Upon a recent trip to San Francisco, I needed to rent a car. After tapping up the usual suspects I realised that I didn’t want the burden of looking after a car for the whole week. For one, parking in SF is a nightmare, there are just too many cars. And secondly, I only needed to drive a few times over the course of a week so it felt wasteful.
I Give An X
Why should you give an X in the upcoming UK election?
Because if you don’t vote you can’t complain. You can’t stand up for what you believe in. You can’t decide who decides important things like your reproductive rights as a woman or how elderly people are treated. You can’t have a say in how education, healthcare or any public services are run. People all over the world fight for democracy in their countries everyday so don’t take the right to vote for granted, show conviction and use it.
This London Girl Can
When Hackney Laces first began four years ago, I don’t think any of us – players, volunteers or coaches – expected for us to grow beyond Hackney. I know I didn’t. Now our sister club Limehouse Laces is taking Tower Hamlets by storm, attracting so many young women to the club and inspiring them along the way.
Born from requests from friends, clients and collaborators, I’ve compiled a resource that lists some of the best free online tools to use for publishing, social media, measurement and market analysis. There are *so* many companies providing services and my list is not an exhaustive one. It’s just some tools that I find useful in the work that I do and hopefully you will too. And if there are any gems you think I’m missing, do let me know!
Click here to see the view the list.
Conscious Consumption
Naturally drawn to Sarah Lazarovic’s book A Bunch of Pretty Things I did Not Buy because of its neon orange cover and hand written type, I almost read the whole book in the shop (not because I didn’t intend on buying it) because it sucked me in. Lazarovic takes you on a journey – her journey tracking the relationship she has with stuff and her decision not to buy things. Rather than reiterate a narrative around how bad fast fashion is for this world, she crafts a charming and powerful manifesto “The buyerarchy of needs” illustrated through personal anecdotes and a guide to buying things that are made to last, encouraging readers to think before they spend.
Lucky Iron Fish
There’s a proverb that gets used a lot in community development: “give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you’ll feed him for a lifetime.” Canadian based company Lucky Iron Fish inadvertently subvert this saying with their simple yet life-changing tool – a fish capable of supplying a family with 75% of their daily iron intake. By purchasing one lucky iron fish, two families in Cambodia will be given a fish of their own to drop into a pot whilst cooking, facilitating the release of iron into their meal.
The Little Free Library began as one man’s tribute to his mother, a former school teacher, and has since become a global movement. Todd Bol of Hudson, Wisconsin built a small replica of a school house, filled it with books and placed it in front of his house for friends and family to enjoy. Now there are more than 15,000 registered sites around the world, enabling anyone to create their own book collection for their community.
541 Exchange
Hamilton’s Barton Street area is often referred to as a “red zone” by city authorities, community groups and press because of the prevalence of homelessness, high number of residents living below the poverty line and reported crime rates surpassing those of any other neighbourhood in the city.
This Girl Can
Sport England’s latest campaign to get more girls playing sport has completely hit the mark. This Girl Can takes an honest, unapologetic approach aimed at empowering females to get involved in physical activity.
My family has a long standing tradition of giving homemade presents. My mum would build up our arts and crafts repertoire each year to help us think beyond classics like handprints on mugs and photos in frames. This year we thought it would be funny (and ridiculous) to make mum a photo book, recreating pictures from our childhood.