Tag Archive for 'Glen Hansard'

Hello, SuperForesters of the World. Welcome to The SF Sundae – today’s post looks into the insightful blog of a young woman living amidst war and an Irish folk singer who’s trying to raise money for the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust.

An Iraqi teen blogs about life and war
Sunshine is the nickname of an 18-year-old Iraqi college student living in Mosul, who started her blog Days Of My Life as a way to share her experience of living in a war-ravaged country. Sadly, she has witnessed more tragedy than most could begin to imagine, but incredibly, she remains hopeful. Something that really grabbed me was the way Sunshine explains how different her life was prior to the war. How growing up, she had lived very comfortably, probably not much differently to you or me, and how these days, all the windows on her home are boarded up and she rarely sets foot outside her home for fear of death. (Can you begin to imagine what it’s like to be afraid every single day?) Sunshine goes on to explain how much she loves her country and that she wants nothing more than to see it restored to its former beauty.

She writes:

“I can’t wait till the day I’ll wake up and open the curtains in my room and see life in my neighborhood again instead of a ghost city. I can’t wait till the day that we’ll remove the wood we placed over the windows, I wonder always if I and all Iraqis will ever feel relief. I have so many hopes and plans for that day, [I] wonder when will it come.”

Pic via WeHeartIt

And from an earlier post in 2008:

“Yesterday, I was [on] my way to the teacher’s house, and was smiling the whole way – I didn’t see residue of car bombs burning, nor bullets’ covers, or any signs [of] a previous fight.

“I know there is still a long, long way till Iraq heals and returns to the way it was before, and there are billions of things [that] need to be done, but I am trying to focus on the positive things. Everything has a solution … the only things we are seeking for now is safety. It is a great blessing to have safety; I didn’t know how important safety [was] till I lost it. Life without safety is unbelievable. Imagine yourself among criminals having guns and killing everyone around you and you can’t protect yourself; it is the most horrible thing that can happen to anyone, and I hope those events I and every Iraqi witnessed will be only memories and stories we tell to the next generations.”

Back in 2006, Sunshine (then aged 14) contributed some comments for a Mother Jones article titled Blogging From Iraq, which is an incredibly riveting read. It’s the kind of article that causes a shift of perception, a change of heart. If you stop by Sunshine’s blog, please have a read of the comments she receives at the end of her posts. They’re truly beautiful. They remind me that we all just make up this one giant team, and we’re constantly rooting for each other to come through.

Let’s Help The Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust
Not so long ago, Edward Norton and Glen Hansard met at a wedding in Venice. Following this, ah, hold that thought – I think you’d best hear the story from the man himself. Dear readers of SuperForest, I give you Edward Norton’s personal account:

“Last spring, in some opera house in Venice, I got recruited to play guitar and sing a song at a wedding. Fortunately for me, this Irish bloke showed up who could actually play and sing, so I kinda hid behind him and limped through it and still got credit. So I bought him some vino and we hit it off and that’s how I met Glen Hansard.

I said ‘Hey I’m going to Kenya … you should come’. and he said ‘Right, where’s that, now?’. But he came anyway ’cause I showed him a picture of a Land Rover and he has a real thing for those, so he got on the planes, which he doesn’t have a thing for.

I’ve been working for many years with the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust in the Chyulu Hills … Hemingway’s ‘Green Hills of Africa’. It’s a great organization and Glen was mightily impressed and inspired by the people and the work going on.

We spent a few weeks out there … Singing, eating, exploring. I took Glen to visit the schools and health clinics and we attended a village community meeting. At this meeting, the elders explained the progress that they were making thanks to the work of MWCT. The local lion population was coming back thanks to their Simba program of hiring local game scouts and compensating ranchers for livestock losses, schools were improving and better attended, clinics were getting new doctors. Things going well … the work expanding. But the team is sorely lacking in one key piece of equipment … a truck.

Glen was so moved by the whole experience that he volunteered to raise some money for this truck.”

Glen played two benefit concerts earlier this year to raise money for this effort. Below is a video of Edward’s (rather funny) version of events at one of these concerts (his introduction is followed by a performance by Glen and Marketa Irglova).

At time of posting, Glen and loads of generous others have raised $48,485 (which means they’re inching closer to their goal of US$70,000).

I think SuperForest could really help push this figure higher and contribute to giving the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust a truck with which to further their work. You can donate via Crowdrise here.

Crowdrise is a new social networking site with a focus on fundraising. I think there’s a lot of potential for SuperForest to get aboard, start our own page and raise money for charities and other good causes, similar to our efforts for the Millennium Seed Bank. Who’s with me?

April