Emmanuel Jal winds up Africa Gathering
October 10, 2009 by Simon Berry · 1 Comment
Africa Gathering came to an emotional end for three reasons:
- Emmanuel Jal - the now musician (Peter Gabriel compares him to the young Bob Marley) - but once Child Soldier told us about bits of his young life. Horrendous to a level you would not believe. That’s all I’m saying. You’ll have to read the book. >>hint
- The £5,000 raised through Africa Gathering ticket sales was presented to Banana Man (aka Kevin Allen). Again an amazing story. And again you’ll have to read the book. >>hint
- Then Emmanuel sang ‘Emma‘ [What would I be if Emma never rescued me?]. Which was brilliant, especially when you know who Emma was. Read the book! Best to listen to it here rather that play the above video caught on my iPhone.
Emmanuel came over to the giant AidPod (in ‘interested person’ mode rather than celebrity mode) and we talked about ColaLife. Then he came back again to talk some more. A lyric of his goes: ‘Babies dying from curable disease’. We could be talking again.
After all of this I thought I’d try and get the giant AidPod back to Rugby on Virgin Trains and I did it by deciding it was a bicycle box for the purposes of the trip! Thank you Virgin Trains for being understanding.
Tracking the Giant AidPod’s progress towards Africa Gathering
October 9, 2009 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
Just for fun . . . this map will track our progress in getting the Giant AidPod to the Africa Gathering event tonight. We should get there by about 5pm. If you are nearby and see us - give us a wave (and a shout)!
The Buzz builds for Africa Gathering
October 9, 2009 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
Africa Gathering is a bunch of innovators and enthusiasts for the development in Africa; Ed Scotcher and Mark Simpkins are leading lights. They kindly allowed me to present the ColaLife story at their first UK event back in April (2009) >>more. Ed and Mark have also been generous with their networks and I have made some great contacts and been able to generate good publicity as a result of my involvement in Africa Gathering. A couple who spring to mind are Jane Young of Scrmblr and Tim Unwin, UNESCO Chair in ICT4D and Professor of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Anyway the buzz is building on Twitter (look out for #agathering) for this weekend’s event which kicks off this evening and runs all day tomorrow at The Hub, Kings Cross, London. Jane and I will be going along this evening and I will be there tomorrow too. My son and I are walking the Giant AidPod from NESTA to Kings Cross starting at around 4:30pm. Here’s our route. So if you’re in the Grays Inn Road area, give us a wave! Anyway, part of this buzz around Africa Gathering was a follow from @ideasforafrica which seems to be the Twitter face of Africa Rural Connect. Their follow of ColaLife drew me to their website where they are asking for ideas for the alleviation of poverty in Africa. This isn’t the core theme of ColaLife but I thought I would put it on anyway. You can see it, endorse and comment on it here.
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