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An end to poverty.
A future
for our planet.
Dear Helen
It’s been too long, sorry. But here’s the update on the Wake Up : Walk Out.
There were some disappointments this time round (which are detailed later in this email) but none of these setbacks detract from the fact that the campaign was a huge success in many ways.
More than 90,000 people visited the Wake Up : Walk Out site. Over 16,000 people viewed the viral film. The campaign received support from the bands Radiohead and Dan le Sac, the clothing brand Howies, the National Union of Students, numerous likeminded campaigning organisations like 350.org, UKYCC, 10:10, Age of Stupid, Plane Stupid and most importantly, you.
Thank you.
Together, we took another pioneering step with one of the (if not the) first SMS text campaigns in the UK. All told, the campaign received 460 texts, and our text petition was submitted to Chris Huhne, Secretary for State for Energy and Climate Change in the new coalition government.
While it’s been with them for many weeks now, we are yet to receive a response from the minister on our demands for the government to increase carbon emissions reductions from 34% to 42%, kick starting a healthy and sustainable green economy. BeThatChange will continue to chase a response and let you know as soon as we have one.
Wake Up : Walk Out did suffer some unexpected difficulties. These were largely due to key organisations not lending their support to the campaign. This is in no way a criticism of those organisations, but it was a surprise to BeThatChange and for reasons of transparency and honesty we thought we should share those with you.
At the outset, BeThatChange chose the policy goal of 42% carbon cuts as almost the entire UK campaigning community supported this goal. Consequently, we approached 3 key campaigning organisations asking them to make their supporters aware of the campaign. Sadly, none of these organisations were willing to do this.
In discussions since the campaign, one of the organisations explained (in refreshingly honest terms) that their unwillingness stemmed largely from the fact that the campaign was “not their idea” and that without retaining data (your phone numbers and email addresses) for their own purposes there was little inherent interest in pursuing the goal as part of the Wake Up : Walk Out.
We are not sharing this with you to attack fellow organisations, merely to share our surprise at this approach. Mostly, we’re sad because, with their support, we believe we could have created a more significant impact in the run up to the UK general election on the issue of climate change. Instead, we were a small voice -but an important one nevertheless.
We’ll bear all of this in mind next time and try to find ways of working that get everyone beating the same drum.
In the meantime we’re excited to be part of 10:10:10 with those lovely folks at 10:10 and 350.org. It’s gonna be the biggest-ever day of positive action on climate change, and it all happens on Sunday 10 October, 2010. You can find the event nearest you, or register your own event here.
