earn your keep, keep your nose to the grind. We wake up every morning – sometimes before the sun is even up – to brave the cold and make our trek to work. We sit in traffic, we get to our desks, we start the day. Sometimes, we’d rather not. We made it to where we are today by being committed to our jobs, by showing up when we’d sometimes rather not. We went to school, did out homework, finished our studies. There were plenty of times where we felt like we’d rather not

So it’s understandable, the annoyance we feel when stopped at every robot on the drive home, after a tiring day, having a pair of cupped hands extended to our car window in the hope of some form of donation. We’ve all, at one stage or another angrily muttered to ourselves, I wish I could spend all day hanging around outside living off other people’s donations. He probably makes more money in a day than I do. I mean, if each person gives R5, and that’s X people per day, and so we work out or little calculation…

If he really wants to earn some cash, why doesn’t he go and get a job? How many times a day are we asked for a handout – and that’s not even counting the car guards! (You know, the ones who did go and get a job, but are somehow still as annoying.)

City life means getting used the ugly realities of urbanization. If you had to ask you me how many homeless people I encountered on my way home this week – would I be able to answer you? Would I be able to describe, or even recall, the face of just one of the street people I had looked past, sidestepped or stepped over today?

We are bombarded with images of poverty, famine and shelterless street-people on the TV, in the news, in the paper, in the movies. It’s no wonder we have become a little desensitized, in a society when headlines of tik abuse make newspaper headlines at least four times a month. It’s not my fault things are like this, and I can’t save the world on my own. Heck, I can’t even save at all, how I am supposed to be expected to sponsor every outstretched hand I meet. Charity begins at home, and I am doing the best I can.

Or am I? Underneath all my reasons, my rationalizing, my explanations – underneath the loud, desensitized voice of cynicism, there is that quiet voice of guilt, the tiny voice of shame – isn’t there? The one that’s supposed to whisper, but does not.

It is missing.

And that, the glaring absence of a conscience, is my secret shame. Where is the nagging whisper of pity, tugging quietly at the strings of my heart? Where is my humanity, the revered shared-link with my fellow man? Why do I not care when I see yet another homeless person asleep on the side of the road? Why have I stopped feeling sorry for the person begging for my loose change? Why am I not secretly shamed by my irritation?

Sometimes I wonder what has happened to me. When did I stop caring? When the books I read speak of the innate human desire to care for the greater good, and the authors words ring dead to my ears, I become secretly frightened insides. I never thought I’d evolve into a Bad Person.

A few days ago I was stuck in town for a late meeting and, having missed my lift, had to catch the 7’oclock bus home. The walk from my office to the station was brief and I found myself at the bus station just as the sun had gone down, the sky a grey-blue. Having about twenty minutes to kill before the next bus, I paged through the local Golden Arrow newsletter, Bus Buzz, which killed all of let’s say, six minutes. I read through a cover story, two letters to the editor, a feature on Lifeline and an insert on the Walking Bus initiative.

The Walking Bus is a program aimed at making the journey along various predetermined routes to the bus terminal safer, by stationing thirty Walking Bus “drivers” to assist commuters in reaching the terminal safely. The bus “drivers” are formerly unemployed locals, selected from neighborhood shelters the Haven and Straatwerk. In addition to providing a safe walk home to its patrons, the Walking Bus program aims to provide employment, and hopefully, ultimately independence, to people previously living on the street with no form of income. Participants that showed commitment and promise could eventually be trained as full time security guards and become fully autonomous. There was even a colour insert, which photographed all thirty participants.

While the voice in my head commended Golden Arrow for their making a difference in the lives of the Walking Bus “drivers”, a quieter voice inside shrank away in shame as it once again became confronted with the reality that people out there do still care. Unlike me, and the Hannibal Lecter I seem to have become.

Just as I had finished reading the newsletter and began staring off into space, wondering how far away the bus still was, I was startled by two guys standing next to me. The one, acting as the spokesperson for the two, sheepishly pointed my hands and asked,

“Does that have Walking Bus?”

It took a moment or two for me to register what he was asking, but I eventually realized he was referring to the Bus Buzz newsletter. Yes, I replied, opening the publication on the relevant page, handing it to him. He excitedly took it from me and showed it to his friend, and it seemed from his surprised reaction that Walking Bus was being featured for the second time in Golden Arrow newsletter. Still a little confused by the disturbance from my zoned out day trance, I looked up to see the one person beaming at me while pointing to the picture, then himself, saying,

“This is them – us, Walking Bus!”

It was at that point I noticed their uniforms – an orange tunic with the words Walking Bus emblazoned in yellow on each. As the two disappeared off excitedly into the night, both still glowing while they studied their photographs in the newsletter, the one turned around again, looked me directly in the eye and gave me the toothiest, proudest grin of achievement I have seen in a very long time.

I watched their darkened forms become shadowless silhouettes in the Cape Town city night as they made their way into the town, and something strange happened. There must have been a bizarre, temporary rise in the surrounding temperature because I touched my face to find a tiny trickle run down my left cheek. Almost as if somehow, somewhere, ice had momentarily melted.