When a plan comes together

It has hit me this weekend that things are finally happening! I've had that slightly nervous feeling that you get in your stomach when you think oh my God (or 'OMG' as my two girls say regularly) I've got a lot to get done!  And in moments of mild hysteria such as these I resort to list writing.  So, here's a list of all the things I've got to do:

• learn French by Wednesday (see next item)
• prepare for a week's work in Senegal (training 40 NGO personnel on children's participation) 
• worry about the flight, visa, getting a window seat (claustrrophobia), packing appropriate clothing for a Muslim country, buying 'good' presents for the girls
• write a concept note and budget for a funding bid worth $25,000
• write my blog
• investigate organising a charity trek in Nepal for Children Unite that I drag all my family on
• research suitable venues for a launch event 

As you can see, writing the blog is the least of it...but this blog is supposed to give me space to reflect on my week and, if I force myself to do this...give me a moment....

OK....I can see that although things have been gradually building up - over the past year in some cases - this week is the week it is all kicking off.  And, as list writing is my coping mechanism, here's another list of what happened this week:

• The funding for a new project was approved and I started working on it.  The proposal for this project was submitted in September last year. 
• I met with a group of former child domestic workers who were trafficked to the UK and will be helping them to launch a film they've made on child domestic work - I've been trying to set this meeting up for a year.
• I will be going to Nepal in March, along with Jonathan to discuss a future project with our Nepalese partner organisation - although this was a very recent opportunity, it was one of those things that we didn't think we'd actually pull off!  Tickets are booked now though.
• I had my brainwave (see last week's blog) and need to turn it into a proper proposal.

When things are HAPPENING, I have an energy, a buzz that tends to mean that more things happen, I find that ideas come through thick and fast and I have to stop myself from going off in a million different directions.  Figure out which ideas to follow through and which ideas are ridiculous and deluded (sounds familiar?!).  For example, the Nepal trip - in investigating what  Jonathan and I could do on our day off in Kathmandu I found an advert for a charity trek to the Everest base camp and thought that my dad would love that (for Children Unite obviously), then thought that actually my brother would also like that, and his fiance and my two uncles and an aunt and my sister....and, of course, that I would like to do that too.  (We're a bit of a mountain loving family).  So, I'm now investigating how I could organise a family charity trek (with half of the group in their 40s and the other half in their 60s) in the Himalayas.

I love this feeling though!  I love it when a plan comes together - to coin a phrase from a much loved childhood TV show; and it feels like this is the week when some quite long held plans/dreams have come together!

A la semaine prochaine mes amis (had to google translate this though just to check!)

News report on child domestic workers in Pakistan

IRIN Asia | PAKISTAN: Child domestic workers at risk of violence | Pakistan | Children | Food Security | Human Rights

This brainwave is deluded, ridiculous, good?

I had one of those in-the-middle-of-the-night-brainwaves this week...it was exhausting! The brainwave struck me at 2.16 am and I was still amending it's minor details at 4.46 am. I had to write it down as soon as possible and, over the course of the week, have explained it to neighbours, trustees, work colleagues, my sister-in-law, my kids - even the cats have probably overheard me banging on about it. You see, I have to check it was a good brainwave and not a deluded one. (I've had previous brainwaves that, in the cold light of day, have proved to be deluded and ridiculous!)...shall I tell it to you?

Oh alright then you've twisted my arm...the thing that is missing from Children Unite at the moment is a 'campaign' - a social action campaign. And the obvious thing to campaign about is a new international convention on domestic work that the International Labour Organisation is introducing. Children Unite together with Anti-Slavery International are bringing six child domestic workers to the International Labour Organization's annual conference in Geneva this June. These six children will lobbying like mad for this new convention to include measures that will protect children in domestic work from exploitation. In the middle of the night I was struggling with how the wider public could connect to the six child domestic workers and their lobbying efforts. I needed to find a way of explaining the legislation that is not too technical, not too complicated and relates somehow to child domestic workers' realities.

And the answer was....rubber gloves! All the tasks that child domestic workers undertake are with their hands - cleaning, cooking even looking after children. Children's hands are more sensitive than adults - they have much more need for protective gloves (and I remember some of the girls in Peru showing me their hands, which had sores and rashes from the harsh chemicals they had to use). This convention can protect child domestic workers from exploitation in the same way that rubber gloves protect your hands from harsh chemicals. I had visions of writing messages on gloves or on hands, drawing on hands, children telling the story of their hands to explain their life as a domestic worker, clapping hands, soothing hands, waving, shaking and caring hands! (that was the stuff that was keeping me awake at 4.46!) There's obviously a bit more to the campaign idea than this but the glove-hand idea is the foundation of it.

I want to connect this vision of gloves and child domestic work to the wider public through the internet - Facebook, Twitter, blogging and am still working on this bit of the brainwave so let me know if you have any brainwaves yourselves and please answer the questionnaire:

This brainwave is:

c Deluded

c Ridiculous

c Good

The importance of how

I was cleaning the bathroom just now (literally 3 minutes ago) and realised I hadn't written my weekly blog - I think this is the first week that I've completely forgotten.  Even during Christmas and New Year I was figuring out how I'd fit it in with festivities...I'm afraid it's not going to have many jokes in it either as the reason I forgot about my blog is that I've been distracted by the sad news of a work colleague who was killed in a crash as he was cycling to work last week.  It was such a shock, it's rocked me a bit and I can't seem to get out of it.

I don't feel in much of a position to reflect on my week and make some witty comment.  I suppose when someone fit and healthy suddenly dies it makes you reflect on your life rather than your week!  Last night I watched the film 'Biutiful' where a man is given two months to 'get things in order' before his cancer kills him (perhaps not such a wise choice of a film given my week?!).  It makes you wonder whether, if you'd had this kind of news, what you would need to put in order. Would you change your life radically, tell people that you loved them, regret things you hadn't done, be a nicer person generally?  I don't really know where I'm going with this, especially in terms of Children Unite but, hey, these are my thoughts on the week I've had, so I suppose I ought to just go with the flow.  One thought I've had this week is that I'm pleased that Children Unite is not EVERYTHING to me, I know that's not what you're supposed to say when you're setting up something - you're supposed to be committed, driven, ambitious....to be hungry for success!?  However, Jonathan and I have always wanted Children Unite to be a part of who we are not everything.  In particular we want it to work with our family life and the care of our two daughters.

And some learning I would like to impart from the participatory work I've been involved in - is the importance of HOW you work over WHAT you achieve through this work.  In particular , how did you treat people along the way, was it with respect?  I would contest that in participatory work, if you don't treat people with respect along the way, whatever you achieve is pretty meaningless.   And if you get given a life sentence of two months such as this man in Biutiful you can't really change how you've treated people - you could make amends to people you had treated badly I suppose but it would seem disingenuous or motivated by guilt.  So what can I learn from this?  I guess, how I live is important to me, so Children Unite needs to reflect this fact.  This does actually connect to some of the work I was  doing this week - writing Children Unite's child protection policy (I know, I know it should have been done months ago).   Child protection is important to me and so I didn't just want to use someone else's policy and replace their name with Children Unite's so I spent a couple of days figuring out what should be in it and developing a draft which will be discussed by our Trustees etc.  I have to confess to doing the 'find and replace' thing with some other policies I've been drafting though!!  I guess we're all a little bit selective about when we want the 'how' to be important?!

Ode to Trustees

We're currently advertising for a Treasurer...and this has got me thinking of how important and supportive our Trustees have been over the last year.  One of our Trustees, Rupert, kindly stepped into the breach at our last Board meeting to become a temporary Treasurer (which we were all delighted about as whenever the issue was raised there had been a discernible lack of eye contact!).  So, we burst into a spontaneous round of applause and boaters (virtual) were thrown in the air at the news!  But we really need a qualified accountant to be our Treasurer and while Ru is certainly the quickest and brightest of us with figures (and works in the finance industry so he's good at the gab too) - he ain't no accountant.   So the advert is being put about and I'm wondering what it would be like to have a 'stranger' in our midst.

At the moment our trustees are a mixture of ex work colleagues, neighbours and friends.  Most of them didn't know each other before becoming trustees but Jonathan and I knew them all.  We announced to them that we had a new baby (Children Unite) and would they help deliver it!  So, being good mid-wives they've seen Children Unite's birth as a registered company, then a registered charity and they've followed our first project last year with much interest.  They've had to learn about this mid-wifely role of trustee, the legal obligations and the honorary positions.  They've advised us on a strategic plan, a business plan, a fundraising plan.  They've also discussed our branding ad nauseum - the implications of a slightly greener tone than we currently have to our logo, the use of the word 'voice', 'a voice' or 'voices' in our strapline.  And I want to thank our trustees for all their advice and support (and the lovely snacks they bring to the meetings!)  I know that many of them will say (have said) that they feel they haven't contributed much or that they don't have the right experience (of working in the children's rights field) but, I want to say honestly - that it doesn't matter....their support and warmth and encouragement makes them the heart of the Children Unite team.

I have literally been on my own for much of the time I've been setting up Children Unite - but I have not felt alone.  Sometimes, I have to admit, it's only because a Trusteee meeting is coming up that I have attempted to do the boring things like update our conflict of interest policy (er still haven't done that one actually!).  But, othertimes, the comraderie of the meetings and the texts and emails and individual stuff that has happened in between reminds me that I'm part of a team. So, thanks trustees for helping to deliver Children Unite...I guess it's a toddler now, taking it's first steps!  And, although I don't suppose you'll thank me for it (but as only one of you has signed up as a follower to the blog most of you see it! Ha) I'm going to 'out' you all through the medium of photographs!

Here they are - our beloved Trustees (in no particular order)!  And just to be fair I've added mine and Jonathan's photos on elsewhere on the blog (hidden away somewhere!).

Liston

Susi

Randini

Rupert

Mariela

Nikhil

Rapping by the seat of my pants

Well here I am writing my blog without typing it up first and getting it checked by Jonathan.  I'm flying by the seat of my pants! And I don't know what to say after that!  But I feel my posts have been a little intense of late...not enough jokes in them.  After all you can't have worked for some of the organisations I've worked for (one of which had a VERY silly name) without a sense of humour.  I think many people believe that if you're working for a charity you need to be earnest and intense (and boring).  But I've found that actually, when you're working on an intense issue, you NEED a sense of humour to get you through.  And, in the participatory work I've done with children I found that taking this sense of humour to the limit - i.e. humiliating yourself by dancing like a loony (which seems to be my particular form of ritual humiliation) wins you brownie points all round.

I've been thinking a lot about the difference between working with adults and children this week as I've been writing some training on children's participation.  At Children Unite, we decided we wanted to promote participative work with children in everything we do - which is not just because it's the new empowerment thing to be doing (it's not that new).  It is because, to be frank, participative work with children is exciting, it makes you think more creatively, you end up doing things you never thought you'd do (dancing like a loony), you are ALLOWED to have a lot more fun and the food is generally good.

So, I think all 'work' should be participative in nature (given the latter definition which I know is not actually a definition of participative work but, hey, this is a blog and I'm flying by the seat of my pants here).  I guess, as far as Children Unite is concerned, it's up to me to make this one of our policies.  Mmmm... I quite like that idea...a policy on 'fun in the workplace'.  Today, for example, instead of working solidly in front of my computer for six hours I should have had a break after every hour and composed a rap about practice standards of children's participation then performed it.  That would have been fun! And my daughter pointed out a rhyming dictionary to me recently so I know you can rhyme quite a lot with 'participation' - 'emancipation' 'infestation' and 'constipation' for example!  I'm sure those words would have come in handy!!

I don't quite know how to round this post off though - perhaps with thanks for the jokes I've shared over the past week with my colleagues. Particularly those with our Trustees at our first Board Meeting of 2011 where we had lots of laughs in appointing a Chair and Treasurer - who both have a good sense of humour! Perhaps also with a TERRIBLE pun I've just thought of...it was no Bored Meeting!  Arg! (Yes, yes I agree - I'll stick to dancing like a loony to get a laugh!).

Quietly glowing magic

I had a bit of a magical start to 2011.  At midnight I was on a rooftop balcony overlooking London with friends and family, we lit two paper lanterns and released them into the night. They gently floated up into the sky – little glowing balls that joined around twenty other lanterns from other people (they were pretty popular this year).  In amongst the different sets of fireworks from people’s back gardens was a steady stream of quietly glowing, floating balls that were just magical to watch!

Like most people over Christmas and New Year I’ve eaten chocolate for breakfast (as well as the usual dinner and tea), made promises I know I can’t keep and been amazed at how quickly the last twelve months have gone. 

It has been a truly amazing year for me though – I’ve travelled to India, Togo and Peru, meeting the staff and children of Children Unite’s partner agencies.  And, together with five child domestic workers, have lobbied delegates at the International Labour Organization’s annual conference at the UN in Geneva.  I’ve worked for the first time with my partner (Jonathan) which did feel a bit weird but I’m comfortable with it now!  In fact, working with the whole team for this project – Rose, Keren, Audrey and Mariela, has been a fantastic experience.  And then, in September, Children Unite got registered charitable status (and I actually understand our Memorandum and Articles of Association!!) and, last but in some ways least, I left my paid job to focus on setting up Children Unite full-time.  I feel truly, truly lucky to be in this position – especially when so many of my friends are facing redundancy or worse. 

When I look back over the year I am reminded of the quietly glowing, magical, floating balls.  I think I was expecting the excitement of fireworks when I finally left my job to set up Children Unite – but in actual fact, it’s been a bit of a slog since September.  The most exciting time was earlier in the year when I was working with child domestic workers abroad – especially in Geneva when I could see the children’s skills and confidence growing day-by-day.  And I thought ‘Wow, I’m part of this!’.  But it was a humbling, quietly glowing kind of magic – like the New Year lanterns – rather than the noise and excitement of fireworks.

So, I think my key learning from this year is not to underestimate the slow magic of quietly glowing, floaty, things!  And I love the idea of thousands of quietly glowing, floaty magic being released into the night for everyone to share.