The Surin Charity Facebook Group is coming soon but in the meantime check out the "How Clean are You Really?" quiz here:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=57839557817#/topic.php?uid=57839557817&topic=6023

Shocking facts today.

1 in 7 UK schools are underperforming ie 50% of children are leaving education without a minimum of 5 C-grade GSCE's.

25% of UK adults go 3 days or more(!) without having a bath or shower.

No wonder C-difficil is a problem: basic education and hygiene needs improving - in UK and in the Third World.

Most Third World deaths (and in UK) are from totally preventable diseases requiring little more than clean water and soap, or simple vaccines: cholera, Cdifficil, TB, malaria, dysentry etc.

And education.

Basic education is necessary to convey this information.

I hope Surin Charity can provide simple hygiene cards and printable/mobile phone-ready websites and audio broadcasts.

For Africa.

A blaze of activity today: Chris working here and already organising the Kent Africa Conference for late March. DFID advising on reports and films from Kent Village (there) and regular updates on Twinning approach.

Very exciting.

And Caldecott! Blazing a trail with Kent Works for their "One Night Fundraiser" to build a school for Bolivia. In an evening.

The event is on February 6th at Ashford International Hotel from 7:30pm and tickets are £25 per head.

Caldecott is a school that specialises in helping disabled and disadvantaged children.

For more info see Kent Works: www.kentworks.org - Anita Trotter or Caldecott School.

A twist of fate with 2 very positive letters from the DFID Minister, Ivan Lewis, who is visiting Sierra Leone after several concerns at failure of aid delivery.

He's keen to report back to Kent (here) on his findings and arrange a subsequent visit to Kent (there) to see how to help.

Also Kent MP Greg Clark expressed interest in the issues and wider KCC/Parliament input.

Let's hope we can pull together a conference on Kent (here) leading the way with KCC and KCC International to develop a Twinning Association for the 21st century to rejuvenate the original puirpose of post-WW2 Europe to improve peace, prosperity and democracy.

As well, a sudden surge of volunteers: nearly 12 in barely a week all keen to help.

Can anyone help or advise on Surin School Charity gaining its own credit card?

Almost every UK adult has a credit and/or debiut card and a charity card allows a small percentage of sales to be proivided to the chosen charity ie Surin School Charity!

A painless way to help a charity: Save the Children gained £7m and Amnesty £2M this way last year with their cards.

The card industry itself makes large donations to charity through the activity of individual companies.

Banks are among the top donors to good causes.

According to The Guide to UK Company Giving 2005 the top five UK
community contributors were banks, with a total of £144.1 million contributed between them.

The card industry has also taken the step of waiving interchange fees (part of the fees charged for processing transactions) in major humanitarian emergencies such as the Asian Tsunami of late
2004 and for intensive national cross-charity events including Children in Need – providing a substantial level of additional assistance.

Can anyone help?