A school for brick kiln children workers, Pakistan - £4 a month per child

Interview with 2 men working in Youhannabad No.2. Brick Kiln Village, outside Lahore, Pakistan:

How much do you earn? 300 rupees (£2.50) for 1000 bricks

How many bricks can you make in a day? A family can make 1000 on a good day.

What do you do in the monsoon when it rains? We cannot work

How do you live? The brick kiln owner is always happy to lend us money

How much do you owe him? More than 10,000 rupees (£100). It will take many years to repay our debts.

Do you like work? If we could only pay off our debts we would run away from here

Do your children go to school? There is no school for them to study. they work with us to make bricks

Education is one of the keys for these children and this community to escape their cylcle of poverty. Starfish Asia is working with local partners in Pakistan to start a school. All the planning has been done and it is due to open this month. It only costs £400 a month to run this primary school for 100 children. So far £220 per month is committed to...
Is this something u would like to contribute to?
If it is go to http://www.starfishasia.com/

(Any questions feel free to ask them in the comments section or by email (see the Free Pocket Guides post). I visited the Brick Kiln in July and have been involved in the planning process)

Be eco-friendly after Christmas!

It's simple but its so easy not to do it - recycle your Christmas tree and your Christmas cards!

'London produces 10% more rubbish at Christmas than during any other time of the year and Christmas tree recycling is an environmentally friendly, convenient way of getting rid of your real Christmas tree' (www.viewlondon.co.uk).

Many local councils have special arrangements for this and the easiest way to find out about them is to google them.

As for cards, well if you haven't got access to a recycling collection which most people have as part of their rubbish collection (or if you keep forgetting!) take them to Tesco with you when you next go shopping. WH Smith is also accepting them for recycling.

Or of course there's the old trick of cutting out the pictures and using them as tags for next year's presents. If you've got the time go for it!