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The Summer Sundae Festival
 At this year's Summer Sundae festival in Leicester, Oxfam joined forces with two locally based organisations - Skillshare International and Leicestershire AIDS Support Service (LASS) - to spread awareness of the importance of access to essential services.
More than 16,000 music fans were entertained by acts such as Elbow, Gomez, Belle & Sebastian, The Proclaimers and José Gonzalez with his trademark solo classical guitar.
Summer Sundae certainly reaffirmed itself as the 'grandson of Glastonbury' playing host to the likes of politically-edged dub maestros Michael Franti and Spearhead and the Coldcut collective whose gritty beats and innovative visuals cooked up a storm on the indoor stage.
Our campaigners were there with red ribbons and petitions, telling people about our Health and Education For All campaign. In the world’s poorest countries there is only one doctor for every 50,000 people, and only 400,000 people worldwide have access to HIV/AIDS treatment - less than 8% of those who need it. What’s more, millions of teachers in poor countries handle classes of up to 100 pupils in schools with few books and no running water.
Jonny Gutteridge of Skillshare said: "People were really positive about the issues that we were campaigning about and the most amazing thing was that almost everybody was wearing a red ribbon by the end of the weekend. There were about sixteen of us campaigning and we all kept smiling and had a good time, despite occasional wind and rain. Oh, and the music was good too!"
Bring on Summer Sundae 2007!
By Becky Clements - campaigner
posted at 11:37 AM
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We're at Leeds Festival
Whilst we've been getting our huge tent ready over the last few days, thousands of festival-goers have been setting up camp in the lovely grounds of Bramham Park just outside Leeds. The traffic round the site has been a nightmare, but most people are in now, and although the music on the stages doesn’t start until later today, the festival is definitely in full-swing, and the atmosphere is great.
Thursday night at Leeds is always good fun, and last night was no exception. Our tent was crammed full of excited (and a bit drunk!) punters up for a dance and a shout. Our resident DJ Jon was nailing it on the decks, the music was awesome! And so the dancing went on until 3am - what a night...
We've had our tent open for an hour or so now this morning, to provide well-needed coffees and paninis to some hungover girls and boys. The music starts at midday, and I think Pearl Jam are headlining Main Stage tonight - can't wait. More blogs, and some photos, to come.
Wish you were here? Didn't manage to get a ticket this year? Send us in a comment or a question about this year's event and we'll give you the inside knowledge!
posted at 9:33 AM
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The Green Man festival
 Last weekend the Brecon Beacons played host to the chilled-out Green Man festival. Spectacular scenery, quality acts spread over three stages, foodstalls serving up an array of organic Fair Trade fayre, and some of the loveliest festival-goers ever known to man (green or otherwise) all combined to make the Green Man festival the highlight of the Welsh  festival summer.
Six of our campaigners were there and over the three days they succeeded in signing-up nearly 600 people to the I'm in campaign, made many useful contacts for Oxjam events, and sold new and second-hand clothing from our recently waterproofed stall.
Dodgy weather on the Friday and Saturday dampened clothes but not the enthusiasm, as King Creosote, The Aliens and the Silver Jews were all received with gusto. Happily, the rain stayed away on Sunday and headliners Calexico (pictured) built on people's good feeling and rounded off a fantastic weekend with their enchilada-tinged sound.
posted at 3:19 PM
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How can it be? It's all over at V...
 What a weekend - the music was great, everyone loved our fair trade coffee stall and chill-out tent (pictured above), and thousands of people signed our petition to make health and education available to everyone. This petition will be presented to Kofi Annan at the next G8 summit to help keep pressure on the government to deliver their Millennium Development Goal promises. So, if you were at the V Festival this weekend and you signed then thank you, and thank you to all our campaigners for spreading the word!
 We also had loads of funny/peculiar/amazing entries to our how angry are you about poverty competition. If you were at Chelmsford and we photographed you then check out our V gallery now, if you were at Stafford then don't fret - these will be coming soon! If you missed us because you were hiding from the weather in your tent, then why not add your photo online? For more photos of the V Festival look out for our photo gallery coming soon.
My personal highlight of the weekend had to be Faithless live on the main stage, what was yours? Add your comments below and let us know.
posted at 3:30 PM
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Soggy in Stafford!
Hey everyone - after a deluge of rain all day yesterday, the Oxfam crew up here at V Festival in Stafford are just drying off in preparation for a good day today. The line-up for later is awesome - Bloc Party, Keane, Beck and Radiohead!
 It sounds like down south in Chelmsford the weather hasn't been great either - top blogging Hannah! Our massive tent here in Stafford survived the storm though, and played host to our exhibition, the beautiful campervan, giant Jenga and our funky chairs and beanbags. It was packed yesterday afternoon.
So apart from the mud, everything's fantastic here. I managed to catch a bit of Razorlight last night... pictures later! They were brilliant, so look forward to that later down in Chelmsford. We're all looking forward to Radiohead tonight. Here are a couple of pics we've just taken as I blog from outside our tent.
posted at 12:54 PM
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