Let me introduce myself.

I am an Irishman abroad, mid-fifties and originally from Tipperary, living in South America with my Chilean wife and teenage twins. Most of my professional adult life has been dedicated to projects that try to make a positive impact on people’s lives. People who, through no fault of their own, didn’t exactly get the good end of the stick. I am ever wary of the label ‘philanthropist’ but, where practical, I do genuinely like to make a difference, large or small, if at all possible.

Over the last twenty-plus years I have thrown myself into a diverse range of self-driven initiatives under the general banner of ‘creative goodwill’. The common thread is a helping hand, but no one project is quite like the other. These include a well-established corporate social responsibility program currently pushing for workers’ rights in over fifty countries worldwide, a school in the slums of India to a highly successful fundraising and mass communication alliance with UNICEF in the Conosur region of South America, to name but three. Many of my projects worked. Some didn’t.

My focus is now firmly on the launch of Elki – a step to begin walking back the modern obsession with screens, especially among our young people. To get the ball rolling, I need a small number of well-positioned influencers to head the charge.

Elki, ‘just a phone’, will hopefully spark a movement away from screen addiction to a healthier, more interactive, lifestyle – a return to face-to-face interaction and conversation between parents and children, families and friends. We must lead from the front and set a new example, so that, together, we might rescue our young people from the trance of so-called ‘connectivity’ and bring back eye-contact and empathy.