sparksforchange

This picture by Prashant Bhardwaj won the Development Gateway Foundation photo competition last year. It is from a handwriting competition held in one of the centers where they teach children who once used to work as child labor in the brass industry in the city. Prashant Bhardwajtalks more about this photo, explaining why he took it and the hope that it stands for,  on the Foundation’s photo webpage.

This year’s photo competition just opened today, and the winner will receive a $1000 prize. The competition organizers are looking for compelling photographs of socio-economic development in developing countries. Four types of photographs will be accepted. 1) The images may show information and communications technologies helping ordinary people. 2) The images may show people making something, selling wares, working in a field, constructing a building or type of infrastructure, or acquiring knowledge. 3) The images could be abstract images representing hope, the future, or capacity building. 4) The photographs may also include images of original artwork from a developing country.

Each entry must include a written statement explaining how that image is representative of development. Images will be judged on technical excellence, composition, overall impact, and artistic merit.

The We Are Media Project is bringing together people who are interested in learning and teaching about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organizations to create, compile, and distribute their stories and change the world. This project builds on the growing reasons for using social media that are set out in Marta Kagan’s punchy presentation below.

Over the next six months the We Are Media Project will develop a “Social Media Starter Kit for Nonprofits”. The project is being supported by NTEN and is being facilitated by Beth Kanter.

This is an open project so if you are beginning to get interested in social media for your nonprofit – or business – visit the We Are Media Project and have a look at what is being developed, or even share your thoughts and be part of the project.

… showing the power of web graphics for creating environmental awareness

This short film takes viewers on a provocative tour of our consumer-driven culture —  from resource extraction to iPod incineration — exposing the real costs of this use-it and lose-it approach to stuff. If you aren’t one of the 3 milion people in more than 200 countries to have seen this then it is worth a view.

The film can be found on-line at http://www.storyofstuff.com/ Throughout the 20-minute film, activist Annie Leonard, the film’s narrator and an expert on the materials economy, examines the social, environmental and global costs of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal. The film features Leonard delivering a rapid-fire, often humorous and always engaging story about “all our stuff — where it comes from and where it goes when we throw it away. Annie Leonard stays on track from start to finish and her engaging style makes us laugh and moves us to take action, all at the same time. I especially liked the way she centers people and power in the film.

Produced by Free Range Studios , the Story of Stuff – http://www.storyofstuff.com – looks appealing enough to usher in a new era of documentary expression for environmentalists and scientists to mainstream their knowledge in a way that mainstreams new stories and norms. Most importantly, the film leaves us in a good place to move forward to a better future. Well worth watching and sharing around your friends … for entertainment, the environment, and as a prompt to new consuming patterns.

Annie and her team put out their first e-mail newsletter today. There is a blog up at the site at http://www.storyofstuff.com/blog/, and their website will soon be out with translations into seven languages.

Canadian ecologist and scientist Crawford “Buzz” Holling has won the 2008 Volvo Environment Prize for his theories on how ecosystems deal with sudden changes. His message stressing the importance of increasing our society’s ability to be flexible and cope with change provides a pathway forward to those worrying about global climate change and unexpected natural disasters.

“Crawford (Buzz) Holling is one of the most creative and influential ecologists of our times,” the jury said in its citation.

“His integrative thinking has shed new light on the growth, collapse and regeneration of coupled human-ecological systems.”

The Volvo Environment Prize is awarded by an independent foundation, assisted by a prize jury of internationally-recognized experts in the environmental field, and is awarded to individuals who explore the way to an equitable and sustainable world. Since 1990, the prize has been awarded to 34 individuals. For more information on the Volvo Environment Prize, including this month’s 2008 award to Buzz Holling, go to www.environment-prize.com.

Recently I heard Hilary Campbell of the Wellington-based Sustainability Trust talking about personal change and their Eco Kiwi networking project. Hilary graphically demonstrated why working with individuals for change can be so powerful by inviting her audience to think about some personal change they had just made – or were making. She then ran through a list of possible reasons for why we were thinking and acting on this change and asked us to think about whether any of these had influenced us, and how powerful an influence it had been. From memory the list went something like: marketing/advertising, advice, friends/family, an external upheaval in your life, and personal aspiration. Without exception, personal aspiration was the biggest driver, highlighting the importance of working at the individual level.

The Eco Kiwi networking project supports change from the bottom-up, and acknowledges that everyone’s needs and priorities are different. So the initiative works through talking and listening, rather than just ‘telling’. This scheme enables community networkers to get out and about in the community, talking and listening to groups and individuals and providing individualised support to help people all make those little changes that can really make a difference.