Ellee Seymour

Vicky Ford is writing some brilliant reports on her mission to Africa, to the beautiful country known best for its genocide, to Rwanda where she - and other Conservatives - are helping improve the lives of those living in abject poverty. I know it will be a truly unforgettable and moving experience.

The aspiring MP is among Project Umubano in Rwanda, a team of Shadow Ministers, MPs and volunteers who David Cameron will be joining next week. They are spending two week on activities ranging from rebuilding a school, to teaching football and cricket to young people.

Vicky is enthusiastically helping refurbish the existing classrooms and build a new one. She has been told that in Rwanda, 50% of children never finish primary school, therefore the teachers try to really teach these tiny pre-schoolers as much as academic work as possible even at such a young age.

Project Umubano in Rwanda is a major social action scheme designed to help bridge the “obscene” wealth gap between the world’s richest and poorest nations. This is one of her recent posts, I am in total awe, I would so love to be there too:

“Our project in Rwanda is now moving incredibly quickly. A bit of background information. The Girubuntu project was initially set up in 1994 to provide an orphanage for survivors of the genocide. Some of the orignal survivors still live at the site, others come back during university breaks, others have moved on. Also on the site is the pre-school, currently for 80 children most of whom are orphans themselves.

“Yesterday I met the children. At the pre-schools I have helped in the UK a lot of time is spent in play. We believe that children will learn a lot about themselves, the world, and how to interact with others through playing. In the UK children have lots of time for academic study later. However here in Rwanda I have been told that 50% of children never even finish primary school, therefore the teachers try to really teach these tiny pre-schoolers as much as academic work as possible even at such a young age. They are also being taught English and French - even though outside school they speak “Kinynaranwda”.

“The state of the “classrooms” was really sad with crumbling walls and leaking roofs. Working alongside local people we are completely refurbishing the existing classrooms and building a new one to allow the school to grow. We start at 7am each morning. I have been plastering, helping to put in new electrics and planning decorations which I hope will be fantastic.It is an incredibly interesting country and with 20 different projects going on at the same time the conversation over dinner each evening is non-stop. Some of us are working with the country’s top lawyers, some are working with street children and there is everything in between. What an opportunity to see a country through so many different peoples’ eyes.”

The pic shows Vicky, (she is on the left), and was taken just before her flight to Nairobi with Nicola, a flautist, who will be running a music programme in a school and is equipped with30  recorders and recorder books. And there is also Kitty, who will be working on a VSO project with young people. Her backpack is stuffed full of condoms and educational leaflets.

Vicky kindly put my name forward to join this very special trip, but it was oversubscribed, I was not lucky. But Iain was and I know he will produce some great videos and reports from there. I  felt you would be kicking yourself if you missed out on Vicky’s posts too, they are worth a daily read.

I’m sure many special lifelong friendships will be made from this unforgettable trip, the memories will remain with everyone for ever. And, as Vicky observes, what a different world it is there, it makes me feel ashamed that we take so much for granted when I read something like this:

“Nicola, who came here to teach music, has found herself teaching excel and word every day to 40 pupils in their late teens and twenties. The class shares two ancient computers. She made them some cardboard keyboards last night - they are over the moon! What a different world.”

I have just returned from an Anglia TV reception in Cambridge with the local great and the good where the company said  they would loan out video cameras if anyone wanted to record an event, encouraging them to be citizen journalists. 

I turned to Bob Pearson, Director of Communications at Cambridgeshire County Council, and described to him my vision for citizen news networking, which could be a vital lifeline to communities during an emergency, from floods and terrorist attacks, to major road accidents and even petrol shortages.

I would like to see a major organisation in each town or city, such as the  local authority or leading newspaper, host a forum where people could interactively communicate and share news during a disaster. This would be used by all the emergency services as well to provide the latest updates.

Local people would be able to report their personal accounts, others would respond with theirs. Even if some people at the centre of a crisis were unable to access it personally, the chances are someone from their family would be able to and could pass on the latest news. The citizen news networking site would be well publicised so everybody knew of it, that it was their key website to turn to during an emergency.

Bob totally dismissed the idea, saying something like this was ”years and years away” and asked: “What about Mabel from Manea?” So I asked him how was she going to get her news anyway and he said from her children. I tried to persuade him he could be the first in the country to do this, but my words fell on deaf ears. He simply could not visualise the benefits of a local authority run interactive forum for communities during an emergency.

Do you think in this digital day and age that such an idea is light years away? Wouldn’t it be so much easier if there was one local site used by all emergency services to provide the latest news bulletins and advice and where people could also interact?

Update: Well done to Cheltenham Borough Council for setting up a blog for flood victims. And well done to Dizzy for spotting it.

I had been hoping Conservatives would come at least second in the Ealing Southall by-election, but coming third was a bitter blow and a huge embarrassment.

Tony Lit, despite his dashing Bollywood looks and huge popularity was obviously a flawed choice after it became known that he had only joined the Conservative Party shortly before his selection and had donated money to Labour just days before.

Even the five flying visits by David Cameron and highly publicised Labour councillor defections to Conservatives failed to ensure the vital support at the ballot box.

What dedicated political candidates need to do is convince voters of their sincerity by being a visible force and working for their political party even before their selection. I would like to see them holding stalls on market places and in shopping centres, as well as knocking on doors, talking to as many people as possible face to face.  They should be doing this now and not waiting for an election to be called. All too often, people complain they have never heard of the candidates, so can you blame them for being apathetic.

“Men are nothing but stomachs and we their food. They eat us until they are full and then they belch us.”

I would like to think that times have changed since the great Bard wrote those words in Othello, but what a wonderfully, descriptive way of putting it.

And what kind of guy sits in the theatre and reads the whole play from a book as it is being performed before his very eyes by some of the country’s best actors? This is what the man behind me was doing, he must have missed so much. However, he still seemed to be enjoying it and was smiling.

I give five stars to the brilliant actors who played the wicked and cunning Iago, I loathed him so much I could have spat in his face and he would merely have sneared, as well as the jealous and unfortunate Rodorigo who had a wonderfully witty and playful stage presence, though doomed to face a tragic end. The rest of the cast get four stars.

 Jovanna Stacey Crawford went missing on June 5, 1981 when she was just two years old. Sometimes, differing information is given about the circumstances of a person’s disappearance, which is the case here.

Some reports state that the last time Jovanna was seen was at her home in Bridgeport, Connecticut in the care of a family friend. The family friend gave the child to a woman who said she was Jovanna’s grandmother.

This report describes how Jovanna was left in the care of her mother’s boyfriend, Ronald Garrett. After she vanished, Garrett told police that a ten- or eleven-year old boy came to the home, telling him that her grandparents had sent for her. He claimed that he had allowed her to go with the boy. His story did not stand up to scrutiny, however, and Garrett was convicted of child endangerment and sentenced to a year in prison. Jovanna has never been seen or heard from again and no evidence has ever been uncovered to indicate what actually happened to her.

Jovanna would now be 27 years old.

In memory of those who are still missing.