Patrick has been at the E-Campaigning Forum, held at St Anne’s College in Oxford. This is a gathering of 120 campaigners from around the world who are working with the internet to effect change for the better.

The group is incredible diverse - coming from the US, Australia, Sweden, India and more.  They are also really inspirational, wanting to solve issues like premature birth, climate change, the imprisonment of young people, school food, student fees, maternal health and much more.

The two day gathering is based on the idea of a “non stop coffee break”.

This doesn’t mean sitting around drinking coffee (one might feel a little jaded after two solid days of this) but more about group discussions on issues that matter- rather than the more traditional series of presentations.

Patrick’s interesting discussions with fellow campaigners have included:

1) Facebook and how to use it to recruit people to the STAND UP campaign

2) The best way to try and influence government ministers and their civil servants on the issue of premature birth

3) The most popular websites and blogs for new mothers (apparently Mum’s Net and Net Mums  are popular: let us know which sites you think should be supporting the campaign

4) How to combine public activism (like going out on a march and campaigning in the street, petitions etc) with the behind the scenes activity, lobbying of MPs and civil servants.

It has been a brilliant couple of days, which will hopefully allow us all to be even more effective in persuading government to act to prevent premature birth, through medical research.

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