4Basra

The trip to Vienna went well. The New Internationalist magazine might be interested in a small article about the organisation. Follow-up calls will tell whether anyone else will publish a piece about the organisation. 

My hotel lacked a wi-fi connection, and I neglected to take any photos with my camera phone. One or two others taken with a digital camera will be on here when I have had a chance to compress them. Anyhow, I have now decided to embrace the digital photography age properly and purchase a digital camera very soon.

 I am happy to report that I have perhaps been fortunate to make a worthwhile suggestion to the organisation: that recruiting a PR, journalism or media volunteer from one of the universities in Vienna would help them greatly.

We had what I hope was a mutually enlightening chat about the situation in Basra, her important work, and our respective backgrounds. 

On Tuesday evening I had the privilege of meeting one of the children the organisation has helped. She is in Vienna for treatment for her condition, Osteogenesis Imperfecta, known as ‘Gasbone’ (not sure if spelling is correct) in German. 

Essentially, her bones fracture easily and they need to be reinforced as she grows. This has meant she has spent a lot of time in pain, bed-ridden and unable to attend school. The intensive therapy she receives in Vienna has helped improve her condition: not to mention affording her the opportunity to learn german.

Up until now it has been a challenge to find a designer who had the time, and more importantly had the artistic vision and imagination to come up with a logo for 4Basra. 

That is not to say that other ideas and the time spent on them were not appreciated, I hasten to add: it’s just that they did not feel or look right.  

I am very happy to report that I now have a number of concepts to choose from. The final design might even take the best elements from two of them and combine them. 

Once I’ve done this, I’ll upload it here.

Although I had a few minutes spare to write about the radio show yesterday, during the previous fortnight or so a fault with my laptop meant I was offline recently for the best part of a week. I was also busy getting getting desks for the office.

Thanks to BMS in Walkinstown for fixing my laptop and fitting a new keyboard.

I managed to assemble one of the desks kindly donated on Freecycle.org. The other one came without instructions and is still in pieces. The owner also threw in an old computer, which probably needs a new keyboard and mouse. 

My thanks to Feroz Basir from Lucan and Gerard Cregan from Blackrock. 

Trip to Vienna 

Aer Lingus recently had a three day low fares offer, so I’ll be spending a few days in Vienna next month to meet with Dr Hobiger and two fathers and their sons from Iraq who travelled to Austria for cancer treatment. 

I hope to generate some publicity from this with interviews and photos. Rageh Omaar’s second article on the NGO situation in Iraq was quite interesting, so it would be great if I could expand on the detail somehow.

A little done, plenty still to do 

In the meantime, one of my volunteers might have our first sponsor lined up if we can organise a photography trip to Basra. Whether this will actually be possible is still a matter for discussion, but as always I think it is important to aim high.  

The new website is waiting to go online – I desperately need a logo to go on it, which is a job for another volunteer whose email arrived nearly two weeks ago, and to whom I must apologise for the delay in responding. 

Medicines still need to be bought and one or two potential donors still need to be approached, not to mention my lofty intention to canvass the universities for one or two PR, media or journalism student volunteers. 

Due to the worsening security situation in Basra, the final paragraph of this post has been removed.

The past week or so has been very busy, so apologies to anyone who visited, expecting to see an update.

Last week took me to London for a writing assignment, and I have also had other business diverting my attentions momentarily. Rest assured that as soon as I have a desk to work at – this should be in the next few days – I will catch up on things, particularly with regard to the medicines we need to source.

My shared office in Dublin is now ready to move into – the phone line and broadband are now working, and it is great to have everything finally ready.

Since the room is bare, apart from a bin and a set of shelves – oh, and now a broadband router – naturally the next step is to furnish it. After posting on Freecycle.org last night, I have already had a number of replies, and one of these mentions plenty of desks, drawers, chairs and PC monitors.

The BBC’s Rageh Omaar has written recently about Iraq for the New Statesman, and I might contact him about this project.

I also met with a multi-talented volunteer, who was bursting with ideas and who I hope will be a great asset to the project. Initially it is important to design a logo, and then my other blog design volunteer, who is also keen and enthusiastic, will be able to transfer this blog to our new domain at http://4basra.org

The next few weeks should be both busy and interesting.

During the past few days, I gave feedback on a logo idea to a volunteer from overseas, which perhaps was a bit too critical – I did my best to be constructive – resulting in his bowing out from the task. 

Nonetheless, I would like to thank him for his time and effort – so thank you Juan – and thank you for giving me some ideas to build on.

I will now have to get my sketch pad and pencils out, to see what I can come up with. 

A few days beforehand, an email arrived from a volunteer who I hope will help with some translation work. Hopefully we will be meeting a little later this week.

If you would like to volunteer in some capacity, please get in touch.