Syria Raffleblog day 27 - £2,094

Guest post by Jo

I thought it might be a good idea to write a blog about the prizes, as Louise has worked so hard sourcing such an amazing bunch of goodies, and also because we're in a bit of a quandary about them.
So, the first bit first. Louise mailed and phoned like a demon asking people who she had written about and worked with if they would donate prizes, and suddenly these fantastic things started rolling in thick and fast. Dinner in an amazing hotel near where Louise lives, a signed Stephen Fry book, a £250 haircut from the X Factor's resident hairdresser Jamie Stevens, a cupcake baking and decorating course from her friend who run's Leah's Pantry: people were so generous.
The folk at People Tree have donated an astonishing £1250 in vouchers which, if we're honest, we don't even know how to apportion as prizes. The just-opened and decidedly lush Rock Mill Estate in Devon has donated short break, and nearby Elizabethan manor Combe House Devon is giving dinner, bed and breakfast.
I thought I would try and help out with the prizes so I phoned a couple of contacts, hence goodie hampers from Triodos Bank and Confiserie Florian. I also decided to cold-call some friendly companies and the delightful people at Sawdays publishing, who don't know me at all, donated a set of their brilliant travel books.
But Louise's contacts just kept a steady stream of prizes coming in: a piece from award-winning jeweller Jamie Stevens, a voucher from Boden, another cooking course, this time with TV chef Rosemary Shrager at the stunning Swinton Park. There didn't seem to be much point me doing any more cold calling.
It has been heartening to receive so much support from companies donating prizes. They're still rolling in, with the latest being dinner, bed and breakfast at Lower Slaughter Manor and a week in journalist Sue Lloyd Rogers' Ca'n Reus hotel in Mallorca.
The prizes were designed to induce more people to donate but we didn't realise that UK rules state that you can't Gift Aid if you stand to benefit from something like a raffle. And it has been difficult to convey to people that they must not tick the Gift Aid box if they want to be entered into the raffle. One donator pointed out that it feels a bit wrong to say you're not a UK taxpayer, which is what you have to do if you don't want to Gift Aid. We have a feeling that JustGiving used to have a special page you could have if you were doing a raffle, but no longer. We keep meaning to phone them up about it but haven't quite had the time.
So really, the point of this particular raffleblog is to say: 'Look! Brilliant prizes," and also to say don't tick the Gift Aid box and do leave your email address with us so that you can be contacted if you win a brilliant prize.
And if you and/or your mates are all charitied out, just think of the prizes. Even a five pound donation gives you five chances to win. Who doesn't want a luxury break, fabulous haircut or basket of chocolate? We can't give the prizes to ourselves!

Give it a whirl here.

Thanks to: Boden, Calcot Manor, Combe House Devon, Hair by Jamie Stevens, Lower Slaughter Manor, Confiserie Florian, Divine, Stephen Fry, Mo Hayder, Leah's Pantry, Harrop Fold Farm, Sue Lloyd Roberts, Me&Em, Eve Menezes Cunningham, Rock Mill, Sawdays, People Tree, Rock Mill Estate, Swinton Park Cookery School and Triodos Bank.

Syria Raffleblog day 22 - £1425

Raffleblog has been a bit quiet for a few days - just catching up with myself.

So, a quick report. Very excitingly, Stephen Fry has agreed to tweet out the raffle appeal. The man has got over four and a half MILLION followers, so if that doesn't whip up a bit of cash, I don't know what will. If our server doesn't crash.

Sue Lloyd Roberts, the Newsnight journalist has been in touch after I contacted her - she's just back from an undercover trip to Syria, and as well as giving the most generous prize of a week's stay for two in her beautiful Mallorca hotel, has also agreed to do the raffle draw on what I'm planning as an evening drinks fundraiser on Thursday 13 September. I just have to get a goddamn venue that doesn't want to charge me £600, which one place I give a lot of business to told me would be the charge. I practically fainted, then sent a very snitty email back. Not very professional of me, but good god, I mean, it's like taking antibiotics out of the mouths of children who will die without them. Literally. It really, really made angry.

So, the donations are coming in which is fantastic, but we need more! Please, if you can, share the JustGiving page with your networks, and encourage people to enter the raffle - it's a real, practical thing you can do instead of wringing your hands in front of the news, which is worse and worse for civilians by the day.

This is a bit of a downer of a Raffleblog, isn't it? I sort of knew there would be those days. I'm also feeling incredibly upset after watching an Aljazeera report by Andrew Simmons showing a two year old toddler being worked on for an hour by horrendously stretched medics in a clinic awash with blood, who then died. I have a baby who's nearly two, and the thought of his body torn and shredded by a shell is beyond bearing. A five year old boy also died in the same clinic. My other son is four, and I see their perfect, beautiful bodies and ache for the parents who have lost their children. It's like a desecration of something that should be absolutely beyond anyone's capacity or imagination to destroy.

If you'd like to donate so that Hand in Hand for Syria can buy stuff that will give some of the wounded a chance of survival. you can here.

Syria Raffleblog day 19 - £1,283

Post by Jo:

Louise and I met the lovely Hanadi from Hand in Hand for Syria yesterday. We managed to get our total number of children down from five to three thanks to the judicious use of babysitters, but it was still a little hectic as Louise's two boys and my small daughter ran rings round the three of us (note from Louise - Jo is being kind here; my four year old was a shrieking, wailing, whingeing nightmare).

Hanadi filled us in on a lot of the work Hand in Hand for Syria has been doing. Mostly the charity is made up of people who work full-time as well as running it. On top of this they all have friends and family who remain in Syria. Hanadi's family is in Damascus and one of the doctors is from Homs, where many of her family have been lost.

We also heard about the tireless work Hand in Hand's doctors have been doing getting into Syria and smuggling in equipment for life-saving operations. The conditions are so hard, with operations being carried out in field hospitals and patients who would in this country be in intensive care being sent home with follow-up visits from nurses. We're hoping to hear more from some of the doctors here on Raffleblog later on.

The charity has also bought a mobile clinic which is working with refugees in Lebanon, where medicines are sometimes sourced. Prices there are being driven up due to such high demand and obtaining medicines in Syria is becoming harder and harder. Hand in Hand's doctors are able to source drugs here in the UK and ship or airfreight them sent out to where they are needed in containers.

The work involved is incredible, especially with the weight of the worry over the worsening situation in Syria. The medical supplies that Hand in Hand provides are desperately needed and your money can buy them. The £40 added to the total on the JustGiving page today might buy eight hours of pain relief for an injured person, or 13 bags of intravenous fluids, or 12 bottles of childrens' antibiotics. This is real, practical help where it is really needed.

If you'd like to enter the raffle we're running on the JustGiving page to raise money, we'd be delighted. There are some fantastic prizes, so do give it a whirl!

www.justgiving.com/syriamedicalaid

Syria Raffleblog day 18 - £1,253

A guest post today from Cara Swift (@cswift2), senior Middle East producer at the BBC, who has very  kindly allowed us to use the account she wrote for the BBC College of Journalism of her trip to the rebel held town of Zabadani, Syria in February this year. She went with reporter Jeremy Bowen and cameraman Darren Conway, but has not been allowed to enter the country since.

The fighting yesterday has led to reports of 170 people killed. There will be many more terribly injured, with little or no access to the medical equipment and drugs that could save their lives. Rather than sitting feeling helpless and hopeless on a sofa, there is, truly, something you can do to help - by donating to our JustGiving appeal on behalf of Hand in Hand for Syria, those vital supplies will be bought and smuggled over borders to the makeshift clinics where they literally do save lives.

Tea with the free Syrian army - and our government minder

After so much time in Gaddafi's Tripoli last year, I became used to being herded onto a government bus and driven around on mystery tours. We were rarely given any detail of where they would be taking us, but we could always rely on coming across a 'spontaneous' pro-Gaddafi crowd of green flags being waved to the chant: "God, Muammar, Libya, that's all we need."


So, when I recently arrived in Damascus on an official visa, maybe I could be forgiven for assuming the same sort of fate lay ahead of me, with 'Bashar and Syria' in place of 'Muammar and Libya'.
But I only came across such crowds once in ten days, in an Alawite area of Damascus. It was the snarled Damascus traffic which slowed our bus down in Syria, not pre-arranged demonstrators.

To travel outside of the capital, we needed permission from the Ministry of Information, and a government minder to accompany us. To speak to opposition activists involved passing through many armed checkpoints. Talking to the opposition, let alone meeting them, is hard to arrange. And risky for them and us.

So we were surprised when we received a call granting us permission to visit Zabadani, a town west of Damascus where we'd heard there was a ceasefire between President Assad's troops and the opposition Free Syria Army. We arrived and were escorted to a house, accompanied by the minder and a team from Syrian State TV.

When a young man speaking fluent English appeared claiming to be a leading activist there, we didn't believe him. It seemed too easy. It must be staged.

Our first ten minutes were spent questioning him, trying to prove he really was who he said he was. We surreptitiously asked some trusted activists we knew to 'drive-by' and see if they could verify his claims. He was telling the truth.

Of course the name he called himself wasn't real. It's usual for opposition activists to call themselves names like 'John' to protect their identity. But, as with all the opposition activists I met in Gaddafi's Libya, his face and expressions were very real.

Dressed in a black beanie hat to protect himself from the minus eight degrees cold, he enthusiastically spent the day giving us a tour. Eager to show us walls scarred by bullets and shrapnel, he led us through the narrow streets. As we weaved through the city he told us stories of their revolution so far: of fighting, of defence, of bravery, and of injuries.

Our 'tour group' grew as other activists joined us, carrying parts of mortar shells they said had landed nearby. Curious children skipped alongside practising their English. "Hello," they would say into my microphone, and then shyly giggle and hide behind their friends.
  
Our guide asked us to stay for the evening. "There will be a demonstration again," he said. So we did. Our hosts were concerned about how cold we were, and insisted on taking us to an apartment with a roaring open fire. As we waited for dusk, I practically had my feet in the open flames to try to restore some feeling in my toes. We were served delicious sweet tea as the man beside me explained how he was arrested in Zabadani last year for protesting. He showed me his legs and told me they'd both been broken when he was in prison.

Three young girls appeared carrying a photo of their dad who had recently been killed. Everyone in the room had a story to tell. And they weren't afraid to share their stories with our government minder. I watched as our guide put a hand on his shoulder and gestured for him to sit next to the fire. Our minder smiled as he sipped a glass of sweet tea and thanked our hosts.

The apartment overlooked a square where a huge independence flag was flying. Hand-made decorations with the names of those killed hung from a fake tree. As dusk fell, people began to gather around it. Men, women, and children. Some were holding photos of loved ones who have died. Some were chanting, some were dancing. Some were riding around on the back of a pick-up truck which had enormous speakers blaring out anti-Assad songs.

Earlier in the day as we had waited for permission to travel to Zabadani, we never imagined we'd have such access to this side of the story. I'd spent ten months watching such scenes on YouTube and it was amazing to experience it for myself.

Since we left there have been reports of renewed fighting in the Zabadani area. Practically everyone we spoke to during our visit to Syria spoke of worse things to come - of continuing violence, of more blood being spilled.

No conflict is ever black and white. It can become so easy to group people into either pro or anti-Assad camps. But the image of our minder and our opposition guide sitting side by side and talking will forever stay in my mind. If they can talk maybe there can still be hope for dialogue.

Syria Raffleblog Day 16 - £1201

It's me again, giving Jo a well earned rest. And it looks like we've broken the £1200 mark! Some very generous people have donated today, so a huge thank you.

Quick note - if you want to enter the raffle, please DON'T add Gift Aid and please DO enter your email address on the JustGiving page - it's the last step you take before exiting. There are instructions for how to do it in our blurb on the page - without your email address, I can't send you your raffle ticket numbers and worse, you might win and not be able to collect your prize!

Right, off to bed. Another day, another dollar, as somebody famous said, I believe... please do keep sharing and tweeting because there's a lot of money left to raise and the need is urgent and growing. 

Syria Rafflblog Day 15 - £1,161

Guest post from Jo

Today sees another landmark for the fundraising with our 50th donation. Made by my university friend Mo. Thanks Mo!

We're hoping to raise a bit of money with a gig that a friend here in Birmingham is setting up. I had told her a little about what we were doing and she mailed me a while ago to ask if she could help. Her exact words were 'is there anything somebody like me could do?' She is a 25-year old who has just graduated with a degree in sound engineering and knows a lot of people on the music scene so I suggested she might organise a gig.

Within a week she'd booked a venue and confirmed three great acts. She's waiting on a headline act and possibly even looking for a DJ to make it a late-nighter. We should be able to sell tickets to over 100 people at £5 a time, raising over £500.

While I'm not yet over the hill, it has been quite some time since I was 25 and it is really nice to see someone this age getting involved. I'm also looking to a good night out as the bands do sound good. The gig will be on Friday August 17th at the Station in Kings Heath, Birmingham.

Meanwhile, people are streaming out of Syria's largest city, Aleppo. Around 200,000 have already left for refugee camps over the border and to seek sanctuary in other parts of Syria. The BBC's Ian Pannell reported under fire from Aleppo last night; his footage showed another child killed by shrapnel, his bloodied body laid out on a gurney. Next to him on another bed was his younger brother, a boy called Mohammed who had been peppered with shrapnel and was screaming in pain as his wounds were cleaned as best they could be in the makeshift clinic. I can't imagine that Mohammend won't need antibiotics to stop his wounds going sceptic. But he may not get them, simply because drugs aren't available in many places. Even though he didn't die instantly from the attack that killed his brother, his long term recovery without drugs to fight infection can't be certain.

 By  donating on the JustGiving page we've set up, your money goes direct to the charity Hand in Hand for Syria which buys urgently needed medical supplies and gets them to where people are being terribly injured on the ground. If you can, please do take a look and enter the raffle:

Syria Raffleblog Day 12 - £1,111

Guest post from Jo

The total is still edging up, we're still going!

One of my contacts Tweeted the Just Giving link to his 15,000 Twitter followers a couple of days ago, which was very kind of him. We're still working hard trying to come up with ways to get the link to as many people as possible and shares on Twitter and Facebook are  a great way of spreading the word.

I'm always interested to see how much people know about the Syrian situation. It sometimes feels very sad that people's lives are being torn apart really so near to us and so many people are just unaware of what is happening. Yesterday marked 500 days of conflict in Syria and with no end in sight it is essential to get medical aid to people suffering there.

To add to the Twibbon Louise posted about on Friday there is also a Facebook Picbadge, a little version of the Hand in Hand for Syria logo which people can stick on their profile picture to raise awareness. Using the Twibbon or the Picbadge is a help in getting people to perhaps have a little think about Syria even if you can't donate.

Louise and I have also been emailing everyone we know with a little note explaining what is going on and what Hand in Hand are doing. It feels a bit like pestering people, but dropping some information into people's inboxes has proved a good way of getting the message through. If you would like a copy of the letter to send to your contacts please do get in touch  with Louise at louise@louisetickle.co.uk.

Syria Raffleblog Day 10 - £1,086

Ooh, a little flurry of donations to the page yesterday - very exciting! We're up to £1,086 which is great, and Jo and her sisters in Birmingham are sorting out a gig as a fundraiser to sell tickets at, so we'll get more for the pot that way. We're off camping today (camping is most definitely not my favourite thing, but it's sunny so it may be tolerable) and when people are sufficiently well-oiled tonight I will be flogging raffle tickets to my friends round the campfire. They'll love me in the morning.

The other news is we have a Hand in Hand for Syria Twibbon for anyone who is a Twitter afficionado and would like to apply it to their picture to raise awareness of the charity's work. Here's the link, and thanks to Hand in Hand for setting it up.

http://twibbon.com/Search?searchQuery=Hand+in+Hand+for+Syria

Right, that's it for now, as I have work to do that's not Syria-related. I'll keep tweeting today and if you could help the campaign by sharing the blog and the JustGiving page here, that'd be just brilliant.

Syria Raffleblog day 8 and a half - £1001

A guest post today from my friend Jo in Birmingham , who is working extremely hard on this:

Well, we're over the £1000 mark. One thousand and one pounds raised in just over a week. A really big thank you to every single person who has donated so far.

There's a great story behind the £50 that took us over that first really big milestone. Hand in Hand for Syria tweeted yesterday to say that a boy of seven had decided to swim the English Channel to raise money for them. Joseph had seen an episode of Newsround about the conflict and decided he wanted to do something to help.

So when I sent Joseph a message to tell him how amazing his plan was and that we would donate, he sent a message back telling us he would ask his parents to donate on our page.

And that was the £50 donation that took us over £1000. A remarkable little boy with extremely generous parents.

Because he is only seven Joseph isn't allowed to swim the real Channel, so he is going to do the 21 miles (33,796 metres) in a pool and is swimming nearly every day. He hopes to visit Syrian refugees in Turkey when he has done his swimming. Here's his website: www.josephswims.com

As to our £10,000 target, we realise that the 'easy' donations have been had. After a good planning meeting this morning we think we still have a couple of methods left to reach our immediate contacts, but now the hunt is on for a broader network of people to donate.

There are plenty of ideas in the pipeline, but with small children and busy working lives they're joining a queue of things to do. Facebook is our friend, we hope, so on the to do list for this week is to start reaching a wider network of people online. More news will follow.

Syria Raffleblog Day 7 - £951

Nearly made a thousand pounds in seven days - mainly it's whoopiedoo with a bit of aaaagghhhh thrown in to express the frustration that I couldn't drum up another 49 quid this afternoon. I was looking after both kids today and it felt a bit unfair to them to be tweeting madly and sending emails off to whoever I know who I've not tapped for cash yet. All the same, I was in front of the computer for far too long on a day when the sun shone and two small and lovely people were stuck in front of YouTube while I tap-tapped away.

The generosity of people I know very well, a bit, and not at all has been fantastic this past week, not to mention everyone who gave prizes. But I know that to reach the target of £10,000 is going to need a really big publicity push. And I'm not too sure how to do it.... so any ideas welcome.

Signing off till tomorrow. 

Syria Raffleblog Day 3 - £613

Look! Look! Over twice as much since Raffleblog last checked in! Morning all. Sore throat grumbles have just been offset by finding out that by the end of last night we'd reached £614. Am grinning like a loon - thank you all very much indeed, and a big hug to Ellen Burney who has tweeted prolifically over the last two days to raise awareness and direct people to the page.

It's my last day shifting at the Guardian today, so I'll be on the train back home tonight doing some jobs like writing copy for Hand in Hand for Syria who want to explain about the raffle to their local press. I also want to drum up a few more prizes from favourite brands, and think of some new ways to publicise the fundraiser.

Right. Am off into the rain with no coat, so my next report on Twitter will likely be somewhat damper than this one. I do just wonder if we might get to £1000 in the first week... any suggestions for how to get there by end of play on Monday, let me know in the comments section! And if you'd like to pass on the JustGiving page, it's here: http://www.justgiving.com/Syriamedicalaid

Syria Raffleblog: Day 2 - £254

Just a quick update tonight: am a bit shattered after a night on a friend's sofa (working in London till Friday, so two more of those to come) and an early false start on the Metropolitan line that took me way out of my way and made me late and flustered.

Today has seen two more fab prizes given for the raffle - a hamper of Fairtrade Divine chocolate from my very kind employer of ten years ago, and a weekend stay at possibly the most luxurious self-catering property I've ever seen, Rock Mill Estate in Membury Devon. So to Charlotte Borger, PR director for Divine and Jane, who owns Rock Mill Estate, a massive thank you. I must also say a heartfelt thank you to Lex Thornely (tweets under @LexPRnMarketing), PR supremo who has been so helpful in easing the way for me to ask his very generous clients for prizes.

I've been following today's extraordinary events in Damascus on Twitter, and from the reports of microbloggers on the ground and mainstream news organisations' reporting, there seems little doubt that a lot of people have been killed and terribly injured today. It always feels so odd to me to be sitting safely on one bit of the planet while some lives are changed utterly and others destroyed on another bit. It reminds me of a poem a foreign correspondent introduced me to when I mused on the same theme to him some years ago. Here it is - it's worth reading:

Musee des Beaux Arts, by WH Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on

So, we're up to £254 today. The money goes directly to Hand in Hand for Syria, who I think I'll be meeting up with for the first time in the next few weeks to find out more about how they work on the ground and how they get medical supplies into the areas under attack.

Please, please keep reading, keep retweeting my tweets and sharing the JustGiving details on your Facebook pages . Here's the link to the JustGiving page if you'd like to give some money and enter the raffle (make sure NOT to Gift Aid the money if you want to enter, and to put 'yes' to the question about whether your donation is in exchange for a raffle ticket). Right, that definitely is it for tonight. Cup of tea. Then glass of wine. Then sofa.

Syria Raffle Blog: Day One - £214

Decided to pop a few thoughts down every day til the JustGiving page gets to £10,000. Who am I kidding – course I won’t keep it up. But given that this is the first time in my life I’ve tried to raise money for anything other than my own shoe fund, it might be amusing to see some of the mistakes I make as I attempt to drum up the dosh. I’m sure there are all sorts of tried and tested fundraisers’ tricks to milking people for money (since I had kids I’m a sap for quite a few of them) but as I’ve got just a few minutes each day to source prizes and inviegle people into coughing up, I rather suspect I won’t be following the handbook.

First possible mistake  – was it a terrible idea to do a raffle? Of course I didn’t check the tax rules before deciding to ask for prizes, and at the last minute discovered that you can't buy a raffle ticket and allow the charity to reclaim Gift Aid on your money. 

On discovering this I hit the ‘edit’ button on the JustGiving page and wrote a bit of blurb explaining that it was a raffle fundraiser and there were all these fab prizes on offer, then added a P.S. to the effect that if you wanted to Gift Aid your donation you could opt out of the raffle. I didn’t think everyone would… but turns out that all the amazing people who have donated so far have Gift Aided their money.  Which means, if everyone else follows suit, that there will be a lot of verrrrrrrry nice stuff going begging. Hmm. What to do? Maybe I get the £250 haircut? It’s a bit of a dilemma. I’d love to know just how good a £250 haircut is...

The upshot of all this, however, is that I want to say to anyone who donates: the very fact that you’re giving is fantastic. For years and years I didn’t give a single penny to any cause, and was all “please, I work for a charity, that’s my contribution.” (I’m not referring to The Guardian here; I actually did work for charities). Honestly, I was such a selfish idiot. So please, don’t feel guilty about entering the raffle. This whole shebang has been designed as a raffle and you know, ravishing though I hope I’d look with a stonkingly expensive haircut, me nabbing the prizes isn’t quite in the spirit of the project. So, please donate, but please do also feel just as good about your donation when you tick "yes" to the bit about "have you given money in exchange for a raffle ticket".

To bring this bang up to date: we’re just over 24 hours since launch, and friends who I love dearly, people I know professionally and individuals who I don’t know at all have already given £214 – I'm so grateful and touched that you've cared enough to do that. 

Under JustGiving’s system, the money goes directly to Hand in Hand for Syria to buy drugs and medical equipment to help people who are being terribly injured every day. 

There are children, women and men who will live because of it.

Why look at pictures of slaughtered children?

What do you do when you see a picture of a toddler with his hands tied together and his throat cut? I shook, sobbed, but I kept looking. There is huge controversy about whether newspapers and broadcast media should publish this kind of picture - and in this country, they don't - but images and footage of Houla's dead children are available now on YouTube and via Twitter, and I think people should look.

I look out of respect, because that child felt terror and pain: for me to look at that image is to acknowledge what they went through, to treasure their humanity, to remember that until minutes before they had been laughing and squabbling and refusing to eat their tea just as my children do, and to value the incalculably precious life that has been so violently stolen from them. My pain on looking at such pictures is, by comparison, of no relevance.

Except in what such feelings might galvanise someone to do. It has to prompt something, looking at pictures of  children's broken, slashed, bloodied bodies, else it becomes not only emotionally devastating but ultimately pornographic and disrespectful.

I've not known what to do for months now, but on Saturday night, I knew I had to do something or I would always be ashamed.

I woke my partner up, and told him that I was going to organise a protest against the systematic killing of children, and that it didn't matter if no-one came and it was just him and me and our two small boys standing there. We were going to do it anyway. And we are - together with all the amazing people who have contacted me to say they'll join us with their own children.

On Sunday 10 June, at noon till 2pm, the 'Stop Killing Children' protest will be held outside the Syrian embassy, 8 Belgrave Square, London. Please join us. Bring your kids. And if you can,  wear something red to symbolise the blood spilt by the 49 children who were killed in Houla last weekend, the children who have died in the days since that atrocity, and the thousands more who have been slaughtered over the past 15 months.

It's not enough. I don't know what is. But doing something must be better than doing nothing. This is my something.

If you're going to join us, please let me know: louise@louisetickle.co.uk, and follow updates about the protest on the Twitter hashtag #stopkillingSyrianchildren