Coca-Cola Campaign

ColaLife enters the mainstream popular and academic media

15 September 2011 By Simon Berry 1 Comment

As we build up to our move to Zambia to oversee an independently evaluated trial of the ColaLife concept, interest in what we are trying to achieve has reached new levels.

In the last few weeks we have had three mentions in HELLO! Magazine (@hellomag) with a full-page spread in the 22 August 2011 issue. This has been thanks to Honda’s Dream Factory initiative which I am very pleased to be a part of – I’m one of the nominated ‘Cultural Engineers’ - we are all dreamers who are trying to make their dreams come true! There are some interesting people in this group and we are all getting together for the first time in November in the Guardian Offices in London . . . . more on this later.

Popular media is all very well and it really boosts our supporter numbers which has been important and has given us the power we need to engage the powerful organisations required to make ColaLife work.

But when it comes to funding, credibility is important and it helps if you feature in UN Publications and academic publications like The Lancet. We were in both this week which is more than we could have hoped for.

On Monday (12/9/11) a thematic report – Innovating for Every Woman, Every Child – was published by the UN’s Every Woman, Every Child initiative (EWEC) looking at innovation in the areas of child and maternal health. The report is being published, as a peer reviewed report, and distributed through The Lancet. You will need to register and download the PDF version. This is all very inaccessible, however, thanks go to Talea Miller of PBS Newshour for writing about the report and choosing to highlight ColaLife in this blog post on the PBS Newshour site.

This blog post has generated quite a lot of excitement on Twitter with an original tweet by The Gates Foundation being re-tweeted many times.

What I’m really looking forward to though is the publication of the results of the ColaLife trial in The Lancet in a couple of years time!

Filed Under: Coca-Cola Campaign Tagged With: ColaLife, Cultural Engineers, Every Woman Every Child, EWEC, Hello Magazine, Honda Dream Factory, Talea Miller, The Lancet, Twitter, UN, UN Foundation

D2D Riders complete their challenge for ColaLife

13 September 2011 By Simon Berry Leave a Comment

Is this the most posed photo you’ve ever seen? Two blokes trying to look exhausted and asleep with big grins on their faces!

This is Bill (left) and Nigel (right) on the ferry from Le Havre to Portsmouth after their 400 km ride across the north of France from Dinard to Deauville (D2D) for ColaLife. The 4-day ride was undertaken almost exclusively in the rain but apparently spirits ran high.

Bill emailed his supporters from his desk on Monday saying:

I am very pleased to say that Nigel and I made it back to the UK last night on the 5pm ferry from Le Havre. We reached our 400 kilometre target in Le Havre and had a thoroughly enjoyable and tiring four days despite the rain. The bike is now in the back of the shed – not to be used for a few weeks!!

Thank you all for supporting ColaLife. http://colalife.org

Regards

Bill

PS – sitting down seems to be a little bit uncomfortable at the moment but hopefully this will improve!!

Huge thanks go to Bill and Nigel for organising this ride and following it through and raising money for ColaLife in the process.

Offline donations are still coming in and they expect to raise £2,750. This money is going towards the costs – mostly travel – of following up leads we have in Tanzania, South Africa and Uganda to get activity underway on the ground in these countries.

It was last year’s ride that raised the money for the visits to Zambia to co-design the trial and produce a costed plan. We are fairly confident that we will be successful in raising the $1.35million needed to run the trial. We effectively multiplied last year’s ride sponsorship by 84 to get the money we need for the trial.

We are going to do our best to do a similar thing again with the proceeds of this year’s ride.

If you’ve meant to sponsor Bill or Nigel but haven’t quite got around to it, it’s not too late:

>> Sponsor Bill here
>> Sponsor Nigel here

100% of your donation goes to ColaLife. Nigel and Bill are covering all the costs of this ride themselves.

Filed Under: Coca-Cola Campaign, colalifeD2D, Participation Ride 2011 Tagged With: France, Le Havre, Sponsor Bill, Sponsor Nigel

Multiply your money | Invest in ColaLife (or book a holiday & help that way too)

4 September 2011 By Simon Berry Leave a Comment

You may have noticed that we are on a fundraising drive. But before I tell you why we are doing this, let me tell you how we have multiplied the money we have received from individual supporters so far.

To date we have received about £10,000 in donations, to put together the partnership and develop the plan to run a trial in Zambia. We’ve supplemented this with voluntary effort and help in kind – watch out for a further blog on that. So far, in cash, we have raised £217,000 towards the cost of the trial. That’s a multiplier of 21.7 on donations from supporters. So, for every £1 donated by individuals, we’ve raised £21.70 from major donors. But it gets better than that. We are now very confident that we will be able to raise the remaining £623,000 we need for the trial. And that will give a final multiplier of 84. That’s equivalent to an interest rate of 8,400%. This offer is not available on the High Street!

So, if we’re confident of securing the funding for the trial, why are we still fund-raising? Jane and I have now moved out of our house in Rugby as the first step towards moving to Zambia to oversee the trial. This will engage us full-time for the first six months or so but then most of the tasks will fall to our local partners and we will drop to about half-time. At this point we will be using our ‘spare’ time to follow-up interest in other countries – Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa – to see if we can get things happening in those countries. The money we raise now will allow us to travel to these other countries to work with the local partners there and get plans in place for initiatives that suit local conditions. These initiatives might mimic the Zambian plan, or might look at alternative models – and we will seek funding from major donors for those as plans develop.

So, if you are able to give there are several options:

You can sponsor one of our cyclists who set off on Thursday (8/11) for a 400km ride from Dinard to Deauville in 4 days – 100% of your donation comes straight to ColaLife – Bill and Nigel are covering all of their costs of doing this
You can give directly to ColaLife through a regular donation
You can also give offline – the details of how to do this are here
And finally, 20% of room sales at The Chic Collection are coming to us through their ‘ColaLife Promotion‘. Book a room, get 40% off and help out ColaLife at the same time

Thanks for your support.

Filed Under: Coca-Cola Campaign Tagged With: ColaLife, Fundraising, Investment, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia

Why Nigel and Bill are cycling for ColaLife

30 August 2011 By Simon Berry Leave a Comment

This video will give you some idea why Nigel and Bill want your support to raise money for ColaLife. You can sponsor Bill here or Nigel here.

So how might ColaLife have helped Agnes and saved her niece’s life? Well, in several ways:

ColaLife will get ADKs (Anti-Diarrhoea Kits), packed within AidPods, to community shops which are MUCH closer for most people than health posts or health clinics which can be more than a day’s walk away
ColaLife community promoters will:

engage their own communities and show them how to treat water to make it safe to drink
teach mothers and care-givers what to do IMMEDIATELY a child gets diarrhoea to keep the child hydrated
teach mothers and care-givers about the ADK that will be available in the retail kiosk in their own community
give mothers and care-givers vouchers so that their first ADK is free

In this process ColaLife will put money into the very same communities we are helping through the retailers and wholesalers who live and work in the target communities

There is more on the ColaLife Business Model here. We think it’s an innovation and so do most other people. We hope it will be a game-changer for people like Agnes.

>> Sponsor Bill

>> Sponsor Nigel
>> Set up a standing order an give regularly

>> Donate offline

Here’s an idea of what your donation could do:

Just £1 will fill an AidPod with simple medicines to help a mother in rural Zambia rehydrate her child/save her child’s life (Note: there are only 70 retail pharmacies in the whole of Zambia – and public clinics can be a 20 kilometre walk from home)
£10 will subsidise 25 ADKs
£25 will subsidise 65 ADKs – we aim to distribute 20,000 in the Zambian trial
£100 will train a Zambian mother as a community promoter for the ADK – in hygiene, hand-washing and rehydration
£75 will buy her a bicycle so she can spread the word to neighbouring communities
£250 will fund a programme of village drama events on how the ColaLife ADK can help save children’s lives
£1,000 will cover on the job training for a Zambian ColaLife Field Officer, to help run our first local trial
£5,000 will pay a Zambian ColaLife field officer for a year to help run our first local trial

Filed Under: Coca-Cola Campaign, colalifeD2D, Funding, Participation Ride 2011 Tagged With: ADK, AidPod, ColaLife, Zambia

Please dig deep and support ColaLife | the riders are ready

26 August 2011 By Simon Berry Leave a Comment

Nigel Bolding and Bill Bryson
On 7 September two ColaLife supporters will catch the ferry to St Malo and spending the next 4 days cycling the 400km from Dinard to Deauville (D2D). They are doing this to give you the excuse to sponsor them. All the money raised will come to straight to ColaLife, Gift Aid enhanced where possible. They are covering all the costs of doing the trip themselves.

The two riders are Nigel Bolding and Bill Bryson. And you can sponsor them online here:

CLICK HERE to sponsor Nigel
CLICK HERE to sponsor Bill

Nigel is ColaLife’s top fundraiser and through his company – The World’s Best Hotels – he has also provided free accommodation for Jane and I during our travels over the last year. Nigel and Bill have worked very hard to make this ride possible and it’s been very hectic pulling things together.

However, Nigel was determined to do another ride after the success of last year’s ColaLife B2B Ride (Boulogne to Biarritz). Nigel said:

Our aim is to work through the whole alphabet and raise as much money as possible for ColaLife in the process so we can’t afford to take a year off! Last year on the B2B ride we managed to raise £6,000 and it’s great to see the impact that funding has had. It paid for the trips to Zambia over the last year where the co-design of the trial happened with local people. As a result, ColaLife now have a fully costed plan in place and this is raising the money ColaLife needs to run the first trial. Funders have committed $350,000 already and we are confident the rest will be in place before the end of the year.

The money we raise this year will be used to follow-up interest ColaLife has generated in other countries and help get things happening on the ground there.

Please sponsor us if you can and help us create the next sprat to catch the next mackerel!

Other giving options
If you’d like to give regularly to ColaLife through a standing order you can do that HERE.
If online giving is not for you then the offline giving options are HERE.

Why Bill and Nigel are cycling for ColaLife.

Thank you!

Filed Under: Coca-Cola Campaign, colalifeD2D, Participation Ride 2011 Tagged With: Bill Bryson, ColaLife, design, Gift Aid, Nigel Bolding, St Malo, Zambia

Another baby innovation

24 August 2011 By Simon Berry Leave a Comment

One of the delights of running ColaLife is the people you get meet. Yesterday I got a call from Tim Moor who I realise now, after our meeting this afternoon at the RSA, is a very well respected inventor who knows how to get his inventions to market.

His inventions include a simple device for detecting and monitoring diabetes, the reinvention of various brands of gin (sic) and a flat-pack disposable sterile baby bottle!

It’s the flat pack baby bottle that is most interest for several reasons:

It’s a product aimed at babies and infants
It has many of the features of the SODIS bag that we’ve been looking at
It was received enthusiastically when supplied to Japanese mothers after the recent earthquake

We don’t think that this is a product of immediate relevance to ColaLife but linking up with Tim certainly is. I feel sure that synergies will emerge over coming months.

Look out for Tim’s disposable bottles in Boots from October. They will be retailing at around £3.50 for a box of four.

Filed Under: Coca-Cola Campaign Tagged With: Baby Bottle, ColaLife, Innovation, RSA, SODIS, Tim Moor

Take 100 children | Graphic illustrations

22 August 2011 By Simon Berry Leave a Comment

Several people have remarked on the effectiveness of the graphics I use in my presentations to convey the injustice of the levels of infant mortality in Africa so I thought I’d share them here.

The three main images are displayed to the left. The first in the set, the image of 100 children, can be downloaded from Flickr here.

The second image showing the number who die before their fifth birthday can be downloaded from Flickr here.

The third image to show mortality rates in more developed countries can be downloaded from Flickr here.

I have also created an animated PowerPoint sequence and this can be downloaded here (PPT, 2.9 MB). This has detailed notes including details of when to click the mouse to advance the animation.

Please use these resources as you wish.

Filed Under: Coca-Cola Campaign Tagged With: Africa, child mortaility, child survival, PPT, Presentation

ColaLife – the nomadic phase begins

21 August 2011 By Simon Berry Leave a Comment

Part of the team that moved us out: Jane, Elizabeth, Pete, Angela, me and David
This post is really just a tribute to our great friends who always have a habit a rallying just when you just couldn’t manage without them. Our house is a family home and so if we were going to rent it out we were going to have to do it now as parents gear up to get their kids into school for the new year.

The house is a self-build project which we started 20 years ago (our experience is that you never quite finish a self-build!). Three kids have grown up there and never quite moved out (although they haven’t lived there for 10 years or more) and so moving out was always going to be a big challenge. Two weeks or so ago it became clear that we were not going to be able to get out by yesterday (20/8/11) by ourselves and the rallying began. Richard was in charge of the frequent runs to the Oxfam shop; Doug (an old friend from the Zambia days) came over for a day to get boxes into store and get my workshop cleared; neighbours, Lesley and Tim, cut the hedge (see the picture below – it’s never looked this good before); Trina, Drew, Sara and Martin did lots of the early clearing, packing and lifting.

The above picture was taken one hour before the new tenants were about to walk through the door as we raise (chilled) beakers of cold Cava to celebrate the beginning of “ColaLife – the nomadic phase” and the end of “Operation get the Berrys out of here”. Jane and I will be staying with family and friends for the next few weeks as we prepare to move to Zambia, probably at the end of September.

So thanks everyone. We will get there, one step at a time!

Here are a couple more pictures from yesterday:

Pete supplied the chilled beakers and Cava to celebrate the end of “operation get the Berrys out of here”. We left the wooden parrot to keep an eye on things… hmmm is it connected to Google?

Tim’s handiwork on the hedge, which has never looked this good. I should mention that Tim is also working to get a project underway in Africa – check out The Stand Up and Build Project. You can find them on Facebook here.

Filed Under: Coca-Cola Campaign Tagged With: Africa, ColaLife, Facebook, Friends, Google, Oxfam, Zambia

But for today I am a child

15 August 2011 By Simon Berry Leave a Comment

Antony And The Johnsons backed by the Heritage Orchestra at the Wilderness Festival (14/8/11)
Sometimes things just work out. We’ve been spending the last few weeks trying to pack up our home of 20 years and doing all the DIY jobs that had been put off, as the first step towards our move to Zambia, and last week things were getting a bit fraught. Then, through my involvement in Honda’s Dream Factory, the possibility of speaking at the Wilderness Festival this weekend emerged. In the end this didn’t happen due the time constraints but Jane and I were given guest passes to do a bit of reconnaissance for possible future involvement. This made us put down our paint brushes and turn our back on the packing.

It was totally rejuvenating - there was no mobile data signal so we had to switch off.

There are 10 ‘Cultural Engineers’ involved in the Dream Factory and two were actively involved in the Festival. The latest recruit, Mark Stevenson, gave a presentation in the festival’s Forum around his new book: An Optimist’s Tour of the Future and Chris Wheeler‘s Heritage Orchestra backed the headline act on Sunday (14/8/11), Antony and the Johnsons, which is where this blog post title comes from.

My involvement with Honda is also starting to benefit ColaLife. ColaLife got a mention in Hello! Magazine this week (15 August, UK Edition, page 75) in the introductory article of a series about Honda’s Dream Factory. Next week, ColaLife gets a whole page.

Now. Where did I put my paint brush?

Filed Under: Coca-Cola Campaign Tagged With: ColaLife, DIY, Dream factory, Hello Magazine, Heritage Orchestra, Honda, Honda Dream Factory, Mark Stevenson, Wilderness Festival, Zambia

ColaLife enters the mainstream popular and academic media

Multiply your money | Invest in ColaLife (or book a holiday & help that way too)

Why Nigel and Bill are cycling for ColaLife

Please dig deep and support ColaLife | the riders are ready

Another baby innovation

Take 100 children | Graphic illustrations

ColaLife – the nomadic phase begins

But for today I am a child

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