2010 World Cup - Outside the Stadium – young people’s alternative channel

If you need a break from watching the fortune of our boys in South Africa, take a look at Outside the Stadium,  “the 100% unofficial video channel for the 2010 World Cup”. 

Made by young people from a community football programme in Paarl, Outside the Stadium takes a look at the life of young people from the underprivileged Paarl East region and the impact the tournament has on their lives.

Throughout the tournament, Outside the Stadium is showing videos filmed and produced by young people about growing up in the townships, the local football scene and the world cup.  They have already shown videos on what local  students think about the World Cup coming to South Africa; about alcohol misuse, which is common in Paarl: and the excitement around the arrival in Paarl of the World Cup’s trophy.

 The youngsters are also running a parallel tournament mirroring the real world cup with the final played on the same day. 

The children are part of the Community Football Programme, which uses football as a means to address social issues faced by children from the area, such as family breakdown, restricted access to education, gang and drug culture, unplanned teenage pregnancy and high youth unemployment levels.


So far 20 local coaches have been given support and training to improve their skills. There are now over 30 boys teams in the U13, U15 and U17 leagues and 16 teams in the girls’  league, and plans to increase the number of coaches and teams. The 1200 children in the programme also have the support of ‘life skills’ coaches who work alongside the football coaches.  The organizers hope to eventually build three full-sized and two junior pitches, a permanent office building, with storage and changing facilities and a large playground for younger children.

The Community Football Programme is run by WER in partnership with Monte Christo Ministries (MCM).  World Emergency Relief (WER) is a leading international child relief and development organisation.

Iran Green Revolution – one year on

Remember Neda

It is a year since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's bitterly disputed re-election sparked the Iran's Green Revolution, and the Green movement is down but not out.

Sporadic demonstrations in Tehran and other Iranian cities have been reported over the weekend, but a massive security presence prevented any larger gatherings to mark the first anniversary of the stolen election.

Last year, people came on to the streets in their millions in a spontaneous outburst of anger.

Since then, the opposition have been steadily battered into submission, beaten up when they demonstrate on the streets, arrested, tortured and abused in prison, and even executed.

Faced with such a brutal repression, the Green movement is a long way down – but not out.

In its new report From Protest to Prison – Iran One Year After the Election, Amnesty International reviews a year of arrest and detention of those who have spoken out against the government and its abuses. The report marks the launch of a one-year campaign calling for the release of prisoners of conscience held since the disputed 2009 election and ensuing repression. 

Hundreds of people remain detained for their part in the June 2009 protests or for expressing dissenting views. The imprisonment of ordinary citizens has become an every day phenomenon in an expanding ‘revolving door system’ of arbitrary arrest and detention. Those with only tentative links to banned groups as well as family members of former prisoners have been subjected to arbitrary arrest in the past year.

Lawyers, academics, former political prisoners and members of Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities have also been caught up in an expanding wave of repression that has led to widespread incidents of torture and other ill-treatment along with politically motivated execution of prisoners. 

Don’t  forget them.

Take action. To call all on the Iranian government to release prisoners of conscience detained since the 2009 election, click here.

Watch the American film For Neda on YouTube.

A Child from Everywhere – a kaleidoscope of multicultural Britain

Alissa, Dominica Caroline Irby

Three years ago Khulan lived a nomadic life on the Mongolian steppe, sleeping in a yurt and herding sheepand camels; Mansury fled the war in Rwanda; Oumou had only seen a white person once in Mali…Now, they go to school in Leicester, Manchester and London.

Sibongile from South Africa says she got moody since living in the UK; Lukas dreams about Lithuania and misses his friends and his grandma; Amna from Bahrain feels happy and at home here: “People don't judge me, they're just accepting.”

In her new book, “A Child from Everywhere”, award-winning photographer Caroline Irby has interviewed and photographed a child from 185 countries living in the UK.

The children, aged from nought to 16, talk about their expectations of the UK, feelings upon arrival, cultural differences, ideas on community and family, and thoughts on their future, along with details on their everyday life. Their short, simple statements - sometimes thoughtful, sometimes moving or funny - paint a multi-layered picture of being an immigrant in the UK and the worlds they have left behind. Caroline’s pictures reflect that too. The 185 portraits are all very different - close up, in action, happy, reflective, casual, carefully composed, cropped, bright, tonal, inside, outdoors – each conveying strong feelings, each moving and incredibly beautiful.

I’ve worked with Caroline in Guinea, Haiti and elsewhere, and noticed how naturally drawn to children she is. “I tend to tell the story through the children I meet. I feel that they give the most sensitive, and maybe more accurate expression of what is happening in almost any given situation,” she says.

Caroline has photographed children all over the world, but found one of her most extraordinary stories right here. “The United Kingdom has long been a focus of immigration, but whereas in the past there have been concentrated influxes from isolated areas, we now have almost all the world converging on one place - we have an unprecedented demographic event unfolding right here.”

Of the estimated 565,000 migrants who arrive in the UK each year, 26,000 of them are children. The numbers are often analyzed in the media, but for every number there's a story. “There are stories dancing around in playgrounds across the country and they are seldom told,” she says. “I learned, from talking to all these children, that they rarely speak about where they have come from or what they've been through. And I think we should take the opportunity to ask and listen to them: we can learn a lot on the subject of globalization no less than any other.”

She was surprised that some of the children from war-torn countries were so uninformed about the situations they had left. “I soon realised, through talking to their parents, that this occurs because the parents want to protect their children from the past, want them to start a new life here and to integrate with children who have not experienced similar trauma.”

One of the most recurrent themes in the children's interviews was that they miss their grandmothers. “They miss their friends, their food, their animals and homes, but it was almost always the Grandmas they said they miss most - I'd say 90% of the children gave me that answer.”

I used to play with my Granny, and my Granny would teach me lessons about life: how to be careful because there was a war in my country. I was crying on my way into the airport: every time I turn my back, I feel like seeing my Grandma.

Israel, 10, Congo (DRC), Southampton

Another recurrent theme is the lack of community the children see in this country. In many of the countries they have come from they know their neighbours intimately, and depend on them. People look after each other.

In Lebanon the neighbours eat with each other: all the people is brothers and sisters. Here not all the neighbours speak with each other but there is something beautiful: people speak with you in a nice way. They can't be mad very fast. They don't fight, they are peaceful.

Rabie, 15, Lebanon, Leicester

“A Child From Everywhere” started as a commission from Guardian Weekend magazine to find a child from each of the 192 countries in the world (as recognized by the UN as sovereign states) now living in the UK. It took Caroline a year and a half to find 185 of them - through schools, GP surgeries, refugee groups, religious organizations, football teams, embassies and more. To meet them, she crisscrossed the country from Orkney Isles to the Isle of Wight and from Belfast to Cornwall - in the process, experiencing the hospitality of families from every continent. “I was given both a glimpse into the countries from which the children came and a 185-layered image of my own country.”

A Child from Everywhere is published by Black Dog Publishing. To order a copy of the book, click here or here

Mass Observation – Ordinary People Tell the Story of the NHS

Since my last posting, I’ve been looking more into Mass Observation and it’s fascinating – it’s like taking a peek at our yesterdays. This new Mass Observation Archive research looks at the experiences of ordinary people and their opinions of their care over the first 60 years of the National Health Service.

Despite the numerous worries, gripes and moans down the decades, the British public has always supported the founding principle of the NHS - free, universal healthcare at the point of delivery, and funded by taxation - and it still does, say research authors Linda Lamont and Fran McCabe.

The study, '60 years of the NHS: Ordinary People Tell the Story', aims to contribute to a patients' history of the NHS by highlighting how expectations have changed over the decades and people's positive and negative experiences of the health service.

The material provides colourful and sometimes touching personal accounts of people's encounters with the NHS at three points in its history: 1949, 1997 and 2008. These accounts are taken from the Mass Observation Archive, kept at the University of Sussex, which specialises in material about everyday life in Britain. Short extracts have been chosen from among hundreds of vividly written responses to illustrate themes, such as hospital care; general practice; dental services; older people, including dementia; as well as contemporary ethical issues, such as organ donation, fertility treatment and assisted dying.

'Bring back 'Matron' and the smell of carbolic soap'

'We both dread the thought of becoming cabbages. I feel strongly that my life is mine to dispose of as and when I will.'

The NHS was launched in July 1948. Prior to that, healthcare was provided by a mixture of private, municipal and charity schemes. This led to inequalities between different regions, with many people unable to afford healthcare.

In the 1949 records, the report shows - unsurprisingly - that people were grateful for the services they had not been able to afford before the NHS began. By 1997, and increasingly in 2008, people's expectations are higher and they are more prepared to be critical when their needs are not met.

Better care for elderly patients, fear of infections caught in hospital wards, changing nursing standards and dislike of mixed wards are among the concerns raised by patients in these more recent responses.

'I cannot say how strongly I believe that the care which we inflict upon our elders will become, in history, the scandal of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.’

The report was compiled by Linda Lamont and Fran McCabe, two historians and retired NHS professionals, who are running a series of seminars about their work this year.

"The Mass Observation material gives us an absorbing and vivid perspective of the NHS going back to its birth. We should not forget that despite its problems, without the NHS many people, especially those without means, would not be alive today,” says Fran McCabe, who spent 40 years working in health and social care and holds an MA on the history of the NHS through general practice from the University. 'Over many long years there has been a definite improvement in treatments, waiting lists and patients rights. But a deterioration in cleanliness, friendliness and nutrition'

Turning pain to power – Women of DRC

When we hear/read about the Congo (DRC), it is usually terrible stories, particularly those involving women. My own blog entries are no different. But recently there is a sense that things are shifting a bit – women are taking things into their own hands and among all the pain and devastation, there are shoots of hope.

• There is City of Joy in Bukavu, a place conceived and created by women to provide women survivors of sexual violence “a place to heal emotionally as they rebuild their lives, turn their pain to power, and return back into their communities to lead.” City of Joy will provide group therapy, self-defense, theatre, HIV/AIDS and family planning, horticulture and economic empowerment to up to 180 women a year. It is a project of V-Day and UNICEF, in partnership with Panzi Foundation. To find out more, watch this short, powerful video.

• Another source of hope is the Heal My People programme at HEAL Africa, a Congolese relief organization centered in Goma. The programme was launched by Jeanne Muliri Kabekaty, known as “Mama Muliri” to her friends and colleagues, and its aim is to turn women from victims into survivors and eventually into strong women of the community and the hope of the future of Congo.

In this interview below, Mama Muliri explains what this means. (The interview was translated by HEAL’s Executive Director Judy Anderson and posted on the PeaceXPeace network. (To listen to the whole interview, click here.)

“Let me tell you about the work we are doing with women who had real pain, real sorrow. You know the stories of what had happened to women but what we were really concerned about is that they not live with the stories of their past as victims of sexual violence.

When we first started they were victims but then we said they’re no longer victims because these women that we have been working with have been cared for medically, their emotional state has improved. We started thinking: what other words can we use? We started calling them survivors. We thought: survivors, well yeah they are survivors but how long are they going to be survivors? How many years can they live as survivors? Where does that leave them? We need to give them a way to show how strong they can be and we want them to think of themselves as strong within the community. We want to also change the name.

How will that name change? They need to be strong enough to do hard work. It also has to be work that they can do well and that they can see the value of and the worth of. We work with women and then when they return home we put them with the other women in the communities so that they are all strong together. The women that come back have strength that is accepted and valued in the community and they can work together for their own futures. They can do handiwork, they can work in the gardens, they can sell small items in markets. They find a way to see themselves again as a woman, like the other women in the community.

These women also learn how to accept each other and welcome each other. The women that had a terrible experience during the war are no longer pointed out with the finger, “See that one.” The women that we have worked with, that we have helped heal are now with their other women in community. They are working together.

So we have buried the word victim. We have buried the word survivor. Now these women are called the strong women of the community. They are the hope for the future of Congo. These women have buried their pasts and they are going into the future. What we see is that if in the next two or three years we have no more wars Congo will have a whole different look. And that is why we women are standing together to say: NO MORE WAR. If somebody comes to us proposing another war for another reason we will stand together and say: No More. Enough is enough."

Keep a diary for just one day – Mass Observation on 12th May

I’d like to pass on this message for the UK Mass Observation project. It sounds fascinating and fun!

Would you keep a one-day diary for Mass Observation on Wednesday 12th May 2010?

In 1937, Mass Observation called for people from all parts of the UK to record everything they did and thought from when they woke up in the morning to when they went to sleep at night on 12th May. The resulting diaries provide a wonderful glimpse into the everyday lives of all sorts of people in the late 1930s. They are stored, with many other diaries and papers, at the Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex.

As it happened 12th May 1937 was the day of George VI's Coronation and many people wrote about being involved in this national event. May 12th 2010 is likely to be quite an ordinary day but we would still like to have your diaries.

Write as much as you can about what you do, who you meet, what you talk about, what you eat and drink, what you buy or sell, what you are working on, the places you visit, the people you meet, the things you read, see and hear around you and of course what you yourself think.

Anyone from any part of the UK whatever your age or background is welcome to send us a diary but it must be in electronic form!

How to take part:

- Diaries should be no more than 750 words

- Diaries MUST be in electronic form - emails or email attachments

- You should include a brief self portrait: your age, where you live, who you live with - if anyone, your present job or occupation if you are working and any other information that you think is important to record. We need this as background to your diary

- If 12th May was a typical day for you please say so. If not, please say why it wasn't. Any reflections on the day and on how you felt while keeping the diary always welcome

- So that we can add your diary to the rest of the Archive for the future, please include the statement below at the end of your diary (not within the 750 word limit). If you don't attach this statement, we won't be able to keep your diary or make it part of the Archive.

"I donate my 12th May diary to the Mass Observation Archive. I consent to it being made publicly available as part of the Archive and to it being reproduced in full or in part on the MOA website, on other websites and in publications as approved by the Mass Observation Archive Trustees".

To submit you diary email to: moa@sussex.ac.uk

We can't thank you personally for your diary but keep an eye on www.massobs.org.uk for news of the project.

The Book of UnCommon Prayers

A friend of mine, who works as a writer in residence in prison, has edited a moving and beautiful booklet - “The Book of UnCommon Prayer”, a collection of personal prayers and reflections by inmates at HMP Grendon (Cat B secure) and Spring Hill (Cat D open prison).

“They say that when men go into prison, they find either the gym or God,” says Jane Bidder. “When I first arrived as writer in residence of HMP Spring Hill, I was slightly bemused (and confused) to find that this was indeed true. Every morning, from 8am onwards, I would hear loud sounds of activity from inside the gym. Meanwhile, only a few feet away, was the chaplaincy…”

She asked her students to write an individual, personal prayer, and if they didn’t have a religion, it could be a private reflection.

To her surprise, lots of men wanted to contribute. Their voices are extremely varied – some are simple, others formal and a bit predictable, and others fresh and moving. Staff at both prisons contributed too. The book counts about 70 prayers and their authors describe themselves as Muslims, Catholics and Christians, as well as one Jew, Hindu, Church of England, Church of Scotland, Rastafarian, Buddhist, Lutheran, Quaker, Seventh Day Adventist and Jehovah’s Witness – some practicing, others lapsing and others without religion - a fascinating array of religions and beliefs all in one place!

Here are extracts from a few prayers:

“Because of my past life as a thief.

I feel kinda numb; I’d like time to fly.

I want peace of mind; I want to know why.

I pray that my tariff will come to an end

And I can go home to family and friends.”

Paul, brought up as a Catholic

“When trouble wells within and my soul

screams for release,

I walk alongside the still waters of his peace.”

Noel, a Seventh Day Adventist

The book (ISBN 978-1-905373-29-1) is published by BAR NONE Books, the publishing arm of the Writers in Prison Network, a charity founded in 1992 to bring writers in residence at various prisons across the country. They believe that “prison does not have to be simply a place to deposit criminals. It can also be a foundation for prisoners' future lives and the writers show how exploration of the written and spoken word can provide a gateway to change.”