Home Away From Home

Sometimes we just need to be happy about ourselves. We spend our lives trying to achieve something more (at least I do), one more task, one more event, one more dinner, one more friend, one more book, one more tv show, one more project, one more dream. It is hard to draw the line between dream and reality and say what you realistically are able to do and what you are just never going to get to. I have that with loads of different things - I keep thinking about all the friends I wish I spent more time with, about all the books I keep starting and not finishing (which never used to happen), about the business plans I want to start one day, about the places I want to visit for a weekend, about the things I should buy, about the plans I should be making, about the strategy focus I should have. Eventually, it gets to a point where all of these are conflicting and I do, as always everything last minute. Except when I accept that life is about choices and choices can actually help living your...

Today was a long day and it is far from being over. Today, if all goes well we launch our first ever Advent Calendar. Rather than a chocolate, for each day you will be greeted with a daily story to make you smile - a young mum that can now read, a child that can now drink milk, a girl that does not have to walk 18 km to go to school anymore. In such a difficult year in Portugal, one of the members of the volunteer team had this idea - after the entire year fundraising, why don't we chose to give to the donors this month, give them back for all we were able to achieve. I thought that was a pretty cool idea. Really. I am not the creative one in the group, that is why years ago I thought I desperately needed someone to help on the fundraising side, so I am always wondered on seeing ideas bubble up. I definitely am a large contributor and still put the calendar together, with the help of many contributors - writing is my thing. But thinking of doing a calendar is not! So today i...

Sometimes I get depressed with the things you would most expect to make me happy... I just came out of the MSIF trustees annual reception. With my love for social action, you would expect me to be happy. Moreover, MSIF did make significant grants to A Little Gesture this year, in recognition of my volunteer work and in recognition of my fundraising efforts for the Jp Morgan Challenge. The charities there were inspiring and it is always re-assuring to see how much the Firm and broader colleague population are always so involved and keen to do more. They went through money donated, lives touched, volunteer hours logged - 16000 hours in one month, the equivalent of 8 years of full time employment.  Magic breakfast focused on the importance of providing breakfast to children in primary school, as a means to an opportunity.  But we started with the wrong foot - they said one did not need to go far and give money to far away children because ours needed and 1 in 4 children did not have acces...