Dear friends in the raw lifestyle,

I have not been contributing to this forum for over a year now although I try to keep up with everything you are up to by having a quick read now and again.

I have been busy spreading the word about raw in The Netherlands, which is where I live. An independent documentary maker made a documentary about my youngest son, Tom, which was shown on national television. Tom and I were invited to appear on a national talk show, which was watched by millions of Dutch viewers to talk about the documentary and our way of eating. One of the presenters became very personal and rude during the program for which I was very grateful because this caused a storm in the media and newspapers and lots of people who otherwise might not have done so watched the documentary the next day and raw food was the no.1 hit on Dutch Google the week after.


The documentary wasn’t perfect, the maker specialises in documentaries about children whose lives are different from other children and how they cope with that so that’s what the documentary is about, Tom being different because of eating raw. But it was the best I could get at that moment in time. If you like you can watch the documentary, RAUW, here [www.youtube.com] and the talk show here [www.youtube.com] but they’re both in Dutch. Since then the documentary has won the first price for best non-fiction children's documentary of 2008 and has also been shown on the IDFA (the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam) where it was a big hit. It was shown to 2000 schoolchildren and was one of the personal favourites of the director of the festival. It has so far been sold to Israel's channel 8.

In the Netherlands and Europe eating raw isn’t as well known yet as it in the States but we’ve made a huge leap in the last year and hopefully in 2009 we will explode all over the place. This is where I need your help. A fragment of the documentary and a fragment of the talk show have both been nominated as TV-moment of the year 2008 and I was wondering if I could induce you guys to vote for us. If we can make it into the top 10 with one or even better still, both fragments we will hit the headlines again and put raw eating even more firmly on the Dutch map.

I’ll have to guide you through the voting process because it’s all in Dutch but I hope you’ll bear with me and make the effort.
The website to go to is [www.tvmomentvanhetjaar.nl] In the right hand corner you go to login to make an account for 'TV moment'. In the next window you fill in the left hand column:

Aanmelden
Maak je account voor het 'TV moment' hier aan.

These are the boxes you need to fill in:

1. Naam = Name

2. Woonplaats = City

3. E-mailadres = Emailadress
(minimaal 6 karakters) = (minimum of 6 characters)

4. Wachtwoord = Password
(minimaal 6 karakters) = (minimum 6 characters)

5. Bevestig wachtwoord = Confirm password

Typ de tekens uit de afbeelding hiernaast over. Dit is om spam te voorkomen. Als je het niet kunt lezen, klik hier = retype the symbols you here. This is to avoid spam. If you can't read it, click here.

6, Tekens uit afbeelding = retype the symbols here.


Hou mij met de nieuwsbrief op de hoogte van de beste momenten en het laatste nieuws. (Ignore this box)

De VARA mag mij aanbiedingen doen die te maken hebben met De Wereld Draait Door en de VARAgids. (Ignore this box)

7. Ik ga akkoord met de algemene voorwaarden = This one you’ll have to mark to say that you agree with the general conditions of the contest. Then you click on

Aanmelden

Next you will receive a confirmation email with a link to activate your account. Click on the link and you will be logged in and ready to vote. For the first fragment go to PROMINENTEN (on the left hand side) and then click on “Hugo Borst haalt fel uit” (Hugo Borst has a sharp go) For the second fragment click on DOCUMENTAIRE and then on “Vlees of geen Vlees” (Meat or no meat).
You can rate each fragment with a number from 1 to 10 (10 please) and if you want you can also leave a comment in the box underneath. In fact, it would be nice if you guys could completely spam this website with international comments!!!

The raw food movement in The Netherlands would really appreciate your help with this and if you can think of any other forums or websites to put this message on I would be grateful. To all the people from other countries who visit this forum, if you could put this message on raw food forums in your own country that would be wonderful. They will announce the winner of the TV-moment of the year on the 10th of january so there's not a lot of time left to vote. I'll be back with the outcome after the event.

Wishing you all a wonderful New Year and may all our seeds come to fruition in the coming year. This is one I planted a few years ago.

With love, Francis

..nice story, and talk show on youtube -- watched a couple minutes of
it in Dutch.. is there an interview in English?.. thanks

Dear Frannie. . .

You and your son are both so beautiful, a living example of the lifestyle.

Thank you for sharing this. . . I loved watching both.

: )

Love,
Julie