The incognito Blog
Incognito’s commitment to donating 10% of all profits to charity has allowed us to support a rich variety of creative and life-changing projects of all shapes and sizes.
One such project, is a student-led enterprise from the Enactus Edinburgh society. Their project aims to confront the lack of opportunities available to young people in Bombita, a village which sits on the southern coast of the Dominican Republic. Their solution? An insect-repellent soap which is made and sold locally to simultaneously tackle challenges of hygiene, insect-borne disease, income and education.
In the first of two guest-blog posts written by Laura; one of the student volunteers, we are introduced to the small village of Bombita, its beauty, eccentricities & charm, and also the challenges and hardships which were to inspire Laura to undertake this project with the Enactus Edinburgh team.
If I were to describe my first experience of Bombita in one one word – departing an over-crowded, dilapidated bus as I said farewell to the middle-age woman with whom I had shared a lap with for the past 6 hours, whilst the audacious orange and red sign marked BOMBITA glared me in the face – it would be foreign. In this particular instant I was beginning to wander if the feat that I had taken on was in fact rather brash. I was seventeen and had newly graduated from secondary school, I had spent the past year and a half fundraising to fly to the Dominican Republic and volunteer as an art teacher and until this point had not once doubted whether or not I was capable of spending 12 months away from my friends and family, never mind learn an entirely new language or control a classroom of 30 finger painting 5 year olds. I could have never anticipated the warmth with which I would be welcomed into the lives of complete strangers and how quickly I would gain a second family in the Dominican Republic.
We’ve had enough off all this scaremongering in the media! Yes, its important to know the facts… but even these can be misleading sometimes. A lot of the information hot-footing it around our world feeds off an impatient mass of readers and writers eagerly awaiting the next big headline. There is no doubt it is … Continue reading "Caremongering"
Hello, I’m Georgia Fox and I’ve just finished a 10 week volunteering programme in Costa Rica and Nicaragua with the charity Raleigh International. During our volunteering time we worked on three different projects involving building a trail through a national park in Costa Rica, building a clean drinking water system in a rural community in … Continue reading "My Costa Rican Adventure – A Guest Blog by Georgia Fox"
World Malaria Day (WMD) is commemorated on 25 April to recognise global efforts to control malaria. With all the high profile news about the Zika virus, it’s easy to forget that Malaria is still the single biggest non-violent killer of human beings. In 2015, there were 214 million cases, and 438 000 deaths from Malaria … Continue reading "World Malaria Day 2016"
There has been a lot happening with ZIKA since our first update and it’s been back in the news this week. We are finding out more and more about this disease over time and we now know that although Zika is most commonly spread via mosquito bites, in particular the Aedes species, it can also … Continue reading "ZIKA UPDATE"
Zika is all over the news and has been for a few weeks now. It’s not going to go away anytime soon, in fact Zika will increase, almost certainly to spread throughout most of America and Asia. The Zika virus is spread via mosquito bites and is carried by daytime biting mosquitoes: Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus (Asian Tiger Mosquito), both these species are in around half the countries in the world. With large populations throughout the Tropics, including Central and South America along with all of the Caribbean. They also carry the diseases dengue (already endemic in Brazil & elsewhere) and Chikungunya.
Howard Carter, Bite Prevention Expert, Founder incognito®
To date nearly all transmitted cases have been by the 2 mosquitoes mentioned above and a handful of suspected sexual transmission; though the authorities: scientists; doctors; the CDC; etc. have very little evidence, including the from the recent Dallas couple, are not sure. For example a female mosquito could be present when said couple were having sex!
So is it really possible to protect you and your loved ones from contracting Zika? Remember! NO BITES = NO ZIKA (or any other mosquito borne disease)