Hello!

This is a project that Owen Powell and Alex Horne started on October 24th, 2006 (United Nations Day), and finished on October 24th, 2007. Our aim was to prove that London is the most cosmopolitan city in the world, by endeavouring to meet and chat to a citizen from every country in the world who currently lives and works in London.

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We managed to meet people from 189 countries. According to the UN, there are 192 countries in the world, so we've proved that at the very least, London contains over 98.4% of the nations of the world!

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We are still looking for people from three countries:

Marshall Islands; Palau; Tuvalu.

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The final encounters during our year appear below, but to follow our story from the start please click on the links under 'How we're doing' on the left-hand side.  The countries appear in the order in which we found their representative. (Any country with an asterisk * next to it has a brief account of the interview - longer versions will appear in the future!)

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To find out more about the project, including our self-imposed rules, then click here.

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Follow this link if you have the urge to see us looking awkward on Channel 4 news.  Or just below you can see us when we were half-way through the project being interviewed by George Alagiah on BBC World.

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Please email us on worldinonecity@hotmail.com if you want to get in touch, or if you know any shy Londoners who are also Tuvaluan, Palauan or Marshallese.

George Alagiah interviews us on the BBC

Friday 5 October 2007

No.162: Barbados


Full story to follow ...

Owen Powell - 5th October 2007


Sometimes Alex and I get encouraging emails from people. (We also get lots of emails that say, "Why don't you try embassies?" even though we're pretty clear about not trying embassies). One of the most encouraging, recently, came from a teacher called Michael who told us that he was using our blog as a way to teach Citizenship to his GCSE class, which we found incredibly flattering. Oh, he added, would we like to meet Rashad from year 10 who was originally from Barbados? And would I like to travel on a tram for the first time in my life?

Sometimes you just have to say, 'Yes, please.'

To get to Addington High School, I had to travel on a bus, a tube, a train and, most excitingly of all, a tram. The school is so far from central London that the phone number doesn't even begin '020'. But it is definitely in London, and Rashad is definitely a Londoner. He left Barbados aged twelve, three years ago, and the kind of lifestyle that meant he "swam in the sea every day after school. Oh, and on Saturdays too." He's going back at Christmas to see family (he's the grandson of famous West Indies cricket umpire, Lloyd Barker, and a cousin of recent fast bowler Tino Best).

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