National Anthem of Haiti Live From Port-au-Prince

Archive for the ‘Cause-Related Videos’ Category

National Anthem of Haiti Live From Port-au-Prince

March 9th, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. No Comments »

When I was in Haiti last week for the #heartofhaiti blogger trip, we were touring around on the Saturday morning and pulled up in our van to the Palace (their version of the White House). As many people have seen in the news, it completely collapsed. So did their National Cathedral and Congress building. Ruins, rubble, dust, trash and in general disarray are everywhere you look. Directly across from the Palace is one of the biggest tent cities in Port-au-Prince. It’s a lot to process.

We step out of the van to take photos of the palace and suddenly a marching bands starts. The national marching band for Haiti was in procession to the flagpole and played their national anthem as they raised the national flag.

It was one of those moments of perfect timing that you couldn’t have planned if you wanted to.

While I was filming I looked over my right shoulder behind me and noticed an odd quiet. Everything had stopped in its place. Men were half stride, cars had come to a complete halt, women washing dishes or clothes had stopped, even kids running around were paused.

Everyone and everything paused to pay tribute to their country. It was one of the largest acts of patriotism I’ve ever seen.

So the video above is the view straightforward but imagine for a moment what it was like with a 360-degree view.

The 5th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards

February 18th, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. 1 Comment »

Calling all nonprofits who have made kick-ass videos this past year. See3, in partnership with YouTube, announced that this year’s DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards are accepting entries.

This year, winners will again have the chance to win one of four $2500 grants provided by the Case Foundation, video cameras from Flip Video, a free registration to next year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference provided by NTEN and more. The winning videos will be announced at this year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference hosted by NTEN and featured on YouTube’s homepage in March.

For many nonprofit clients I worked with over the years, we’ve talked about the power of video. Video is a great way to share your mission, messages and goals. The medium educates, makes others aware of issues, progress that’s being made, and the work that still needs to be done. Awards like these, recognize nonprofits that see the importance in video and hopefully encourage others to extend into this medium as well.

I heard last year there were 750 entries, 17K votes by the public, and 150,000 views. Wow, right? Now it’s your turn. Here are some details to get you started:

Submissions for Best Small, Medium, and Large nonprofit organization videos must be a video that was made in 2010. Entries for the Best Thrifty Video category can be for videos made any time before the end of the submission period. Each nonprofit can submit as many videos as they would like. No specific categories or missions are needed.
Entries cannot exceed 10 minutes in length and are limited to nonprofits from the US, the UK, and Australia.
You can submit your videos from February 4, 2011 until March 2, 2011. Starting March 7th, voting is open to the public.
Your organization MUST be a member of the YouTube Nonprofit Program.

Good luck! If you enter let me know so I can help spread the word when voting starts!

Join the FITE

February 2nd, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. No Comments »

Earlier this month, Kiva co-launched an exciting new campaign to help empower women, together with Dermalogica and other strategic partners called JoinFITE. FITE stands for “Financial Indepence Through Entrepreneurship” and is focused on helping women worldwide start and grow a business.

The campaign has since been covered in BusinessWeek, FastCompany, and the Huffington Post.

Jane Wurwand, the 52-year-old founder of skin-care product maker Dermalogica started 25 years ago with $14,000 and built a business with customers in 87 countries and more than $200 million in annual revenue. She’s an incredible woman I’ve heard speak through my involvement with Step Up Women’s Network. She is dedicated to helping women in business and support entrepreneurship and this is an amazing partnership and campaign to highlight that commitment.

Dermalogica is donating $500,000 to help fund microloans to women through Kiva. Wurwand just stepped down as chief executive officer of Dermalogica to focus her attention on the microlending campaign. According to Jane:

It’s so authentic to our industry. Every spa and salon owner has said it feels like their story. Each of them started with a small amount of money and built their success through that. They know as a woman what it means to be financially independent.

The project will involve promotions on five of Dermalogica’s top-selling products, including skin cleansers, microfolients, and eye creams, that consumers can redeem online to contribute $1 to a Kiva loan. Wurwand hopes consumers will add to the credits with donations of their own, and aims to facilitate microloans to at least 25,000 entrepreneurs in two years. Unlike on Kiva’s main site, loans made through FITE will only go to women. When people fund a loan on the site, starting at $25, they choose what country and what industry their money goes to. Kiva will then choose the borrower and send donors e-mail updates on the entrepreneurs who receive their funds. You can check out the campaign site too, at http://joinFITE.org.

JoinFITE is inspiring a movement and I can’t wait to see where it goes! Celebrities like Geena Davis and Julia Ormond, companies like Dermalogica and Seventh Generation, and thought leaders like Isobel Coleman and Nicholas Kristof (NY Times Columnist and best-selling co-author of Half-the-Sky) have all joined forces and are competing in the joinFITE Challenge. Learn more about it at JoinFITE.org.

Levi’s Spotlight: Braddock, PA

October 1st, 2010, by Sloane Berrent. 2 Comments »

My stepdad is from Braddock, PA, a small working class town just on the eastern outskirts of Pittsburgh, but still within Allegheny county. Growing up we heard the classic, some over-inflated, some as real as the sky is blue, stories of growing up in a steel community. Getting an apple for Christmas if you were good, nothing if you weren’t. Braddock held a lure, a mystery to it, because when I was a kid it wasn’t “cool” to go into areas like that and revitalize and pump hope in the community.

All that has changed now. It is incredibly “cool” to find neighborhoods and help them along, and in many cases the artists that moved into these empty warehouses to make them into lofts are the new cowboys, the fearless ones letting the rest of us know “it’s ok” to go, settle, create commerce, opportunity and places to call home amongst the long-term residents who have seen-it-all.

When I first saw the video above, a single tear slid down my cheek. I’m serious! It’s such an incredible tribute to a town not just of survivors, but of people who continue to thrive, fight adversity and fight back. Part of Levi’s “Go Forth” campaign around their corporate social responsibility campaign that was recently named one of the best of the year by Forbes magazine.

Levi’s also partnered with IFC and the Sundance Channel to create “Ready To Work” which is about Braddock and has been airing segments on both networks, some of which you can see on Levi’s YouTube. The channel say, “We Are All Workers: Braddock, PA, a town of pioneers answering the call to mend what needs mending and build what’s theirs to build.”

Part of what the series talks about is the effort to repair and mend the Braddock branch of the Carnegie Library, another personal connection to me. So this whole campaign struck very close to home.

My favorite line in the video at the top of this post is, “People think their aren’t frontiers anymore, but there are frontiers all around us.”

I’ve been thinking about that the last few days. What is means to create your own frontier and look beyond the horizon to a horizon that you’re creating. Here’s my conclusion; these new frontiers don’t have to be completely new to be special. And they don’t have to be entrepreneurial or something that only a specific group (or clique) of people can do. A frontier is for the every man, and we can all work to finding our frontiers and horizons and share them with those we love.

At least that’s my, somewhat realist but deeply idealist, interpretation.

Reshma For Congress

August 31st, 2010, by Sloane Berrent. No Comments »

I came across the most remarkable woman running for Congress. Since I wrote about supporting professional women last week, I thought this was a good follow up.

Resham Saujani is running for Congress in the 14th district of New York City which encompasses the East Side and Queens. She is using social media to help spread the word about her campaign and being transparent every step along the way as she talks about her campaign on her website and on Twitter (you can follow her @reshma2010 or join her campaign by texting JOIN to 646-807-9932).

She writes about herself:

My name is Reshma Saujani. I am a dedicated Democrat, a community activist, a Yale University legal scholar, and an attorney in New York City. But first and foremost, I am the daughter of political refugees whose story embodies the promise of life in America. For questions or more info email info@reshma2010.com.

She is exactly the type of candidate I want to see. She has the experience to get the job done, the passion to want to and the background and family that make her a standup person and member of society. While I can’t vote for Reshma myself (I’m not registered to vote in NYC), I support her for Congress and will do what I can to support her from the sidelines.

What other organizations do you know about that support women in politics? Leave a comment or message me to help out with a future blog post!
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