Monthly newsletter - April 2021

We hope you’ve been enjoying your extra hour of daylight ☀️

Given the Zoom pub quizzes have started to dry up, here’s a quick one: do you know which are the only three European countries that don’t have daylight savings time? *

This month, the focus is on our wonderful Cuckoo Compass partner,  Jangala. And if you’ve ever wondered how canal boats get broadband, we have something for you as well.

As you know, 1% of your bill every month is used to help get the internet to places it’s needed most. And it’s Jangala we work with to make this happen.

Here are some examples of the types of Jangala projects you’ve helped support over the past few months via the Cuckoo Compass:

• Helping vulnerable Londoners get access to mental health services  - five Get Boxes have been deployed around London to enable people to access essential services
• Providing Nepalese children access to books  - a Big Box supplied to Books4Nepal provides connectivity for a library doing inter-school book loan
• Getting internet to international refugee camps  - from Calais to Kenya, access to the internet ensures provision of critical services, as well as enabling refugees to complete online courses
• Enabling London schoolchildren to continue their studies in lockdown  - Get Boxes have been sent out to an East London school to help children who were struggling to access educational materials at home
• Connecting women in emergency housing in Essex  - four Get Boxes have been deployed to provide internet to ten families in temporary accommodation in Thurrock

Thanks to an Openreach canal-trained engineer, we now provide internet to a customer on Regent’s Canal.

We knew about the flat-roof-trained and underground-trained engineers, but a diver being sent out to fix slow speeds was a new one for us!

We are the sad bearers of some bad news about BTO’s  Valentine. It’s suspected that he perished somewhere between Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo.

Don’t be deterred though! If you’re still after your cuckoo migration fix, we recommend keeping an eye on  PJ who’s expected to begin his journey north across the Sahara later this month.

* It’s Iceland, Russia & Belarus.