:Author:   Ben Parkinson
:Date:     Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:16:40 PDT

Ok, well I raised the issue of this wall many months ago.  The situation was poor then and is now worse.  The Life in Africa buildings are deteriorating, as a result of frequent incursions by who knows who, items are frequently stolen from outside the two centres and people are free to roam by our bedside windows every night.

We are told that Life in Africa have a history of not repaying a loan, but they are not given the means to build up the potential of the compound here, despite its perfect location in an extremely poverty-stricken and crime-ridden area and massive local awareness and respect for their work.  

We have developed proposals, drawn up banners, coloured logos on pigs and spent countless hours posting on this project, currently for zero return, so I have decided to under-write what remains on the balance of the wall myself.  This will impact on my project, which has little funding as it is, but we simply cannot hold any longer and it seems crazy that several months have passed already waiting for only the "friends of Life in Africa" to participate, those who support time and time again.  Most people will know that I have very little reserves remaining and zero income, as I run this project, but I feel that I raised the issue of this need and thus I must "put up or shut up!"

The wonderful people that frequent NED we can only thank for their unfailing support for projects, in terms of time and sometimes financial support.  What we are not seeing with NED, though, is any real substance to its mission to support the development of new social entrepreneurs, as stated on its homepage.  It seems too that there is little implementation strategy underway to support this mission or develop new users of the site as views on pages dwindle.

This is not a criticism per se, as we all have ambitions for our projects that we cannot always fulfil, but a statement of fact that NED has not met our need and, if anything, has been counter-productive in being too slow to meet a mission-critical need.  Peter has tried all sorts of ways to publicise the need for the wall in the channels available to him (as I have) to no avail, so we have been reliant on NED.  

Please use this posting as a facilitator to release what money has been gathered and send it to Peter.  If Mark can "double up", as Peter requested, then that will help me, by slightly reducing my contribution to less than half of the total needed.