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Friday Nov 24, 2006

Prime Minister requests the honour of the company of...

ME!!!!!!

Yes folks I'm off to meet with the Prime Minister and Mrs Blair. In recognition of voluntary services woohoo

Basically the people we got funding from to develop our Young Volunteers Group 'THE PARTY!' asked for the organsations/groups they have given funding to, to nominate someone in their project that the funding was for. I got put forward by Barnardo's NE and was accepted to go down to meet the Prime Minister and Mrs Blair.

So in December I will be heading to Number 10 Downing Street, I know its a while off yet its about 2weeks away, but just got my invite through and thought I would tell everyone hehe. So you know that in 2weeks I will let you know what happened.

Now I know its a while since I wrote anything sorry internet problems and been really busy since the V Factor-Eco Fashion Show, yes thats right you read it right I have said 'since'....So if you wanted to see it well its over...haha!  No really it went really well we had lots of entries into the fashion show, all outfits again were recycled, some were from Barnardos shops, and some from....well, what was made in the workshops etc.  All ages attended at V Factor and got some interest from young people about 'The PARTY! and volunteering which is all good.  Remember it was about raising awareness of Barnardos, recycling and of course VOLUNTEERING.  Which we aimed to do so in a fun way, which I think we did.

We had a photographer there from local paper and we had a bit put in the paper about it, and we had the photographer we had a The B'OSCARS there to take pics of people walking up and down the catwalk.  Which I believe have been delivered this week.  So it was all good!  I'm so glad its over.

So now that the V Factor is over, we can concentrate on the B'OSCARS if you remember that is Barnardos North East way of recognising young peoples achievements.  Which we held in April last year so this will be our 2nd one hehe! which we are having in The Sage. 

 Oh yeah and the Young People's Regional Advisory have been shortlisted for Young Partners Award and so Im off to London next weekend to the award ceremony with the rest of YPRAG.  Should be fun.

So bye for now

Moira

Posted by Moira ( 6:02 PM )
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Wednesday Nov 01, 2006

Warning: This is going to be a LONG post.

Phew! It's been a long time since I wrote anything here! Once again, due an unfortunate turn of events I have been unable to keep this up to date, my computer was rather.. incapacitated and whatever we did the Internet just didn't seem to work, but now I'm back on a slightly improved machine and with a shiny new ISP! The upside is of course is that I have lots to say! So much has happened..

I received those GCSE results I was in such anticipation of and... was pleasantly surprised! I achieved 2 A* 's, 4 A's, 4 B's, 1 C. I'm now continuing to study at sixth form and of course my work for Love Music Hate Racism.

I spent quite a few days working in the office over the holidays doing various bits and pices, mainly due to the sheer amount of free time i had. It was quite different to what i had expected! I had imagined a large open plan office, what i found on my arrival was two quite small rooms with about 4 desks crammed in each and a bathroom in the middle! I did alot of typing. By the end of the day my fingers were so tired i could scarcely hold a msn conversation! It gave me a much larger respect for those who travel in everyday and do 9-5 in an office. I was utterly exhausted!

We also had a fair few events of the summer. Firstly, both of the school visits we were planning took place. They both happened on the 14th of July, one at my school, Barking Abbey, the second at Jo Richardson community school a short distance away. Both Frances and I (who is a school friend and has been involved with LMHR along with myself from the start) attended our school event as representatives - as attendee's of the school and people who are involved in the campaign. We arrived to see a lot of worried looking people on our arrival – Donna was giggling nervously, Weyman was pacing, Lee was shouting at people down the phone.. There was also a pretty, shy-seeming, young woman who was sitting on one of the sofa's by our reception fervently looking over some pages of scrawled writing and reading them out loud.

I didn't recognise her at first but Lee soon came over to introduced her as Naomi, and when she stood up to shake our hands I realised – this was Miss Dynamite! Me and Frances were soon whisked away and told to set up the stall which we did as all the students, Year 10 and 11's filed into the hall. They had no idea of what was about to happen, only that a 'special assembly' was taking place, they were all quite excited! My sociology and drama teachers got up on stage to announce rather excitedly what was happening, introducing our special guest! The noise from the students when she appeared was SO loud, but they soon quietened down and listened (pretty attentively surprisingly!) to the speech she had to read. She talked about how important it was to respect each others cultures and celebrate diversity, saying that "being different should not be ridiculed or interpreted as an offence, but is seen for what it truly is - a beautiful gift.". She gave examples of how people from so many different cultures and background have given so much to our world, listing inventors and scientists such as Einstein. She then asked the students if they had any questions, this resulted in much hilarity! We stood at the back of the hall laughing. Some of them were pretty cheeky, asking her if she had a boyfriend or if she would sing to them , to which Ms Dynamite replied, "no but you can" so the girl got up and gave us a mini-performance – which was amusing! They also had some quite intelligent questions to ask about racism, what she had experienced, how she thought they should deal with it. After the speech there was a lot of press waiting and we had to have our pictures taken for LMHR as well as other press that had turned out. She left the hall from the front and walked towards the quads which Weyman thought was a good location for the pictures, this however was a mistake! All the students leaving the hall from the back entrance followed us out and swamped us and the photographers, attempting to get the picture! We was mobbed I tell ya! Naomi was wonderfully calm in this situation, telling everyone to relax and back off a bit! We had a few more pictures taken outside but when it became impossible again we were directed inside.

Frances and I, along with a few school children were then interviewed by various people and had lots more pictures taken. They stood in front of us and yelled, "Over here please" while directing what seemed like hundred of flashes in our direction! By the ended of it I was blinded! There was actually quite a lot of press there that day, a few local papers, the BBC, London tonight, we even got interviewed for 'The Sun' which was rather surreal... Once she had left and everyone had calmed down slightly, we met up with the other group which had been to the Jo Richardson visit, walking to the café for some much needed refreshment while reporting back on how the day had gone. Overall it was a really positive event! There's a report both visits here on the Love music hate racism site  One written by myself! There was also a very amusingly negative but significantly .. misguided.. shall we say, report about it on the BNP web site, since encouraging children to be Anti-racist is such a BAD thing! Urg, sometimes you have to laugh...

Ooooh. What else has happened. We helped out at 'In the mix' festival, which was not organised by us but which we supported. It was supposed to be a fete kinda thing with different foods, music, stalls, activities. What it actually was, was well.. disorganised...quiet! We got there about 10 and arrange our stall ready for it all to kick off by about 11, but soon realised, we were practically the only ones setting up.. The same was the case an hour later when it was meant to begin with the exception of a few other charity and food stalls.. The ladies who had actually organising it weren't even coming and had left a rather bewildered bloke in charge! The P.A system hadn't even arrived! In the end, Lee decided to take over, we got the P.A system up and some stuff happening on stage and it finally, very slowly, began.. All the stall holders arrived and a few people started milling about.. but I mean a few.. Nevertheless, we carried on with the stall, talking to those that were there and (mostly successfully) getting people to sign up to the mailing list.. The four people I felt most sorry for that day were The Metro Riots. Now, they are a pretty good band and can pull crowds of 1000 or so people in the venues of central london, but on a grey Saturday afternoon in September, in the middle of marks gate they played to a grand total of 6, yes, 6 people. Two of those people were me and Frankie! They were pretty understandably unimpressed, though quite comical about it .. we chatted to them later in an attempt to console them.. bless 'em. Later however, when some of the more Urban acts started playing a reasonably good crowd of 50 or so people seemed to appear suddenly from no-where! So I guess the last bit of the day was better. After we'd closed and tidied-up we then went off to the pub – not however in the name of recreation but another exciting event we were organising!

We'd had the rather excellent band Dirty Pretty Things booked for the 30th September for quite a while, and had arranged several different venues but each one seemed to back out or have problems soon after it was confirmed... It was already the 9th of September, about 20 days to go and this pub – The Cauliflower, was pretty much our last hope. Luckily, it was great, suiting our needs pretty much perfectly apart from we'd have to be a bit stricter on ages than we wanted. But the owners were happy, we were relieved, it was arranged! In the coming weeks we vivaciously sold tickets and promoted as much as we could. We were rewarded by the fact the event was completely sold out – about 400 of so tickets all gone! It night itself was also amazing. As well as Dirty Pretty Things, Roll Deep, O.T crew, Rock I.D, The Mentalists and a real range of people performed who were pretty much as diverse as the audience watching.

The whole place had such a good atmosphere. We got there quite early (we were on decorating duty!) spending most of the night on the stall as usual among other tasks here and there.. I was even persuaded by Lee to go up and speak on stage, don't ask me how.. He still owes me a drink for the experience. Marcia was up first and said a lot of good stuff, getting the crowd excited, I walked on, realised I was too short to talk into the microphone and walked straight off again! Lee however persisted, and gave me some stuff to talk about. A second attempt, with the microphone lowered, it was over! I ran away back to the relative safety of the stall! It was a really really long night, the headliners DPT didn't go on until about midnight. They were SO worth it though, Carl and the boys were amazing as always playing a loud and energetic set! They were also very lovely when Alison led us upstairs for a quick chat! She knew what fan-girls we were and said it would be a bit of a treat for all our hard work over the last year and a half! All in all it was such a great night, everyone we talked to was really enthusiastic about what were now and said what a wonderful time they had. We left, exhausted, at about 2am with a really good nights work done.

The last significant thing we did in my area was the Black History Month Event we organised at Barking college. This took place on the weekend just gone, (the 28th) and I spent most of my half term out and about with Drew and Donna leafleting and promoting it. It was a day of various workshops and discussions about various issues centred around celebrating and educating people about Black History. They were all pretty lively and I was proud to contribute.

Apart from the usual meeting and such it's all a bit quiet on the volunteering front until the end of the month now when we have a fundraiser night at Fabric which should be a good night. Congratulations if you've got this far having also read the rest of this entry! I told you it was going to be long... =D

Posted by Carolynn ( 5:07 PM )
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