One Wild Life- Coming in April

One Wild Life, published by The Collins Press, will be on shelves in bookshops nationwide in early April.

I now blog at: www.claremulvany.com/blog

Available for download

My interview on Newstalk 106-108 with documentary maker Louise Williams can now be downloaded here :

http://83.138.170.50/podcasts/audio/Week11.mp3

(my interview is in the second half of the Show. You can also here fellow SEI awardee, Helene Hugel, talk about her own project, Freddie&Friends, a puppetting programme she runs for children in hospital.

Tune in on Sunday 9th March- Newstalk’s Change Makers series.

As part of the Change Makers series on Newstalk (106-108FM), documentary maker Louise Williams came along with me to St. Andrew’s College, where I gave a presentation on my travels to fourth year students. She interviewed myself and some of the students. The show will be broadcast at 1pm, Sunday 9th March and will also be available for download from the Newstalk website.

Social Entrepreneurs Ireland- Applications Open for 2008 Awards

Social Entrepreneurs Ireland, an organisation with supports the development of social entrepreneurship in Ireland, is now accepting applications for its 2008 awards.

In their own words;

‘Social Entrepreneurs Ireland’s mission is to spark social change by identifying, investing in, and supporting some of Ireland’s most exceptional emerging leaders and the organisations they launch…Social Entrepreneurs Ireland directly supports the early stage development of social entrepreneurs by providing a range of supports. These supports consist of financial investment in social entrepreneurs, technical training, peer networking, mentoring and links to other social entrepreneur networks’.

Check out www.socialentrepreneurs.ie for more information.

(In line with the 2008 award announcement, SEI have also re-launched their website, on which some my WDYDWYD? Images make a happy appearance- enjoy!)

Social Entrepreneurs on South East Radio

Just to let you know that I will be talking about Social Entrepreneurship on South East Radio (Ireland), 95.6- 96.4, this coming Saturday 3rd November. The show goes out after the morning ten o’ clock news.

http://www.southeastradio.ie/

Social Entrepreneur Ireland Awards…

It has been a busy few months since returning to Ireland; writing the book ‘One Wild Life’- an account of my travels for the last year. It profiles some of the inspiring social entrepreneurs I met along the way and includes snippets of travelogue and a selection of photos. After many an hour in a library, I'm happy to say the book is really taking shape.

Since returning I’ve also been given one of the Social Entrepreneur Ireland Level One awards this year- with gratitude. The award is in recognition of my work to date and particularly my plan to share the stories of social entrepreneurs with young people in Ireland. An Award ceremony is taking place tomorrow evening in Dublin.

I'll also be speaking on the Pat Kenny Radio show tomorrow morning- about the awards and my travels. I’ll be interviewed along with Bob Seward, one of the people who I met in Cork, and Rotemi Adebari, the first Black mayor in Ireland, and another interviewee. Tune in at around 10.30am RTE Radio 1. It is usually me doing the interviews- so this is an interesting turn of events!

Responses, comments or queries can be sent to
onewildlife@gmail.com

Volunteer Programme- another year on

For those of you who have been following this blog- and my own journey, you will have heard me mention the organisation Suas (www.suas.ie) on more than one occasion. I still feel the air time is justified. Much of my own learning about social change issues started out when I was running the Suas Volunteer Programme a few years back. It was meeting young people interested in making a difference through Suas, and meeting Suas’ partners in India and Kenya, which got me started on the ‘Exceptional Lives’ Journey; and I own a huge amount to the people behind it.

The volunteer programme has since grown from strength to strength- and last weekend saw this year’s 80 volunteer’s gather for a weekend of celebration, and reflection, on their experiences of working in education projects in India and Kenya this summer. The volunteer programme is a powerful experience in the life of a young adult- being exposed to grassroots development issues, learning about a new culture, and working as a team under often difficult circumstances.

I was lucky enough to be able to join in- and put together an exhibition of photos at the annual return reception, this year held in Maynooth College. Below are a few images;

(For those of you who may be interested in applying for the ’08 programme, applications will be open from Nov of this year. Check out www.suas.ie for updates).

Social Entrepreneur Elected as First Black Mayor in Ireland

Rotimi Adebari, one on the social entrepreneurs I interviewed on the Irish leg of my journey has today been elected as the first black mayor in Ireland. Congrats Rotimi!

Here is the RTE news article about him. My photo of Rotimi was used on their news site.

A Nigerian man who came to Ireland seven years ago to seek asylum here has made history this afternoon by becoming Ireland's first black mayor.

43-year-old Councillor Rotimi Adebari was elected the Mayor of Portlaoise Town Council this afternoon by a vote of six to three and with the support of Fine Gael, Sinn Féin and Independent members of the council.

At a meeting attended by officials from the Nigerian, South African and the United States embassies, the new mayor said his election was proof that Ireland is not just a country of a thousand welcomes but it is a country of equal opportunity.
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Councillor Adebari said Portlaoise is a town that looks beyond colour, creed and religion, but he said integration is a two-way process and involving or engaging members of the ethnic communities in local activities is the way to go.

The election was attended by a crowd of over 100 people drawn from the Nigerian community all over Ireland.

Elected as a councillor in 2004, Mr Adebari has a Masters degree in Intercultural Studies from Dublin City University and works with the local authority in Co Laois co-ordinating an integration projects for immigrants.

The father of four fled Nigeria with his wife and two children in 2000.

Young and Able.. meet AYUDA

American Youth Understanding Diabetes Abroad may seem like a bit of a mouthful, but there is indeed bite to their work. AYUDA started out when two 15 year olds, Nick Cuttriss and Jesse Fuchs-Simon when to Equador for a summer. They encountered a young boy with Diabetes, whose parents were doctors, who could not afford his medical care. Nick and Jesse ended up raising finance and support to bring the boy to the United States for care, but they soon realised that they could not do this for every child. Instead what they realised was that they could help deliver diabetes management skills to those with the illness- which was a huge gap in medical provision in Equador.

To bridge the gap Nick and Jesse start summer diabetes camps for children with the illness, enlisting local and international volunteers to run the camps. It had a two part knock on effect. Firstly, the children who needed access to information on how to look after themselves could not access it more readily, and secondly, by engaging a whole band of young volunteers, it catalysed a wave of young support and commitment to tackling such problems.

I got to meet Nick in Ayuda offices in Washington, along with Merith Basey, a former volunteer which the team who is now working full time.

Still in their early twenties, Ayuda is a prime example of the potential of young people to effect solutions- when given the opportunity. At 24, Nick is an old hand!

Lending Peer to Peer- by Proxy

I have been following a fellow blogger, Matt Flannery, for sometime now on Social Edge, an online forum for social entrepreneurs (for more about Social Edge, see my interview with Victor D’Allant). Some when in town I popped over to meet Matt in person.

Matt’s blog is an insiders guide to setting up a social venture. He should know; he has been doing it for the last two years. The result has been Kiva.org, an online peer to peer micro finance lending platform. Sound complex? Well it’s not. The idea is rather straightforward really. I’ll give an example.

Take, let’s say, John, a 25 year old man in Kampala, Uganda who is setting up a bike repair business. John has a wife and family, has the usual bills to pay, and is also supporting his younger brother’s education. He can’t do that until he can get his bike business off the ground, and in order to do that he needs a loan. So he goes to a micro-finance institution (small loan bank) to ask for the money.

Pause there and meet Joan.

Joan lives in Dublin, a 30 year old school teacher. She has never visited Uganda, but has been following the news and is interested in getting more involved with development issues; but she a bit at a quandary how. She has given money to larger charities before, but would like to know more about where her donation exactly goes.

Basically, Kiva help to make some introductions. John meet Joan, Joan meet John.
Joan reads about John’s business online and decides to directly invest with him. The loan is made via the Kiva website, to John’s local micro-finance institution and then on to John. When John pays back the loan, Joan can track it online, and John can add some photos and stories.

John and Joan introduced. John’s business off the ground. Joan eventually paid back. And this year, it will be with interest.

That’s Kiva in a nutshell. It was Matt and his ‘amazing wife’ (his words- ahh) Jessica who got it off the ground, have rallied the support and continue to build the website along with a growing team in San Francisco. Other unrelated but fortuitous events have helped to speed Kiva’s growth, including Muhammad Yunnas winning the Nobel Prize for building the micro-finance field with Grameen Bank.

Other than that, it’s a lot of hard work, a lot of commitment, and a lot of introductions, oh, and broadband is a bonus.

To follow more on the Kiva story click here, and to make a loan, click here. There are lots and Joans and Johns to meet, and many more business’ to follow.

The Tongan Ocean of Light

When you live on a small island, far from even other small islands, life takes on unusual dimensions, and challenges.

One of those challenges is getting a quality education. There are schools of course- a primary school in each village, and a secondary or high school in the large towns, but the standard is low, class sizes large and resources limited. This makes for some frustrated brains.

However, ten years ago, the founders of the Ocean of Light Primary School, decided to take on the challenge and in doing so are raising the educational bar in Tonga.

Back when I was last in Tonga, on a gap volunteer year after school, I worked for a some time at the then infant Ocean of Light Primary School. It has just 27 pupils and was very much still trying to find its feet. Ten years later, with new school buildings and a pupil intake of about 340, it’s feet are clearly found. There is now a kindergarten and a secondary school, and plans for more buildings. Last year the school opted for the Cambridge International School certificate, and now students can take A levels and compete for university places in whatever part of the globe they wish. The exams are tough, the standard high- and given the relative shortage of local teachers who are available to teach at A level standard, it’s hard to get staff.

But still the school continues, believing the just because you may live in an isolated place, it doesn’t mean opportunities have to be isolated too.

Interstingly too, and I dare say unique to Tonga, the school takes moral education and pastoral care as a very high priority. Although inspired by the principles of the Bahai’i Faith, the school uses ‘The Virtues Guide’ which a methodology for teaching social and moral behaviour across the religious and cultural spectrum. The principle of the secondary school, Nick Flegg, told me that about one third of the current pupils are Baha’i while the remainder are from the many other denominations which make up the Tongan population- Methodist, Baptist, Seven day Adventist, Mormon, all seeing advantage in the methodology.

Ten years on, it was fantastic to see the growth of the school. The challenges are still there (funding, staff, resources), but the school is committed to tackling them, and keeping the bar high. I hear too that other schools that other schools on the islands are sitting up and taking note… which is a good sign for educational opportunity but at bad sign for frustrated brains. I’m on the side of the good sign.