Please support us . . . |
1 . . . by donating to the cause |
| Please help us by contributing to: Volunteers’ travel (by the cheapest and most climate-friendly way possible); Promotional materials (business cards, T-Shirts etc); Paper, card, glue etc! |
2 . . . by allowing us to contact you when we need helpFrom time to time we need to mobilise ColaLife supporters to, for example, vote for us in the Google competition or join us at a celebration or awareness raising event. To do this we need your email address. |
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3 . . . by keeping up to date, one blog post at a time |
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| Your email address will only used by us for the purposes of advancing the objectives of ColaLife. Your email address will not be shared with others. |
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| >> Other ways to support ColaLife |
15 July 2009 By 1 Comment
Why we still need Google’s support
23 April 2009 By 1 Comment
Animation produced by Facebook members to support our Project 10^100 entry
There is a danger, now that Coca-Cola have said yes (probably) to trials of our idea in Tanzania, the people at Google will think ‘job done’ and decide we don’t need their help. However, the truth is that we need their help now more than ever. Up until the Coca-Cola statement on Tuesday (21/4/09) all we had was an idea, a pretty amazing idea, but just an idea. Now we have a job to do. It’s not a case of ‘job done’, more the case of a huge ‘job to do’.
Although we are right to expect Coca-Cola to invest in the ColaLife idea, we shouldn’t expect them to ‘own’ it – and indeed they have no aspiration to. Coca-Cola will be one of a number of crucial partners that will be required to make ColaLife a successful, replicable reality. If ColaLife aidpods are going to be part of the trials this year we are going to need several thousand of them. We are going to need talented designers to build and test prototypes. Then we’ll need them made – preferably in Africa. Everything so far has been voluntary – but to do this properly we’re going to need funding. While the trials are underway in Tanzania we’ll need to be learning and understanding the key success factors. We’ll need to be working with local people in other developing countries to understand local conditions and the enablers and barriers to replication of the idea. And so the list goes on.
So, Google, if you’re listening. We need you now more than ever.
The text of our Project 10^100 entry are here.
Please register to vote for ColaLife here.
If you work for Google . . . when are you going to announce the top 100 ideas? (well, if you don’t ask?).
Giant AidPod looking for places to hang out in London
8 April 2009 By 2 Comments
Thanks to the generosity and enthusiasm of the people at theWorkshop in Sheffield we bring you ‘the biggest ColaLife AidPod in the World’ (as far as we know). This time-lapse video shows how it was constructed.
As soon as Google announce the 100 semi-finalists in their Project 10 to the 100th we will be parading this amazing object through the streets of London to get people to vote for ColaLife. If we don’t get through to the last 100, we will still do it to raise the profile of our campaign.
Between now and the Google announcement it seems a great shame that the giant ColaLife AidPod is hidden away, out of sight. So we are going to bring it down to London and liberate it.
If you work somewhere with a busy reception and want to generate excitement, conversation and show your support for ColaLife at the same time, we would love to lend the giant AidPod to you.
On the other hand, you may be a window dresser on Oxford Street looking to for ‘that extra curious thing’ to raise sales in these difficult times . . . please get in touch.
You can leave a comment or email ‘act at colalife dot org’.
Yes, I understand. But what about the 20% child mortality?
1 April 2009 By 1 Comment
Image credit: Alison Pearson
I knew today was going to be a bit of a challenge. Me, a ‘spare-timer’, going into an environment of development professionals. So although I was prepared I did feel I needed to reassure myself of the child mortality figures one more time. How bad is it really? How do the mortality rates in Africa compare with those here?
I got up early and reassurance wasn’t long in coming – a Google search on ‘child mortality in the UK’ was all it took to find this BBC article. This reported “Child mortality ‘at record low’”. Which strictly speaking is correct. In 2006, the global total number of deaths before the age of five had dipped below the 10 million mark for the first time. But just look at the breakdown of the figures:
Over a 16 year period (1990 to 2006) the total number of annual deaths had INCREASED by 1 million a year (700,000 + 100,000 + 500,000 – 300,000).
Despite this increase the mortality rate had decreased slightly but, in Africa, is still between 13 and 18%. Can you imagine living in an environment where this happened? If you ran a livestock enterprise in Europe, these levels of mortality would be unacceptable and these are human beings and these deaths are described as ‘avoidable’.
So, while I agreed with a lot of what was said today about encouraging good governance; re-establishing accountability between African people and their leaders (where this doesn’t exist); stopping the flight of capital into tax havens; removing the barriers to trade etc etc. We can’t just sit wait another 20 years without trying to do something to stop this horrendous death toll amongst children. Can we?
ColaLife Video snuggles up to Google
6 March 2009 By 1 Comment
Views of the ColaLife animation topped 6,000 today and in a search for ‘Project 10 100′ in Google the ColaLife animation is now second only to the Google Project itself! You can view the animation here. If you’ve got a YouTube account please give it 5 stars and make a comment if you have time.
While all this is going on, plans are being drawn up, collaborations built, a giant colalife aidpod commissioned in preparation for a March on London (England) to get people to vote for ColaLife. You can register for a reminder here: colalife.org/vote.
Onwards and upwards.
Trovus Revelations keeps us in the picture
31 January 2009 By Leave a Comment
Trovus, who provide an amazing website visitor monitoring system, has been a supporter of ColaLife from the moment they heard about the campaign.
This is how Trovus Revelations works. Every computer connected to the internet has a number (an IP address) this IP address is allocated to you by the organisation who ‘owns’ the internet connection you are using.
What Trovus Revelations does is match the IP address of all visitors to a website with the name of the organisation that ‘owns’ that address. When I view a page on the ColaLife website, Trovus registers that ‘Virgin Media’ (my internet service provider) has visited the site. Not terribly useful. BUT most corporations have their own connection to the internet – they ‘own’ their own IP addresses. So we know, for example, when Coca-Cola look at the website and that Heineken and Procter and Gamble are also interested in ColaLife!
Trovus allows you to set up email alerts that let you know when a particular organisation looks at your website. The image above shows a series of emails from Trovus telling me that Google are looking at this website which is reassuring given that entries to Google’s Project 10 to the 100th are being assessed at the moment.
Thanks Trovus for keeping us in the picture!
Gearing up to vote for ColaLife in Project 10^100
26 January 2009 By 4 Comments
Google’s trawl for the best ideas in the World (aka Project 10 to the 100th) attracted more than 100,000 entries and ColaLife was one of them. The text of our entry is here and above is the video that Facebook members put together. The video on YouTube has been viewed 4,925 times at the last count which is pretty impressive.
Tomorrow (27/1/09) Google will announce the top 100 ideas and invite people to vote for their favourite. The five winners share $10m to implement their idea. If we get through to the last 100 PLEASE VOTE for ColaLife and help us by ASKING ALL YOUR FRIENDS TO VOTE TOO! Sorry . . . don’t mean to sound desperate
At the time of writing you can REGISTER TO VOTE HERE.
Of course we might not get through but if we do you’ll hear about it here first.
Global Tolerance to host ColaLife meet-up – 16/12/08
18 November 2008 By 4 Comments
The generous support for Colalife from Simon Cohen of Global Tolerance continues. Simon has offered to host a meet-up at their London headquarters for those us who can make it on 16 December, 6 – 9pm. This is particularly welcome as most of us have never met! Numbers will be limited to 20. The following people have already responded to announcements through the Google and Facebook Groups: Steve Bridger; Simon Berry; Ann Holmes; David Wilcox; Tessy Britton; Ian Crawford; Ellie Stoneley; Steve Dale, Simon Cohen and Kate Andrews. If you’d like to join us please comment on this blog item or email me at sxberry -at- gmail -dot- com. Numbers will be limited to 20.
The meeting will be informal and focus on ‘what next?’ By the time we meet we will have the outcomes of the meeting in Dar Es Salaam to consider.
Download the ColaLife video to your iPod!
6 November 2008 By 1 Comment
The ColaLife, Four Children A Minute video can’t compete with video clips of Barack Obama but it’s competing pretty effectively with everything else on YouTube. It’s number two in a search for Project 10^100 on YouTube. Second only to the Google video itself. In a Google search for ‘project 10 to the 100th’ it features very highly too.
Thanks to everyone who’s viewed it, embedded it, rated it and favourited it!
To mark the 2,000th viewing of the video we are providing the whole video for download. Right-click here and select ‘Save Link As …’ (6.0MB). It’s in mp4 format and so you should be able to drag it straight into iTunes and onto your iPod.
BUT please go and view the video online as well and if you have a YouTube account please give the video 5 stars, comment and make it a favourite . . . every little helps!
Thanks.
Storyboard: ColaLife video for the Google 10^100 application
15 October 2008 By 3 Comments
How about this for a storyboard for the video to support the Google 10^100 application? Thanks to Howard lake for getting the creative juices running! I am now going to contact all the animators and musicians I know to see if they can realise this. Click on the image to see it full-size.
