Well like most of us I was glued to the TV and radio yesterday, what a wonderful coming together of the people of our planet. As the Dutch did not host a concert, the Dutch TV coverage moved around all the venues picking out the best, I think my favourites were Green Day from Berlin who belted out an amazing set, and to see the Floyd and The Who. Now I was a Zep fan and it seemed you were either a Zep fan or a Who fan but rarely both, of course it is easy to be a Zep and a Floyd fan at the same time.The Who were great with loads of attitude from Pete Townsend - marvellous. Of course the moment Bob Geldolf brought the Ethiopian woman who was saved 20 years ago announcing she had just graduated from agricultural college, I was in floods of tears - those Ethiopian images are just a shocking and powerful as they were then. It saddens me so much the poorer are now even poorer in Africa.
I'm spurred to do more, as I live here in the Netherlands and this is one of only 4 countries who meet the UN targets for development funding (Canada, Sweden, and Luxembourg I think are the other 3, and I think the Dutch public raised the most per head for the Tsunami), there is no need to go down the government/ citizens route here, but I will engage with big business to do more. So I'll be taking it up internally to see if my company will commit more to development than they do today, they are not laggers in this field by any means, but there is no reason why all businesses and each one of us cannot donate 0.5% of our income to development/good causes. Remembering regular monthly contributions are better than response style funding, albeit when emergencies arise we must all have one less meal out or one less round of drinks and give the cash immediately to those whose need is greater.