In my last post I told you about my quest to get to the Millennium Villages conference, which has since been renamed VILLAGES IN ACTION . As promised I am back with an update.
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
- I could only have 19,000 miles transferred to me
- I would be responsible for the cost of the transfer £140
- The surcharge fees would still apply £220-£250 of it
- 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
- @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!
~
Ida,
I’m glad some good came out of this.
I like to fly with B.A. because their
cabin crew are so fiendly and
efficient.
Pity the management sometimes
behave like ****weazles!
Stephen
Thank you Stephen, Yes pity their customers services is sometimes inflexible