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The finalists have been selected by a panel of judges from a pool impact award 2017.pngof nominations made by members of the nonprofit community. Now, you will choose the winner by voting for the campaign of your choice!

The campaign with the most votes will win the Impact Award and £1,000 and the runners up will win the Innovator Award and £200 each.

Voting will close at midnight on 4 March, 2017.

Here are the finalists:

  

Craftivist Collective: Marks & Spencer Living Wage Campaign

Craftivist Collective called on Marks & Spencer to take steps towards becoming an accredited Living Wage employer. There had been previous contact behind the scenes - all very friendly, but no real progress. The Craftivism action aimed to step up the pressure, but in a way that was positive rather than directly confrontational and gain a meeting with M&S to discuss the issue further.

The action involved public ‘stitch ins’ outside M&S stores around the UK (organised by the Craftivists) to engage shoppers in conversation about the issue. They shared the offline events online via Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. 24 Individual craftivists researched board members, M&S’ celebrity faces and the CIOs of the five biggest shareholder companies of M&S to develop personalised hand-crafted artwork which were delivered in person along with campaign information.

The AGM action was also documented during the day on social media and retweeted by Lucy Seigel (presenter on the One Show and columnist) and Own Jones (author and journalist). These innovative offline quiet actions led to media coverage in Time OutLondon, The Observer Magazine, many craft blogs during the campaign as well as 85,000 signatures on the petition hosted on Care2's petition website. They did all this within 5 weeks.

As a result, 50,000 M&S employees have had their pay increased to the level of the 2015 Living Wage. 

The campaign inspired people with the different approach. Board members told craftivists how moved they were by their gifts and spoke to their children about the living wage. One board member put her hanky in the M&S Archive museum in Leeds, which she called "a place where only objects with key significance for the company go."

The wife of the Chair of the Board told craftivists how the Living Wage wasn't even in the board's mind before the campaign. She told them quietly that  it was the most powerful campaign they had received and she wished she could join the Craftivist Collective.

There has been a ripple effect from this campaign. It is still being shared online, inspiring and empowering individuals and organsiations to use this 'gentle protest' technique for their own campaigns. Using craft can build ongoing relationships as critical friends rather than aggressive enemies with UK politicians, US senators and even Head Teachers and school governors. The principle of campaigning to work with, not against to speak truth to power has inspired not for profits and individuals to try this different approach.

https://craftivist-collective.com/Marks-and-Spencer-Living-Wage-meeting-update 

 

IC Change: Change Herstory

IC Change is a grassroots volunteer-led campaign group calling for the U.K. Government to bring in a life-saving women's rights law - the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.

When the campaign started in 2014, it was 2.5 years since the U.K. government promise had promised ratification. This process had clearly stalled.

The campaign is to amplify the voices in the women's sector calling for ratification of the Istanbul Convention, make the public aware of this life-saving law and create the political will to call for ratification of the Istanbul Convention.

This law covers a range of forms of violence including domestic violence, rape and sexual violence, FGM, and  so-called honour based violence. It is a strategic approach to ending violence against women, from prevention and prosecution of violence, through to protecting those experiencing violence - and ensuring the government monitors violence properly.

This is some of what has been achieved:

  • Change Herstory campaign with a coalition of over 40 women's organisations supporting calling for MPs to #ChangeHerstory by ratifying the Istanbul Convention.
  • 135 MPs (with strong representation from all parties) showing up on a Friday to vote for a Private Members Bill calling for the UK government to ratify the Istanbul Convention.
  • Significant press around the private members bill and the MPs coming together to vote (www.icchange.co.uk/press).
  • Recognition of the campaign in Hansard and with MPs citing its role in bringing the Istanbul Convention to the attention of MPs.
  • Emma Watson's support engaging a new audience about the Istanbul Convention.
  • All of this achieved by volunteers working in their spare time and building coalitions across the women's sector and human rights sector.

http://icchange.co.uk/ 

 

Livity UK: Undivided

Undivided is the UK’s first nationwide, youth-led campaign to demand the best possible Brexit deal for young people. The campaign was formed by 30 young people in the wake of the EU referendum, between us, we voted Remain, Leave or didn’t vote at all (some of us are under 18). But regardless of how we voted, we are connected by the motivation to fight for young people’s interests in Brexit.

We planned Undivided in a hot room in Brixton over the course of 3 days, and at the end we had a campaign we felt could change contemporary politics as we know it, and inform one of the most important political events of our time. We were fortunate enough to receive funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to allow us to build the innovative website platform we dreamed up, and officially launched campaign on October 26th with coverage across the Today programme, BBC2, ITV, Sky, 4Music, The Guardian and Huffington Post.

The campaign focused on bringing young people together, to unite, organise and mobilise. Using a digital platform, all demands are uploaded and voted on by UK 13-29 year olds. The top demands will be curated as the top youth demands to help influence Brexit negotiations.

We use tools and platforms that young people inherently use and understand, to bring important political issues to them and to encourage action. To do this, we have worked with over 100 'micro influencers' (young people with large Instagram, Twitter or YouTube followings) - which encouraged thousands of young people to understand Brexit in a native setting. We also partnered with Buzzfeed to achieve this.

Undivided has reached over 8 million young people, and has engaged over a quarter of a million young people through events, social media and schools activity.

To date we have had over 240,000 votes on key demands from 13-29 year olds at weareundivided.co.uk.

www.weareundivided.co.uk  

 

The Microbeads Coalition: Ban the Bead

The Microbeads Coalition is a join effort of the Environmental Investigation Agency, Fauna & Flora International, Greenpeace UK, and the Marine Conservation Society.

Microbeads are tiny microplastic particles that are intentionally added to a wide range of products, including most notably face washes and body scrubs. Once washed down the drain, they enter our waterways and oceans where they are eaten by sea creatures. This is not only harmful to marine life, but also potentially to us, as toxins from these microplastics can leach into the bodies of the animals that eat them and be passed up the food chain - possibly to our plates.

In January 2016 the UK microbeads coalition was formed following the announcement of a ban on microbeads in the USA. We launched a petition calling for the UK government to follow suit, which quickly became one of the largest-ever online petitions on an environmental issue in the UK, achieving over 310,000 signatures in under 6 months. This petition was handed in to Downing Street on 8th June 2016, World Oceans Day.

Alongside our petition, we conducted polling to show that over two thirds of the British public wanted a microbeads ban, generating online and offline headlines (e.g., Daily Mail, ASOS, Vogue, the Guardian).

On the day of the petition hand-in, our accompanying #BanTheBead Twitter action saw our hashtag trend in the top 10 in the UK, and received support from celebrities as diverse as Ellie Goulding, Chris Packham, and Kirstie Allsopp.

By working together collectively as a coalition of NGOs with different strengths and resources, we were able to pull together an online and offline campaign in an incredibly short period of time and make microbeads one of the key UK environmental issues of 2016.

As a direct result of our campaigning, in April 2016 the UK parliament's Environmental Audit Committee launched an inquiry into microplastics. Following our petition hand in and the associated social media and press coverage, in August 2016 the committee delivered its report calling for a full ban on all microbeads in the UK. Shortly afterwards, in responding to this recommendation, the UK Government announced that they would be introducing a ban on microbeads.

In responding to this announcement, the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, Mary Creagh MP, said: "I'd like to thank everyone who signed the petition. Your action helped pile the pressure on Government to ban microbeads."

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/uk-government-urged-to-follow-us-example-and-ban-plastic-microbeads-a6886351.html 

 

Right2Water

The Irish government, under the weight of huge banking debt, moved to privatise the water infrastructure under direction of the IMF.

Resistance to the installation of water metres began locally and the mobilisation began in local communities and grew to relatively small protests of 5,000 people in Dublin. All this time mainstream media ignored the campaign amid controversy over the awarding of the contract to install water meters to a company owned by Denis O'Brien (who owns the majority of Ireland's media). 

Right2Water started in this context by bringing together local community groups, smaller progressive political parties and a few unions to create a national campaign platform.

When digital mobilisation was introduced the campaign, it quickly grew to become the largest online petition in the country's history providing the campaign with the base it needed to continue mobilising people online for offline action.

While previous protests and the launch of the initiative were ignored by mainstream media the first national protest could not be ignored. 100,000 people were moblilised from all over the country to protest in the capital. The majority had never been involved in protest before and the campaign successfully brought together people from across the spectrum of Irish society and political leanings (left, right and centre). Subsequently the group organised almost 100 protests across Ireland.

It has grown into the largest social movement in the history of the state. As a result, the government rowed back on planned water charges offering a reduced fixed annual fee. 

Under the Right2Change banner, 32 candidates were elected to parliament during the general election taking seats from established austerity parties. 2/3rds of current parliament members support the abolition of water charges.

The movement is now growing into a broader issue-based grassroots movement, acting as a distributed network of community activist groups on issues other than water. Recently the #HomeSweetHome campaign harnessed the Right2Water network and social media to raise €170,000 in few weeks online, occupying a government building and providing homes for 40 people over Christmas. This is expected to grow into other issue areas.

http://right2water.ie/ 

Questions regarding the voting process? Please email us at events@care2team.com. Thanks!

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