I had the pleasure of being invited as a VIP guest speaker to the Thrive Business Breakfast Exclusive Event: Corporate Social Responsibility this morning at The Royal Scots Club in Edinburgh. It was an early start on a very wet morning for me to get to Edinburgh from Glasgow for 8am. After breakfast each delegate had 1 minute to introduce themselves around the table with me and the other two VIP speakers then having 8 minutes to talk about Corporate Social Responsibility.

I explained (in more than 8 minutes!) how through Inksters I had been able to promote our charity work in Argentina in a way that would not otherwise have been possible. This had resulted in corporate sponsorship, individual donations and raised awareness on a scale that benefitted both Inksters and Habitat for Humanity. I showed the delegates an InkstersGive T-Shirt and gave them all a booklet to take away on our Global Village Challenge.

The other two Guest speakers, Dr Michael Groves (Managing Director of Great Circle) and Andrew Mason (Group Sustainability Manager at Royal Bank of Scotland) spoke on sustainability.

It was great to be able to bring our work in Argentina to the attention of a diverse group of businesses and charities in Edinburgh. I made my way back to Glasgow in the knowledge that the very early start to the day had been well worth it.

The title of this blog post is taken from the Tweet today by Kristof Zoltan von Csefalvay-Bartal (@chrisvcb) who tweeted: "look at the flashy t-shirt I have!": And here is the image from Cardiff that accompanied the tweet:-

Chris is a "Lawyer, geek, superhero, survivor. Currently going to jail so you don't have to".

Follow Chris on Twitter: @chrisvcb

One of our Corporate Sponsors, Tom Valenti of ValentiLaw, wearing his InkstersGive T-Shirt in Chicago.

Tom recently returned from a trip to Haiti where he went to assess the need for conflict management skills after the early responders have left and there is a lull in activity. As a result of this visit Tom intends to train Haitians in mediation, facilitation, advocacy, dialogue and in training itself. He and Alan Gross (a NY & PA mediator, trainer and facilitator who has worked all over the world) are taking steps to start a program to train Haitian lawyers in mediation to work on the  existing 7 – 10 year backlog of cases in the Haitian judicial system. This can eventually include the development of community mediation centers to handle disputes at a local level by people from the community. They hope to work with existing NGOs to start peer mediation training in the schools, which in many respects need a fresh look at how to get kids into school; how to keep kids in school and how to treat kids while there. They hope to empower Haitians to be able to advocate for themselves so that from the rubble and chaos, there arises a new Haiti that provides the Haitians with a home; an education; a job; and a country in which they have pride.

Read more: Mediators as early responders – follow up and a discussion of a recent trip to Haiti

Follow Tom Valenti on Twitter: @ValentiLaw and @ChicagoMediator

Michael Scutt's (aka Jobsworth) latest UK Blawg Round Up #3 is on the topic of Midsummer Madness. He includes the Inksters Give Blog in this and, in particular, Scott Greenfield wearing his Inksters Give T-Shirt. This results in Scott Greenfield's blog, Simple Justice, and his post on You're Not Atticus Finch (and neither am I) being the first non UK blog to be mentioned in a UK Blawg Round Up. The benefits of wearing an Inksters Give T-Shirt knows no bounds!

Michael Scutt kindly bought an Inksters Give T-Shirt but states in Midsummer Madness that "modesty prevents me from posting a photo of my gym-honed torso on this blog". With a little bit of persuasion and a competition between Michael, Valentilaw and Chris v C-B we can now exclusively reveal that gym-honed torso on the Inksters Give Blog:-

Midsummer Madness!

The T-Shirts have been printed and today they were posted within the UK and to as far afield as Canada and the USA.

One recipient who has been waiting patiently by his mailbox is American Attorney, Blawger and Social Media Ninja, Scott Greenfield. Scott spends a lot of time by his mailbox waiting for Key Lime Pie and iPods. Corporate Sponsor, The Trial Warrior, kindly donated one of his T-Shirts to Scott and as this was posted to New York today the wait by the mailbox should not be for much longer. The T-Shirt will, of course, more than compensate Scott for missing out on the Grand Prize that Adrian Dayton won from the Lexis Nexis booth at the Inside Counsel Superconference.

Perhaps Scott will provide us with a photo of him by his mailbox wearing the T-Shirt for a future blog post.

InkstersGive recommends you take a look at Scott's blog at Simple Justice. It makes for a very good read and not just for lawyers.

The T-Shirt (an updated version of the original one) now contains the logos of all 12 Corporate Sponsors: Inksters, Page \ Park, Innovation Digital, The Trial Warrior, Harley Haddow, Theatreplan, Silverman Sherliker, Valentilaw, Barr Brady, Océ, Jeffrey Aitken and Armitage Associates.

The profits from the sale of the T-Shirts amounts to £83.01 which will go to Habitat for Humanity to help the residents of 22 de Enero in La Matanza build a better future.

Thanks to everyone who bought the T-Shirt and have helped make a difference.

If you have not donated yet but would like to then please visit and donate at JustGiving. It would be nice to reach the £7,000 mark - we are nearly there.

Orders are still coming in for our T-Shirts. But we must now print them and fulfil our orders. So this is your last chance to order the T-Shirt. Orders will close on 1st May 2010. Don't delay order today. For full details on how to order see our earlier post on Buy the T-Shirt. We shall then ship all orders by the end of May so that you have your T-Shirts in time for the Summer.

It is heartening to see donations still coming in for Habitat for Humanity 3 months after we returned from Argentina. Since the beginning of this month a total of £100 has been donated (£50 online and £50 off-line).

The total raised to date stands at £6,801. All monies raised go directly to help the work of Habitat for Humanity in the 22 de Enero neighbourhood.

We will be continuing to accept donations for the next few months. If you have not donated yet and would like to please visit and donate at JustGiving.

Your donations could help Alejandro and his family build a home.

This blog post will provide a recap of the run up to our Habitat for Humanity Global Village Challenge and our time building in Buenos Aires. It will be a useful reference point for the 70 blog posts that have preceded this one.

This Blog and the inkstersgive.com website were officially launched on 23 September 2009 with thanks to corporate sponsor, Innovation Digital.

There is a link from the InkstersGive site to our JustGiving  page, and it was not long before the donations started rolling in. This included our first US donation from Richard Prickman of Bitcher & Prickman. However, he was not allowed to outdo his Partner, Beatrice Bitcher. There followed more donations from my Twitter followers including generous corporate sponsors: The Trial Warrior, Silverman Sherliker and Valentilaw. The generosity of Twitter followers was overwhelming as seen in Fundraising and the Power of Twitter and #FollowFriday for Just Giving.

We had asked for help to cover our hard hats with logos and were having good success. In addition to those corporate sponsors already mentioned we had Inksters, Page\Park, Harley Haddow and Theatreplan on board. They were to be joined by Barr Brady, Oce and Jeffrey Aitken.

We were getting plenty of attention in the legal and architectural press, all helping to raise awareness and encourage donations.

In amongst all this we started Spanish classes with a teacher from Argentina at Centro Español Loco. We were to go on to take 5 Spanish lessons in total. Our teacher ended up joining our La Bordona Tango class at Sloans.

I read a Chinese Poem from 700BC. Our T-Shirts were printed and offered for sale. We were all set to head to Argentina.

Nicola and I arrived in Argentina a couple of days ahead of the rest of our Group. This gave us a chance to acclimatise and recover from the jet lag before beginning building work. It also meant we experienced floods in Buenos Aires on our first day there.

When the rest of the Group (13 of us in total) arrived from the UK it was straight into Orientation and learning about the 22 de Enero neighbourhood that we would be working in.

Then building works commenced. By the end of day 4 which consisted of painting, digging holes and moving concrete fence posts I was very tired but equally elated. Our active filled days passed by quickly with a brick wall, yellow paint and a concrete column, not to mention a higher wall, more yellow paint and a bedroom extension.

We were also able to celebrate the work we had done with the community when we attended the inauguration of the room we painted yellow.

On a day where work was rained off we had the opportunity to visit the Recovering Urban Homes Project and learn of the other work Habitat for Humanity was doing within Buenos Aires. On the way Jas met Maradona in La Boca.

On day 8 and on day 9 we were given time off for rest and relaxation. This allowed us to see Buenos Aires and take in some Tango.

Then back to work and Nicola and I worked together one morning on Tito’s wall. Nicola spent most of her time in La Matanza building Tito’s wall and became a very accomplished bricklayer as a result. I moved around more to work on different projects such as building Miguel’s walls, moving earth at Alejandro’s property, moving rubble at Antoñin’s house, and building Germán’s tower. This gave me a good perspective on the different living conditions and family units that exist in 22 de Enero. It had been particularly gratifying to help the poorest of these families who were just starting out to build homes to replace the shacks they were living in.

Our time at La Matanza came to a close and we had to say farewell to 22 de Enero community. The families were truly grateful for the time we had spent with them and the work we had been able to do for them. Beba wrote a thank you note and Alejandro wrote that “if all the world helped like you, all the world would be better”. With tears in our eyes the bus took us out over the dirt track from 22 de Enero and back to Buenos Aires.

Then it was time to say farewell to Hábitat para la Humanidad Argentina and have a “make your world a home” photograph taken.

Back in the UK I blogged that it was “over but not out”. Indeed with Tessa Shepperson making Habitat for Humanity her Charity of the month at Landlord-Law Blog and Armitage Associates becoming our Christmas Corporate Sponsor the fundraising continues. As 2009 comes to a close I will be considering how best we can retain links with our new friends in 22 de Enero and help them in 2010. In the meantime please help them this Christmas by giving at www.justgiving.com/argentina2009.

Armitage Associates became our twelfth Corporate Sponsor today. Established in 1993, Armitage Associates is a small architectural and interior design practice with a committed professional workforce based in Glasgow. Armitage Associates has developed a deep understanding of the issues surrounding health buildings and housing. Jeremy Armitage has extensive experience of designing specialist areas of hospitals as well as special-needs housing. Lena Armitage joined the practice in 2000 combining her interior design skills with her experience of working in the NHS within hospitals and the community.

Instead of sending out Christmas Cards this year Armitage Associates have kindly made a generous donation to Habitat for Humanity.

Visit the Armitage Associates website

You can help the inhabitants of 22 de Enero this Christmas by giving at www.justgiving.com/argentina2009

One of our first corporate sponsors was Page \ Park. I have just realised that whilst they have been listed as a corporate sponsor on inkstersgive.com for some time now we have not done a blog post about them. So I will now remedy that.

Nicola is an Associate Director at Page \ Park and they have been very supportive of her taking up the Global Village Challenge to Argentina. It is of course fitting for a firm of Architects to be associated with a house building project. Indeed Page \ Park are well known for their involvement in social housing such as Dalilea Drive, Easterhouse in Glasgow (which Nicola worked on), 1967 -1969 Dumbarton Road in Glasgow, Graham Square in Glasgow, Grangemouth Housing in Grangemouth, Hayfield Street/Crown Street in Glasgow, Lilybank Wynd in Johnstone, Moore Street in Glasgow, Newmilns Housing in Ayrshire and Waddell Street/Ballater Street in Glasgow.

[Dalilea Drive, Easterhouse, Glasgow: © Page \ Park, Architects]

As well as a very generous donation to Habitat for Humanity from the firm itself, Nicola's colleagues at Page \ Park have also been very generous in giving donations both online and offline.

So when we start the build project in Buenos Aires on Monday we will proudly be displaying the Page \ Park logo (alongside our other corporate sponsors) on our T-Shirts and hard hats.

To learn more about Page \ Park visit the Page \ Park website.

Follow Page \ Park on Twitter.