Have you heard of Pay it Forward?  You may have seen the film with Kevin Spacey, well if not it is the movement that promotes doing a good deed and asking the recipient to pass it on and has spread to 120 countries world wide.

It all took off from Catherine Ryan Hyde's best-seller of the same name who launched the movement back in 2001.  The present President Charley Johnson serves as an inspiration to many inclding my guest Shimi Shah, Director Carousel Solutions here in Dubai who is helping to share the message with an aim to get eight million Pay It Forward bracelets out in the UAE for the eight million residents here.  She is also working with corporations on their CSR and with schools to spread the pay it forward message of small acts of kindness.

To find out more about the movement check out:

www.pifexperience.org

And to contact Shimi:

http://www.carousel-solutions.com/csr/pay-it-forward/

csr@carousel-solutions.com

At the beginning of September we set out on a mission to highlight the greatest green business talent in the UAE. We wanted to reinforce all of the hard work that goes on to make the planet a more environmentally friendly place by crowning one company, ‘Dubai Chamber Ecopreneur of the Year’.

We were looking for firms who create and/or sell environmentally friendly products in the market, or that operate with a number of green practices in place.

“An Ecopreneur is a successful business which is helping UAE society develop more sustainably by providing ecologically friendly products and services or operating in a way which helps solve environmental challenges. Their green solutions help individuals and/or businesses in the UAE reduce pollution and conserve resources.”  

Well we’d like to thank you for all of your nominations. The response has been overwhelming, highlighting a whole battalion of businesses that make a daily difference, with a wide range of innovative ideas and initiatives.

Click here to listen to the company sales pitch and to get more information on each business.

And the winner is...

Organic Foods and Cafe
CEO: Nils al Accad
Website: www.organicfoodsandcafe.com

Final voting figures:

Organic Café = 48%
PTL Solar = 32%
Neutral Fuels = 15.8%
Farnek Avireal = 4.2%

Dubai Chamber - Helping your Business is our Business

Dr Ginger Krieg Dosier, Assistant architecture professor, at the American University of Sharjah joined The Green Team this week and brought along her ‘eco bricks’.  Just recently unveiled these they are being described as a new breed of biologically “grown” bricks that are durable, sustainably manufactured, and easily produced from readily available materials.

Called “Better Bricks,” the building material can be “grown” from sand, common bacteria, calcium chloride, and urea instead of being baked, which consumes a ton of energy. The concept may seem simple, but it has the potential to have a global impact when you consider that producing the 1.23 trillion bricks manufactured per year right now creates more pollution than all the airplanes in the world!

Conceived in her lab at the University these amazing bricks really could be the solution to the enormous environmental impact of producing all of the bricks the world needs each year.

To put the numbers into perspective, if the Better Brick replaced each new brick on Earth, it would reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by at least 800 million tons a year.

Dr Dosier is still looking for funding for this project and has already been offered a project with Masdar City.  We wish her all the best with this very cool invention and if you would like to find out more and contact Ginger you can do so on:

www.biomason.com

ginger@biomason.com

The Reader: Mattew Cowdery, Middle East Sales Manager, Hachette UK Ltd

The Review: The Girl on The Stairs – Louise Welsh

Jane Logan is a stranger to Berlin and she finds the city alive and echoing with the ghosts of its turbulent past. At six months pregnant, she’s instructed by her partner Petra to rest and enjoy her new life in Germany. But while Petra is out at work, Jane begins to feel uneasy in their chic apartment. Screams reverberate through the walls, lights flicker in the derelict building that looms over the yard, a shadow passes on the stairs...

Jane meets a neighbour’s daughter, a girl whose life she tries to mend, but her involvement only further isolates her. Alone and haunted, Jane fears the worst... but the worst is yet to come.

Rating: Louise Welsh, the acclaimed author of The Cutting Room, delivers another masterful suspense novel. The Girl on the Stairs is a powerful psychological thriller packed with twists and turns to keep you reading well into the night. Read it, or be left in the dark.

Reader:Jamal Al Mawed – Regional Account Director at DABO & CO

The Review: The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

The book is a first person account from Private Bartle, a 21-year-old Southern soldier serving in Al Tafar in Iraq. Just before leaving the States, he makes a promise to the mother of a younger soldier, Private Murphy, that he will protect her son and bring him home alive. As the war starts to close in on the two soldiers physically, mentally and emotionally, Private Bartle is haunted by the realization that he cannot keep the promise he made.

The Yellow Birds is a poetic and dark insight into the minds of soldiers forced to commit atrocious acts in the name of war, and forced to live in fear of the horrific reprisals that they might have to endure. Throughout the book, the author ensures that the narration of Private Bartle is never separate from his stream of consciousness, continuously merging beautiful prose with the hard-hitting facts of life in the warzone, its effect on the mind, and the gradual realization that although you can protect someone from harm, you cannot protect them for their own thoughts.

Rating:Although war fiction related to an American view of the Iraq war is looked upon somewhat unsympathetically in this region, The Yellow Birds is able to transcend questions of morality and describe the inner workings of a troubled young mind, where the stressful toll of living in terror is a greater threat than any perceived enemy, and it is precisely this conflict that makes it such a compelling read. At just 170 pages in length, and with only three characters in the whole book, The Yellow Birds is far from a plot-driven thriller, but the authenticity of the author’s voice makes it a haunting, beautiful and impactful story.