Month: April 2011
Bridging relationships to reduce child mortality.
This is a picture of me with my mother when I was much younger- I guess around two years old. We are standing on the nature strip of our old house in inner-city Melbourne. Great photo isn’t it!
Today is my mother’s birthday. Happy birthday Mum! I have come a long way since this photo. A lot has happened in the years between.
The 10 City Bridge Run is about bridging relationships to reduce child mortality.
Life is fragile. Most child mortality tragically is influenced within the first 48 hours of birth. Similarly, maternal health is influenced by the health available during pregnancy and at birth.
The risks of pregnancy and child-birth remain despite our technology. We are just better prepared, educated and equipped to ensure a high proportion of births. In Papua New Guinea where I recently visited, they experience the second-highest rate of child mortality in Asia Pacific. It is something that doesn’t attract much publicity. It is just plain sad.
Building bridges to reduce child mortality is difficult enough to understand as an abstract concept, let alone to do in reality. There are almost too many challenges to consider, but I believe if we together on a global scale focus on relationships to reduce child mortality then change can occur.
Bridging relationships between two people is where this starts. Sure, the ultimate result is across a global stage, but the important start is here between you and me. It is about us. It takes work, more work than wearing a wrist band. It is not always going to be easy, but it will be worthwhile.
Tomorrow I will show you the first small collection of photographs of human bridges that I have taken to communicate how together we can bridge relationships to reduce child mortality. Join me by helping me build this collection and contributing your own photos.
Let me start leading by example with this photo of my mother. Bridging conversations that sometimes seem unbridgeable. Together, we can show that the seemingly impossible really is possible.
Listen to me please, some things need to change.
Hello world, Me again- I’m back!
I hope you haven’t felt neglected since I last wrote. Yes, it has been a while, but rest assured I have been thinking of you a lot in that time.
I suppose you are wondering what is going on with the 10 City Bridge Run. In fact, maybe you are asking is anything going on with the 10 City Bridge Run?
The last couple of months have been a much needed source of reflection and reorientation, and the answer the question above is unequivocally ‘YES!’
Let me spell what that is in more detail in the blogs that follow. Importantly, we must both understand that some things need to change. You an I both know that.
Sure, the vision needs to be more clearly articulated. And the site is very busy with information.
But I am talking about something much bigger than that. You and I need to get to the heart of what this is about: bridging relationships to reduce child mortality.
There is some work ahead I am going to ask you to join me in doing. Taking photos of human bridges. But it’s ok, it is not a big ask, but I do need your help.
I can’t do it without you. I have only come this far already because of your support, even if you didn’t know that.
Please don’t give up on me now! Thanks for your follow. It means the world to me!
Matt
PS. Would you RT or repost? I can’t tell everyone this myself.
Building Bridges 