Perhaps inspired by the buy-one-give-one-away early campaign from the One Laptop per Child programmes an environmental housing developer in Sacremento is offering BOGOF on Houses.

If you buy one of their US homes they will train a mason in Burkina Faso to build a home there.

They call the project Real Estate Development 2.0. I like [...]

As you might gather I’m keen to see lobby groups, charities and the social sector using social media, but tone of voice is everything. I found this film through John Hemmings blog. There’s something about it that troubles me. It follows an Ofsted report highlighting important failings with the court support service CAFCASS.

The [...]

I’m enjoying the unravelling social media project that is The Big Picture. I especially like the interest taken in the people behind the pics: art as an expression of who we are rather than an end in itself. Jon Bounds has interviewed trav28 about why he’s taking a photo a day – [...]

Is there a solution to street racing in Birmingham? Masood Ajaib of the Washwood Heath based community enterprise Commpact thinks there is. He has signed up for an experiment to find a communal way of turning a dangerous [...]

 

 The Track: Landor Street, Birmingham [10:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

There’s an established link between grime and crime, which is why Kingstanding Neighbourhood Forum is using public money to crack crime one fridge at a time. This podcast and the youtube video you can see here or here explain how the forum has been using £10,000 from an experiment called the [...]

 

 Kingstanding Bimringham and the NPRG experiment on crime and grime [10:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Benjamin Zander, Conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, plays the audience at Davos.  The job of leaders, he tells us, is to “awaken possibility in other people”.

Hat tip.

..just say thank you. A lot. And mean it.

Hat-tip.

Tim Davies tells us he’s off to the pub having just finished a substantial revamp of the Hear by Right website. Hear by Right sets out standards and principals designed to help organisations involve young people in what they do and how they do it.

The mapping tool looks promising as a means to [...]