Filed under: Get Activist
Fabrica Forma Fotografia aims to promote photography as a means of transmitting information and creating awareness.
Launched by Fabrica, the Benetton Group’s communication research center, and Forma, Centro Internazionale di Fotografia (international photography center)it’s promoted by Contrasto and Fondazione Corriere della Sera (the Corriere della Sera foundation) in collaboration with ATM.
Aims:
To involve photographers from all over the world.To award photography that documents and criticizes, that tells a story: dramas, struggles, abused rights, but also dignity; pain and consolation, desperation and hope; the loss of everything and the triumph of life’s new possibilities and lastly the things that people do to face all of this. In a word, life.
Check out the work here.
Filed under: Get Activist
“Our mission is to create an economy that rewards care, courtesy and passion form justice.” Or, as the title of the famous article by its founder Edgar S. Cahn says: no more exclusion!
The Timedollar Institute was created in the 1980s by Edgar S. Cahn and after different phases in its history today it can count over 65 active member groups in the USA as well as a network of international partners that sprung from it.
The Institute’s activities vary and obviously range from the most traditional application of the community Time Bank model, to juvenile crime prevention programs and education programs based on carefully chosen curricula aimed at realizing the potential of the specific abilities of the young people who participate in them.
In reality, far from being just a Time Bank in itself, in the last few years the Institute has been dedicating most of its energies to spreading Cahn’s fundamental concepts and ideas, and trying to apply them, both by making the theories more available and promoting actual education campaigns for whoever wants to learn more about the exchange of time without the involvement of money, or for whoever wants to set up their own Time Bank.
More recently Timedollar has been promoting the concept of Co-Production through which it strives to provide the conceptual basis to the collaboration between the beneficiaries and professionals of social services. The four basic principles of Co-Production are:
• each person can contribute to building the wellbeing of the community;
• the concept of work must be redefined to include any action that contributes to raising healthy children and rendering the community safer and more active, and that offers opportunities for the protection of the weak or vulnerable;
• reciprocity lies at the base of almost all human relationships and so it is necessary to value interdependence within social relationships;
• social networks need to invest in social capital, based on trust, reciprocity and social involvement.
via BennetonTalk
Some things just have to be experienced.
You can’t photograph them. You can’t film them. Dancing about architecture…
I can’t tell you what it was like to be in a crowd of 70,000 people at the U2 concert but perhaps I can give you a glimpse of a moment.
Australia has one of the highest penetrations of mobile phones on the planet, so when Bono asked the crowd to raise their mobile phones in the air it made the stars in the sky look dull.
I know that this is a MO for a U2 concert:
“Time to do a magic trick. “These little devices — these cell phones — they can do all sorts of things.”
Then the band launches into the next song and Bono encourages the audience to use their phones to send an SMS to (in Australia it is www.makepovertyhistory.com), a sort of digital petition voicing support for poverty relief. Later, during the encore, the names of all who did so are scrolled on the same screen.
But just because it’s been rehearsed doesn’t mean it wasn’t magical.
The story: we have the power in our hands to make a difference.
Beautiful.
Tell me – I forget,
Show me – I remember,
Involve me – I understand.”
– Confucius
We Are What We Do have set up all sorts of ways for you to share your ideas, vote for what you believe, dare your friends to do new things, get others involved, and ultimately… change the world
Moms Rising is working to build a massive grassroots online resource to move motherhood and family issues to the forefront of awareness, and to provide grassroots support for leaders, as well as organizations, addressing key motherhood issues.
The intent is to reach millions of women who have not previously been active, to educate people about the problems facing mothers and families, and to provide avenues for common sense solutions to those problems.
GOOD Magazine, touted as a “cultural magazine for people who give a damn,” aims to promote social, political and environmental change by educating young people on world news and issues and empowering them to take action.
I do have to fight to keep my lover’s quarrel with the world in check. I acknowledge that it’s the ability to see how magnificent this place is and humanity’s potential for the sublime that is the cause of a lot of my Shouty behaviour.
Over on Jeffre Jackson’s Pink Air is a post about Idealism, which comments: both the optimism and the disgust are characteristic of idealism. He goes on to say that: we the people who work in advertising bear some responsibility for (the world being a cynical place). And yet, we’re not an especially cynical bunch as far as I can tell. So I’m wondering, what does a marketing idealist believe?
I like the notion of the responsibility of a “marketing idealist” Jeffree puts forward the “Be optimistic” campaign which was designed by a group of people in the Dutch communications industry to get people to look at things in a more positive light, to see that everything isn’t going downhill. What cracks me up is that there is nothing on this site- there is no good news!
Jeffree sums it up like this:
“I hoped a global band of marketing savvy idealists was starting a movement to get people to think, not just happier thoughts, but bigger thoughts about what is possible. “
I think we’re all a little swamped by the sheer volume of bad news that we get subject to every day.
Amidst all this noise and despair perhaps the first thing that marketing idealists can achieve is to motivate people through the compassion fatigue, through the moral apathy that we generate to help get us through the day.
Filed under: Get Activist
I’ve just put my first post on karmacredits.org “Triple Bottom Line Marketing”
I was reading an article on Fast Company about Participant Productions- the first film company to be founded on a mission of social impact through storytelling. But it’s no charity. It’s a pro-social commercial operation, a hybrid emblematic of the social-entrepreneurship movement. “Ultimately, the goal here is to build a brand around social relevance in media.
This is not amateur hour- Participant has already brought us the films Syriana (which took on the oil industry), Good Night, and Good Luck (McCarthyism and freedom of the press), North Country (sexual harassment), the documentary Murderball (living with a disability) which garnered a combined 11 Oscar nominations, with one win and An Inconvenient Truth.
And it was started by Jeff Skoll. Yes Mr eBay.
Why would a man with five billion bucks do anything like this?
Most of the world probably relates more readily to a retired millionaire who says, “What could I possibly do?” than to the one who says, “Let’s do something.” Yet the whole purpose of Participant is essentially to get people to believe in the possibility of change–and to dedicate their own resources to bringing it about.
Well I don’t have much but some passion and the tools of the marketing profession.
I believe in the possibility of change, and if you do too and want to do something about addressing your ad marketing debt – then please go sign up at karmacredits.org and get involved.
To shoot down the zen like call for humour in the face of rudeness and general dumbass behaviour of yesterday’s post, this morning I arrived at work shouty. Real shouty.
Australia’s Treasurer, Peter Costello, was quoted on the national broadcaster this morning saying “there is no point in Australia reducing their greenhouse emissions as we only produce 1% of the output”. WTF?
SO if we only produce 1% of the global deaths in custody we shouldn’t try to stop that? Or 1% of rapes?
His argument is Australia needs to get other countries to agree to reduce their outputs (er..heard of Kyoto bozo?).
If it weren’t for the sedition laws on this country…..
Filed under: Get Activist
Man I love passion with a purpose. This week there’s been a brilliant conversation, a sentiment and spirit that has been growing in momentum and seems to be about to flower.
I seriously cheered when I read Paul’s post this morning which is summed up by his lines:
Until we pick today to stand up for the good we can do, the power we have to empower, then we have only ourselves to blame. We have a burden to not accept the excuses and finger pointing, and purge and shun those with only one aim, to selfishly gain.
Today does seem to be a very good day to start things. Have just got back from a coffee salon set up by Emily from Conformists Unite. Conversation ranged from the viral spread of football chants to being a first time parent. Lovely to meet a circle of like minds. This will be happening every Thursday- so please come and join in if you are in Sydney.
Excitingly we were able to workshop an idea that came of this week’s blogsphere, office rants, an article that Gavin posted here, and a couple of my own posts and discussions. What really seemed to ignite a bit of a spark was the notion of “karma credits” (which is what I call the stuff I do for Embrace International).
Gavin already has had a number of people respond to his article “A W3C for Marketing 2.0” who have put up their hands to make a difference. www.karmacredits.org has been registered!
Filed under: Get Activist
Noone dared approach the question, originally uploaded by matt.
Filed under: Get Activist
Connector extraordinaire CK led me over to Paul’s post Next Time, Whisper Better:
“We’re in an industry where everyone is trying to scream the loudest, when all we ever needed to do was get close enough to whisper. “
I do so love a quiet word. I can’t what people are saying when they’re yelling at me. I just want to protect myself from that energy.
A shining example of people who are whispering in the right ear at the right time and using the intimacy they have with their clients is World Nomads, an online travel insurance provider, who are using e-commerce technology to take the hard work out of ‘making a difference’.
Footprints is their online fundraising mechanism designed to leave positive footprints all over the internet.
When you purchase a travel insurance policy you can add a small contribution to the policy purchase price. It’s that simple.
Don’t you just love the concept of positive footprints? A whisper of ‘wouldn’t you like to give back’?
In the shifting sands of the internet this is step in the right direction.
