Click on the image below to make it readable (and laughable).

We DO have a purpose!  (Thanks to Tom Cheney and the Cartoon Bank)

Last month I asked readers of Outside the Lines to support the Hippos, an initiative supported by Project H Design to deliver 75 water rollers (the Hippos in question) to Kgautswane a community in South Africa.

Today I heard from Emily, Project H Design’s founder, who sent a report on its success.

Here’s some of what she said – and some great photos.

On Wednesday afternoon, we handed over the rollers to households selected by Clara Masinga, Kgautswane’s community leader- an amazing woman who really has been a voice and an inspiration to the whole community.

I spent the following 2 days with Grant [the inventor of the Hippo] and Clara, interviewing community members about the Hippo Roller (thousands of which are currently in use throughout Kgautswane), particularly regarding the way it enables families and quite simply, makes life easier. As we drove down the dusty roads around dusk, children rolled their Hippo Rollers home, and waved and smiled every time we passed

In an earlier newsletter/posting, I asked “What have you signed up for?” Here’s an opportunity to test that.

I have just signed an urgent petition calling on the Chinese government to respect human rights in Tibet and dialogue with the Dalai Lama.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_end_the_violence/98.php/?cl_tf_sign=1

After nearly 50 years of Chinese rule, the Tibetans are sending out a global cry for change. Violence is spreading across Tibet and neighbouring regions, and the Chinese regime is right now making a crucial choice between tougher crackdown or dialogue.

President Hu Jintao needs to hear that ‘Made in China’ exports and the upcoming Olympics in Beijing will have the support of the world’s people only if he chooses dialogue. But it will take an avalanche of global people power to get his attention. Click below to sign the petition – in just 3 days, the campaign is almost half way to the goal of 1 million signatures!

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_end_the_violence/98.php/?cl_tf_sign=1

If this is something that’s important to you, please send your friends to this blog posting or copy and paste and pass it along. I’d strongly encourage you to support the Tibetans so that they may also live without fear as we do.

In honour of my Canadian citizenship, our webmaster extraordinaire, Kathryn of Zoonini directed me to Adanac (spelled backwards is…) a great font featuring all things Canadians celebrate and love. Check out the upper, lower case and numbers! And you can download the font set for free, courtesy of the folks at 10four Design.com

My friend Bob Presner of Beyond the Box was kind enough to put this together, a memento of my Canadian-ization on Monday 18th February, 2008.

Yes, I *am* Canadian.

I’m delighted to announce that I’ve been honoured at the Indira India Innovation summit in Mumbai with an Excellence in Innovation Award.

I spoke to the conference participants on the power of the Possibility Virus and the art of doing less Good Work and more Great Work.

There were a number of excellent and prestigious speakers, including Bob Rosenfeld (who set up Kodak’s Office of Innovation), Cheryl Perkins (former SVP of Innovation for Kimberly-Clark) and the Head of Innovation Worldwide for Unilever.