Good Night Euro2012

Good Night Euro 2012. It has been a pleasure since the start. And it feels like yesterday when I woke up with the Good Morning Euro 2012. It has been a privilege to watch all the 19 match days, full of excitement, passion and grace. But now it is over.

Congratulations to the winner Spain - the Record Breaker. Spain has been crowned for the third time as European champions, winning the last one with pace and skills by the glory team. Three records have been broken tonight: 1) Spain is the first team to win three times in a row in three big football tournaments: Euro champions in 2008 (Austria and Switzerland), World champions in 2010 (South Africa) and again Euro champions in 2012 (Poland and Ukraine).  2) Spain are also the first team to defend their previously won Euro title. 3) And finally Spain are the first team to score more than 3 goals in a final game, securing their 4:0 win over Italy.

Bravo Spain, it has been a real pleasure to watch your games, and not only yours. The whole tournament was an amazing experience. It made me think how a simple game such is the football, brings countries together. Some people leave disappointed when others celebrate, and it does not matter if your nation is playing in the tournament. An individual, whose country could not qualify, would always pick a team to support and will cheer like it is his or hers team. This is something special.

Good Night Euro 2012.. and Thank You!!

Why NGOs or charity-like organisations' reputation decline?

Friday, 28th July, was one of the rarely nice days in London. Warm and sunny, the day was partially spent with a friend, a colleague from the university, around the Olympic Park in Stratford. Sharing moments and thoughts for life, just before we set apart to each others next destination we have witnessed WWF volunteers raising awareness of a cause. 

The World Wildlife Federation is the world's leading independent conservation body, which is passionate about: safeguarding the natural world; tackling the urgent threat of climate change (Earth Hour); and sustainability - change the way we live.

However, the aim and the set objectives of such organisations are difficult to manage from the moment they start becoming big in numbers of personnel . When me and my friend saw the group of young people under the flag of WWF, I was stunned with the way they were trying to raise awareness of their cause: Safe The Tiger. Let me clarify it slightly. In a team seemingly to be a group of 5-6 young people, there was only one (let's code name her Ranger665) that I saw, she was the only one working with passion and trying to explain the purpose of their appearance among endless crowd. On the contrary, two of the representatives, one of which was supposedly the supervisor or the team leader (NOT!) were all the time simply talking to each other. Where is the purpose in that? Yet, there was another one, walking like an Olympic gold medalist in weightlifting. Many people, I observed, were passing by her  with a strange look on their faces once she was about to approach them, perhaps also asking themselves various types of questions. And there were two more, which could not be seen clearly but trying to get the attention of the walkers. Nevertheless, the purpose of the volunteers was to get peoples attention about their cause. It was simply to send a short message to number 70800 with a text Ranger, which was indeed a bit expensive for a message, 5 GBP, but neglecting previously mentioned behaviour of the representatives, the purpose served a good cause: Safe The Tiger.

Personally, I am for world unity and harmony. I am for nature and sustainability. I like the causes of WWF and the initiative that has become a global movement today: Earth Hour. Nevertheless, these causes are being neglected by the staff, employees, volunteers, which as a stakeholder group are the most valuable asset in organisational reputation building. In a case like WWF, which is a Global and Big organisation, such representatives like the ones stated earlier, would only jeopardise the ultimate goal: “people living in harmony with nature” and create the wrong impression in the society, which would rather push back peoples willingness to help. However, people would help, but only if they see serious behaviour of the organisation's representatives.