I have just measured myself up to provide baseline figures for the fitness drive I am going to embark upon in the lead up to my participation in the BUPA 10km run in London next year. The data are not impressive.
Height - 1.74m
Weight - 80kg
Waist - 99cm
Hips - 101 cm
Oh dear. Consultation with the BUPA website indicates that it's currently not looking good for my prospects of avoiding a heart attack. My Body Mass Index (BMI) which is calculated by dividing weight in kg by height in metres stands at 26.42; a figure of between 25-30 is considered "overweight". Encouraged by the recent medical evidence that BMI is a less reliable measure of risk than Waist to Hip ratio I calculated that one enthusiastically. My optimism was short lived. The ratio works out at 0.98 - a figure of greater than .90 takes me into the high risk zone.
Anyway, encouraged by a family member's contribution of £2k towards my sponsorship page this morning the fitness drive begins today. As I am nearing my first fundraising target of £1k for every km of the run I am going to set myself a real challenge. I am no athlete, decreasingly so as the years go on, and have little chance of realising my idle boast to friends of being first across the line. Instead I am going to try to set a record for the amount raised by an individual and maybe also by a charity running team in this particular event. I am awaiting information from the event organisers as to what the highest sponsorship has been in the past.
Guinness Book of Records here we come!
Tuesday 11 November 2008
Monday 10 November 2008
The banality of evil
When Adolf Eichmann, the infamous architect of Hitler's "Final Solution" against th
e Jews, was finally captured and presented in an Israeli court in 1963 the public was in for a surprise. For his was not the face of an ogre. Instead a very ordinairy, diminutive, bespectacled bureaucrat was being accused of the most horrendous of charges. This experience led to a book being published called "Eichmann in Jerusalem" with the subtitle "The banality of evil". My mind turned to this last evening after I received this picture of Kaajiman Shrestha, a Nepali who is currently facing charges of trafficking children to the Indian circuses. He was apprehended by Esther Benjamins Trust staff after allegedly having been involved in sending scores of children to a living hell that masqueraded as circus life. He's of course not remotely in the same league as Eichmann, but he looks a fairly benign kind of a chap, one that you wouldn't look twice at if you met him in the street. If convicted he faces twenty years in prison.
e Jews, was finally captured and presented in an Israeli court in 1963 the public was in for a surprise. For his was not the face of an ogre. Instead a very ordinairy, diminutive, bespectacled bureaucrat was being accused of the most horrendous of charges. This experience led to a book being published called "Eichmann in Jerusalem" with the subtitle "The banality of evil". My mind turned to this last evening after I received this picture of Kaajiman Shrestha, a Nepali who is currently facing charges of trafficking children to the Indian circuses. He was apprehended by Esther Benjamins Trust staff after allegedly having been involved in sending scores of children to a living hell that masqueraded as circus life. He's of course not remotely in the same league as Eichmann, but he looks a fairly benign kind of a chap, one that you wouldn't look twice at if you met him in the street. If convicted he faces twenty years in prison.
Monday 3 November 2008
Flickr
I have just embraced "Flickr" which allows me to share Trust photographs through an online album and that automatically places pictures onto this blog, Facebook and to my charity run fundraising page (hint, hint). I have uploaded a few pictures from our circus rescue in June, but I would recommend that you have a look at the trekking collection that I have uploaded this morning. Essentially the older refuge children who are taking part in the International Award scheme become involved in a range of activities from community work to adventurous training that develops them as well-rounded citizens, even the leaders tomorrow. Thanks to the Body Shop Foundation we were able to purchase trekking and camping equipment which has allowed the children to go off on regular trips with their carers and with guides.
The images of the happy children in the trekking collection belie the grim backgrounds that they've all come from. It is so common for our work to attract comment about "institutionalisation". Do these children look institutionalised to you?
The images of the happy children in the trekking collection belie the grim backgrounds that they've all come from. It is so common for our work to attract comment about "institutionalisation". Do these children look institutionalised to you?
Saturday 1 November 2008
Feet of clay
I have just returned from Saturday lunch with the children at the refuge. It's a lovely sunny 
day in Kathmandu and I was pleased to see upon arrival at the refuge that Shailaja, typically, was not lazing in the sun. Instead she had put the sun to work for her with two solar ovens up and running, baking bread for the children's lunch. And very good it was too. We are working towards using the larger, trailer mounted, solar oven commercially as it bakes more bread than even our voracious children can eat. That could provide a handy income to the local organisation, albeit a modest one. 
However that which can lead to intrinsic strength can also foster the weakness of dependence. And what happens when these social and family bonds fail and children end up sent to prison because there is no one prepared to bear the stigma of caring for the children of prisoners (even if they are relatives) or when children get sold and are trafficked into modern day slavery in the Indian circuses? Usually this represents an irretrievable breakdown of those bonds as families dissolve around the trafficking victims. The only answer surely is to "empower" (a grossly overused word within the development sector) the survivors and prepare children and young people to face the adult life in a tough country without being solely reliant upon support that may well be founded upon feet of clay.
day in Kathmandu and I was pleased to see upon arrival at the refuge that Shailaja, typically, was not lazing in the sun. Instead she had put the sun to work for her with two solar ovens up and running, baking bread for the children's lunch. And very good it was too. We are working towards using the larger, trailer mounted, solar oven commercially as it bakes more bread than even our voracious children can eat. That could provide a handy income to the local organisation, albeit a modest one. 
Next week will see the start of an external evaluation of our work and yesterday I was revisiting a previous evaluation from 2005 which needs to be taken into consideration 
by a different evaluator, Jason Hoke, who will be conducting a more in-depth review. The evaluator at that time was very naive, surprisingly so since he'd lived for 20 years in Nepal and spoke the language, taking pretty well everything that the (then) local staff said to him at face value. Much of his report still grates with me. But one particularly unfair comment that was made was that by teaching children independent living and how to fend for themselves we were erroneously bringing them up in a Western way. In Nepali culture there is a great deal of interdependence within the family and the community. These links are reinforced through religious practice and festivals like the ones we've just had, Dashain and Tihar, when parent/child and sibling/sibling relationships are re-affirmed. Undoubtedly these practices can add a great deal of strength to family life, an inherent strength that we could indeed learn from in the West.
by a different evaluator, Jason Hoke, who will be conducting a more in-depth review. The evaluator at that time was very naive, surprisingly so since he'd lived for 20 years in Nepal and spoke the language, taking pretty well everything that the (then) local staff said to him at face value. Much of his report still grates with me. But one particularly unfair comment that was made was that by teaching children independent living and how to fend for themselves we were erroneously bringing them up in a Western way. In Nepali culture there is a great deal of interdependence within the family and the community. These links are reinforced through religious practice and festivals like the ones we've just had, Dashain and Tihar, when parent/child and sibling/sibling relationships are re-affirmed. Undoubtedly these practices can add a great deal of strength to family life, an inherent strength that we could indeed learn from in the West.However that which can lead to intrinsic strength can also foster the weakness of dependence. And what happens when these social and family bonds fail and children end up sent to prison because there is no one prepared to bear the stigma of caring for the children of prisoners (even if they are relatives) or when children get sold and are trafficked into modern day slavery in the Indian circuses? Usually this represents an irretrievable breakdown of those bonds as families dissolve around the trafficking victims. The only answer surely is to "empower" (a grossly overused word within the development sector) the survivors and prepare children and young people to face the adult life in a tough country without being solely reliant upon support that may well be founded upon feet of clay.
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