Big bamboo makes big impression at Number 10

3 July 2008

Having spent all of last weekend taking in the rays and watching Glastonbury - or at least the best bits from the Oxfam and Greenpeace video bloggers - it's clear that summer is now well and truly upon us.

And though we're now into July (and hopefully the start of barbeque season), there's been little time for such sunshine-fuelled frolicking for the Oxfam G8 team over on the other side of the planet in Japan.

Having barely stopped for the past few months, the last few days has seen the Oxfam team there continuing their final preparations - polishing the papier-mache Big Heads, briefing the papers and the media, and generally getting things in place to make sure they hammer the message home to the G8 that tackling poverty must be top priority.

Meanwhile, a little closer to home, three months of hard-graft G8 campaigning in the UK came to a head yesterday morning when campaigners from six different anti-poverty organisations could be seen lugging 6-foot tall bamboo trees up a wet and drizzly Downing Street.

Though big bamboo might not be the most obvious tool in a campaigner's extensive list of over-sized novelty props, it was what was attached to the trees that was important.

Dangling - Japanese style - from the branches were just a few of the 55,000 Tanabata messages from the UK public (and by that we mean you) who've called for the G8 to: keep their promises to deliver more aid money; make health care for all of the poorest people a reality; stop making climate change worse and start helping poor people adapt; and to put and end to the global food crisis.

We even managed to get one of the Tanabata bamboo trees on show at the Department for International Department - the section of Government responsible for helping to tackle poverty in poor countries - so if you're one of the people who've sent a G8 message then it might well be wafting on display inside a Government building.

And if you're one of the people that hasn't sent a message yet, then what are you waiting for? There's but a few days left before the Summit begins on 7 July, so browse on over to our virtual Tanabata tree and tell the G8 to honour their promises to deliver justice for the world's poorest people.

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