Most days, we roll out of bed and drink a bunch of coffee and then spend the next ten hours diligently writing code and emails and grant applications. Not exactly the rock star lifestyle, but we're terrible at playing the guitar and have gotten kicked off of karaoke stages, so we understand.
On uniquely excellent days, however, we receive unsolicited emails from the organizers of the Roskilde Festival. As if their mere acknowledgement of our existence wasn't cool enough, this email explained that they were interested in making an offer of financial support to FrontlineSMS, and could we please provide them with a little more information about our organization?
So... to recap: roll out of bed, drink a bunch of coffee, receive an offer of a donation from the largest culture and music festival in Northern Europe, who do not accept applications but independently identify organizations they wish to support...
Now is when I get to call my Mom, right?
We could not be more honored to be in receipt of a generous grant from the Roskilde Festival Charity Foundation. This society works to support humanitarian and cultural work and arranges the non profit Roskilde Festival, drawing some 100,000+ people to Denmark annually for the week-long international, cultural event.
The theme of 2013's Roskilde Festival was "CHANGE" and focused on creating a more socially responsible and sustainable city through active citizenship. The Foundation was interested in where youth were empowered with open technology tools enabling them to share knowledge and influence society. We were fortunate enough that they came across our work and saw the many instances in which our users have created FrontlineSMS hubs to collect and distribute information on civic engagement, sexual and reproductive health, education, jobs, and disaster recovery, amongst many other topics.
Leave it to my Mom to point out that it's probably our users that are cool; they're the ones that are actually doing all this sharing and influencing.
We floated back down to Earth, full of gratitude for the kind people at Roskilde.
And with the volume on our headphones just a click too loud, we headed back into the code where we belong.