Planning For Good

2009-04-23T03:28:00.004-04:00

Your old briefs, please

2009-03-19T09:45:00.000-04:00

Your old briefs, please

This is an urgent request to planning & strategy folk (responses needed by monday night)

Can you help us help the Ideas Foundation? [http://www.ideasfoundation.org.uk/]

It's a UK charity that is committed to championing creativity in young people

"We broker projects between industry and education.
We spot & develop young people’s creativity.
We pilot creative education projects and champion transferable skills within the creative industries and beyond.
We provide effective work experience, internship and apprenticeship opportunities. We signpost further & higher education routes to creative employment and enterprise.
And having done all that, we encourage our creativity scholars to stay in touch and get involved"

So here's the shout out to Planning for Good types - do you have a social policy brief that you've written that these kids can do work from?

Maybe the client didn't buy it? Maybe the suits or the CD didn't like it? Or your boss? Or you?

So what are we after?

A brief to target a youth audience on a social policy area

It could be in areas such as smoking cessation, sexual health, knife or gun crime, drug or alchohol abuse, bullying, internet safety etc.

We'd just like your old briefs. Or, if you really want to write a new one, please feel free to do so but just make sure you include the usual information (the problem defined, the audience, etc) and try to ground it in reality and evidence...

Thanks very much in advance on behalf of the Ideas Foundation - we promise to keep you in touch with what folk send in and what they do with them

Pls send your briefs to Mark at markearls [at] hotmail [dot] com by Monday night

Calling All Entrepreneurs

2008-10-02T14:33:00.002-04:00

The Idea Village, a non-profit created for innovators in New Orleans, is launching 504ward’s $100,000 Business Competition for entrepreneurs with ideas to retain young talent in New Orleans.

As some of you may remember, The Idea Village was Planning for Good’s first client. One of the ideas coming out of that experience was engaging national corporations and organizations in driving innovation to New Orleans. The Idea Village is now proud to report that Worldwide Partners and two teams Google employees have joined them to help launch this competition.

Check out this YouTube video for more info and please help spread the word:

Don’t forget The Idea Village mantra: “Trust Your Crazy Ideas.”

Winners of the Planning for Good Challenge-AAAA Account Planning Conference 2008

2008-07-24T18:08:00.000-04:00

More on PFG at the AAAA's Planning Conference

2008-07-21T17:16:00.002-04:00

Nice report from WARC on Sunday's efforts in Miami.

http://www.warc.com/ConferenceBlogs/AAAA-072008.asp

PFG at the planning conference

2008-07-20T17:12:00.002-04:00

Several of us from PFG are down at the AAAA Planning Conference in Miami this week. And PFG is leading a session for junior and intermediate planners today. 32 people signed up, and in teams they have 6 hours to crack a brief on one of two projects for microlender Kiva.org or human rights advocacy group Witness.

The teams are working away right now. It's exciting, after a lot of virtual working over the past year, to have everybody in a room working away. We'll announce a bit about the winning teams and their ideas here over the next few days.

Volunteering is bad.

2008-06-16T12:59:00.008-04:00

After speaking with a friend and hearing her definition of volunteering, I thought about writing this post: to know your opinions. Chatting we realized that our associations with the word "volunteering", were quite different.

In the past I volunteered in Italy and in Ireland, to help and assist children. What really surprised me, in both cases, was the atmosphere. People living with other people, and sharing everything. Children were helping us (me and other volunteers) to think differently about life, adopting a different perspective. We were there to give them back their hopes.

Sharing (as well as helping) aspect of this attitude is completely eclipsed behind what seems to be just an economic issue. "Volunteers are people who are not paid for working", said my friend - expressing a common thought. If that is the normal assumption (in Italy I'm quite sure it is), social volunteering has a high obstacle to overcome, starting from its name.

What about your countries? Is there a name to indicate who helps other people just for the sake of it? Can you translate it in english? If not, may we find one?

Updated:
They are "activists", but activism is probably a too aggressive concept... and not the most important one.
"Helpers" would sound better... but we loose the sharing side...
I'm thinking about firefighters ... for their generosity... social volunteering is probably fighting the bad fate...

Any help?

Healthy Santas

2008-06-02T12:15:00.004-04:00

Fitness may be a matter of attractiveness.
WiiFit is a great game/tool because through it incentive (gaming pleasure) takes over sacrifice (workout)
Nothing new, it's something similar to flavoured cough syrup for children.
Simple, effective, helpful.
"An incentive is a bullet, a lever, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation" (Levitt & Debner, Freakonomics)

We are planning for good, so I spen some time thinking of a different, often weaker target: older people.
For them attractiveness is no more an issue, video gaming is not a pleasure, but phisical exercise is a vital need. A good incentive might work on the emotional link with their grandchildren.

What about digitally recording (something like Nike+Ipod) the phisical exercise of theese people and link their performance with prizes?
No digital stuff? We can set up a more familiar dynamics: loyalty scheme through club card points
- Selection of itineraries (parks or pedestrian areas)
- Exercise tracking through coupons validation -start/check points/arrival marks
- Itineraries completion give you points for the club card
Prizes: free cinema tickets (Cartoons), free entrances to leisure parks, zoos...

Incentive and sacrifice, does it make sense?

Help create some fast strategy

2008-04-23T19:53:00.002-04:00

One of our committee members, Mark Earls, is participating in a Fast Strategy conference in London on Monday 28th. They will be given a brief to answer that day by the Central Office of Information (the UK Government's communications 'client').

Mark has assembled a crack group of planners - Jon Leach (of HHCL fame), Chris Forrest (ex DFGW and now of the excellent research company The Nursery) and Ian Tait (of Poke (and the crackunit blog)) to work on the brief as the P4G Allstars. BUT THEY WANT YOUR HELP.

Mark wants to demonstrate the power of P4G by involving any of us with internet access (and favorable time zones) to contribute to the the thinking. Here's the deal.

Next Monday, 10amBST brief posted on wiki site; responses by 12pm (noon) at the latest. Mark and the team will present at 2pm BST.

Please try and contribute - it will be fun and a great demonstration of the power of P4G at work.

If you're interested please email faststrategy@planningforgood.org and/or keep an eye on our facebook page.

Blessed is the person

2008-04-07T20:18:00.001-04:00

(via roujo)

I'm with Stupid.

2008-04-02T13:51:00.001-04:00

(via caglecartoons.com)

Sustainable Music

2008-03-21T22:25:00.005-04:00

Edison, an italian energy company, launched a program called “Edison - Change the Music” to promote sustainability culture in the music world.

Producing and listening music means energy usage, therefore usually an heavy impact on the environment.
Edison - Change the Music is thought to inform artists, producers, fans, and all the rest of the world about music related energy saving.

The first step is represented by sustainable concerts.
There’s a Green Music Book , on the making, with suggestions from the community, like:
- Daylight concerts to avoid use of artificial lights
- Reserved (and nearer) parking areas for car pooling
- Planning concerts near train stations, metro, bus station or other easy reachable areas
(If you have some interesting suggestion to share I’ll do my best to translate and add them to the list)

Here is their MySpace page with a contest for new bands and musicians.

(thanks to Davide)

"The Alarmists"

2008-03-14T17:15:00.003-04:00

A group of influential green professionals are pushing for activism to go viral.

Keeping themselves deliberately incognito and going by the name of "The Alarmists" they are proposing to make some serious noise about Global Warming. Not just at one event, but at 11 am on the 11th of every month for one minute.

They say, "This is a state of global emergency. According to the IPCC, we must cut emissions within eight years, to avoid catastrophic global warming. There is nowhere near enough action yet to make that happen. We need to set off the world's alarms. Join in. It could be the alarm on your phone, in your home, in your car. You could gather some friends to make some noise. Organise a flash mob. Schedule a company fire drill. Borrow a vintage air raid siren... Be creative. Raise the alarm."

Check it out here: www.alarmism.org

State of Emergency

2008-02-06T09:33:00.000-05:00

If anyone had any doubts about Climate Change, this will put them to rest. John Grant (author, planner, overall concerned guy) posted this on his blog yesterday.

I am thinking of ways PFG should be doing something on this and welcome suggestions.

It is much worse than we thought (MUCH worse)

Yesterday I saw the end of the world.

More specifically at Tomrrow's Company I saw a repeat of this presentation (originally given to a cross party working group on climate change in the UK parliament), plus a presentation by a Cambridge professor of theoretical physics on 2006/07 data on the arctic sheet, where exactly this sort of first and second order feedback and acceleration are now starting to be seen. In scientific terms this is paradigm-shifting new knowledge discovery work of the first order. If it wasnt so terrifying it would almost be exciting. If you read one thing on the environment this year, I would recommend you read this report.

The result in the case of the arctic is that ice melting has reached a level which the linear models behind IPCC, Stern Report and so on didnt predict until the 2080s.

The potential result for the planet overall is a catastrophe beyond anything that's been considered so far; a potential mass extinction event which would take out according to the speakers "5/6 of the world's biota".

the non-linear effects are basically the acceleration which comes about when a set of processes have a tendency to reinforce themselves individually (first order) or each other (second order). A couple of examples:
- as atmospheric CO2 increases the sea gets hotter which means it absorbs less CO2, which increases atmospheric CO2 which leads to further heating
- as permofrost in Siberia melts it releases trapped methane, which is one of the most powerful greenhouse gases, which leads to further heating... (apparently this was observed this year, to the extent of huge "flumes" of escaping methane)

There are many positive feedback loops (acceleration) and no known naturally occuring major negative ones (damping). It still needs us forcing it along at this stage though. If it was just a one off event like a supervolcano eruption, radiation from a hotter atmosphere would cool the world down.

Think of it as like us pushing at a tree trunk which we have also been whittling away at - at some point the thing is simply going to fall over whether you keep pushing and whittling or not. That is the critical threshhold talked about in this paper. I studied the physics of non linear change at college, so I find it quite intuitive and easy to take on board, you might need to read this paper a couple of times although maybe not? - I think it does a masterful job.

This is not a new fringe theory. It is seen as the new central thrust of climate change science. It is the main thing which Al Gore now talks about. But it is new news compared to all the models driving current policy.

The important chart is the last one.

Think of our learning process in recent years as a sliding scale of worse and worse worst cases:

1. the loss of biodiversity, continuing the process of people ruining nature by chopping it down, desertifying it etc.

2. a shift in average temperature affecting global agriculture, especially in the hard to feed poor regions with rapid population growth such as sub saharan africa; a continuation of the 1980s recognition of humanitarian disaster

3. a shift in average temperature producing extremes of weather, a rate of Hurricane Katrina style global disasters which could bankrupt the global economy within 60 years according to one source

4. a raised sea level due to melting greenland icesheet, peak oil, cities and infrastructure in meltdown, a global emergency and significant social, economic and ecological collapse

5. global pandemics hit an environmentally stressed and overpopulated world (this is what is driving many amphibian species to extinction and a new theory says may be what actually did for the dinosaurs)

6. world war three fought over water; eg drought struck China invades Russia for Siberian water

7. non-linear effects, the critical threshold point, a potential new hot planet steady state, mass extinction

The difference between 1-6 and 7 is the recovery time. It jumps from a few thousand years, to NEVER.

There is a view that the disasters in 1-6 are actually going to be the negative feedback systems needed to stop all of this at the brink. A catastrophic collapse in human societies would stop the global forcing of climate change. But firstly we dont even know that's true (if it's enough at this stage). And secondly to go into those scenarios 1-6. knowingly would be an act of inhumanity unprecedented in the history of the most evil dictators and religious wars.

The implications for action are the same only more so. The Kyoto scenario takes us straight over the edge, because it was based on climate change models that took no account of feedback and acceleration. The survival pathway in these new models requires not just slamming on the brakes, but driving into reverse to back away from an oncoming threat.

I know many reading this will want to assume its not true, that there must be a catch. If it's that bad already, why was it possible to go around our daily routines as usual today? Why doesnt it LOOK like the end of days? Well if you watch the news, it is starting to look a bit like it. If it rained frogs in London tomorrow due to some freak weather event, would you really be as surprised as you should be?

One further point to bear in mind which I hadnt realised until yesterday although its pretty obvious when you think about it is that there is a 40-50 year lag between warming events and the planet actually getting hotter. It takes a long time to heat up oceans and landmasses. The global instability in weather and so on we are experiencing now is only the result of emissions and events in the 1950s-70s. Its clearly already extreme and has proved catastrophic in places, but everything has already accelerated greatly since that point and actually in terms of changes we are heading into under the business as usual scenario, this is actually very mild change.

The implications for culture are immense. This is THE apocalypse. Actually its even worse than that, in the apocalypse there is some sort of continuity of human culture in an afterlife, even if via a great battle etc. etc. This is ERADICATION - a 'we might as well never have existed' event. Legacy is all we have as any hedge against mortality, individually and collectively.

There have been times when individual civilisations have faced eradication and the destruction of their entire system of meaning, of any notion of legacy. It's a fate worse than individual or collective death, the prospect of discontinuity. The end. And faced with this prospect there have been some remarkble returns from the brink, for instance the Roman Empire in the 3rd Century (under Dioclitian/Constantine). Human societies do have an extraordinary ability to respond to catastrophic emergency. One speaker yesterday compared it to the ability of a shoal to respond in unison to threats.

I'm now working on a the beginnings of a scheme to help people 'get' on a mass scale what I heard yesterday. We dont have another decade for this to sink in. It's the only response I can think of where I can personally do something constructive beyond my current activities. Updates to follow when it's properly thought through. If anyone wants to help do drop me a line.

If you want to get the full briefing on all this there is a collection of papers prepared as a briefing for the Bali conference which you can order here

Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. My own view is that I'd rather know now than find out later when i could have done more. In fact I am slightly peeved that politicians have known all this for 7 months before we got to see this.

Recycled Overclaims

2008-01-19T01:44:00.000-05:00

"The reputation of Japan's paper industry lay in tatters today after the market leader, Oji Paper, admitted it had lied for more than a decade about the volume of recycled paper used in some of its products.

The revelation comes days after the country's second-biggest paper company, Nippon Paper Group, admitted it had made similarly false claims.

In one case Oji Paper said the amount of recycled paper in its copy and printing paper was as high as 50% when the real figure was between 5% and 10%.

The firm's envelopes contained, at most, 30% of recycled paper, although consumers had been led to believe it was as high as 70%. Some products contained no recycled material at all.

"We had let the ratio of recycled paper fall amid rising shipments while the amount of recycled paper did not grow," Oji Paper's president, Kazuhisa Shinoda, told reporters in Tokyo."

The Guardian- http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jan/18/greenbusiness.recycling

Ark Assembly Instruction

2008-01-13T15:14:00.000-05:00

Italy has been the sources of some really clever advertising meant to promote global warming awareness.

Copy reads: Global warming is bringing us closer to a catastrophe of biblical proportions. Let’s make sure history doesn’t repeat itself.

Advertised brand: Global warming Effects
Advert title: Ark Instructions
Advertising Agency: Unbranded Communication, Milan, Italy
Creative Director: Gianluca Ghezzi
Art Director: Manuela Valtolina
Copywriter: Elia Canteri
Illustrator: Manuela Valtolina

19 million = 766 million

2008-01-10T16:17:00.000-05:00

"19 million people living in New York State have the same carbon footprint as 766 million people living in the world’s 50 poorest countries."

Source: UN

Cindy Gallup on Planning for Good and Agencies Doing Good

2008-01-10T13:17:00.000-05:00

Cindy Gallup, the current chair of The Talent Business, Americas and the former head of BBH in the US, was a guest at the recent Evening of Goodness in New York. We asked her what she thought about PFG and the overall idea of agencies and brands doing good. Here is her response.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1370867859

What's your consumption level?

2008-01-02T16:24:00.001-05:00

There's an excellent piece in the NY Times today by Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs and Steel and all-around expert in the dynamics of societies. He talks about some of the issues behind climate change and explains the underlying reason why we need to reduce our consumption. Much of it comes down to the difference in consumption rates between first-world and third-world nations.

In the 'west' we consume resources at 32 times the rate of people in the third world. Each one of us consumes in a day the same resources, and creates the same waste, that 32 Indonesians or Kenyans do.

The problem, of course, is that third-world economies are quickly catching up, and the goal for many people in those countries is to reach a 'western' level of consumption. But if the whole world started consuming at our inflated rates, it would be the equivalent to having 72 billion people on the planet at today's consumption rates. And we're having trouble sustaining things as is.

But it's patronizing and insulting to ask those economies to forgo a goal which we already enjoy. So the challenge is really how do we find a way to stabilize worldwide consumption - reducing our consumption to a level to which they can grow. This makes it sound like we need to undertake radical sacrifices, but Diamond points out something important - resource consumption is not really tied to standard of living. Our consumption patterns are so wasteful that we could cut them in half and not notice a difference.

Election 2008

2007-12-29T19:48:00.000-05:00

Why is no one asking the climate question?

Good Magazine's Pop-Up Community Center

2007-12-29T13:38:00.000-05:00

Good Magazine made a short film about the community center they set up in Mulbery Street, New York for 18 days in December. This is where PFG had its Evening of Goodness on December 10th.

Worldchanging Needs Help

2007-12-22T12:51:00.000-05:00

Alex Steffen's great site, Worldchanging, that covers all things environment related, needs some help.

It costs around $250k per year to run the site and they could use some financial support.

If you are feeling generous, you can donate here.

Thom Yorke on the Carbon Cost of Touring

2007-12-18T21:55:00.000-05:00

"We did one of those carbon footprint things recently where they assessed the last period of touring we did and tried to work out where the biggest problems were. And it was obviously everybody traveling to the shows."

Wired Interview

Anti Slavery TV Spot- Agency?

2007-12-18T20:17:00.000-05:00

Bali Climate Change Deal

2007-12-16T18:23:00.000-05:00

From The Economist.
"After a fortnight of often tortuous negotiations, and an additional day at the end, 190-odd countries have decided that a global agreement involving all countries is needed to tackle climate change. The “Bali roadmap”, named after the Indonesian island where the deal was struck, is an important milestone. Rich, middle-income and poor countries have acknowledged both the threat of a changing climate and the need for urgent action by all. Substantive negotiations will start within weeks to produce an international convention by the end of 2009 on exactly how countries will meet their “common but differentiated responsibilities” to fight climate change. "

Jason Oke in San Francisco

2007-12-15T20:02:00.000-05:00

Photos from the Planning for Good Party

2007-12-13T10:31:00.000-05:00

Some great shots by Justin Lin of Monday night's party in New York.

http://www.justinwilliamlin.com/webgallery/planforgood/

Planning for Good- Beijing

2007-12-12T02:31:00.000-05:00

Charles Frith is a planner at JWT Beijing and is keen to establish a PFG outpost.

If you are a planner or work in the ad world and in Beijing and interested in being part of the group, please contact Charles at cefrith@hotmail.com or via his Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=501736069

Planning for Good Party with Good Magazine

2007-12-12T01:28:00.001-05:00

Good Magazine hosted an amazing event for Planning for Good Monday night at Openhouse in Mulbery Street, New York.

Over 220 people from the advertising and non-profit worlds attended the event to hear James Friedman play some tunes and be inspired to do good by Graham Hill of Treehugger, Matisse Bustos Hawkes of Witness and Irwin Redliner of Children's Health Fund describe the new generation of activists as more singificant than those in the 60s.

It was a great time and we want to thank Good Magazine for their amazing generosity.

We will have photos and video shortly.

Care2

2007-12-09T07:20:00.000-05:00

Probably many of you already know Care2. I just discovered it and thought it could be a good resource to share.

It’s a Portal/Community/Social Network dedicated to green living, health, human rights and protecting the environment

"The premise of Care2 is simple: One person can make a difference.

Over 7 (8 actually) million wonderful people discover, share and take action on Care2 and Care2's The Petition Site. It's the largest online community of people passionate about making a difference"

Neroogle

2007-12-08T21:26:00.001-05:00

Nerooogle (literally – Blackooogle) is an italian initiative for energetic saving: a black background not only reduces optical stress but allows to save thousands of watts. Developers say they realised an idea (posted here) by Mark Ontkush

"Take at look at Google, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let's assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop."

Using Neroogle (or if Google released a black backround) "...turns into a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year. Now take into account that about 25 percent of the monitors in the world are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that's $75,000, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes"

Planning for Good and Good Magazine Party- NYC December 10th

2007-12-05T14:23:00.001-05:00

Planning for Good Presentation to UNICEF

2007-12-05T11:30:00.000-05:00

Here's the deck

| View | Upload your own

There are 3 ideas UNICEF want to action ASAP.

Unwanted Presents- PFG London and Denver

Coin Jar- PFG Los Angeles

Snowflake- PFG Sydney

If anyone has access to some digital resources that could help us execute, please let me know.

FareStart : Great Food. Better Lives.

2007-12-03T16:45:00.000-05:00

Here in Seattle we have a local non-profit organization called FareStart.

FareStart provides a community that empowers homeless and disadvantaged men, women, and families to achieve self-sufficiency through life skills, job training and employment in the food service industry.

A weekly highlight for the FareStart community is Thursday Guest Chef Night, held at the FareStart Restaurant at 7th & Virginia. For FareStart students, it is a unique opportunity to work with Seattle's premier chefs. For FareStart supporters, it's a great opportunity to enjoy an excellent meal, introduce new supporters to the organization, or volunteer. Since 1994, Guest Chef Night has raised more than $1.5 million, revenue which has gone directly back into the program, to support student job training and placement services.

Every Thursday night, a different Guest Chef works with the students to prepare a three-course meal for over 200 guests served at the FareStart Restaurant. Guest Chef Night has been called "Seattle's best food lover’s event" and for just $24.95 it's one of the city’s best values as well. Hard-working community volunteers serve the guests who enjoy great food in support of FareStart and our students - 100% of the proceeds and gratuities from Guest Chef Night go back into the program and fund student services and training.

Guest Chef Night is open to the public and reservations are strongly suggested.

If you're going to be in town anytime soon, check the schedule HERE to see if tickets are still available.

QUESTION:
Besides the food service industry, where else might this model work? How could another set of viable job skills be transfered to those in need? How would this work for say auto mechanics? Or coffee roasters?

Some inspiration

2007-11-30T20:16:00.000-05:00

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

- Margaret Mead

NYC 12/10

2007-11-30T09:34:00.000-05:00

Mark your calendars if you're in NYC on the evening of 12/10. There will be a Planning For Good event - more details to come soon. Suffice it to say we're rather excited.

PFG City and City Leader Information

2007-11-27T10:16:00.000-05:00

Oceania/Asia

Bejing: Leader: Charles Frith (from December 1st) (charles.frith@jwt.com)

Dubai: Leader: Ralph Khairallah (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=24604095)

Singapore: Leader: Rob Campbell

Sydney- Leaders: Emily Reed (emily@openintelligenceagency.com), Katie Chatfield (Katiec@bellamyhayden.com.au)

North America

Atlanta: Michael Dezso

Austin: Leader: Libby Anderson (libby@mc-j.com)

Boston: Leaders: Brian Reich (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=721930528), Gareth Kay (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=595465372)

Boulder: Leader: Joselyn Bickford (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=554133791)

Burlington: Leader: Maurine Gilbert (mgilbert@ksvc.com)

Chicago: Leader: Danielli Alejos (http://www.facebook.com/s.php?q=Danielli+Alejos&init=q)

Charleston: Leader: Karen Kariv (http://duke.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1316724)

Columbus: Brendon Keenan (brendon.k@mac.com)

Denver: Leader: Sean Miller (millerse1@gmail.com)

Detroit- Leader: Casey Ingle (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=765716517)

Fayetteville: Dave Nelson (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=720636928)

Honolulu: Leader: Patrick Spargur (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=695152731)

Los Angeles: Leaders: Kate Bristow (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=506538499)

Minneapolis: Leader: Aki Spicer (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=803440172)

New Orleans: Leader: Michael Karnjanaprakorn (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=25500538)

New York: Leaders: Jinal Shah (http://temple.facebook.com/profile.php?id=8218650), Amy Daroukakis (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=785430272), Alexa Knight (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=564234396), Stephanie Redlener (http://www.facebook.com/s.php?k=100000080&id=575156723)

Richmond: VCU: Leader: Quintina A. Conway (http://vcu.facebook.com/profile.php?id=19000621)

San Francisco: Leaders: Ed Cotton (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=709876260)

Toronto: Leaders: Jason Oke (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500010692) Dino Demopoulos (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=502316834)

Vancover: Leader: John Canavan (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=505720756)

White Plains: Leader: Gawain De Leeuw

Latin America

Medellin: Daniel Mejia

Europe

Copenhagen: Leader: Daria Radota Rasmussen (dariaradota@gmail.com), Casper Willer (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=603194387)

Regio Emillia: Marco Bandini (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=574027563)

Istanbul: Leader: Ozgur Alaz (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500894740)

London: Leader: Mark Earls (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=734466147) Amelia Torode (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=586271746)

Milan: Leader: Hans Suter (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=641851118)

Paris: Leader: Magali Charmot (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=569188243)

Live Earth Brief- Due December 17th

2007-11-27T10:12:00.000-05:00

Background:

It’s no longer a debate. Global climate change is a fact of life today. Scientists from all over the world agree that the evidence of a warming trend is "unequivocal," and that human activity has "very likely" been the driving force in that change over the last 50 years; they believe the earth could warm by an additional 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit during the 21st century if we fail to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels. This rise in average temperature will have far-reaching effects. Sea levels will rise, flooding coastal areas. Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense. Droughts and wildfires will occur more often. Disease-carrying mosquitoes will expand their range. And species will be pushed to extinction.

Global warming is already affecting the world we know, endangering polar bears, shortening ski seasons and creating more intense storms.

The Live Earth global concerts on 7/07/07 helped to create a tipping point of awareness in the U.S. this summer. Live Earth is leading the charge to create a mass movement to influence people to address climate change, through the power of entertainment. With 8 concerts on 7 continents, and a broadcast on over 150 TV stations around the globe. Live Earth was the largest global media event in history. This event was the single largest online entertainment event ever, and in total we had an estimated live audience of 1 million people, and 2 billion total viewers around the world.

The UN secretary general has called the climate crisis “the most defining crisis of our time,” and has pointed to the U.S. (and China) as the leading emitters of greenhouse gasses. In the next 9 months, Live Earth will focus our efforts here at home where awareness and behavior change are lagging from the rest of the western world.

Background – Live Earth 2008 Campus Program:

On April 20, 2008 we will kick-off a massive Live Earth fueled student movement in the U.S. Ultimately, we aim to reach half the total student population – nearly nine million undergraduates.

Assignment:
Help us position Live Earth and create a messaging strategy that will kick-start students to take action. Help us define actions that will be the most relevant to students and help the cause. Evaluate our current messaging and inform us on how we can make it smarter, more impactful.

The Live Earth Assignment has 3 components:

1. How should LE be positioned to college students?
2. How should messaging come out of that?
3. What do the actions look like?

(Request full length brief for more information on the program and the assignment.)

Check out Social Actions

2007-11-25T10:03:00.000-05:00

http://www.socialactions.com

This is an interesting site that agreegates the fund raising efforts of groups and helps individuals to start their own.

Presentation to the Idea Village

2007-11-25T10:01:00.000-05:00

Here's the presentation that was made to the Idea Village.

| View | Upload your own

UNICEF Presentation- Monday

2007-11-24T15:37:00.000-05:00

Gareth will be at UNICEF this coming Monday presenting the PFG responses to the holiday brief. We will post the deck on this blog and links to it on the Facebook page. In addition, we will follow up with everyone on next steps.

We finally have a blog up and running

2007-11-18T15:20:00.000-05:00

Rather than build a website, we thought it made more sense to set up a blog where along with our Facebook group we can keep you up to date with what is going on.
The latest is that we are due to present to UNICEF on Tuesday November 20th. Thank you to everyone who contributed - there's some great ideas. Once we get over a time delay for confidentiality reasons we'll put the presentation up on Slideshare.
In the meantime, keep your eyes here and on Facebook for the latest news and the next brief. We're going to open this blog up to posts from committee members and the chapter leaders.