Oxfam : Be Humankind

The one that got away...

School then home for our Oxfam picnic in the garden.

Today Oxfam are launching a global food justice campaign to look for better ways to grow, share and live together entitled Be Humankind. The message being delivered resonates within me and the force of the tagline strikes at the heart.

Reuben fell asleep. Callum enjoyed the bunting and the wooden fish.

There are few causes closer to my heart than this. It became my centre of studies at uni (and Polly's) and I'm no different that the majority of people here who are deeply touched by the magnitude of this global issue. Before I became so heavily absorbed in child portraiture by blessed virtue of the boys, I was fortunate enough to travel widely to about 50 countries, many of them in developing countries, longing to record in travel photojournalism from India to Bolivia and Tanzania to Indonesia, the other world I really knew so little of. I walked away feeling sickeningly rich for all I had, the things I was taking for granted and it is easy to forget that most of us here, as global a force as we feel we are, are just a tiny percentage of the global population who are fortunate to enjoy relative prosperity. We are not the populace: we are the minority, a little finger of fortunate people on an otherwise disadvantaged planet.

Callum has suddenly turned into a little song bird, singing every song he knows from circle time at school - Five little monkeys, the welcome song to each kid, Row your boat. It's so delightful to hear him suddenly burst into song.


Techy: I could have spent all evening trying to correct the exposure on another image, so unaccustomed am I to shooting at midday other than in Midday sun.