Sunday 28 June 2009

MEAK UK - Three Peak Challenge



Raising money for
Medical And Educational Aid To Kenya
Charity Registration No. 1093115

"MEAK provide medical and educational supplies to Kenya as well as carrying out open heart surgery in Nairobi on sick children using a team of medics recruited from Guys and St Thomas' Hospital, who all provide their services free of charge. It also runs eye camps in remote areas of Kenya".





Welcome to the MEAK Three Peak Challenge 2009.

MEAK made history, on the 19th of May by carrying out a rare and complicated open heart procedure on a 6-month old boy, the first operation of its kind to take place in all of East Africa. Some of the money raised from this page went towards that Heart Mission.

"We are now home and safe after our successful attempt at the Three Peaks. It was a fantastic experience with many challenges, one of which was the travelling for hours in a mini bus with a sat nav directing us the long way around the country. the lack of sleep for over 24 hours but the hardest and most scary part was hiking up Scarfell Pike in the driving rain, high winds and in the dark. We only had head torches to see where we were going. We must have been crazy"!


Thank you from the challenge team, MEAK and of course the children.

Please keep giving - we need more money.

We are attempting the National (UK) Three Peak Challenge on June 11th-13th 2009 in aid of MEAK. ++UPDATE - THEY'VE DONE IT++

Medical and Educational Aid to Kenya was founded 14 years ago by a dynamic British couple, Mike and Dee Belliere, after they fell in love with Kenya and its people. Their mission and passion is to establish and execute medical and educational based programs across Kenya and bring a positive awareness about this extraordinary country. New Yorker Jess Atkins discovered MEAK on the web and after one Mission found that she had to help MEAK and joined the team. Their renowned international medical teams lend their time and expertise, without charge, to save Kenyan lives, and provide a better quality of life for thousands, with an additional focus on sharing knowledge and training with the local staffs. MEAK donates large quantities of medical consumables to our many affiliate partners in Kenya.

MEAK HEART MISSION SEEKS to work in tandem with the local medics, share knowledge and training, and execute free screening clinics for children with pediatric heart conditions. They then operate on those patients that are in a critical condition.
It is said that MEAK is now responsible for about 25% of all of East Africa’s annual pediatric heart operations. To date, MEAK has completed 10 heart missions, screened 1,741 patients, and performed 196 operations. The charity also carries out eye missions to remote parts of Kenya.

The MEAK Three Peak Challenge team as been organised by Graham Sewell, Trevor Harrison-Phipps and Serge Janssens.

The people involved and who are looking for sponsorship as a joint event are as follows:

1

Alistair Sinclair

Hiker

2

Andy Woodard

Hiker

3

Bill Tebbitts


Team Leader

4

Carl Dalton

Hiker

5

Chris Christopher

Hiker

6

Christopher Nichols

Hiker

7

Damien Sainte-Cluque

Hiker

8

Darren Smith

Hiker

9

Gary Roberts

Hiker

10

Graham Sewell

Organiser / Driver

11

Ian Rhodes

Hiker

12

John Rogers

Hiker

13

Joyce Sewell

Catering

14

Lee McCready

Hiker

15

Michael Dunbar

Hiker

16

Michael Sewell

Backup Driver

17

Mike Fels

Charity Ambassador / Driver

18

Neil Newing

Driver

19

Richard Knight

Hiker

20

Ryan Duane

Hiker

21

Sam Young

Hiker

22

Serge Janssens

Project Manager / Hiker

23

Tony Blyth

Team Leader

24

Trevor Harrison-Phipps


Filmmaker / Hiker

25


Yogi Foottit


Hiker

We are aiming to walk up Ben Nevis and Scafell Pike in one day to then rest over night before attempting Snowdon on the second day. We are not attempting this challenge over 24 hours because of safety issues, the money we raise is for MEAK not for Mountain helicopter rescue. This challenge will be of endurance, hardship and probably quite a bit of pain but if we can fund a heart mission then it will be well worth it.

Thanks for visiting our fundraising page.

Donating through Justgiving is quick, easy and totally secure. It’s also the most efficient way to sponsor us: Medical And Educational Aid To Kenya gets your money faster and, if you’re a UK taxpayer, Justgiving makes sure 25% in Gift Aid, plus a 3% supplement, are added to your donation.

Please be as generous as you can because for 20,000 pounds sterling we could fund a heart mission to Kenya and save childrens lives, please sponsor us now!

Trevor Harrison-Phipps will be filming the challenge as he is currently making a documentary about MEAK. For more information about MEAK please visit : www.meak.org

Thank you in advance.

The MEAK Three Peak Challenge.

Thursday 18 June 2009

"I am a Librarian"





And thank you muchly to @pfanderon for sharing this gem, spotted here on FriendFeed.

Sunday 14 June 2009

"There's Evian, then there's tap water"




"I've always felt that personal use (ie among you, your family and friends) should be totally unrestricted". Thomas Dolby 2007

--

Some interesting recent discussions about "Fair Use" in the blogosphere.





Also see this post on the i9606 blog and Paper Chase by Craig Powell over at Nature Network.

These and other similar discussions will continue. The stark reality however with regards to p2p file sharing in terms of PDF's is that this has been happening for years and in my own experience, 90% of Authors that I contact seeking a copy of a PDF results in the file being shared. IMHO, services such as Mendeley provide a means to an end to do this (as in sharing PDF's) in a much more structed manner.



--



One of McDawg's musical hero's, Thomas Dolby thoughts about "Fair Use" in terms of music can be found here on his blog:-

Posted 2/15/2007
Q: Thomas,
The ubiquitous mix tape (well, the mix CD now.) It's a staple of fledgling romances all over the planet. People mix up music from their collections, make a compilation, and send it off as a token of love, affection, or misguided passion... I know you, like many musicians, have strong feelings about the illegal reproduction of your music. But what do you say to those folks who want to zap off their emotions in a happy jumble of songs? Is the mix CD evil? Or should it be seen as a way to expand an artist's audience (while helping some hapless romantic express himself?)
-Nancy

A: I've always felt that personal use (ie among you, your family and friends) should be totally unrestricted. That's the best way to share music, and to discover it. But there's clearly a huge moral difference between personal use, and wholesale mass pirating, duplication and distribution, to anonymous millions of Internet users. The challenge is, how to fairly use technology or legislation to allow the one and prevent the other? It's almost impossible to draw the line. And historically, the lobbyists, litigators, and politicians have been way behind the curve.

It takes decades for copyright law to catch up with technology, by which time technology has moved on. This struggle has been going on since the printing press--not to mention audio recording, broadcasting, piano rolls, jukeboxes, cable TV and cassette tapes. While I have always fought against people who disregard the copyright notice on my records and go ahead and rip my music for the purpose of sharing it via illegal P2P networks, I am the first to admit that a certain proportion of music should be and always has been free.

As musicians we need to give out free samples, to get the audience hooked so they will come back for more. It's the drug dealer model! To that end, we produce music at our own expense and give it to radio stations who make money of the advertising revenue; we produce videos that we give to MTV so they can sell ads to Nike and American Express; we do this to get wide exposure so new fans can discover our music. Without that there will be no demand for any kind of for-sale product. And the Internet is the most effective method yet of getting that exposure. So clearly we need to embrace it. This is a tough time because we're still at a cusp.

In the end I believe it will all settle down--music will be cheap and easy enough to buy, that the convenience of obtaining music legally will outweigh the few cents you save by pirating it. There's Evian, then there's tap water :)