“New challenges require new answers. It is clear that we cannot continue waiting for our governments to take the initiative regarding climate change. We must be the ones to do it. It is also clear that the lonely voices will not be the ones leading the change. Our collective future depends on our collective voice. ”
Kieran Battles, Director of Be That Change
The Be That Change initiative aims to develop a new movement that brings about the changes that are needed. In the hope of inspiring the “Digital Generation” of the United Kingdom and giving its members the power and capacity they need, this initiative hopes to transform environmental and anti-poverty campaigns into projects that are truly online - in line with its approaches and in line with the aforementioned digital generation. The project seeks to take advantage of the opportunity offered by the Internet to unite millions of voices and achieve strong and demanding responses from our policy makers.
The idea is based on making these types of campaigns as attractive, comfortable and accessible as possible. As one of the young people who support this initiative says: “show me an organization that understands what really matters to me, give me the channels that I use on the web, the language I use with my friends and the vehicle I use to Listen to music, and you will have my total commitment and dedication. ”
The Be That Change initiative began its journey by recently launching its first campaign via Twitter: “Get the PM to the UN” - a call calling on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to attend the Copenhagen conference in person on Climate change organized by the United Nations.
Thousands of people and groups, including British actor and writer Stephen Fry, The Guardian newspaper and NGO Oxfam, posted their messages on the Twitter social network supporting this appeal and included in them the expression # pm2un a type of label that is known on Twitter as hashtag and which serves in this case to identify who will show support for this campaign.
At 9 a.m. on the first day of the campaign, the label # pm2un meant nothing. By 9 pm that same day, there were already 51, 000 entries in Google with this expression. During the same afternoon, Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, contacted Be That Change through Twitter asking what their priorities were. Ed was informed that he directly requested Gordon Brown to attend the conference. Although he was under significant pressure from various campaigns, five days later the British Prime Minister became the first political leader in committing to attend the Copenhagen conference. Downing Street used the tag # pm2un when announcing this information on Twitter.
We wanted to create a new way of campaigning that would allow the maximum number of people to join their voices to this call. In this case, it was about our prime minister attending the UN conference, explains Kieran Battles. The campaign concept on Twitter has no trick. We must increase the speed and dimensions of the changes we want to adopt so that we can solve the problems we face in the short time we have. This type of campaign open on Twitter is undoubtedly a direct response to this situation.
Contact: Be That Change, York House,
15 York Gardens, Bristol, BS8 4LL United Kingdom
Website: www.bethatchange.com
Image: Mike Cannings
