The Power of Twitter (& its users)

Twitter is an excellent potential tool for getting public support for a particular cause. Trouble is, in order to spread the word you really need a lot of followers so that lots of people can hear your message.

In starting out trying to get publicity for your cause you probably won't have many followers, so you need to get your message to someone who does have lots of followers and who is willing to retweet your message for you. Here lies the dilemma. No doubt all the celebrities and such get so many tweets that even if they are checking their '@replies' they will probably miss yours in the flood they get every second.

I've been thinking about this for sometime as there are a couple of causes that I'm desperate to help and get the message out there for. Many of the charities I support already have great public support so I'm concentrating my efforts for the next few weeks on 2 in particular.

The first of these is Project_18. Those of you who have already read my blog will be familiar with Cate Bolt and her fantastic idea to help both the children and the orangutans of Indonesia. Currently circumstances are difficult for the Bolt familiy, partly due to their dedication to this Project, and are now having to camp around Queensland having been evicted from their house shortly before Christmas. Fortunately they've got slightly warmer temperatures than we have here in the UK at the moment, but it's constantly raining and besides a family deserves a home. It can't be easy camping with 9 children in the best of circumstances.

The second of these is Jenny Rowbory. Jenny suffers from severe ME which leaves her bed-bound and unable to sit up. Jenny lives in the UK where we are fortunate enough to have the National Health Service - that is, until the won't pay. She has had many medical consultations and has finally been given a treatment plan. The difficulty is, that it will cost £35,000 and her local PCT won't pay, or even contribute towards this. Not to be deterred she has written a wonderful poetry anthology which has now been published in order to help raise the money for her medical costs.

These are my 2 chosen causes for January and I need your help. I'm not asking for money, I'm just asking for you to do a bit of typing. I think that the only way to get real support for these causes is to get them noticed and picked up by a public figure and one of the ways of doing this is through Twitter. I think that perhaps, if a group of us agree a time to be all logged in together, preferably when a figure or two of choice is also online (trickier I know, but some seem to be on for large chunks of time), then if we all tweet them at the same time, with the same message then it might just get through.

I can't do this alone. Will anyone spare a few seconds to help these worthy causes?

Thank you.

Spare a Thought

For a lot of people, right now is a special time of year. Why? Because we've just had Christmas and been given lots and lots of presents (some which we want, some which we really don't, or had from the same relative last year and the year before that). We've gorged ourselves on turkey, goose, stuffing, potatoes, vegetables, mince pies, chocolates, cakes all washed down with wine, beer and indigestion remedies. Many of us will have been extremely lucky, we'll have been with our friends and loved ones, in a nice warm house with electricity for watching DVDs and playing computer games, internet connection to twitter and blog and heating to keep us all nice and toasty.

Unfortunately Christmas is not a happy time for everyone. In fact it can be a very difficult time for thousands of people. In the UK alone, like other Western countries, people have been bereaved, are sick, homeless or simply alone. The constant festivities being forced down their throats on TV, in newspapers, in shops that start their sales at 6am on Boxing Day can't make it any easier for them.

Further afield, in countries across Africa and Indonesia people are literally starving. They are malnourished and die of simple diseases that can be easily fought off by stronger, healthier bodies. The mortality rate, particularly of infants, in these countries is frighteningly high.


So, when you're casting aside that unwanted Christmas present, or when you're wishing you'd been given something else, or when you're shopping around for bargains in the sales despite all the presents you've just received, I would like you to spare 1minute to think of someone else. Someone here in the UK that's fallen on hard times, or someone far away who has no idea what Christmas is, or even if they do, don't care, because they just have to focus on surviving. Perhaps you could choose not to buy that one extra bargain which you probably will never wear or eat or use and are just buying because it's a great deal. Perhaps, instead you could donate it to a charity instead. Drop it into a collection box often found at tills, or being shaken outside the store. Go online and find a charity that is doing something you care about. If you're still stuck for ideas here are a few charities that I love:

www.savetheorangutan.co.uk
www.forests4orangutans.org
www.samaritans.org
www.project18.org.au
www.oxfam.org.uk

Any amount of money you could donate to any of these charities would be wisely spent and gratefully appreciated. Please, spare a thought for someone else. Afterall Christmas is a time for GIVING.

Boots & Palm Oil

I realise I've been a bit quiet lately on here, but I've been waiting for some more responses from companies on the issue of palm oil.

Today I heard back from Boots. It's a long reply and for once, they've actually bothered to write details, explaining the various types of palm oil used in products and attempt to answer my specific answers.

"As one of the first retailers to join the RSPO in 2006 Boots recognise the considerable environmental and social impact of large scale palm oil production. Via the European Palm Oil Retailer Group hosted by the British Retail Consortium we help fund a RSPO representative and are working to a find way to make available credibly certified sources of palm oil in the products that we make and sell.

The palm oil supply chain is very complex and as palm oil can reach products in a number of different forms labelling is not as easy as for organic or Fairtrade products. To illustrate this (and to answer your questions) there are three possible ways palm oil is used in Boots health and beauty products.

i) Direct use of palm oil in products. Contrary to some press reports there is very little use of palm oil in health and beauty products. Boots do not use any neat palm oil in our products. If we did this would appear on the product ingredients list.

ii) Ingredients directly made from palm oil. The main products concerned here are solid soaps that use ingredients made from palm oil. Like other cosmetics & toiletry producers we have a legal obligation to identify on pack the ingredients in our products. Where ingredients are based on palm oil the regulations require us to use the Latin name for palm (Elaeis Guineensis). We also list the common name equivalents on our website:
http://www.boots-uk.com/App_Portals/BootsUK/Media/PDFs/CSR/Herbal_extracts_INCI_name_information_Aug_2008_.pdf

Currently the extract (fraction) of palm oil which is used to make the soap ingredients is not available as a Certified Sustainable Source (CSPO). We are working with our suppliers to develop certified sources and also look at alternative materials. We are aiming to complete this work in 2010

iii) There are also some ingredients which are made by breaking down the chemical structure of vegetable oil and then reformulating it. In theory any vegetable oil can be used as the starting material, (including palm). As the processing passes though several stages and suppliers on its way to the final product tracing the source is not easy. A simple "contains palm oil" label would be difficult to justify here as the likely palm content of the product is usually going to be very low. Certified sustainable sources are currently only available for palm material used in the food industry therefore are not available as these derivatives. We are working with ingredients suppliers to identify if palm is used and what the options are to move to either sustainable sources or only use non palm vegetable oils.

More information and our palm oil policy is available on our website.
http://www.boots-uk.com/Corporate_Social_Responsibility/Environment/Biodiversity.aspx "