Blogladesh – Blogging for Save the Children

I’ve been keeping a secret from you. It’s a bit of a big one and it’s going to take me to the other side of the world. But first we need to back-track a little. First we need to do some Maths.

It’s always a bit hard to get your head round big numbers, I guess. When you start talking about nine million children, nine million children a year dying from preventable, poverty-related illnesses, it’s hard to engage which such a huge, impersonal number.

So, let’s start with one child. One mother. Whose child gets sick. Something simple like a tummy bug, most of which us parents have dealt with at one point or another with our own children. And the treatment that will cure it? Costs a couple of quid. Except THIS mother comes from one of the poorest countries in the world, one of 86% of the world’s population surviving on less than two dollars a day, or even one of 36% of the world’s population surviving on less than ONE dollar a day. If you’re this mother you’re probably dependent on your own young children to work and help bring in enough money to survive. Chances are your sick child is already severely underweight, and watching Kai go through a horrendous tummy bug earlier in the year I know how quickly even fit, chunky toddlers can lose weight and get dehydrated.

Your child needs help fast. But you can’t pay the doctor’s fees. And so you watch your child die. From something entirely preventable. You watch your child die not because they had a tummy bug, but because they were poor.

NOW times that by nine million. Every year.

Not good, is it? There is no way that can be right.

A couple of weeks ago, I and two other bloggers were approached by Save the Children UK. As a global organisation they’re doing more than almost any other charity to fight to make the above scenario a thing of the past, pushing the world’s leaders to meet the Millennium Development Goals they pledged their commitment to ten years ago.

These are achievable goals. We’re not talking huge amounts of money here, even in the economic down-turn of many countries. It’s less about money and far more about priorities. It’s about making the fact that so many poor children are dying every year a priority.

Not a lot to ask.

And they want the British Parent Blogging community, and our friends and supporters, to help them do it. To help raise awareness of their work and spread the word. To be able to tell our children that once it was normal for children to die of easily treatable illnesses but that WE CHANGED THAT.

To launch the campaign, in two weeks, Save the Children are flying myself, Sian from Mummy Tips and Eva from NixdMinx out to Bangladesh for a week, one of the most poverty-stricken countries in the world. We will be seeing their work first-hand, seeing what a difference just tiny amounts of intervention can make, talking to the mothers and children there and hearing their stories, and feeding the whole thing back to you, live, through our writing via our blogs, and via Twitter, photos, video, podcasts and other multi-media channels. It is an incredible opportunity, one we are hugely honoured to be a part of.

We hope that, with your support, we can reach a huge number of people through our work, spread our message far and wide and really make a difference, really start something special, and drive this campaign.

We hope you’ll join us on that journey.

For more information on our project see our webpage on the Save The Children website and pledge your support by adding the badge to your blog. And don’t forget to  read our blogs,  follow us individually on Twitter and via the #blogladesh hashtag for all the latest developments, and re-tweet what you can.

We are:

Josie, that’s me! @porridgebrain

Eva, NixdMinx, @nixdminx

Sian, Mummy Tips, @mummytips

@SaveChildrenPR

We’re going to have an amazing adventure. We can’t wait to share it with you and use it to do something extraordinary.

Thank you.

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