Journey to justice - action tip

Ten years ago the global debt crisis campaign was thrust into the mainstream as thousands of people formed a big human chain in Birmingham - ten years on and the the anniversary is being marked to:

CELEBRATE ten years since the Birmingham human chain
DISCOVER the impact of debt cancellation so far
DEMAND a lasting solution to the [...]

Making her traffickers pay

A few weeks ago I mentioned I’d be leading an Encounter team to Bangladesh in October to see the work of the Church of Bangladesh Social Development Programme (CBSDP), who are involved in highlighting the issues of human trafficking…
News last week on the CMS website shares the story of Halima, who was sold by her [...]

Zambia’s lost copper wealth - action tip

It’s been a while, but here is another action tip…
Having lived in the Copperbelt in Zambia we know that one of the central questions about Zambia is always: why is this once middle-income country so poor, when it is so rich - £2bn worth extracted from its mines last year - in copper?
As things are [...]

Black Gold Movie - action tip

A new documentary film about the impact of the coffee trade called Black Gold, is about to be released, so I am making it an action tip.
The film exposes the injustices of the international coffee trade industry by following the journey of Tadesse Meskela, General Manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co. in Ethiopia, [...]

stop vulture funds - action tip

Yesterday the vulture fund, Donegal International, that has been targeting Zambia for $55 million (we have talked about it before) was told it will only get $15.4 million. The fact Zambia has to pay anything to this company is still too much, but it is progress! The judge back in February found Donegal’s full claim [...]

the slave tree - action tip

I have mentioned Freedom Day before. Recently, anticipating that this day to mark the end of slavery is just around the corner (25th March), we went in search for the famous slave tree in Ndola town and a local history lesson.
Swahili slave-traders used to frequent the area around the tree - meeting under the shade [...]

vulture funds: action tip

Last week a high court judge in London ruled whether a so-called ‘vulture fund’, Donegal International, could extract more than $40m from Zambia for a debt which it bought for less than $4m.
In 1979 the Romanian government lent Zambia money to buy Romanian tractors. Zambia was unable to keep up the payments and in 1999 [...]

Action Tip no 1: Freedom Day - 25th March

The 25th of March 2007 is Freedom Day, which this year will mark the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Today twenty-seven million men, women, and children are still enslaved around the globe, so I am kicking off the Action Tips series with a look at the things planned to commemorate the [...]

Action Tips

Inspired by Jonny Bakers Worship Tricks I’ve decided to start a series of blog posts about all things campaigning and action, which I’ll be calling action tricks, consisting of thoughts, tips, resources and actions around campaigning and speaking out.
Having been involved for sometime in campaigning and finding a voice in the world of politics [...]

Climate change - An Inconvenient Truth

“Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever [...]