Hi

In my enthusiasm, I rather charged in without introducing myself, so here we go: I’m conorh, a former waiter, pizza chef, puppeteer, and geo-electrical surveyor in the Northern Rif Mountains of Morocco. More recently I’ve been a presenter on the late, lamented Jazzfm and now seem to spend most of my time being a flaneur around town. My personal blog is here, my Flickr is here and if you’d like to say hello feel free to drop a line to deadpanfilm at themailofg dotcom.

Just a quick post to say thanks to all at Dublin Metblogs for the warm welcome to the team! I look forward to sharing my experiences of our wonderful city with you all and welcome any comments, compliments, criticism or healthy debate!

All the best…
Sheena xx

Children can be incredibly aware of social issues, and this was demonstrated by my colleague’s daughter just a week or so ago. While watching her favourite kiddie channel, an advertisement came up, seeking for sponsorship of children in countries that require continuous support. She turned to her mother and very candidly asked “Mummy, these children don’t look very happy. Is it because they don’t have food and toys? Can we help them?”

My colleague and her husband made an agreement then that they would try to seek for a programme to sponsor a child, and hope by this they would educate their daughters of charity and awareness about poverty.

But first, they want to know where to start.

I have been sponsoring a child from Ethiopia for a while now, through Action Aid (UK) because at that point when I started, Action Aid Ireland didn’t yet have such programme in place. My understanding of this organisation is that the money doesn’t go to the child individually but to the community where various projects to improve the living standards and education levels are being carried out. In return the organisation would send periodical progress reports (so to speak) along with maybe a sketch or two by the child.

Not wanting to sound heartless, but I’d rather not receive any of the correspondence by post. I am more than happy to receive email correspondence (this is more environmentally friendly, plus it means less cost on printing and postage) and would rather the money be spent less on administrative items and more on community projects. So far, I’m happy with the level of correspondence (or non-correspondence) that I’m receiving.

But I digress.

So where can you start if you’re considering a worthwhile project like this? Here, I am suggesting 5 organisations (in alphabetical order) that are/have Irish base which you can investigate further, of their aims, their projects and how they are helping the communities that need assistance.

1) Action Aid Ireland
2) A-Z Children Charity
3) Child Fund Ireland
4) Plan Ireland
5) World Vision Ireland

Most of the sponsorship plan requested between €20-€30 per month, and on a long term basis so that there’s continuous funding to carry out appropriate works without constant worry (and administrative duties) of seeking for new sponsors to replace those who withdraw after just a short period of sponsorship. The key here is community development, so it is a little bit of a long term commitment from all parties involved.

It is not a huge sum of money involved - one less fancy meal in town per month - but it will make such a difference to the life a child somewhere. To have basic comforts such as housing with clean water facilities. An oppportunity to education. The list continues. These, are priceless.

for Chinese Earthquake Relief Fund.

In Ireland -

Oxfam Ireland (click here)

Red Cross Ireland (click here)

—–

On 5-12-2008, at Beijing local time 14:28pm, a historically rare earthquake of 7.8 magnitude devastated southwestern China, killing close to 14, 866 people by far and trapping thousands of others under schools, factories and houses, while the worst-hit area was still cut off from rescuers today. Now we are facing a crucial time period of rescuing those needy people and helping them with disaster relief. Children are wandering homeless on the street, young people are being buried by their tearing elder parents with unspeakable sadness.

The victims need your help urgently !!! Each dollar/euro from an individual may not have a big impact. But together, it can make a GREAT difference!!! Your generosity is highly appreciated! PLEASE make your contribution to help the earthquake victims!

Ireland is booming with enthusiasm for young entrepreneurs and there is definitely a positive attitude in people for making it big. I met few last week, which I mentioned in my previous post also. ”

NYT excerpt: “they seemingly rank just below rock stars in popularity” .. & who doesn’t want that now :D

The article mentions Enterprise Ireland few times. Another name which comes to my mind (read about them in tech blogs also) is Paddy’s Valley, group of Irish business and technology people who are trying to build better ties between Silicon Valley and entrepreneurs here. Check their website for more information.

via New York Tiimes: Entrepreneurship Takes Off in Ireland

while surfing google maps dublin, thru’ their sharing maps feature, if you search something like renting accommodation, it gives a list of people looking for or renting in the maps, quite handy with the location shown in, a lot of them are from daft.ie itself which shows google map locations. Still a handy way to have quick glance.

via Telegraph.co.uk:

Bono U2 tower is to be the tallest in Ireland and a new design has be accepted. An egg-shaped recording studio suspended from the top of a 600ft luxury apartment block was unveiled as part of the rock band U2’s plans for a skyscraper that will dominate Dublin.

I know this is not the perfect place to rant and write about this…but I think it’s worth a shot asking ppl what they think-mostly because I’m not so sure if this is “the norm” in Ireland/Europe.

I finished the last of my exams on June 1st. It is now June 28th, and NO ONE knows when our results are coming out. My previous experiences in other colleges (in Japan and in the US, we were told IN THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR when our exam results were coming out; all exam schedules were set down to the very day and hour.)

I come here, and we dont know what time our exams are until two or three weeks before, and we have to wait and wait and wait in dread/shivering excitement after the exams for our results to arrive.

And when they do, you have usually forgotten about them already and don’t even remember the exam itself, so you really dont know what question was your downfall/claim to fame.

I want to ask: is this normal in Ireland/Europe/the UK? Have people had similar experiences in their Universities/Colleges?!

Last week, while surfing YouTube, came across UCD banner ad, was a bit amazed to see UCD advertising on YouTube, mebbe its the right way reach the video watching generation :)) .. but still not so sure about it.

Recent survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit’s, Worldwide cost of living survey puts Dublin in the 16th position, where a cup of coffee is more expensive than London, NY, Paris :)). Read more HERE. Also, after 14 years of reigning the survey, Tokyo has been replaced by Oslo as the most expensive city to live in the world and the developed western European cities of London, Zürich, Geneva, Paris, Copenhagen, Amsterdam etc etc make up most of the expensive cities in the world.
(more…)