2010- IC Europe Shout Outs!

So 2010 has been a busy one so far for IC in Europe and we wanted to give a special shout out for all the awesome things that you guys have been doing so far this year to keep raising money and awareness for IC and it’s programmes. You guys are complete allstars! Keep it up, this movement relies on all of you!!

Read and be inspired!

Adam from Durham Uni is running not 1 BUT 2 marathons this summer to raise money for IC and War Child. Go Adam!! You are a brave guy!

The IC Club at St Clare’s Oxford have held a couple of awesome fundraisers at school and are going round other local schools in the area presenting IC. They are also off to Geneva later this month to raise awareness about IC at the Global Issues Network Conference to get other students involved. Way to go guys!!

Cosimo and the Model UN society at Cardiff Uni just held a massive IC screening and are continuing to gather support from their fellow students!

Chloe (Cheney School, Oxford) wrote to Judith Mann from the Great Lakes Section of the FCO, is setting her school up on the Schools for Schools programme and is planning screenings and fundraisers

Heather, Grace and Chris (Glasgow) have been diving into the Scottish political scene – Heather received a reply to her letter to Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy including an invitation to a debate event in January. Grace and Chris attended in her place and spoke to the hosting MPs, who suggested drafting a motion to try to get into Scottish Parliament.

James (Birmingham) has been busy spreading awareness on the music scene, with particular interest from Kids in Glass Houses, and is hoping to get the band involved with promoting IC in Europe.

Jay (LSE) got IC the opportunity to be beneficiaries of LSE’s biggest annual cultural event Timeless! – the event raised around £5000. Timeless and the RAG society are now organising a joint screening to continue gaining support in the wake of the event.

Laure (SOAS, Prime Minister’s Global Fellow) hosted a screening at SOAS, held a screening herself at a school in Manchester, has written to MPs and Baroness Kinnock and is getting the Prime Minister’s Global Fellowship energised about the movement.

Martin (Broughton High School, Edinburgh) is on the charity committee at school and they are supporting IC this term. Among their plans is a screening after which they will ask the audience to write letters to MPs. In the pipeline are various fundraising activities by classmates including dress down days, cakes sales and a sponsored sky dive!

Ste successfully applied for a grant from the local council to fund public music gigs to raise awareness for IC and is holding a ‘Kidnap’ event in early March.

Tyna and Petra (Czech Republic) continue to storm the nationwide movement and have a translated version of IC website up and running so everyone can access the information. She and friends represented IC at a big charity showcase event, choreographed a special dance piece and has held fundraisers and awareness events at her university

Other News:

Innocent, the face behind the white bracelet, was a delegate in spirit if not in person (due to visa issues) at the inaugural One Young World summit held in London in early February. He has been invited again next year and will have the chance to meet inspiring and influential leaders such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Kofi Annan

James Allen Girls’ School raised money for IC at their multicultural evening in January to which Lizzy was invited and treated to a wonderful variety of performances including a short drama entirely in Italian, a French mime and a number of dances including the hula. The evening raised £1600 – thanks girls!

The IC club at the American School of the Hague recently held a great screening which moved one audience member to say that it changed his life, and went on to talk to his friends and family back in the US about it. The club also raised E400 by selling popcorn and IC merch, and used an internet bulletin to urge people to vote for IC in the Chase contest, which motivated not just the students but the faculty as well.

Ami and Lizzy represented IC to a crowd of nearly 500 people at a discussion on Global Citizenship hosted by UCL in early February. Experts on security and global citizenship also spoke about the situation and why it is important for people to act, which generated lots of insightful and sometimes hard-hitting questions

Emily Wikelnsky and her fellow students at Peebles High School, Scotland raised an awesome £500 from their charity concert!

Students from St Margaret’s High School Airdrie, Scotland have got so involved with IC since the roadies visited that they have raised almost £1000 for IC!!

Also a MASSIVE CONGRATS to 2 bands who have been huge supporters of IC in Europe.

BIFFY CLYRO recently picked up the NME award for “Best Video” for their single The Captain. Well done boys you earned it!!

FRIGHTENED RABBIT have recently released their new album “The Winter of Mixed Drinks”. Listen and love it!!

Keep up the amazing work everyone, we are so blown away with all you are doing!

Ami and Team Europe!!! x

Mammouth Update from the Road!

Here is an update from our lovely roadie team, as we’ve had zero time to breathe it’s a 4 month all in oner! enjoy!

Tales from the road…

ok…where to start? I am not too sure. Therefore the following might be a ‘wee’ bit of a ramble (my Scottish slang sneaking its way in there). Well, we have had a brilliant four months of tour, shamelessly throwing flyers out the window of the van to confused onlookers would be one of our many proud awareness raising moments for I.C!  

In the southern parts we have visited the likes of Cambridge, where between screenings we rediscovered the joys of the free museum entry..including the Zoologoy Museum where we all agreed with the comment left by Helen aged 6 and three quaters that our ‘Favorut was the big sloth’. Also featured in the southern region of our travels was Oxford, Eton, and the wonderful Heathfield School. Lizzy is still raving about the reaction at Eton and after Heathfield us three Roadies were practically bouncing off the walls..their enthusiasm was awesome. So great in fact we went on a celebratory jaunt into Windsor to wave wildly at the Queen and get our photo taken with some policemen. We also gave some stirling I.C chat to the man working in the Fudge Kitchen on the high street..who in turn has officially (although you might not know it yet) renamed fudge to ‘Sweet Slabs of Justice’ in our honour! Some what overly confident in our happiness, Cameron insisted we film him jumping over a gate in the middle of the pedestrian high street. Underestimating the gate and its potential to swing out and subsequently ‘ruin his life’. Chris and I were practically crying with Laughter. Yes, I have it on film!!  

Lizzy (my big, although rather small in physical size Sister) and I were lucky enough to join forces during tour and visit our old school, King’s School Canterbury. The upper sixth weren’t even at the school when I left in 2005. Very strange and made me feel old..but to be fair probably made Lizzy feel like a granny being another school generation older!  

Further afield, the Roadies headed to Cardiff where the support for I.C is what can only described as ’off the chain’, we hung out with Lea a previous I.C intern at the London office and a “fabulous one at that” - quote Ami Anderson. As well as Adam, Trigg and Cosimo (Shout out to the boys of Cardiff..whoop whoop etc.etc.). Luckily Cardiff fell on a thursday so the post screening curry at 4.99 incl drink at the local ‘poons fell like putty into our hands..

We took part in Carmel College’s ‘One World Day’ and were a part of a jam packed day of events with a variety of other speakers from different organisations, which was fab!  We also headed to Birmingham where the students at Park View were getting involved in a T-shirt design competition to raise money. We are really looking forward to seeing the winning design guys! *Sigh…..Durham…Sigh*..just awesome! I smile when I think of Durham because of these two fabulous people: Fabiana and Adam. They pulled out all the stops to achieve a beyond successful screening at Durham Van Mildret College and it was brilliant. We knocked about with all the dressed up (and the not so dressed) society social groups heading out for a night on the town, who still gave up some of their time to come to the screening and speak to us! Fabiana and Adam are still doing amazing things around their university to get the word out and raise the profile of Invisible Children at Durham.  

Last but, definitely by no means least,.. we have the Scotland leg!! Cameron, the guardian of the van drove us around Scotland like a trooper..while Chris either sang/danced or snored in the passenger seat (equal percentage of the three I’d say) and I laughed outragiously at everything and anything. We caught up with all our wonderful contacts and Ambassadors such as those at Peebles High School, St Andrew’s University, St Margarets, Alva Academy, Carnoustie and Gordonstoun. At St Andrew’s the UGLY committee, whos continued support has been simply amazing, were ready for another onslaught of I.C merch and media with many new faces in the crowd too! At St Margarets we had a post screening sing along to ‘I got Soul’ which was definitely a Roadie moment to remember! At Carnoustie we were welcomed with fabulous news, they had not only raised money for us by putting on a charity concert but they had also been awarded a charity partnership award with Invisible Children!! We were so proud to accept the award and to have talked to all the students and teachers who were involved en masse at the RESCUE event in Edinburgh! At Gordonstoun some of the 6th form girls, headed up by Tolu and Daisy had organised a Masquerade ball and raised nearly £2000 for Invisible Children, again another very proud moment for the I.C Europe team and we had the honour of accepting the cheque at Sunday mornings assembly at the school. Later in the morning we held a screening for the 6th form. Having already seen the RESCUE we decided to screen Sunday, and I have to say it was one of the best screenings I have ever sat through. Everyone was so involved while watching the film, and I remember Cameron getting all emotional about it (haha..sorry but you did!). After the screening Gordonstoun 6th form went ‘Merch’ crazy and it was brilliant to get such an amazing level of support from every single person who attended the presentation!


Unfortunately when there are highs there are inevitably lows…a low which was undeniably caused by ME! So, about 20 minutes after I suggest I drive the first leg of the journey back from Elgin to Glasgow I manage to bump into another car, crack the radiator, have it towed and subsequently strand us in a 24hr Tesco’s where we attempted to pass the time waiting for Euan (I.C Biffy Clyro Tour Liason, your Legendary status deserves the bold sort of font!), who kindly offered to drive 5 hours from Glasgow to Elgin to pick us up. We got talking to Moira, a Tesco’s coffee shop worker who once hearing our sorry tale and without any hint of hesitation invited us back to her house to wait for Euan. We spent three long and what can only be described as uncomfortable hours sitting in Moira’s front room drinking tea, which she assured us had been made without the addition of white-powder. In fact she invited us to watch her make it just so we could make sure! Half expecting to start falling out of consciousness Cameron frantically dished out address details so that we could be easily located. Unfortunately Chris at this point had tonselitus and therefore missed this dramatic episode but he fondly recalls a paniced phone call from Cameron around half an hour before Euan arrived!! Euan a special shout out to you, your seedy sat nav and playing twenty questions all over Scotland!!    

All in, we have had far too many wetherspoons, Mc Donalds and Subways to count but our diet has some how resulted in dramatic weightloss on both the boys parts…the same cannot be said for myself. Why is this girls? I do not have the answer!

Next Generation Philanthropy Forum

Hi Guys,

As you may have gathered from Facebook, Invisible Children is about to be part of a very excititing event that is taking place on Monday 9th November in London called the Next Generation Philanthropy Forum. The event will feature some amazing speakers from various non-profits and organisations. Invisible Children’s work will also be showcased.

The whole event will be broadcast on a live feed and we are encoraging as many people as possible to access this feed, sending in their comments and questions to the panels for discussion.

See info on the Event below and GET INVOLVED!!

The Legatum Institute is pleased to present the 2009 Next Generation
Philanthropy Forum. Building a more prosperous world requires strategy
and focus on the next generation to increase philanthropic giving,
improve advocacy and promote relationship-based social entrepreneurship. Over the past decade social networking websites and other new media tools have changed the way people, especially youth, communicate, relate and become civically active. At the same time, innovations in philanthropy that emphasize business approaches, entrepreneurship and high impact are inspiring to young people. The goal of the Forum is to highlight these new trends and understand how they can best be promoted to mobilize youth as individuals, organizations or social movements and to improve their effectiveness as change agents.

To view the Live Feed visit: www.li.com
To join the conversation: www.twitter.com/legatum (#linextgen)

Opening Remarks (9.15 - 9.45 GMT)
Jean Geran, Legatum Institute and Ami Anderson, Invisible Children

Panel 1 – Youth entrepreneurship and education (9.45 - 11.00 GMT)

(Presenter/Moderator – Steve Mariotti, Founder of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship)

• Legatum Center at MIT – Nada Hashmi, Fellow

• Teach First – Brett Wigdortz, Chief Executive Officer/Founder


Panel 2 – New business approaches to philanthropy (11.15 - 12.45 GMT)

(Presenter/Moderator – Michael Green, co-author of Philanthrocapitalism)

• Invisible Children and Edun/MEND – Ben Keesey, Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer

• RED – Seb Bishop, Chief Executive Officer

• Shell Foundation – Chris West, Director


Lunch Keynote Speech (13.15 - 14.30 GMT)
Jared Cohen, author of Children of Jihad and co-founder of the Alliance of Youth Movements


Panel 3 – Measuring impact: how do you know you are making a difference? (14.45 - 16.15 GMT)

(Presenter/Moderator – Martin Brookes, Chief Executive Officer of New Philanthropy Capital)

• Newdea – Troy Stremler, Chief Executive Officer

• Geneva Global– Doug Balfour, Chief Executive Officer

• YouGov – Stephan Shakespeare, Founder/Chief Innovations Officer



Panel 4 - Advocacy and philanthropy through new media (16.30 - 18.00 GMT)

(Presenter/Moderator – Antony Mayfield, Vice President of Social Media, iCrossing)

• Invisible Children – Laren Poole, Co-founder/Filmmaker

• Ushahidi – Juliana Rotich, Program Director

• Global Giving – Sharath Jeevan, Chief Executive Officer



Closing Reception (18.00 GMT)

Excitement!!

We have some complete allstars all over Europe who have went above and beyond to support Invisible Children’s work and here are some of our most recent bits of inspiration!

GORDONSTOUN SCHOOL in Scotland

The school chose Invisible Children as one of the charities of the year to raise money for, and recently held their Charity Ball raising almost £1200 for IC!!! Amazing job guys, so are so inspiring and we are in awe of all the cool things you have been doing to spread the word of Invisible Children- the roadies visit them this weekend for a second time and to say a massive thank you!

CARNOUSTIE HIGH SCHOOL, Scotland

We love these guys!!! What an incredible bunch who turned out in force at the Edinburgh Rescue and have since been strong supporters of IC across their community. They recently held a benefit show for IC and raised over £600. They were also awarded a “Partnership of Excellence Award” for the partnership built between the school and IC this year. We are honoured to have people like these guys support us and we admire you all so much!!

YORK UNIVERSITY

IC was recently made International RAG beneficiary charity at York Univesity for 2009 - 2010. Amazing effort by the guys there in all their hard work to support Invisible Children, exciting to see what happens there!

Thanks to every single person who is working so hard across Europe to support Invisible Children, we couldn’t do it without you all!

Ami x

IC on tour with Biffy Clyro!

We love Biffy Clyro, we love their music, we love their banter and we love their hairy scottish faces……and they seem to like us too.

So for the third time, Invisible Children Europe will be hitting the road to join up with Biffy Clyro on their current UK Tour. The boys have been an amazing support to us since our launch into Europe from promoting the work of Invisible Children on tour and inviting us to tell the stories of Northern Uganda to thousands of their fans. They are also big fans of our merch and have worn it to promote us on National Tv interviews and press opportunites. In short, they are awesome and we’re so grateful for all their help!

We will be joining the boys on 6 of their dates on their UK Tour, as follows:

1st Nov- Dundee, Scotland

2nd Nov- Glasgow, Scotland

3rd Nov- Glasgow, Scotland

4th Nov- Newcastle

6th Nov- Leeds

12th Nov- London

We’ll be raffling off some awesome signed goodies each night and spreading the word of IC to the Biffy Clyro contingent :)

We’ve got some exciting things planned and it’s going to be a busy week!

If you’re hitting up any of these shows, come and say hey! keep checking for updates!

Ami x

Ambassador Shout Outs!!

We thought it was about time we gave a shout out to our incredible network of Ambassadors and highlight some of the brilliant things they have been working on for the Europe movement… be inspired!

• Adam (Oxford) has set us up with the fantastic opportunity to present to the Prime Minister’s Global Fellowship Alumni and is helping promote IC at university and his old school

• Aska (Oxford) started an IC club at her school, is planning a bake sale and working on publicising IC around Oxford by approaching shops for support

• Callum (Carnoustie) is organising a big concert that could draw in £1000

• Carina (Germany) hosted a house party and she and her friends are working on ideas to help expand the movement in Germany

• Deborah (London) was inspired to set up a club after a screening and has a car wash, cake sale and two more screenings in the works

• Hannah (Plymouth) shakes her change for change jar whenever friends come over and has collected £100 so far

• Hilary (London) works with Portia in their IC club to at Richmond University - they’re planning a poker tournament, concert and a big art project to take to the streets of London

• Ishtah (London) is holding a bake sale at her school and has suggested IC as the beneficiary of their Christmas talent show

• Jay (London) introduced us to the production team of a huge annual event hosted by LSE which is flourishing into a strong partnership with huge potential for publicity and funding

• Joshua (London) hosted a house party with fellow ambassador Joanne, raised the support of their friends as well as £80 on the night and is now planning events at his local church and college

• Niki (St Andrews) is part of the Uganda Liberation of Youth (Ug.L.Y) group at university and is planning screenings, music evenings, dodgeball competitions and a book drive

• Phoebe (Oxford) raised £100 through her school’s Young Enterprise scheme and has encouraged her friends to help her spread the word

• Tyna (Czech Republic) has initiated an entire movement in her city with the help of a dedicated group of friends - they have been invited to represent Invisible Children at a big charity showcase which will lead to mass awareness and potential funding

No doubt there is lots more going on behind the scenes so if you’ve been working on something, however big or small, we want to hear about it… Keep up the amazing work everyone!

Meet the Roadies…..

So…..here we have it, we’ve kicked off Autumn with the help of our amazing roadies Cameron, Chris and Vicky who are currently making their way around the UK screening like crazy. Read their profiles below- learn them, love them and get ready for them….they could be coming to a school, University,church,living room near you very soon! These guys rock our world :)

x

Vicky

Name: Vicky Chenery

Age: 22

Hails from: London

Known for: her trademark laugh, which is almost always present. This girl has lived all over the world and has bouncy enthusiasm that would make Tigger jealous.

We love her because: She was in charge of the Edinburgh University IC club, getting her fellow students involved and decided to go one step further and take to the road to inspire others.

On tour you will most likely find her: Leading sing a longs in the van and scouting for potential IC Europe Ambassadors and Activists!

Vicky says….. “I wanted to be an IC roadie because I wanted to travel my own nation in search of more brave and inspired activists to join the Europe Movement. I wanted to volunteer for a cause I strongly believed in and an organisation that empowered young people to make a beneficial change in the world.”

Cameron

Name: Cameron Barbour

Age:   23

Hails from: Oban, Scotland (but we stole him from Glasgow)

Known for: his OCD (although he’ll debate that) tendencies, fear of olives and food share, the fact that he’s a bit of a sporting legend in Scotland…..ask him for an autograph….all proceeds go to IC :)

We love him because: He is the voice of reason and guardian of the trusty IC wagon….ensuring safe travels on the road. He also does a pretty impressive rendition of mambo number 5!

On tour you will most likely find him:   guarding the merch table and issuing death stares to anyone that messes up the order and right angles of his stock. Behind the wheel of the ‘trusty’ IC van.

Cameron says….. ” I loved the way IC captured the importance of using your voice for change regardless of age. I think that makes a real difference and I’m excited to hit the road in Europe and encourage others to join us in doing this”.