East Africa crisis
Project Spotlight: behind The Pound Store
The team behind the latest 50/50 project launch, The Pound Store, give us the headlines about their newly launched project.
How did you decide to become involved with 50/50?
We saw the tweets from Made by Many about the 50/50 project and thought it was a great opportunity to do something positive. We posted some ideas on the crowdsourcing platform good.byideas.co.uk and then offered Tim Malbon some Sapient man hours to get something produced.
Project spotlight: 12,000,000 people
How can we really understand what it means for 12,000,000 people in East Africa to be at risk? It's a well known fact that we relate more easily to one person's story than to large, inconceivable numbers. But the fact remains that this crisis isn't about one or two stories and we need to find ways to connect to it that go beyond the lens of individual experiences.
This lovely video put together by Jonas Skafte shows how Wolf Olins set about communicating the sheer scale of the number 12,000,000 as part of their 50/50 project.
You wait six weeks for a Twitter Swearbox, and then two of them turn up at once
The ‘other’ Twitter sweary-thing on 5050 is the brainchild of James Dow. The Charity Swearbox is a platform that he and co-founders Jay Gelardi and Rameet Chawla have been working on for over a year. We were really chuffed that they decided to make 5050 their first charity project – but their platform is intended to facilitate the running of many campaigns: it’s a brilliant charity start-up idea. Over time, the list of charities will grow--the aptly named Fuck Cancer and a whole host of great causes that have contacted them over the past week--so interested charities please get in contact with James at james[dot]dow[at]me[dot]com.
It's UN World Food Day: we're officially launching the 50/50 fundraising phase
'There's nothing in the world worse than watching your own child die in front of your eyes because you cannot feed him' - Ban Ki Moon
It's UN World Food Day today.
The famine in East Africa is still raging.
The voices of the families and children struggling to survive are not being heard.
$615 million is still urgently needed for relief efforts.
Which is why we're inviting the world to get behind 50/50 Make or Break for the families of East Africa.
Project spotlight: how Kids Draw for East Africa came about
Charlotte Hillenbrand, one of the many at Made by Many, tells us about the Kids Draw for East Africa project created with her husband, John Bennett, Group Strategy Director at Syzygy…
As parents of a toddler ourselves, we were both horrified by the child mortality statistics quoted by UNICEF, and decided that we wanted to do something to help.
Project spotlight: the story behind Swearjar for famine relief
Glyn Britton, from integrated agency Albion London, tells us about how Swearjar was born...
On Sunday 14th August I got an email from Tim Malbon of Made by Many. They’d had a get together with Good for Nothing, the people who stage creative collaborations for good causes.
They’d decided to do something about the East African Famine. They realised that this was a crisis on a massive scale, which was hardly getting any attention, because of our preoccupation with the riots and the recession. They wanted to do something that would draw attention to it, and raise money for it.
Project spotlight: the team behind Fight the Famine
As Fight the Famine launches, we go behind the scenes to talk to 15 Million Elephants and find out about how they came up with their idea.
Who are you?
During normal business hours, most of us are EffectiveUI people. In our spare time, we transform into 15 Million Elephants. Our names are not all that important. But our mission is.
What compelled you to take part in 50/50?
The families of East Africa need our help. The situation is too hard to ignore. So we challenged ourselves to make the ultimate viral loop to spread awareness and grow support for the cause.
Project spotlight: Phone2Food
We're excited to announce our newest 50/50 project from the folks at digital innovation lab Moonshot. Here the team behind the service tell all:
What’s the project?
The Phone2Food project invites people to send used cell phones and other electronics to our partner, BuyMyTronics.com, who then donates the device’s buyback value to UNICEF instead of sending it to the seller. With the upcoming iPhone4S launch and all the early adopters out there in the agency world, we think we’re perfectly poised to make a BIG contribution to 50/50’s overall £1 million goal.
Project spotlight: I gave a buck, now you give a f**k
The Disrupt4Good team were one of the first onboard and embody in some ways many of the characteristics of the remarkable coalition of people working together to raise money for East Africa famine-aid with 50/50. For one thing, they had never met before but were brought together by a Good for Nothing hack weekend.
Here, Heidi Kikoler tells the story of their project, and how she linked up with developer Peter Hamilton to make Disrupt4Good:
NYC Famine Hackathon: the hack weekend
Earlier in the week Farrah Bostic told us about what it takes to plan a hackathon for good in just a few weeks. In this follow up post, she looks at how the hack weekend went and the awesome fundraising projects for famine relief which came out of it.
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By the week of the event, we had about 70 people registered: developers, designers, copywriters, strategists, entrepreneurs. Now I realized I could not possibly run the event on my own and that we needed people to keep the ideas flowing and spark new ones.
I reached out to the female entrepreneurs and asked them to be mentors. Cortney Harding, Rachel, and Yao Huang of The Hatcheryall said yes. Kelley Boyd and Ryan MacCarrigan agreed to present a crash course in Lean Startup thinking. Stuart Eccles of Made by Many booked his flight to come demo the 50/50 API and help out on projects. And the amazing Justin Kerr Scheckler of Etsy, Akshay Patil of Foursquare, Frank Denbow on behalf of Twilio, and Pamela Rousso of AppFirst, demo'd their services and APIs.
Friday, September 23, it rained most of the day. Torrential downpour raining. We didn't know if anyone would show. I was hopeful that with about 75 registered, 50 would show up that evening. We opened doors at 6pm, and people started entering in ones and twos, as befits a deluge. By 7, we had 40-45 people in attendance and were ready to start the hackathon. By 8:30, people were drinking beer and pitching ideas. By 9:30, we had 20+ ideas on the board. At 10, people headed off home to mull over their options and get some rest.
Project spotlight: Good Belly Project
Today we caught up with the team from Mullen who are behind the Good Belly Project. It's fascinating to hear how the project has evolved and the particular challenges of doing this on the side in an agency environment. We know what it's like and we appreciate all your efforts!
We'll let Janene from Mullen tell you more about that in her own words:
So who's working on the Good Belly Project?
After we got the call to get involved from Tim at Made by Many, Boston-based Mullen deployed an integrated team of socially minded, entrepreneurially driven employees for 50/50. The team is made up of talent from creative, media, planning and PR/social.
How did you decide to do a project for 5050?
When we first heard about 50/50, we were very excited about the opportunity to use our creativity for social good. Our story started with a couple of planners and a creative technologist in a brainstorm during which we came up with an idea. This small team then grew to a larger team that included digitally-savvy people from various departments who are now all working collaboratively to evolve the idea and bring it to life.
The NYC Famine Hackathon: how did we get here?
Farrah Bostic has just sent us the full story on the fantastic NYC Famine Hackathon she ran at the end of September. We're dividing it in two: today's post tells the story of how the hack came to be, and then tomorrow we'll follow up with how it actually went and what projects came out of it.
Without further ado, over to Farrah:
The project began with an email from Nicki Sprinz that began "Inevitably: the E. Africa begging email…". I said I would help in any way I could with the 50/50 project, and so with this email the clock started - it was time to actually do something.
I had a simple, rather Tom Sawyer-esque, idea - we'd throw a hackathon. We'd get a bunch of people together in a room with some outlets and internet access and see what would happen.
Project spotlight: Toilet to Pocket
This week we're catching up with lots of 50/50 projects to find out more about what got them involved in the campaign, how the making process has been and what their plans are in the run up to World Food Day.
We're kicking off today by catching up with MC from Relax in the Air, the guys behind one of the first 50/50 projects to launch: Toilet to Pocket.
Foodie Challenge: Aid rations recipes needed!
In solidarity with famine refugees in East Africa and their limited aid rations, Alejandro Lozada (@lacreid), strategy director at an ad agency in Mexico City, is only eating the daily famine aid ration for 50 days until World Food Day on Oct 16th. No booze, no sweets, no animal protein. And he works in advertising… Why? #dontfeedtheplanner is the first project coming out of the 50/50 creative collaboration fundraising campaign, of which all donations go straight to UNICEF’s aid work in the region. The campaign is gaining momentum, with over 30 projects confirmed and press coverage in major publications such as Adweek, Campaign and PSFK and no less a tweet from Stephen Fry(!).
50/50 gaining momentum
With now over 30 projects confirmed, 50/50 is gaining momentum and building awareness – one of our projects #africashback was even tweeted by Stephen Fry! We’re still on the lookout for individuals or agencies to contribute projects, so get in touch for your chance to help save lives in East Africa.
Another way you can get involved is by spreading the word about 50/50 – back the projects, tweet, blog, donate and pass it on. The more people know about it, the bigger the impact.
Here’s a roundup of 50/50’s coverage on the web so far – get in touch if you want any more information:
From the makers of #AfricaNeedsYou
Yesterday another great 50/50 project went live. #AfricaNeedsYou disrupts the celebrity 'pay to tweet' culture by asking them to donate their earnings to famine relief in East Africa.
We caught up with Jack and Paul, the duo behind this latest endeavour, to find out more about how the project came about.
5050 - Project Update
Well, we're about half-way and we've got over 30 projects - with more coming forward every day, and now starting to launch 'live', public sites.
Please have a look through the SlideShare deck below. Check out the projects from individuals and companies all over the world. We still need 17 projects (and we're obviously not going to suddenly stop at 50). The hard work of raising a million quid starts in just over two weeks...
Just to re-cap, we started this madness with Good For Nothing in August, and the goal right now is to find and make 50 projects by UN World Food Day on October 16th. So, currently we're in 'making mode'. On 16th October we switch into 'donating mode', and use World Food Day as a springboard to extend our reach and start driving traffic and donations through the 50 or more incredible projects that will be part of the 5050 platform.
All the money goes to support the people of East Africa, who are struggling to cope with a terrible famine that's threatening the lives of 10 million people and killing a child every six minutes.
Stephen Fry tweets about #Africashback
@stephenfry
Stephen Fry Raise cash for UNICEF #famineaid while shopping at Amazon, #africashback aims to raise £1m in http://t.co/H40JyO1h
FavoriteRetweetReply
Who's behind the brilliant Africashback project?
Mike Overthrow, a digital marketing manager working in Gloucestershire, pitched the idea for Africashback to 50/50 on 7th Sept and just 7 days later on the 14th the project went live on 50/50! Pretty impressive considering he works full time and has two toddlers.
Thanks to Chilly Gonzales for providing the soundtrack to our film
A quick post to say a massive thanks to Chilly Gonzales for giving us the thumbs up to use his 'Solo Piano track' in our 50/50 film.
Projects update
We're now 3 weeks into this initial 'making' phase of 50/50 Make or Break. Our goal for this phase is to get 50 projects to join the platform in the 50 days up until World Food Day on 16th October. Our plan is to use World Food Day, and 50/50's network of projects and supporters, as a springboard to reach huge numbers of people and drive some big traffic to kick-start an intense phase of fundraising.
Why we’re doing 50/50: the latest news
Awesome agencies and individuals are building creative projects to raise money for the devastating famine in East Africa as we speak. Check out the latest projects and see how you can get involved, either by creating a project, backing one or simply donating. All proceeds go directly to Unicef’s aid work in the region.
Ideas, ideas coming out of our ears
People all over the world have been having some fantastic brainstorms to generate ideas for 50/50. It's very exciting. In a few weeks time, Farrah Bostic will be hosting a hackathon in NYC - register your interest here. And just yesterday we heard that our friends at Arnold Worldwide have moved one step closer to a brilliant project that will start in Boston but spread globally. Stay tuned for more information on that very soon.
Meanwhile, over in Sweden, Patrik Falk challenged a group of Hyper Island students on the mobile applications course to a half an hour brainstorm to generate ideas on helping East Africa.
They've kindly sent over the results to us, so we thought we'd write them up here. Who knows, maybe you can take one on?
Want to do a 50/50 project? Here are some great ideas up for grabs
What a week, 3 projects launched, 7 more still in development, and some very exciting new ones coming next week which we can't talk about just yet.... 50/50 is go.
So, who *is* the fat planner?
Alejandro Lozada is the Director of Strategy at Cheil Mexico and the first person to come on board the 50/50 Make or Break challenge we've launched with Good for Nothing. His project is 'The Fat Planner', and it's all about backing him as he takes on the challenge of eating nothing but what an African refugee would, for 50 days - the duration of the project. It's very ambitious (he hopes to raise $75,000), very exciting and very very good of him - yeah, even if he is an ad man.
So here we go. Our 50 days start today!
There are 50 days until 16 October, which is UN World Food Day. World Food Day was set up in 1979 to:
"Heighten public awareness of the world food problem and strengthen solidarity in the struggle against hunger, malnutrition and poverty."
We aim to raise £1m (about $1.6m USD) through the platform of projects we're building over the next 50 days.
Why 50/50? It's literally make or break
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© Victims of Famine Seek Treatment at Mogadishu Hospital. UN Photo/Stuart Price
Good for Nothing and Made by Many have joined forces to build a collaborative fundraising platform of 50 creative projects run by individuals and teams of makers globally to raise money for the East Africa famine. 50/ 50 launches today and the challenge runs for 50 days until Sunday October 16th - which is World Food Day.
How to get started with a 50/50 project
So you're up for running a 50/50 fundraising project to help raise millions for famine relief efforts in East Africa. That's fantastic news.
Here's the lowdown on exactly what you need to do to take part and what we can do to support you.
Welcome to 50/50... in beta
Hello, it's 3 days before the start of our 50-day campaign to raise millions for East Africa and we're launching the 50/50 platform in beta.