Stuart Fowkes, PR manager

At the end of 2011, Olympic legend and household name Sally Gunnell came out to Ethiopia with us to take part in the Great Ethiopian Run and see some ActionAid work at the same time.

You can read about the race and Sally’s thoughts on it here, but for me, rather than pitting my wits (and feeble fitness levels) against an Olympic gold medallist in a run at an altitude of 2,300 metres, my time was spent waiting at the finish line to get some pictures of Team ActionAid wheezing soaring over the line. It’s tough to get across how impressive it was to see 36,000 people of all shapes and sizes clad in the same bright red T-shirts flooding past in an exuberant celebration lasting for hours. The shots I took of people finishing the race tell this part of the story better at least...

For us and for Sally, though, the main event was the following day, with a chance to get out of the city, see some of the beautiful Ethiopian countryside and visit three ActionAid projects. And the drive really was gorgeous – vast, rolling steppes leading up to the outer reaches of the Great Rift Valley. The rugged beauty is apparently only punctuated by the ongoing battle for supremacy between Coke and Pepsi in practically every settlement. In the concrete and dust of Addis Ababa, Coke are on top, but for some reason Pepsi are racing away with it out in the suburbs.

After a quick stop in Fiche Town, 200km north of Addis Ababa for a bracing Ethiopian coffee to combat the 5am start, it was onto a high school built by ActionAid to meet the students and teachers. Before the school was built, students would have had to walk 10km – the same distance as the Great Ethiopian Run – every single day to get to the nearest school, and many would not have been able to make the trek. But now there’s a school in place, filled with hundreds of children sparkling with ambition, telling us excitedly of their plans for the future.

Just round the corner is a health centre built by ActionAid – with just two staff, it serves 5,000 people in the local area. It’s mostly about preventative measures: teaching people about good sanitation and hygiene practices, contraception and so on to prevent potentially hundreds of cases of life-threatening, but essentially avoidable illnesses. There’s also a small delivery suite enabling local women to give birth safely, and the centre also offers home visits – it’s amazing what can be achieved and how many people in the community can benefit from something apparently so basic.

Our last stop is perhaps the most interesting – we are lucky enough to be invited into the homes of several women who have benefited from ActionAid’s WISE programme. This rather dry acronym (standing for ‘women in social enterprise’) conceals a fascinating piece of work personified in the inspiring story of Genet Damenna, who Sally and I met in her home.

At forty years old, she has nine children and her husband doesn’t have a job – so how can she manage to feed, clothe and educate her entire family? ActionAid provided her with a loan to buy an electric lathe and some raw materials, and training in business basics like finances, marketing and so on. Now Genet manufactures an incredible 1,000 wooden crosses every single day, and sells 5,000 of them every week, for one birr each (around four pence). Thanks to this, she can stand on her own and her children are not only well-fed and healthy, but also go to school every day.

It struck me throughout that no matter which project we were visiting, whether school, health centre or even inside individual homes, the ActionAid work that was going on was based right at the heart of the community, helping people to achieve their own ambitions on their own terms – something I know Sally will also have appreciated, but I’ll let her tell the story in her own words:

Jane Moyo, Head of media relations

I’ve just listened to an exploration of child sponsorship through the voices of the children themselves. The BBC visited Accra in Ghana.  I really wish they’d been able to visit us, but ActionAid works in Ghana’s northern poverty belt which is too far from the capital so the BBC just didn’t have the time. Instead they talked to children sponsored by Compassion, Plan International and World Vision although ActionAid’s spokesperson was interviewed throughout the programme. To use that phrase loved by examiners, it’s been interesting to ‘compare and contrast’!
 
Here’s the main focus areas of the programme and my response
 
Focus area: What’s better – direct donations to individual children or pooling funds?
Jane’s response: That’s a no-brainer. Direct benefits are unfair. As Sue Bishop, ActionAid’s Communications Director said on the programme: “Experience shows that the best way to change a child’s life is to change the world in which they live”. Sponsors’ donations are pooled so that the whole community is helped and not just individual children. While sponsored children do benefit, tangibly, ActionAid’s approach is to fight poverty long-term, for all, rather than to single out and enrich individual families.
 
Focus area:  Once sponsorship is finished, children often get upset because they feel they’ve lost a connection to a member of the family.
Jane’s response: Had to think about that one. All the feedback we get from children and their families is that children wear the relationship lightly even though it makes them feel special. They understand that they’re representing their community and because everyone’s being helped they’re not that worried when the connection comes to a natural end. As a mum myself that chimes with my experience, albeit my two boys are now in their 20s and are not naturally sensitive souls!
 
Focus area: The individual gifts donors give and the exchange of letters cause jealousy in children who are not sponsored.
Jane’s response: This is exactly why ActionAid doesn’t allow direct gifts. Instead we have a gift fund which is to buy things that the whole community asks for. Recently a sponsor gave enough money to a village in Uganda to buy five cows – their milk benefits all the children in the village.  Sometimes it buys footballs and skipping ropes too! As for letters – we organise a massive party for all the kids (sponsored or not) who write letters or draw - in-between the cake and the games. When a letter is received, it’s read out to everyone and put on the community notice board for a few days before the child who it’s been originally sent to, takes it home.
 
Focus area: Child sponsorship is a massive logistical operation taking time and money.
Jane’s response: All I’d say to that is it’s important to get things right. Reporting is part of the development process and people who organise sponsorship in the field act as a support network ensuring long-term solutions are applied that offer real development to real people. And by the way, ActionAid only spends 8 pence of the sponsorship pound on in-country sponsorship administration. That’s no more – and is often a great deal less – than most other international development organisations.

Focus area: Child sponsorship is about donors buying happiness and they should “grow up”.
Jane’s response: Well I don’t think the person who said this meant to sound as condescending as he did, but ActionAid believes sponsorship is about solidarity. It creates partnerships between people across the world, helping to bring about a more just and equal planet. An intrinsic part of ActionAid’s work is to help people who don’t have a voice campaign for their basic human rights, and for people who do have a voice to campaign alongside them to ensure change happens at local, national and international levels

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Patricia Lima, ActionAid Head of PR

When the lovely Rankin said he’d help me create a cool project to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day I was really happy because once he is involved in something you can guarantee its success.  He is such a cool dude and was very nice throughout; and he really considered why Get Lippy is such an important project. 

We had the shy and lovely Miranda Richardson who all of a sudden came out with a massive “Get Lippy!” scream which we couldn’t believe had come out of her mouth! Beverley Knight was cool and down to earth and really helpful and fun to work with. 

Sophie was defiant and very vintage but right now English Rose, she’s a dichotomy – as was Annie Mac a gorgeous tomboy with the most amazing hair and taste in music ever.  She is a real trouper and got stuck in and offered to help wherever help was needed, she has a great way of being, she reminded me of a very good friend of mine... she’s that kind of gal ya know?

Joanna was just fantastic and really down to earth, funny and very polite – super chatty and full of genuine charisma, she’s got it, she was born with it... brains and all. As I said goodbye to her after a long day’s shoot I said to her "Thanks so much Joanna, this is really important to me, I’m really over the moon you could make it." she then turned around and said "I’m right there behind you Patsy." So there it was, from one Patsy to another – absolutely fabulous.

My real soul mate though and fellow punk mosh pit queen was Kathy Burke, what a legend.  She was the most fun and we talked and laughed for ages, her energy is contagious and we had a big hug at the end and Rankin took our picture on my iPhone.  She is an amazing woman, a real complete package filled with real stories and lots of talent.

Rankin and I chose the pics and his team made them shine. The film was shot with 3 different cameras and the vibe in the studio was always upbeat and dynamic.  I’m so glad this has all come to fruition and that despite all the supposed 'glamour' of the shoot the messages behind it are poignant and real reminders that women are half the population, we are not a minority and we must be equal everywhere or we aren’t equal anywhere.

>> Join the Get Lippy campaign

>> Watch the film

Jane Moyo, Head of media relations

So what will Kate Moss wear on her big day now that Galliano's in disgrace? Will Kate Middleton be accepted by William's snobby friends? These are the big questions when marriage is in the UK news.

Yet for many brides, marriage is the precursor to sustained and dreadful violence

Domestic violence causes more death and disability amongst women aged between 16 and 44 than cancer or traffic accidents. In Afghanistan, 80 per cent of women experience domestic violence.  Whilst up to 60 per cent of women surveyed in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Peru, Samoa, Thailand and Tanzania said that they had been physically or sexually abused by their partner.

And don’t just think it’s a problem of the developing world. On average in the UK, two women a week are killed by a current of former male partner. In the US, nearly a half of all women who visit a hospital emergency room do so because of injuries their intimate partner has inflicted.

Such violence against women is just one of the reasons why ActionAid has launched the Get Lippy campaign.

For the centenary of the very first International Women’s Day we’re asking people to send messages of support to women like Nazziwa from Uganda whose husband chopped off her hands with a machete because she failed to serve his evening meal on time. Or to Mina from Afghanistan, married at 6 and systematically abused for twelve years before escaping to a refuge.

It's time to shine a spotlight on the struggles women are facing and to build solidarity to tackle the urgent challenges ahead - towards a world where women and men, girls and boys, have equally good chances in life, free from want and very definitely free from fear.

At ActionAid we believe that more unites than divides. So Get Lippy and send a message of support to the millions of women in the developing world who are struggling everyday to improve their lives. And do read some of the many messages that have already been left. They are totally inspiring.

>> Get Lippy now

Melissa Hall, Aid Policy Officer

This week’s earthquake in New Zealand hit home for me. We Kiwis are used to preparing for “the big one” but the devastation and loss of life reminds us that nature doesn’t discriminate between a poor country like Haiti, and a wealthy country like New Zealand.

New Zealanders are immensely thankful for the response from around the world. Search and rescue teams, donations and simply words have been a source of strength. Britain sent the same team to Christchurch that’s previously been deployed in Haiti, Pakistan and Indonesia.

It’s made me reflect on the role of international aid. It seems there's something about being human that means we respond to need, regardless of where it is.

Jane Moyo, Head of media relations

There’s a lot of journalists in Haiti. They’re chasing the cholera story. At the moment it’s been contained in Port au Prince but there are rumours circulating amongst the media that it could be out of control in the north of Haiti. I was talking to a television producer who’d heard that the mayor of a small town was personally having to bury his citizens and might talk on the record. Is it true? Who knows? ActionAid Haiti is not a medical charity and I was firmly told are determined not to feed that particular rumour mill. But I couldn’t help but notice that everyone is using hand sanitizers.