Project HappyChild NEWS

1^st July 2000

[for ongoing updates, see Latest Site News]

This has been a complex month, especially with around half the site pages being re-located, and the originals being removed from the server [thus effectively losing the search engine listings on 600 pages .....] - amazingly we've survived this okay and the visitor count this month has been higher than ever before. Our ISP has been busy coping with the change-over to "Surftime" [allowing unlimited on-line time with no extra costs] but hopes to reinstate the daily webstats shortly.

Meanwhile we'd like to welcome the very many people who've signed up for the Newsletter - starting a new mailing list from scratch on a robot listserver is a major undertaking [and can vastly reduce subscriptions] - astonishingly the mailing list is now *five times* the size it was at the beginning of June.

The Millennium Balloon finally got launched this month! - Sunday 4^th June - from Quesnel, BC, Canada. Kids had been asked to tune in using their dads' scanners, to hear the hams talking, and there were some photos after the launch of the view from the balloon, from the on-board camera. However the payload came down in flames the same evening (at Stoney Lake) and since then there have been no updates at the balloon website, apart from a few photos of the launch itself. We've left the link in place from FOCUS, for the time being, for anyone who's been following this saga over the last few months

The General Events calendar for June was an active one; calendar pages have now been updated and July's UK events include the Big H Bike Ride from Hampton Court Palace to Hove (Sunday 2^nd), a prestigious City Dinner in Threadneedle Street, London (Tuesday 11^th), the Flora Women's Challenge in Hyde Park and a Junior Bike Ride [Norwood Ravenswood](Sunday 16^th), and Fun Day 2000 (Saturday 22^nd) at Tadworth Court, Surrey. More details of all these on our General Events page.

There's only one event visible on the Sponsored Events page for July [Cycling Safari Charity Bike Ride, in Kenya] with August blank before the rush of events scheduled from September, but if you take a look at Ockenden's page [linked from Sponsored Events] they have a number of events during the summer including an Iceland Trek and Sea Kayak, and a Sangla Valley Himalayan Trek, in July and August 2000.

Meanwhile we've been approached by "Pulkids" - a group of 8 to 12-year-olds in Pulteney Grammar Prep in Adelaide, South Australia, who believe people should focus on the good things in life and are inviting schools, families and communities to get in touch and "make this world a more peaceful place for us all to share". We've added their project to our "FOCUS" area.

We've also added a link to the Hunger Site from our main Welcome page, along with a link to the Rainforest Site where your daily (free) donation can add to more than 550,000 acres of rainforest already protected by The Nature Conservancy. Each sponsor on their page pays for 2.4 square feet of land when you "click the button" - eg doing so today allows you personally to protect 14.4 square feet of rainforest. Remembering to visit both these sites each day can add up to a sizeable amount of "free donations" over a year. You can access links to both from the main Welcome page [you'll need to scroll down to just below the opening screen].

Also on the Appeals front, there's a new letter in the Guestbook, about help for children living on the streets due to the internal war in Sri Lanka. If you have any contacts with Sri Lanka, or know anyone who has, please take a look at this one.

Meanwhile we have appeals on site from British & USA Military Regiments, for help for a school in Kosovo and for landmines awareness training in Bosnia & Herzegovina. The items requested have now been added to the Resources Required page, and also we've opened up the page for Schools Kosovo as a starting point for this area [linked from the Schools Eurasia index also].

We've also updated the Shop page for Humanitarian Aid Transport Services, who specialise in the transportation of humanitarian aid and emergency relief goods worldwide - by road, sea and air - anything from a few small cartons to full container-loads. Though based in the UK they can organise shipping, transportation and air-lifts in any part of the world.

One major area which has been both streamlined and re-located is the resource of free French worksheets, currently under construction, which will span several hundred pages when completed. The existing pages all have new addresses and the index itself has been re-linked from the blue and white navigation table which appears on several hundred pages across the site. At present only two elements (avoir and calendar) of the French pages have been completed, but with the rest of the site largely up to date now, we hope to get back to pagebuilding more of this area later this month.

Meanwhile the new Pokémon resource has been added to again, in the last few days, and a News page uploaded today to summarise the many developments in this area [which now has its own separate mailing list]. There's a lot more detail on the H.M.s page, linked in from the Walk Through for the blue, red and yellow versions of the game, and we've added 20 more Pokémon to the Pokédex, interlinking these from the pages for Evolution, Types and Elements. We still have around 150 pages to build in this area but plan to add a few pages at a time regularly for the next few weeks, gradually interlinking all the different factors as each set of new items is added.

We've had a number of enquiries this month asking when Michael Tipper's next set of articles will be going on line in our Accelerated Learning area. Michael takes an annual break each summer (June/July) which is currently allowing him to organise the World Memory Championships again - the date of this event has recently *changed*, please see the Press Release for more details.

Sites linking to Project HappyChild, of which we've been made aware this month, include Bangor University, Ireland on Line, Gifted Canada, English on Line (Auckland, NZ), Norfolk County Council and the Hercule project [Dublin City public libraries]. We'd like to thank everyone involved, and also the many other sites which continue to add links to Project HappyChild.

Best regards,

Penny.

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