a paw and a claw

are inhibiting my typing skills. I broke a finger on each hand at a youth weekend two weeks ago. One break is sitting in a little plastic splint and is doing sweet as, the other was a bad one and needed surgery and screws and is now wrapped in one humoungous cast. I feel like a big grizzly swiping at honey. So blogging is not easy but still i wanted to point out three things:
1- thumbs are great.
2- Fairtrade fornight is going swimmingly despite a ludicrous report from the Adam Smith Institute. (the name comes from the father of capitalism and says alot) It has been one of the main focuses of the press and basically says FT is a hoax- this is a real shame as all cynics need is some silly piece of evidence and they run away with it. See the FT foundation's response here.
3- It is international womens day this weekend- 8th march. so far as poverty goes i think this is a fairly critical calender date- so long as gender discrimination exists poverty will never be eradicated*. I was drawn to something put out by Amnesty in the guardian on saturday, it made me so sad. It spoke of the choice women are having to make in Darfur about traveling to get water for their families and risk being raped or not getting water and having their families perish. Rape is regularly used as a weapon of war out there. We can write letters to the UNAMID about this here-please do.

*

• 70 per cent of the 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty are female.
• There are twice as many women as men among the world’s 900 million illiterates.
• On average, women are paid 30-40 per cent less than men for comparable work.
• Above 80 percent of farmers in Africa are women.
• A woman living in sub-Saharan Africa has a 1-in-16 chance of dying in pregnancy. This compares with a 1-in-3,700 risk for a woman from North America.
• Every minute, a woman somewhere dies in pregnancy or childbirth. This adds up to 1,400 women dying each day, an estimated 529,000 each year from pregnancy-related causes.

Check out what is going on in your local region for womens day here.