Weekly Roundup
The thing about returning to blogging is that there is always something more urgent that grabs my time. It's something that I didn't predict, because I love writing and I'm truly passionate about motivating people to buy on their values. But the truth is, sustainability is now also the 'day job' and so I'm driven to find extra time to work on that, too. I've become a positive workaholic.
I am a big proponent of the idea of 'just start' though. You don't need to be ready, you don't really need to have a plan, you just have to start. So this week I'm starting with something I like doing; sharing things that I've seen online that I think are great. You can see more of this in real time on my Twitter feed.
Bumble: A company uses their influence and reach to help the homeless
If you're in the UK, you will have noticed that it's been pretty cold over the last week, as we suffered the effects of the #beastfromtheeast* and Storm Emma. Snow has blanketed much of the country and this puts our homeless population in a very vulnerable position – cold and wet is not a good combination for those who do not have access to shelter and warmth.
During the worst of it, dating app Bumble made my day by popping up on my phone with a promotion for Streetlink – a charity that connects homeless people to local services. You can use the Streetlink service to report where you have seen a homeless person sleeping, so local support workers know where to find them to offer help. This service saves lives, but in order for the system to work, people have to know it exists. I'm not sure how many people Bumble targeted with this mobile notification, but with 23 million users globally, you can imagine the reach they have in the UK. A tech company using their platform for good, I love it!
*I bet the person who came up with the term 'Beast from the East' never thought that would become an actual thing, but that's another conversation entirely.
Lacoste: Using a brand to give a cause a platform
Luxury casual clothing brand Lacoste hit on a clever campaign to raise awareness of threatened species around the world. Swapping out their signature crocodile logo for 10 IUCN threatened species, they produced the exact number of shirts as the number of the animals remaining on this planet. The animals appearing on the shirts included the vaquita, the Sumatran tiger and the kakapo parrot (see the full list here).
The campaign was in partnership with the initiative Save Our Species and the polo shirts sold out, but the Lacoste website is directing people to donate on the Save Our Species website.
Legally Black UK: Bringing race representation to the mainstream through popular culture
Over the last few months, there has been an explosion in the conversation about race and race representation in Britain. This has been helped quite a lot by books like 'The Good Immigrant' and 'Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race' (both fantastic reads by the way). In fact, just before the Legally Black campaign below hit the headlines, I facilitated a discussion at Rebel Book Club where I talked a little bit about growing up without seeing anyone who looked like me in the media (I'm mixed race British).
The Legally Black campaign reworks posters for major motion pictures with black actors and then displays them in the same places you would normally see these adverts. As an adult, I'd almost forgotten about this lack of diversity; I'd become desensitised to the fact almost all major motion pictures lacked range in the leading roles. Reading 'Why I'm Not Longer Talking to White People About Race' reminded me that this is still the case, and the Legally Black campaign is a genius way to highlight this to people who might not have even have thought about it. Because if you always see yourself when you turn on the TV or watch a film, why would you notice?
