Ellee Seymour

I love this story about how an internet campaign raised $10,000 dollars within four days to save a family from being evicted from their home. It shows how creative America is with its use of the internet in rallying support and raising desperately needed funds.

Under the headline, "Help a Family Keep Their Home," Jaki Greer pleaded with readers of her LiveJournal to donate just $1 dollar each to save her neighbours and friends Ebony and Daniel Sampson from losing their home.

This is how Fast Company reported Greer’s impressive campaign:

Greer talked about how her friends Ebony and Daniel Sampson were about to loose their home if they could not come up with $10K by December 8th. Ebony was a stay at home mom, caring for their two children, one with special needs that required medical care and special schooling. Daniel had recently lost his job. Ebony was also expecting a third child. Greer wrote “This bothers me because it shouldn’t happen to them. It shouldn’t be happening to anyone. But it hits me personally because she’s done so much to help so many people. After all, they’re both ministers who scraped together the money they had to help other people and now they don’t have anyone to turn to.”

Greer also launched an aggressive local media campaign. She called local news stations and asked them to do a human interest story on Ebony and Daniel Sampson’s dire situation. She asked fellow bloggers to reach out to the local news stations as well and blog about the Sampsons and the fundraising campaign. Furthermore, Greer invested time engaging her followers on LiveJournal by responding to their comments and updating them on the status of reaching the $10K goal. Greer’s plan worked. Within 48 hours bloggers posted articles about the Sampsons’ story and Channel 11 WBALTV did a profile about the effort to help them raise $10K to pay their over due mortgage. Greer met her $10K fundraising goal in just four days.

With unemployment in the UK set to soar next year leading to a threat of increased homelessness, and Shadow Housing Minister Grant Shapps‘ warning that 44% of mortgage holders are worried about being able to meet their mortgage payments over the next 12 months, I wonder how successful Greer’s campaign would be in the UK.

I wonder if we are as generous in the UK. Would you cough up to save a family from losing their home, particularly if they were strangers? This might be a one-off because the campaign was masterminded by an internet savvy friend, but it is still incredibly impressive. It certainly reminds us of the huge positive potential the internet can have if used cleverly.

Bravo Jaki Greer.

"Here’s a present for you mum!"

Those were David’s first words when he arrived home from uni for Christmas on Friday.

Instead of being given a lovely package to open, I was presented with a huge bag of dirty washing!

It made me smile. I know it sounds corny, but my best present had just walked through my front door. And I was thrilled because David is so happy. He passed his first exam and has a girlfriend who we hope to meet over the  festive break. I absorbed the happiness he was exuding. It was so infectious.

That kind of feeling is priceles. I would much rather have that rather than some of the ostentatious and obscene gifts which are on the market. What does it prove to anybody if you spend £12,400 on a diamond encrusted computer mouse for them? It shows that you’ve got more money than sense. I assume this kind of gift is for someone who already has a bank vault full of diamonds and it would just be an extra stocking filler.

And for those who really do have money to burn and want to splash out on some unique lingerie, would you really pay $122,000 on a diamond thong? How on earth would you wash it? You certainly couldn’t hang it on the washing line in case it got nicked!

I wonder what impact the credit crunch is having on Selfridge’s Wonder Room this year where hefty price tags are not for the faint hearted. It’s where you might find this kind of bling -if they haven’t sold out - limited edition Bluetooth headsets which are a snip at £6,250.

For thousands of newly redundant people, this year is not going to be a Merry Christmas. I’m thinking of my fellow journalists in Cambridge right now as a third of them in my former newsroom will hear in the next couple of days whether their jobs have been axed. Where will they find new jobs when the newspaper industry up and down the country has been doing laying off staff?  This is the most terrible, gut wrenching, worrying time for tens of thousands of jobless people who want to still give their kids a good Christmas.

This year, more than ever, we must remember our core values and families must support each other through the dark days ahead. It’s all we can do - and hope that the light at the end of the tunnel is not too far away.

I bet the kind of woman who has a diamond encrusted mobile phone bought for her doesn’t even have to wash a bag of dirty washing. Poor her….

Merry Christmas xxx

I wanted to update you with some great news. Our Headway Cambridgeshire patron John Hayes, a Shadow Minister, has won the prestigious parliamentary Charity Champion Award for disability.

John was stunned and thrilled with the award and I was there with our CEO Andrew Gardner. John beat two very worthy competitors, man-of-the-moment Damian Green,  who supports a charity which helps children and adults with severe speech problems, and Lee Scott, a campaigner for autism and Asperger’s Syndrome.

The even was hosted by a recently de-bugged Esther Rantzen, who told me that she is also a patron of Headway, and I am hoping we can invite her to our Cambridge centre.

The Christmas tree outside No 10 looked wonderful when my Robert Sturdy MEP and the Shadow Agriculture Minister James Paice presented a petition calling on the government to carry out a Europe-wide impact assessment on new pesticide legislation. They were joined by agricultural scientist Dr Ian Denholm, from Rothamsted Research, who presented a separate petition signed by 72 scientists from 11 countries.

It all seemed a world away when I went to my pilates class this morning, and then dashed into Iceland to buy Southern Fried Chicken to feed James and his friends this evening. The huge diversity is all part of the thrill…

Pic credit from Charity Champion Awards: Paul Heartfield.

Update: This is a  link to the video I made of the pesticide petition presentation at No 10.

I’m afraid blogging is going to have to take a back seat between now and the end of the year as I focus on meeting a crucial deadline for my publisher.

I also have important commitments as chair of trustees for Headway Cambridgeshire which supports adults with an acquired brain injury. Tomorrow I am in London attending a course for new chairs of charity trustees which is being held at the premises of distinguished law firm Farrer & Co.

Since I’ve taken on this role, I’ve participated in a CEO appraisal and organised a skills’ audit of the full board so members can be given appropriate and fulfilling roles on sub-committees.

I am also encouraging our very talented trustees to act as ambassadors for the organisation whenever possible to support  our fantastic CEO and service users.

In a couple of weeks I shall be joining one of our patrons, John Hayes, Shadow Minister of Innovation, Universities and Skills, at the Charity Champion Awards 2008 where he has been shortlisted to win an award. Jungle Queen (she is as far as I am concerned) Esther Rantzen will be hosting the event and I look forward to meeting her there.

I nominated John on behalf of Headway Cambridgeshire for the fantastic work he does in supporting us. I made a video which you can see here showing a fund-raising cricket match he held last summer in his Lincolnshire village.

I shall also be going to 10 Downing Street with my MEP Robert Sturdy to present a letter of petition calling for a Europe-wide impact assessment on new pesticide legislation which could devastate the agricultural industry. I wonder if it will  be as exciting as the last time I went there and met BBC political editor Nick Robinson standing on the doorstep and later bumped into the Mongolian Ambassador and explained to him the worrying situation of post office closures.

Now, I must get back to writing my next chapter ….

They are both iconic British retail emporiums which failed to keep up with modern times and maintain their public appeal.

But it’s still a sad day, a very sad day, to learn that both Woolworths and MFI (whose furniture can we joke about now?) have gone into administration.

This comes on top of reading today how 30 local journalists - a couple who I know - have lost their jobs at Anglia TV in a cost cutting shake-up by ITV to save £40m a year by axing more than 400 posts across its regional news service.

I remember escaping redundancy by the skin of my teeth at the Cambridge Evening News when the paper lost its lucrative estate agents advertising deal to a competitor. Who got the chop was decided on a "last in - first out" basis. My name was top of the list of those whose job was saved.

It is the most terrible gut wrenching, nerve wracking, depressing and demoralising experience. I lived on a very sharp knife edge for a few weeks and can imagine how desperately worried those thousands of poor souls must be feeling whose jobs are at risk.

It is truly a black Wednesday.