How can something as (potentially) shallow as Christmas gift shopping be a great way to make a difference in the world? Easy đ If we aspire to living a life where our actions reflect our values, then how we spend our time and money on Christmas gifts can make a real impact on people beyond […]
Yay! Advent is my favourite season in the church calendar, and it’s almost here! Actually, Lent was pretty cool this year, too, with our superduper Lent with Kids series, but the inspiration for that came from all the fun and surprisingly helpful things we did at home during Advent. So here we are! I […]
I like the word lucky. Not just because it has a pleasant combination of consonants and rhymes with ducky and plucky, which are also awesome words. For me it does a better job than blessed for making it clear that much of the goodness sprinkled through my days is thoroughly undeserved, nothing I can take credit […]
Even if youâre little you can do a lot, you Mustnât let a little thing like âlittleâ stop you – Matilda the Musical, ‘Naughty’, Tim Minchin Changing the world is a hard job. Best to start early, donât you think? Here are a bunch of ways you can help your kids live a life […]
Just a little post prompted by a quote: Cry, the Beloved Country is one of my favourite and most formative books. I read this quote from it today at the beginning of a collection of photographs and stories, Displaced Reflections, by Oddny Gumaer, cofounder of Partners Relief & Development. You can see more on this book here, her second […]
The last fortnight has been a mix of hope and horror as I’ve been learning more about the work of the friends we’re visiting in Thailand. They are part of Partners Relief & Development, a small international charity that does strategic work in health, education, poverty uplift and human rights advocacy for the (very many) […]
On Saturday night (or afternoon, Thai time), the New Zealand general election results rolled in, faster than ever before, and they led to the first outright majority government in the twenty years we’ve had MMP, our proportional representational voting system. And it’s the centre-right National government who has been voted in for a third term with […]
Jess Berentson-Shaw lives in on the side of a windswept Wellington hill. Jess has two kids, is a part time researcher and scientist, and runs (and blogs about) her social enterprise called muka kids (mukakids.com). Muka kids is her plan to bring about a sustainability revolution in the world of kids’ clothing production. She has […]
The latest booklovers’ chain-letter going around Facebook seems to be a challenge to list (without too much agonising) your ten most ‘influential’ books. Heavens. To stay in the spirit of the challenge I’ve tried to write this in one sitting, presumably missing a lot of worthy contenders, but hopefully capturing some kind of truth. And […]
It’s not that this ‘health and safety’ advice from Wellington’s Massey University isn’t sensible, it’s just that it is absolutely insane that we live in a world where the solution to rape is female university students being advised to carry a whistle and wear running shoes. University spokesman James Gardiner said … “If students don’t wish […]