35,000 people brave rain and blisters for G20 rally

We'd like to say a great big thank you to the throngs of Oxfam supporters who joined the crowd of 35,000 for the Put People First G20 rally last weekend.

Thank you for giving up your Saturday to come to London. Thank you for helping us to bring the voices of poor people to the rally. But most of all, thank you for braving the rain, and the blisters.

For those of you who couldn't make it, we've put a video together of some of the highlights of the day. Watch it below.

Other rallies and demonstrations will continue through this week, but our attention now turns to London's Excel Centre, where heads of state will gather on Thursday this week.

Now usually these types of big, international conferences are walled events, with the detail of the discussions taking place well away from the watchful public eye.

Given the "global economic reach" of the G20, what is - or is not - decided this week will undoubtedly have a profound effect on the lives of people everywhere (not to mention the impact on poor nations), the closed-door approach has always left us wondering whether what's publicly announced after previous summits reflects the real conversations between heads of state. (Remember the Bush-Blair encounter of two years ago?).

With that in mind, Oxfam has helped set up G20 Voice - an initiative where 50 of the world's most interesting and influential bloggers will be your eyes and ears at the G20 Summit.

The bloggers come from 22 different countries, and together have a combined audience of over 14 million. Some of them are from poor countries, and so they will help bring a more global perspective to the G20 summit - as even though the G20 is more representative than the G8, the majority of delegates are still from rich countries.

But most importantly, all the bloggers are active citizens, committed to the eradication of poverty and injustice.

They're people who include Daudi Were (mentalacrobatics.com) and Jotman (jotman.com), both of whom have combined powerful writing and reporting with the global reach reach of the Internet. Daubi is recognised as one of Africa's most influential citizen journalists, and Jotman (whose real name is not disclosed for security reasons) posted some of the first images of 2006 Bangkok coup and interviewed escaped monks during the 2007 Burma crisis.

Between them, the bloggers will pull back the curtain at the summit as leaders draw up their blueprint for global recovery.