Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts

Monday, 9 June 2014

Mindbomb Monday

In the 1970's the founders of Greenpeace came up with the idea of using electronic media to communicate revolutionary ideas, they came up with the tactic "mindbomb" whereby they would use simple images, delivered by the media, that would "explode in people's minds" and create a new understanding of the world.
On some Mondays I hope to share an image that might be considered a "mindbomb" that could get people thinking throughout the week ahead.  I won't include any words with the image as I hope the image alone will speak for itself.  Sometimes I will use images found online, other times it will be my own photographs and they will reflect something that has spoken to me from the past week.  It might be shocking, inspiring, confrontational or uplifting.
If you would like to join in please share your "mindbomb" in a comment.


Tuesday, 17 September 2013

Changing the World

Yesterday evening I was browsing Pinterest (something I spend far too much time doing)  and came across a photo that just broke my heart, I couldn't stop looking at it, it made me so so sad.  It was a journalistic style photo of a young boy laid sleeping on a cardboard box on some steps, cradling his younger, toddler aged brother.  I think before I had a child of my own this sort of photo would have saddened me but it wouldn't have affected me like it did yesterday, I literally had tears pouring down my face, it touched me right to my core. I think it was because I could just picture these boys being my own children and they looked so vulnerable, so fragile and alone.  It felt so unfair, I was really struck by the injustice of it, that we can live in a world where there are children sleeping on the street and simultaneously we have people paying $425 to buy capsules of flakes of golds to make their poo glitter (I am not kidding, check it out). Seriously, what is wrong with the world?  It make me feel like I really am so lucky and blessed for everything that I have and the country we live in.  I don't appreciate how fortunate I am, how secure and safe.  Just having basic things like a roof over my head, electricity and clean water makes me one very lucky woman. 
The photo made me feel like I desperately wanted to do something to help, to save children like these little boys, I just wanted to scoop them into my arms and take them away from the poverty and misery and fear, but then at the same time felt helpless because there is so little that I can actually do.  I can give money, but seeing as I don't actually earn any of my own it doesn't really feel like it would be my contribution.
But then I came across this pin:

Corner is picked and ready to change the world :) 
And I remembered that I am doing something to help the world by giving my time to voluntary breastfeeding help through The Breastfeeding Network.  I am helping mothers who want to breastfeed their babies to do so successfully and pain free, and enabling babies to have the most natural first food possible. 
I did my first session of volunteering on Friday and I felt it went really well.  I only spoke to one woman, but hopefully I made a difference to her, what she really needed was someone to listen and to reassure her that what she was doing was the right thing.  So maybe I am not directly helping children living in poverty but I am doing something to help and something I feel really passionate about and in my own small way I am changing the world.  I am not telling you this to say how great I am but to say that even these apparently small things we do can make a real difference.  And many many people are doing the same thing as me, for some it is saving animals, for others it's helping old people and for others it's simply picking up litter or recycling, but we are all doing our own little thing to help to change the world.
What are you doing to change the world today?