Area 6 : News & Views

NEWS ARCHIVE - May to Aug 2001

31st August 2001: Two new events have been added to the General Events calendar - firstly a Gala Charity Night, in aid of suffering children around the world, scheduled for 2nd November 2001 at The Liverpool Olympia, and secondly (on 15th September) a mini-conference on SEN tribunals - the massive changes effective from 1st September, special educational needs and disability act, including assessment and statementing - billed simply as "talks" you would need to see the General Events page for full details on this one.

31st August 2001: Michael Tipper's feature article for September is now on line - the new Feature Articles area has proved hugely popular and this month's article is entitled: "The Mind Map Organic Study Technique" [a topic requested recently by one of the many visitors to Michael's pages].

31st August 2001: We've received an e-mail from Fathima, in Kandy, Sri Lanka, looking to make contact with other parents or organizations helping children with learning difficulties / ADD - please see the Guestbook for more details.

30th August 2001: We're delighted to welcome CACHE [The Council for Awards in Children's Care and Education] to the Project HappyChild Directory [No. 1052]. CACHE now incorporates CEYA, NNEB and NAMCW (many of you will have seen NAMCW in the Directory previously). CACHE believes that all child carers should be required to obtain a minimum level of training, and are actively committed to raising the quality and professionalism of child care. To reach their Directory entry, please click here (if you have a cached or printed-out version of the Directory, you may wish to update this).

29th August 2001: VIRUS ALERT: Yesterday we received an e-mail (title "you enjoy this book") which said: (quote) "Select this book? ______________________________What was the book about and what did it mean to you?(unquote)(followed by several variables on the same question).

Attached was a file called setup.exe, so we forwarded the whole package to Sophos for analysis.

We've just received the following information from them - "the file that you sent to us for analysis was infected with W32/Magistr-A" - really drastic one this, "W32/Magistr-A is a polymorphic Windows 32 executable file virus which spreads by infecting files and via email. Magistr includes highly destructive code which - if triggered - can delete all files from local and network drives, wipe the CMOS settings, and flash the BIOS chip of your computer" - quoted from their website.

Please note that this virus uses randomly generated subject, body text and attached filename - so there may be no real clues except the attachment; the one sent to us was setup.exe but there are a number of others listed on the Sophos site.

This virus is at "number 2" - still well behind Sircam but "quite prevalent" according to Sophos. We've forwarded info about the virus to everyone on our mailing list but feel free to pass on details to friends and colleagues.

Update 8.30pm 27/8 - our thanks to F-Secure Corp. in Helsinki, Finland for confirming the identity of this virus this afternoon.

We would add also that we have received a further three copies of the virus this evening - all with entirely different subjects and text. Please be on the lookout! Not only should the attachment not be opened, but after the virus-carrying e-mail has been deleted it should also be removed from the "deleted items" folder in your mail program.

27th August 2001: Many of you will have seen the Appeal in the Guestbook back in July of last year, from Eugenia in Russia, requesting help for her five year old daughter who needed hearing aids - we're delighted to say that this appeal has been more than fulfilled by a lady in America (who has asked to remain anonymous).

19th August 2001: Our thanks to Kevin Revill who has created a .cgi script to allow us to send the monthly Newsletter direct from Project HappyChild, now that the free Microsoft ListBot service has been discontinued. This will make a very real difference for us, given the size of the mailing list, and on a practical level things should be very much easier from now on. Kevin helped Project HappyChild a great deal in the early stages, back in 1998 (when I was a complete Internet novice!) and also put the first edition of the Project HappyChild Directory on line. More details on our Sponsors page.

17th August 2001: We've received an e-mail from Cross-Cultural Solutions, one of the leading international volunteer organizations in the United States which sends over 1,000 volunteers overseas every year and is involved in a number of projects with children - see the Guestbook for more details.

12th August: We've been asked to publicise details of this year's WORLD MEMORY CHAMPIONSHIPS sanctioned by the World Federation of Memory Sports - to be held at Simpsons in the Strand, London, England on Saturday and Sunday the 25th and 26th August, 2001. To register as a contestant (or to be an arbiter/judge) please e-mail Buzan (at) Mind-Map.com. To read Michael Tipper's write-up of the Year 2000 World Memory Championships, please click here.

11th August: Our thanks to Lucy for a delightful e-mail which has now been added to the website Guestbook.

9th August: Heartwarming news from the Betesda Appeal to help homeless children in Romania - seven children are now accommodated on site in the renovated house. They still have a great deal of money to raise (around £30,000) to be able to accommodate all 24 teenagers, but with help they'll get there ..... latest scheduled fundraising event is "Rodeo for Romania!" on 19th October 2001 - see the General Events calendar for more details.

9th August: We're delighted to say that The Sick Children's Trust Major Appeal to raise over £1 million for the building of Acorn House at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge and Treetop House at Sheffield Children's Hospital was a wonderful success and both houses are now open to families.

SCT are now in negotiations with other hospitals regarding the development of new houses as well as continuing to run the eight existing 'Homes from Home' for families of children who are seriously ill. The entry for The Sick Children's Trust in the Project HappyChild Directory has now been updated, along with a changed e-mail address and a link to their new website, where you'll find details (and pictures) of the homes which are now open. If you have a cached or printed-out copy of the Directory, you may wish to update this.

8th August: New addition today to the Syndromes Links Index - The Los Angeles Centre for Traumatic Stress and Sudden Bereavement (children and adolescents). Their conference "The Black Hole of Trauma" featuring Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. (assessment, diagnosis and treatment of PTSD, including Childhood Trauma, EMDR and Pharmacological Interventions) in Chicago, in October 2001, has been added to the General Events page.

8th August: As readers of the July Newsletter will know, we're taking things easy for a few weeks until the new pagebuilding begins again in September.

However there have been not a few enquiries asking when the next update will be to Michael Tipper's Accelerated Learning pages! Michael's first "Feature Article" has now gone on line, "How to Memorise Long Pieces of Text", and Area 3 as a whole has been upgraded to interlink the new area and make navigation across all the Accelerated Learning pages as easy as possible.

Meanwhile (at time of writing) we are just approaching 2.5 million visits - a huge landmark. Our thanks to everyone who has helped in making the Project HappyChild site so well known.

17th June 2001: We've been contacted by Paul Potts, an Architect, working in Cheltenham, Glos. who plays in a band called Deep Water - next Saturday is their first charity event (jointly with another band) which will be held at Parkland's Community Centre, Cheltenham in aid of an organization called "Winston's Wish", a local community-based grief support programme for bereaved children who have experienced the death of a mum, dad, brother or sister. Details of Saturday's gig have been added to the General Events calendar.

We have also begun the process of updating the Schools Interchange pages, with new links input for the Crown Dependencies (Jersey, Guernsey and Isle of Man - the latter now linking to background information on the five local schools, as well as links to a wide range of local colleges of higher education) on the UK index page, and updated OFSTED and UCAS links where appropriate over the whole UK area.

With the upgrading of Schools Interchange, the second full stage of website construction at Project HappyChild is now completed. Over the next 12 months, in tandem with completing construction of the supplementary resources (free-to-print French worksheets, Sol's Guide to Harry Potter and Andy's Guide to Pokémon) we plan to gradually input the remainder of planned information across the whole site [the outstanding Schools & Appeals areas, primarily] as well as updating any residual link changes.

Whilst this represents a fairly heavy pagebuilding schedule in total, it has become clear recently that with traffic levels accelerating, the need to update any lapsed links and complete the remaining areas is as much a priority as completing the pagebuilding of the supplementary resources, in order to maximise the effectiveness of the Project HappyChild site as a whole.

Now that the second construction stage has been completed, with full visual and logistical integration across the site, and the overall site parameters clearly defined, the third construction stage will essentially centre on "colouring in the blank spaces" within a defined framework. Any help from site visitors in locating requisite information on the Internet will - as always! - be very much appreciated.

14th June 2001: A new appeal has been added to the Guestbook today, from Multiethnic Children And Youth Peace Centers, asking for sponsorship [100$ per child] for Albanian and Serbian children from Kosovo to attend a summer camp in Poland in July this year. Please help if you can.

13th June 2001: Ever thought of running a marathon? You could raise much-needed funds for disadvantaged children at the same time. The National Blind Children's Society can arrange your entry into a huge range of marathons worldwide - and have different packages available, to include travel and accommodation, depending on the level of sponsorship obtained. Take a look at the Sponsored Events page for marathons (and many other events) scheduled over the next 18 months .....

8th June 2001: Many of you will have seen the page on the site here for the Betesda charitable foundation, helping street children in Romania. When the page was updated in January of this year, a request was included for help with the purchase of a flat for the streetgirls. We're delighted to report that Hans & Erika Kraft from Marburg, Germany, have kindly forwarded the necessary money to Betesda, to buy this flat, so that now it is almost remodeled, repaired and ready to welcome the girls. Their kindness is very much appreciated ..... to see the Betesda page, please click here.

8th June 2001: Child Advocacy International, just added to the Project HappyChild Directory, works to help children in a number of areas of the world. We have now added CAI to the relevant pages in the area for Worldwide Appeals & Projects, namely Albania, Bosnia, Cameroon, India, Kosovo, Nepal, Pakistan, Uganda, Ukraine and Yugoslavia.

We've also taken this opportunity to overhaul the Appeals area as a whole, to provide greater integration between the continents, countries worldwide and individual appeal pages. With the ever-increasing size of the website, ease of navigation is a constant focus, and the changes made will enable visitors to move more easily within the different sectors in this area.

Child Advocacy International benefits from mobile phones sent to CRUMP - the Campaign to Recycle Unwanted Mobile Phones - which has now been added to our "Resources Required" area. There's a FREEPOST address if you're in the UK, or free collection can be arranged for larger quantities of phones [UK mainland only].

5th June: Many of our regular visitors will have watched the progress of solo skipper Vinny Lauwers (a paraplegic from Australia) in his landmark voyage around the world during 1999/2000, details of which have remained on our FOCUS page ever since. We have left the details of this voyage on line here as a tribute to Vinny Lauwers' extraordinary courage in braving the elements single-handed on his boat "Vision Quest", so as to raise funds to help disabled and disadvantaged children. We've now updated the FOCUS page to include the information that on 24th May 2001 Vinny received the Laureus World Sportsperson of the Year award - congratulations Vinny! - well deserved.

5th June: Contact a Family [CaF] [No. 1079 in the Project HappyChild Directory] has changed address and contact details - their Directory entry has been updated (click here); if you have a cached or printed-out version of the Directory you may wish to update this. To quote from the CaF website - "every day over sixty children in the UK are born or diagnosed with a serious disability and the vast majority of them are cared for at home ... discovering that your child has a special need or disability is probably one of the most devastating experiences that a parent will live through. The feeling of isolation - both physically and emotionally - can often be acute. However, experience tells us that some of this pain can be relieved by sharing thoughts and fears with other families in a similar situation. We have information on over 1,000 rare syndromes and rare disorders and can put families in touch with each other."

28th May: The Rescue Foundation for the Brain Injured Infant has been added to the Booklists page - over the past 9 years the Rescue Foundation has developed a unique archive of information about all aspects of brain injury and related matters. Their resources are freely available to parents and families of brain injured children, professionals working in the field, or anyone else with an interest in this subject. They have a library of approximately 3000 titles, about half of which are available for postal lending. We've also included a reference to their international parents' network on the Syndromes Links index page.

28th May: The last couple of weeks has been spent largely on concerted pagebuilding for the free-to-print French resources on the site - five areas have been completed: school subjects, sport, clothing, medical and classroom. The first three are now linked in from the main French index page; medical and classroom are still in the third checking stage but should be on line in a few days. It's becoming apparent what a mammoth task the French area is! - but we should get there eventually, given a following wind. Our thanks to everyone who's written in about the free worksheets recently.

Incidentally, for the time being only the Freeway mirror within the Project HappyChild site has been updated; the other two mirrors for this area will be updated as soon as time allows.

13th May: The main Project HappyChild welcome page has been re-designed to include more focus on the advertisers whose funding makes this website possible, along with links to our Sponsors page, the "Give Water" organization and the latest chapter from Lance Winslow's book, "How to run a successful Car Wash Fundraiser".

We've also taken this opportunity to update the main "publicity page" to incorporate the latest developments on the site, and our thanks to anyone who prints this off and sticks it up on a noticeboard somewhere!

8th May: The Children's Trust [1042 in the Project HappyChild Directory] has a new website which we have linked from their directory entry. If you have a cached or printed-out version of this page, you may wish to update this.

1^st May: Project HappyChild News for May 2001 is now on line.

1st May: Chapter 4 of Lance Winslow III's acclaimed book, "How to run a Successful Car Wash Fundraiser" has just gone on line at the site here. Lance has kindly given permission for this book to be serialised at Project HappyChild and this month's chapter is about PUBLICITY. Lance is a highly successful businessman and this chapter is packed with dynamic ideas for successful publicity - whatever type of fundraising event you're planning, this chapter is well worth a read.

1st May: Michael Tipper's May articles on Accelerated Learning are now on line. This month's Book Review is of "Accelerated Learning in the Classroom", the Amazing Brain fact is about how "Your Dreams Can Help You", this month's Great Mind is Johannes Gensfleisch Gutenberg, the Memory Training article talks about "The Power of Suggestion" and this month's mnemonic is another one for "Stalagtites and Stalagmites" [following on from "Rock Formations" in February 1999].

NEWSLETTERS - this website has been on line since 1998 - there have been a lot of Newsletters! The archive is here and the very last Newsletter is here.