Will you be there this year? Come on! It’ll be fun! Check out the details at www.joineeforum.com! Do it!

This year, we’re supporting Build Africa, and in particular, Twendane Primary School. This is a fantastic, fantastic thing to be doing…

About Twendane Primary School

Twendane is located in Naivaisha District, south-western Kenya, and was established in 1978 by the local community. Build Africa started working with Twendane in 2009 after seeing the poor conditions of the school first hand. Children were crowded into small, draughty classrooms with dirt floors which turned into mud during the rainy season. Hygiene and sanitation levels at the school were low, with temporary latrines presenting a health hazard to the children. Unsurprisingly, Twendane’s academic performance in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KPCE) was poor, so pupils had little chance of progressing to secondary school.

How Build Africa has helped so far

New toilet blocks were built in 2009, and new classrooms built in 2010 provided bright, spacious learning environments. A School Management Committee was set up and trained to ensure the smooth running of the school, and a School Development Plan was formed in partnership with the local community to establish priorities for the school’s development over the next three years. In 2011, the school received new educational resources and sports equipment, helping to improve the quality of children’s school experience within and beyond the classroom. There has also been a dramatic improvement in the academic performance at the school – Twendane is now one of the top-performing schools in the area.

…but there’s still a whole load of work to be done. Thankfully – it’s totally achievable!

If we can raise £10,000 we can…

• Renovate 3 classrooms, purchase 75 desks and 80 textbooks to further improve the teaching and learning environment at Twendane
• Purchase more sports equipment, so that all the children can play sports regularly
• Purchase 500 sanitary towels, to ensure that the older girls don’t have to miss school

If you’d like to donate – and please do! – visit https://www.justgiving.com/karmageddon10

If you’d like to come along to K10 on December 3rd, head over to the forum for more information.

I can’t believe it’s still going strong, with new joinees signing up from all over the globe every single week.

We’ve got some pretty cool plans in the pipeline for what to do in the name of Karmageddon 10 this December…

So Join Us! And don’t forget – your next stop should be the Joinee Forum… come and meet your fellow joinees!

Good work, you lot! Welcome to Join Me!

Hope you’re having a good day!

Thought I ought to get round to dropping you a line to let you know about my appreciation of your ‘Joinee’ troop.

Got married just over six years ago and had a wedding list with Debenhams, as we got nearer the big day we were advised that we required to add further items to the list.

On checking the items purchased we noted that four presents had been bought by Joinee members (people unknown to us), obviously doing their good Friday deeds.

What a great bunch of chums you have! (I assume they must have known they weren’t buying for you? If wrong I owe you some kitchenware!)

Have been a fan since.

Keep up the good work!

Daniel Wallace

The famous Joinee Whitby has sent me a fantastic photo of a proper moment in Join Me history…

Right at the beginning, when I didn’t have very many joinees at all, I also had little idea what to do with them.

I discovered a small group were meeting on the edge of Hyde Park in London, so, acting all mysteriously like a good Leader should, I sent them a package. Inside was a disposable camera and a dictaphone, as well as strict instructions not to play the tape until all the joinees had gathered.

The message told them to go out and make an old man very happy, and take pictures of their endeavours. They did – old men were made happy right across the capital – and the beginnings of the Karma Army were formed that day.

And the final man they met on their adventure? Raymond Price.

Cheers for the photo, Matt!

Here’s a picture from the very first Karmageddon, all those years ago…

Joinees came from all over – including a fella from Belgium – to meet at the bottom of Oxford Street, and undertake random acts of kindness, before a few pints at the Horse & Groom on Great Portland Street…

Later in the afternoon, we had our inaugural Join Me Awards — and a proper election for the post of Leader…

Happy days!

In 2004, we decided to break from tradition and have a summer Join Meet – Join Me June!

By the end of the day, hundreds of Joinees had popped their heads through the door and said hello… and random acts of kindness were spread right the way through central London…

I had no idea how many people would turn up to Join Me at Flinders Street station when I announced on the telly that I’d be there… and was shocked when I crossed the road and saw the crowd.

I then went to an off-licence, bought ten slabs of beer, and we bonded in the Ozzie sunshine while sitting in a park…

If you’ve never been to a Karmageddon before, you can expect a march through the streets of London, present-giving, raffles, auctions and maybe a little bit of drinking! And it’s all for a good cause, as all monies raised will be shared between a couple of great charities. Watch this space for more news soon.

Join Meets also take place all over the UK throughout the year (why not check out the joinee forum to see if there’s one near you, or organise one yourself) and they are a great way of meeting other joinees and spreading the word of Join Me. This year, meets in Nottingham, Liverpool, Inverness and Market Harborough have raised huge sums of money for charities such as Mind and the RNLI.

One of the highlights of the march was an impromptu chorus of Jingle Bells with a group of buskers in a tunnel at Blackfriars. I’ve often heard it said that Londoners don’t smile, but every single person leaving that tunnel had a huge grin on their face. A lovely sight!

The joinees also performed a mass Random Act of Kindness when they bumped into a group of couch-surfers who had planned a flash-mob on the Millenium Bridge, but were going to have to cancel when nobody turned up! On hearing of their plight, the joinees stepped in and saved the day.

Events then took a surreal turn at St Paul’s Cathedral when the joinees bumped into a group of Furries, who were handing out hugs to the people of London. A few of them, still dressed as animals, even joined us in the pub later in the day.

Celebrations continued into the evening at the Paternoster pub. Excitingly, TV and radio star Richard Bacon delivered a rousing speech and officially joined the collective, and was also given the slightly-ironic honour of being the first joinee awarded the title “Tin Joinee.”

A unique piece of joinee memorabilia, the original hand-written lyrics of the Join Me song, was auctioned along with other items, and a grand total of almost £4000 was raised which was shared between St John Ambulance and St Mungo’s Homeless charity. Both of these charities provide a vital service, and the money raised will make a real difference.

Well done joinees!

Photo courtesy of Andrew Sweeney