The Great Football Giveaway - Happening now in Uganda

I wrote about the Great Football Giveaway a few months ago when I found out about it and donated a few balls - I think it's a brilliant idea!

Duncan Thomas and a team of volunteers have collected donations for 3000 footballs to give away in Uganda and they are in the middle of it right now, I wanted to share the email I received from them:

Hi Willem,

Well we’re approaching the mid point of The Great Football Giveaway in Uganda and finally have found somewhere where we can send you a quick update. We have been joined by our full team of volunteers – Paul & I, Beth, Lisa Ben & Rick, as we continue our journey across rural Uganda, traveling East to West.

In the first two weeks we have already visited over 50 schools in rural areas, many orphan centres, programmes for partially & severely disabled children, and linked up with a number of local NGOs. The passion that people have here for caring for their own is both extraordinary and inspirational. We have already distributed over 1,000 footballs and netballs direct to the children and the reactions have been breathtaking.

The majority of schools visited have had very poor resources and we have seen that those fortunate enough to have a football have often either borrowed it from a neighbouring school, or are using very old balls in poor condition. We have also had many opportunities to “stop & swap” homemade rag balls for those we have brought, with children in villages, or those playing by the side of the road. Reactions have varied from shock followed by excitement, to excitement followed by yet more excitement. So many smiles…

In brief everywhere we have gone across some of the most rural areas of Uganda, we have seen the kids go wild with joy and have often left a legacy of chaos and hysteria in the schools we’ve visited. The beginning of next week sees us leave the East of the country and travel in an arc across the north towards the hotter climate of the West. But more of the later… Thank you so much for the balls you’ve given us to give to the kids here. Already there are tens of thousands of children that will have enjoyed kicking & throwing them around and we still have another 2,000 balls to give away. Even if we had to return today, this project has already been a huge success, so thank you.

All the best

Duncan

A really inspiring project, and I encourage you to check out the site and the video.

The Visitor

I was lucky to be invited by a friend for a press screening of a movie yesterday, so I might as well write about it given it's the point.

And moreover because I thought this was an absolutely beautiful movie, definitely one of the best - if not the best - I've seen in a long time. The Visitor will be released in the UK on the 4th July and I really recommend everyone to go see it.

The movie is the story of a lonely man whose life is changed by the unexpected encounter with a Syrian musician in New-York and by the rediscovery of music and rythm in his life. There are a lot more to it than this and it's a really short sum up, though you can read more about the movie elsewhere (Future Movies review), and view the trailor here. I thought the shots and photography were beautiful and the acting is great. It deals with a lot of pretty tough topics in a very real way and at the same time is humourous, emotional, and overall very humane.

Playing Balloonacy

Not really news by now, but I love the new Poke campaign for Orange! I'm playing the game and I certainly intend for my camel to be a serious contender!!

Click here to support Socrates the camel, or click in the box on the right side bar =>

Just brilliant, I love playing games. The concept makes me think of PMOG a lot (which I'm completely addicted to - tell me if you'd like an invite for the Beta!). The web is turning into a gigantic playground interwoven in any site, and I think that's very cool ;o)

PMOG

I just found out about PMOG, the passively multiplayer online game, from Russell's blog, he sent me an invite and I'm already loving it!

I love games but never wanted to get into a MMORPG like World of Warcraft for fear of spending way too much time on it, but this is great, it just translates all the hours I spend surfing the web anyway into a game experience! It's still in Beta, but it looks pretty cool.

Tell me if you'd like me to send you an invite! Come and play!

Deezer

Just a quick snippet given I haven't written anything here in 3 weeks, need to get rid of the cobwebs and give this blog at least a semblance of life ;o)

Lots of things have been going on in April, and I'm not going to go over everything now, but this is my favourite find of the weekend, I went to Paris and Orleans and to visit some friends and family and one of my best friends converted me to Deezer - I'm loving it!

Deezer is a (French - woohoo!) online music service, way better than Last.fm or Pandora in that being a radio is only one of it's functions - it's also accessible wherever you live - and completely free! In addition to being able to search and listen to any title from a very large array of different artists, users can also create their own playlists and upload all their MP3 so that your whole music library can be available online anywhere, anytime. It also ha a strong community element, where you can make friends and then be able to listen to their own playlists, enabling people to hook up with people with similar music tastes and discover more bands.

My friend told me of a couple of occasions where he saved parties from dying by overtaking the host's computer, logging into Deezer and launching one of his wild party music playlists full blast ;o)

I'm just starting in the Deezer world, but check here if you want to be my musical friend!

That's my mate Jo aka BMF

Temporary Autonomous Arts Brighton 2008

Saturday, I went to the latest TAA (Temporary Autonomous Arts) event happening in Brighton (Portslade). The festival was on from the 2nd to the 5th April and my friend Ben stayed there for the whole thing.

In their words:

TAA's are free, open access art exhibitions that take place in disused and reclaimed spaces throughout the UK.

Reclaiming space that has no other immediate purpose, we will be repairing, making safe and improving the building we use before transforming it into a vibrant, organic, techno artistic statement. [...]

Artists, musicians, writers and performers who otherwise would have no outlet, are invited to display their work uninhibited by the normal constraints placed on the current artistic climate. The space will be used respectfully and intelligently, for genuine community development, creating fields of opportunity for a future at no cost or harm to anyone else. We want to exhibit all forms of artwork; drawings, paintings, sculptures big and small, photography, installations and more. Showcasing poets and vocalists, films and performance, words and concepts born out of the free party underground movement. These spaces of reclaimed freedom have been making a significant contribution to an alternative art world.

It was very cool, all sorts of beautiful and sometimes strange artworks were all over the place, from graffiti to metalworks, projection of short films, paintings, live music in the evening, good food, etc. All in a friendly atmosphere with some pretty interesting people, it was well worth it! I'll definitely be checking when it will be happening next year!

I uploaded some pics on Flickr, check them out here: link

iris & Contagious - Under the Influence

"We're turning the boring industry conference on its head and taking it out on the town"

Organised jointly by iris and Contagious, come round Borough Market in London on April 17th for some serious marketing/creative talks, booze, and inspiration!!



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Rather disturbing

I just randomly came across this ad that I found cool, though quite disturbing. It might be well known, but I'd never seen it before...

Funny spam

Few spam emails get in my main inbox, and I just thought this one was priceless - I least it's one of the most outrageous I've seen:

I am khalid mahmoud from Bahrain,I have been diagnosed with Oesophageal cancer.
It has defiled all forms of medical treatment,I have few months to live. I have decided to give alms to charity organizations. I cannot do this myself because of my health. I have Eighteen Million USD with a finance House abroad. Can you help me collect this deposit and dispatch it to charity organizations? You will take 20% for your assistance. reply via: xxxx@gmail.com

Computerised eating

I just found out about this restaurant in Israel that just introduced a network of touch screens on the dining tables, allowing customers to view the menu, order directly from there and interact with customers at other tables. It's pretty interesting stuff; I never heard of that before, I don't know if it was done elsewhere.

Later down the line they intend for the menu interface to be available online for customers coming in with their laptops as well. It's pretty cool though I have to say it could seem a bit cold as well - people might get more interested in the screen than talking with the people they're with... A bit like a table of people all thumbing away on their Blackberries - mostly messaging each other - which I find strange... Maybe I'm a bit old-fashioned when it comes to dining.
Check it out here - for some silly reason they disabled the embedding.