Pass it On! A world-changing meme

I’m delighted this morning to be helping to launch a new meme on behalf of Save the Children, along with the fabulous Red Ted Art Blog, combining a healthy dollop of potentially world-changing charity action with a bit of a challenge and crafty fun.

As you’ll know, art plays a big part in mine and Kai’s lives and is a huge part of how we both express ourselves. Encouraging Kai to paint and draw as a way of compensating for some of his communication difficulties has been really rewarding.

Since coming back from Bangladesh last year I have been so aware of how lucky Kai is to have been born where he was. Kai can sit with me and draw a picture of himself while I imagine a future for him and I know that there is every chance that he will get one, the chance to shine in whatever it is that he chooses. Here he has easy access to excellent healthcare and readily-available life-saving immunisations, but for many of the children and mothers I met when out visiting Save the Children’s work, that promising future was far from certain, with children often facing seemingly insurmountable barriers of poverty and disease. What’s most frustrating is that many of these barriers ARE preventable, with vaccines costing pence and just a few trained health workers within a community able to make an extraordinary difference.

The Campaign

At the beginning of the year I attended the launch of Save the Children’s most ambitious campaign to date as they bring into focus the fact that 8 million children a year are still dying from preventable diseases such as pneumonia and diarrhoea. For the next few weeks the No Child Born to Die campaign is shifting its focus on to vaccination programmes in developing countries and we need YOUR help to make some noise.

In June, David Cameron is hosting a hugely significant conference in London attended by world leaders. This meeting marks the chance to ensure the funding shortfall for vaccinations (4.7 billion) is met by all the donor countries – it might sound a lot but this easily achievable, even in the current economic climate. It just takes commitment from those in power and holds the potential to save the lives of millions of children.

Our #Blogladesh campaign last year proved that social media CAN make a difference, with our message reaching millions of people through Twitter, Facebook and news channels, leading to meetings with the Deputy Prime minister both here and in New York, and a petition hundreds of thousands of names strong.

Save the Children are building on this for the new vaccination campaign, taking three bloggers/ vloggers to Mozambique to follow the journey of a vaccine from the coldstore in the city right down to a rural community. They will write, make films and tweet about their experiences, the children and families they meet and the challenges of “cold” vaccinations in hot countries.

The bloggers going are diverse and I’m honoured to say include some good friends: Lindsay Atkin (@Liliesarelike) is a hugely popular YouTuber, Chris Mosler (@christinemosler) is an influential parenting blogger and Tracey Cheetham (@tchee) is a popular political blogger and recently elected councilor. You’ll be able to follow it all on Twitter using the hashtag #passiton, as well as through exciting content on other social media channels.

The Challenge

Our challenge back home is to help support this amazing trip but spreading word of the campaign and getting people to SIGN THE PETITION to put pressure on the government leaders to meet the funding shortfall for vaccines at the conference in June.

We thought a fun way to do this would be to get bloggers involved in a crafty meme that celebrates the increased chance our children have of a healthy life thanks to readily available vaccines.

Here’s how it works…

1) Get your child to either draw or craft a self portrait of themselves now or in the future, perhaps imagining what they will look like or what they might do. Check out Red Ted Art’s self portrait post on some tips to get started!

2) Sign the Save the Children petition and share news of it with your friends.

3) Write a blog post about it as soon as possible, featuring your children’s pictures and perhaps how you made them together, and including info about Save the Children and the petition. We want as many people linked up AND signed up the petition by Sunday 29th May 2011

5) Tag 8 blogging friends to do the same – #passiton!

6) Come back and link up your posts, either here or over at Red Ted Art, so we can all see each other’s posts and if you have time, go and leave some comment love on each others posts! It’s a blog-hop link-up so you can even publish the list of entries on your blog too.

We’re hoping to collect all the images at the end into a fantastic gallery, and stay tuned for news of some great prizes for the best efforts too!

Not been tagged yet? Do it anyway! Start another ‘chain’ of posts by starting us off with your own tagged friends. And even if you don’t feel like doing the challenge, just signing the petition, writing a post about the campaign, or helping to share and retweet news of the Mozambique trip will help make a huge difference.

Here’s who I’m tagging to get the ball rolling (it’s more than eight to get us started!):

Sticky Fingers

Patch of Puddles

My Daddy Cooks (can you and Archie come up with a foody creation?!)

Rosie Scribble

Are We Nearly There Yet Mummy?

A Mother’s Ramblings

Mocha Beanie Mummy

Little Stuff

Mari’s World

Who’s The Mummy

Kitschy Coo

Frugal Family

Tales From the Village

Baby Baby

Good luck and have fun!

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