18-07-2010 | Posted by: Irene Dirks
Mandela day
Tags: mandeladay | nelson | mandela | 67 ways | irene |

Today is Mandela day!

At the London celebrations of Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday at Hyde park in June 2008, Mandela said: : “It is time for the next generations to continue our struggle against social injustice and for the rights of humanity. It is in your hands.”

After this it was decided to celebrate his birthday every year with a day dedicated to his life’s work to ensure that his legacy continues forever.

So what is Mandela day?

• Mandela Day is an annual celebration of Nelson Mandela’s life and a global call to action for people to recognize their individual ability to make an imprint and change the world around them.
• Mandela Day has been created to inspire people from every cor ner of the world to embrace the values that have embodied Nelson Mandela’s life – democracy; equality; reconciliation; diversity; responsibility; respect and freedom – for these are the values of Nelson Mandela and they are his legacy to the world.
• Mandela Day aims to showcase the work of the Nelson Mandela charitable organisations (Nelson Mandela Foundation; Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund; Mandela Rhodes Foundation) and raise monies to support their continuing work.
• By connecting people with ways to act on Nelson Mandela’s values, it aims to empower every individual to make an imprint on the world.
• The Mandela Day campaign message is simple: Nelson Mandela has given 67 years of his life fighting for the rights of humanity. All they are asking is that everyone gives 67 minutes of their time, whether it’s supporting your chosen charity or serving your local community.
• Mandela Day is a global social movement – an umbrella idea – that does not discriminate, it’s open and lets in and embraces every organization that does good, whilst enabling people to serve their community and improve their lives.
• The Mandela Day brand icon represents Mr Mandela’s hand and the passing of the torch to each of us and our individual ability to make an imprint on the world.
• Mandela Day is not a holiday – it is a day for all of us to opt in and show that we can all make an impact.

(source)

I think Mandela is such an inspirational person!

Sometimes I feel: how can we change? How can I make a change? And whenever I think of Mandela, I think WOW! He really did it! He made such a big change, not only for himself, but for the entire world!

Hopefully people will continue feeling inspired by him and really pick up the torch from him and try to make an imprint on the world!

I‘ve put 67 ways to change your world on the forum, so everyday can be a Mandela day!

It really is in your hands!

www.mandeladay.com
www.nelsonmandela.org/mandeladay/67_ways.html



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15-07-2010 | Posted by: Anne-Marie Van Dijk
Start
Tags: prince charles | uk | foundation | start | initiative |

Prince Charles recently started a wonderful new initiative through his non-profit, "The Prince's Charities Foundation."

Start is about changing your lifestyle, the way you live. By providing simple yet insightful tips, Start gives its interested viewers the tools to start making a difference in your every day life. How? By adopting small, eco-friendly practices one step at a time that inevitably lead to big-time changes. 

Geared toward the inhabitants of the UK, Start is for anyone and its educational videos can easily be accessed via their website.

The idea is to start with something simple. Something that resonnates with you : Take a look and see how you can Kick-Start your day! .......... Or should I say Life?

 

http://www.startuk.org/

01-07-2010 | Posted by: Irene Dirks
Join the PIPE!
Tags: water | bottles | join the pipe | waterprojects | irene |

Reading back the blogs from the past week, my eyes fell on the re-usable bottle blog from Lonneke and the Toxins blog from Anne-Marie.

I have to admit that I drink from old waterbottles ALL THE TIME!

I do always hate how you are unable to wash them and I felt a little guilty about switching them regularly because of that. Never ever did I hear about BPA before!

So I decided to find a replacement. And I found a PERFECT one!

I just bought two bottles from jointhepipe, this is a project from two Dutch designers that were shocked about how much water is wasted on one half of the world while the other half doesn’t have enough water!

They wanted to build a huge waterpipe to send the water there! Well, that was of course not quite possible, so they started a social tap water community.

They created bottles that resembled water pipe elements that could be cleaned easily and could be used for a lifetime! They would sell the bottles to the members of the community and use the money to fund water projects in Africa and Asia. They asked everybody to join the community and in April during earth month Aveda Benelux invited everybody to buy the bottles during the walk for water to buy another 6 waterpumps in Congo.

Since the start 722 people have joined the community, 3473 bottles were sold and 6 pumps were build. And over 10.000 people that didn’t have water now do have water to drink!

Isn’t that amazing!!

I’ll enjoy drinking my tapwater from now on for sure!!!

www.jointhepipe.org



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