As the year unfolded it turned to be quite memorable. This post is about some of the events that stood out for me.

When I got  back to the UK I hit the road again this time to Libya. Gaddafi had called a conference to discuss the state of the African Diaspora in the Europe and I was to address 600 people on issues that affect African Women in the Diaspora. The conference gave me an  insight into  life in Libya.  I got an opportunity to meet Gaddafi face to face as well as spending time in his infamous compound.

In Ivory Coast there was a political impasse and the livelihood  of cocoa growers was threatened

A gay man was killed in Uganda- what was that about? We saw international donors threaten withdraw Aid from countries with poor record of gay rights – the jury is still out on this one.

In the same month I lost my dear cousin Doreen due to poor maternal health care in Uganda, things didn’t improve in February as my niece miscarried twins whilst a dear friend lost her new born baby.

In February I had a guest a appearance on the SHOOT THE MESSENGER show to discuss issues that concern Africans in the diaspora

In March I was voted as one of the 20 most inspirational African  women in the diaspora what an honour!

Between April and June I worked hard on the Water project in Ruhanga SW Uganda. One of our goals for the year at LET THEM HELP THEMSELVES OUT OF POVERTY was to get clean water into this village and we pulled out everything we had.  I even managed a 5k walk in Virginia Water Surrey  to raise money for this programme.  I was back in Uganda at the end of June to catch up with progress on this water project

In Uganda a new form of  protest led by the opposition  WALK 2 WORK caught the government there by surprise and  the world watched as the opposition leader was dragged through the streets of  Kampala

I got to see my childhood singer Janet Jackson at a live concert in London

In July there was bad news at Ethnic Supplies we had hoped to join the Oxfam’s  Supply chain but we didn’t make it because of they had to cut back due to the poor economy.

Africa got a new country South Sudan and the worst food crisis in decades continued to kill children in Somalia

In August London and other cities in the UK were set on fire for reasons that we still don’t understand several months although most have argued that it was due to systemic poverty . The phone hacking scandal hit the UK, as head rolled, the Met Police lost its Chief and News of The World Britain’s favourite tabloid closed.

September was a sad time in Ruhanga one of our 4 year old WITNESS lost her life in a hit and run accident. The bad news did  not stop there, our application for a grant from Comic Relief was turned down.

Although this year marked 100 years of Women’s day a woman in Uganda was allowed to do die on a labour ward because she could not pay her hospital bill of £66

My plans to get started on that Masters degree fell to pieces in October. I was gutted and I am hoping that I will pick this up in the new year.

In November I was honoured to address a Business fights poverty gathering about my work in SW Uganda and I had to pack my bags again. In Uganda I caught up with the folk at the Uganda Coffee Development Agency and introduced them to Carmel Dennis  a friend from England. We toured SW Uganda and got as far Kisoro on the border of Rwanda and Uganda. I was saddened to learn that things had not improved much for women in that region.

The beginning of December was end of term at Ruhanga Community Development School and the “turning on the taps” in Ruhanga!

The village finally had piped water . I can’t tell you what that felt like and of all the things I have done this year being part of the team that brought clean water to that village  is the one  thing I am most proud of.  And I hope that before the year ends I can add one more achievement! BUILDING A GIRLS ONLY TOILET at Ruhanga community school. Please support my effort http://www.lethemhelpthemselves.org/news/gender-equality-the-girls-want-a-toilet-of-their-own

Technology has played a big role in my world this year and even a bigger one in shaping world events. It appears  that ordinary folk are finding it easier to fight exclusion and the big men of politics can only ignore their citizens at their peril

How 2011 for you?

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We spoke for 2 solid hours on anything and everything. But mostly about Twitter, the point of black history month and not being able to find underwear that complimented our skin colours. By the end of that conversation Sadia told me that she was going to start a new enterprise producing underwear for women of colour!

A few months later and I get a call from Sadia informing me that she was on her way to Paris to meet an experienced lingerie designer!

Me: So you have done it? You are going to bring knickers especially designed for black women on the market?
Sadia: Yep!

Me: Good luck dear and let me know what I can do to help
Sadia: You will be sorry you asked Ida, I will be in touch

We remained in touch and I followed her progress and the ups and downs of having to nurse her mother through ill health for a whole year.She remained focused through it all.

In the mean time I had taken on the role of curating Africa on the Blog and Sadia was one of the first people I contacted when I was looking for contributors. There was a passion about her on all manner of things concerning the African Diaspora and I wanted everyone to hear that passion and what Sadia had to say. We eventually met face to face in October last year.

After all of that hard work Sadia’s dream of bringing underwear for women of colour to the market has been realised and she has called this brand new label beingU

But like any new product on the market folk need to hear about it and in this case lingerie retailers are reluctant to stock it until folk are actually Asking for it

So to help Sadia along I have designed this simple questionnaire and I would be grateful if you would please spare 1 minute to take part

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The challenge was interesting, fun and a great way to learn about blogging as well as being disciplined.

What I learned from the challenge

1. how to use and apply key words in a post
2. constructing a killer headline
3. where to look for inspiration- things to blog about
4. using social media to promote posts
5. how to write posts for the benefit of the readers
6. and how to use tags in a post

I found the 30 day blogging challenge an easy way to grow my blog and it meant I often didn’t have an excuse not post something.

I am now psyching myself for the next change which is the 30 day facebook challenge

You too can take part in these challenges by signing up at http://www.30daychallenges.nikkipilkington.com/

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If you missed the previous post on the issue of being generous to those in your network you can catch up here

Ces is the brains behind Brand Buzz. She  is an avid advocate for my work and has used her expertise in branding to develop a whole new look for the following websites

Africa on the Blog

Let Them Help themselves out of Poverty

Ida Horner

I was pleasantly surprised when her and lovely hubby dropped in one evening to understand what I do and how they can help, bearing in mind that they lived in Liverpool at the time.

Ces’ generosity is legendary  amongst those of us in her network. She is currently running a free- yes a free Promotion  for producers of handcrafts in UK and if you would like to participate in this promotion please click on the diagram below

I decided to revisit this topic primarily to  acknowledge a woman that understands the meaning of networking and being generous to those in your network.

Secondly those who know me will be familiar with my community work in South West Uganda . I am not a rich a woman by any stretch of imagination  and one of  the questions I get asked a lot is Where does your funding come from? The simple answer is that from my networks both on and offline- in other words the generosity  of others enables me to help those less fortunate than I am and Ces is one of those that help by volunteering her skills and as such saving me a time and money. She never expects  anything in return!

Unfortunately some of us do not get this whole notion of networking being about building relationships, sharing what you know and have  with those in your network without expecting anything in return.

I recently  approached someone  for  contact details of someone  in their organisation. I went through my work and explained that I was trying to reach that person at the organisation he works at to find out if they would be interested in sponsoring an event we are organising to raise money to complete a water project in SW Uganda

I was unprepared for the answer I got back

“that is all very well but what’s in it for you”?

I must admit I was taken back by that answer and was at a loss of what to say and mumbled something along the lines of “hopefully God’s blessings” I am not sure what was behind that question and 2 weeks on I have not heard back from that person.

I have asked myself a few questions  following that exchange

1. Am I falling foul of the networking etiquette
2. was I wrong to expect that because I know this person they would help me?
3. should givers gain?

I don’t have any answer to those questions but I am grateful to people like Ces that have reached out to me

If you have any branding questions or would like a fresh look for your website Ces can be contacted at  ces@creativelyminded.co.uk

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Team ORANGE

I have written about how the actual day went over Ethnicsupplies.org therefore this post will deal with the Social Media story in relation to the conference

There were several people involved in bringing this conference about and the actual idea came about from a conversation on Twitter and I was pleasantly surprised to meet at least 7 people in person, in Masindi, people I had been “talking to ” on Twitter and Facebook for nearly two years or so but had never met in person.

But the real story of the day call it a miracle if you will is the power of  technology to narrow the world quite literary.

SOLOMON, THE SUPER GEEK CHECKING OUT THE WIFI INSTALLATION

Orange™ Uganda  co sponsored this event and provided free WIFI on the day which enabled folk from 6 continents to experience the event on several social media platforms right from their living rooms/offices.

A camera crew was hired to record the event and were linked into the Ustream account of BUSINESS FIGHTS POVERTY an online forum hosted by  NING. the final analysis indicated that 570 people across the globe had tuned in/visited the video stream and those that tuned in were tweeting about what they were watching.

At the event itself at least 8 of us were tweeting about the event whilst some had a running commentary on facebook.  Those following the event on twitter were able to ask questions of the panels and tweeted the panels answers to the questions.

We took advantage of the free high speed WIFI and uploaded photos on Flickr,

Ning , facebook and video clips on twitter and this served to bring the event alive for those that were not there in person

SOME OF THOSE WHO TWEETED AT THE EVENT

What is amazing about all this is the fact this was going on in the middle of a field with no electricity   or telephone line as you can see from these behind the scenes photos from TMS RUGE MEDIA

I understand from the organizers PROJECT DIASPORA that the entire source of funding for this event came from Social Media sources/contacts. I am not privy to the exact costs involved but I doubt very much if they got much change out of $17,000! how about that for crowd sourcing

I don’t know about you but this for me is the biggest Social Media story of year, if you have one that beats this one lets hear it

As well as raising the necessary BA Air Miles I also wanted to test the whole concept of #crowdsourcing so I will start with feed back on that. The post was tweeted and retweeted at least 44 times! I was truly touched by this.

@SarahArrow and @afriquanwoman took this a step further and wrote blog posts urging folk in cyber space to help me you can view Sarah’s post here and Afriquanwoman’s here

After all this tweeting @Nikkipilkington put me in touch with her twitter contact @KSukalac who had BA miles to donate next my good friend and fellow blogger over @africanontheblog,  @STM95 got in touch she too had in excess of 28000 to donate, if I wanted them

@uusoksa didn’t have any air miles but she sent  a donation of £25 by way of helping me out

At this stage I had enough Air miles I needed to get to Uganda and the next step was for me to call @British_Airways and arrange the transfer of those miles into my account. I was not prepared for what I learned when I called@British_Airways

1. I could only have 19,000 miles transferred to me
2. I would be responsible for the cost of the transfer £140
3. The surcharge fees would still apply £220-£250 of it
4. I would still need to top up the fair as my own air miles would not make up the total that is required to get a free   flight
5. @British_Airways would not waive the transfer fees

At this stage it looked like all was lost but one thing for sure, I had proven that Crowd sourcing or cyber  begging works!

In the days that followed all the twitter activities, I  got an an order for 30 raw silk scarves from my online shop.

Which enabled me to raise enough money for my the ticket and had to do with my networking, building and maintaining those relationships.  I can now get to Uganda!

May I take this opportunity to thank all those who rallied around, I do appreciate the love!

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IDA HORNER

I recently came across Paul Smith’s story, a man that decided to travel half way across the world by relying on the generosity of people or precisely his Twitter followers. You can read about how he got on here . I was so intrigued by his success that I decided to put this to the test myself.

My challenge is to get to Uganda for the Millenium Villages Conference using @British-Airways miles donated by folk on twitter

My British Airways Air miles Account is 29688427 and I need to raise 50000 air miles.

I will provide an update of how I can get on so drop by!

In the mean time if you have had success with what I am trying to do kindly share your tips

For some this is a  situation where everyone wins but in my mind it also means  BE GENEROUS TO THOSE IN YOUR NETWORK, which put simply is  share what you know and have with those in your network, go out of your way to reach out to them and help wherever possible.

That all sounds OK, but there is always that question WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?

A few days ago I had a call from a dear friend lets call her Mary. Mary has a brother let’s call him Jon. Jon is addicted to alcohol and as such his wife left him and the children. Jon’s family stepped in and shared the upbringing of the children. One of those children, lets call her Jen, graduated from University last year, got a a very good job and  was  married a week ago.

At the wedding, the groom’s parents thanked Jen’s mother for bringing her up single handedly without reference to Jon’s family or their role in Jen’s upbringing. You can imagine how this went down. Jen’s mother had left when she was a child at primary school and Jon’s family had stepped in to safeguard the children and here there were, at an important day in Jen’s life and the credit for all their hard work had gone to someone else. Someone that had left and played no part whatever.

To say that my friend Mary was furious is understatement. She asked me if she was being unreasonable to expect that their role in Jen’s upbringing should have been acknowledged, Jen would not be where she is today is today, she lamented.

My first reaction was one of dismay.

I wondered why was Mary so hurt by this. She was adamant that her niece Jen was at fault and someone on her side of the family should confront Jen about this . According to her Jen had briefed her in laws out of spite because she is an ungrateful child.

All I could say was, It is one of those things Mary, as family members you had to help these children, without the expectation of a reward, because you could and  as  Christians, I would imagine that is something you do for Gods Sake.

Mary accepted this with a big BUT, someone should speak with that child, if it had not been for us…

After the call I wondered, SHOULD GIVERS GAIN?  Do you give and expect something back from the person you have given? Surely that would be conditional giving which goes against the grain of generosity when networking with others?

I also wondered whether  Jen had  in fact paid back through her achievements of education attainment, getting a good job and settling down?

One thing I know for certain is that it is best to be generous to others without the expectation of anything in return. The advantage of this is maintaining good relationships with those in your network, and if you are  not expecting anything in return you are unlikely to be disappointed if it does not materialise.

Have you got your own experience that you would like to share with me, then leave a comment

This exercise revealed that I have two copies of a book called  HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE by Dale Carnegie. One of the books had an old BA boarding pass for a flight from Stockholm in 2007! I used it to bookmark a page.

I decided to forget the dusting and reading that page again and before I knew I had read the whole chapter. The gist of it is that we are all interested in what interests us and if you want to arouse one’s interest you have to talk to them in terms of their interest.

Having read this chapter I put the book back , continued dusting and rearranging the books and when I was done I logged into my account over at Ecademy to catch up with what was going on. My in box had the greatest surprise of all.

It contained two messages and I nearly fell off the chair whilst reading one of them. It was from someone that I regularly communicate with on line and is familiar with my work over at Ethnic Supplies . Here is what it said word for word

How are things in China? Do you know anyone who produces reasonably quality solar panel components for shipping? A colleague of mine is looking at a large infrastructure project to provide power to homes and schools in rural areas in third world countries. As well as obtaining help with sourcing the components, we would need help with checking any cargo before it is shipped in respect of quality and other risks. I should add that this is at the germ of an idea stage, so please do not invest too much of your time for the moment. Sometimes these projects do not get past the funding stages in which case we would struggle to reimburse any costs.

I sat back and said out loud WOW! Suddenly the chapter I had just read in Dale Carnegie’s  made a whole lot of sense.  Although this is someone that I already know he gave me no reason at all to be interested in his business venture because, let alone help him even if I could

• dispensed with the  usual pleasantries or hello, how are you!
• As someone that knows me and I have spoken to a few times he is aware that I work in Africa, why was he asking me about China?
• why did he assume that I know about solar power components
• but this is the sentence that left me dumb founded I should add that this is at the germ of an idea stage, so please do not invest too much of your time for the moment.

He left me feeling  WHAT DOES ALL THIS GOT TO DO WITH ME? Does that sound familiar?

If you were advising this person to rewrite his email so that he didn’t leave the reader asking what it’s all got to do with them, what would that look like?

I would be interested in your views on this.

But my  good friend Jackie Groundsell over at the 12:30 The Women’s company has adopted this as the tag line for this year’s annual conference.  I have been thinking about this tag line in relation to women’s networks.

As I pondered this I did wonder whether women are better at networking and if so why? I can’t provide you with a logical answer to this question but I believe that women are fabulous  at networking and I have been at the receiving end of  this .

I had a problem recently when a parcel I needed for a meeting with John Lewis was stuck at Stansted Airport. You guessed it I put out a private message to my fellow bloggers over at Birds on the Blog and before I knew it my parcel had arrived and I made the meeting. What was interesting about this was,  I tagged my question on a thread that was to do with the Birds on the Blog, but ladies took up my “Any other Business” question and dealt with it. I also felt confident to ask this question in such an environment and did not feel that I would be ticked off sidetracking the discussion.

Something else that has been on my mind; the notion of connectedness and I wrote about this a little while ago. The idea of not having to look for work if you are well connected may seem far fetched but Jackie and I tested this out since my post.

Here is what I happened. Whilst I was in Rwanda last December Jackie sent me an email introducing me to Julia a jewellery designer.

When I got back Julia and I exchanged a few emails and phone calls. I discovered that Julia had previously  lived in Ireland where she specialized in Ethnic jewellery but her suppliers had dropped off the face of the  earth  so to so say, leaving her high and dry. She was keen to restart her business here  in the UK and through  a quick conversation with Jackie she learned that Jackie knew someone that might help her and that someone is Me. I gained a new customer and Julia’s problem with suppliers was resolved. That dear readers is the value of being well connected!

So if you are  looking to kick start your networking this year don’t the  Any other Business event on 16 March 2010