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SpaceShare Carpooling & Green Logistics January Newsletter
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If not, just reply and let me know.
Happy New Year!
The January newsletter reviews how our vision is evolving, and
what we expect to accomplish in the coming year. And to invite
you to help SpaceShare make the connections we need to do
our green work.
The new year is a good time to ask everyone to help us make
new connections. To start with the basics: through the coming
spring and summer, what large festivals and conferences will
you be attending? Let us know about the events, but even
more important: tell the organizers you'd like to carpool, and
encourage them to contact SpaceShare. As a ticket-buyer,
they're much more likely to listen to you than to an outside
environmental group.
The same pattern seems to hold throughout the environmental
movement: it takes a few people focused on a project, in
combination with thousands of people asking for change at the
ballot box or cash register, to effect change. Adding your voice
to the calls for a greener planet really does make the
difference.
Our vision for the New Year
SpaceShare grew about 500% last year. Our matching tools, our
website, and our outreach plan were all revised, made cleaner
and easier to use. We're still "small," providing carpooling and
environmental logistics to a tiny percentage of the events that
need it. SpaceShare's vision, since the beginning, has been to
combine big dreams with solid work. Many environmental
projects languish as ideas waiting for someone else to
implement them, we want to make sure SpaceShare happens
no matter who wins elections or what the government decides
to fund.
Outreach is our next challenge. Joel, Andrew, Susan, Liane and
Brian will be spreading carpooling across North America,
forming the core of a new outreach effort. As this team comes
together, we're in a position to turn our "prototype" into a real
current for change. With the new outreach team, we're looking
for a rapid transformation, offering hundreds of events the
option to be green.
It's our clear promise to people thinking of volunteering: if you
put your time and energy into this project, you will make a
difference for the planet!
Looking Ahead One Step: Green Events
In our vision, we discussed SpaceShare as an "icebreaker" or
"asphalt breaker," introducing event planners to many other
ways to green their events. That vision will begin to solidify
into action this year.
We're in the process of launching a nonprofit, Green Events, as
an Initiative of the MetaFoundation (www.metafoundation.org).
SpaceShare will continue to build the sharing and networking
tools. Green Events will find new sources of funding and
volunteers to work on a broader mission. Green Events
volunteers are putting together the Green Guide mentioned in
previous newsletters, simplifying green event planning and
green travel: www.spaceshare.com/green
By the end of this year, we hope again to have a few hundred
percent growth of the basic SpaceShare tools, and to complete
the prototype for broadening our efforts to green events.
Looking further
The new year is a good time to look ahead. Green Events
hopes to find funding for a few amazing projects in the
coming years:
- International development efforts often need supplies
delivered, and travelers often hope to help the nations they
visit. We want to connect travelers who can bring an extra
suitcase of supplies with the NGOs that need them.
- Earth Stewardship should be a part of every faith based
meeting. We hope to provide carpooling tools for every church,
synagogue, mosque and other faith-based institution in North
America. Imagine not only saving millions of passenger miles
each week, but having the chance to reinforce the connections
between religion and Earth Stewardship, to create an avenue
for religious environmentalists to reach congregations of their
faith. Do you want to write the grant proposal that makes this
happen?
We're still holding true to our long term goal, making it
possible for you to walk out of your house with a cell phone
and get a ride.
A request for everyone
A Request for feedback: have you been to an event that has an
alternative rideboard? What do we do better, what do other
systems do better? Has anyone used both a SpaceShare system
and Bioneer's system this year to try to match for rides and
rooms? What did you think? How can we improve our tools?
Some key requests
We're still looking for someone to research and contact
speakers, encouraging the speakers to encourage their events
to be green. A great class project or internship - know any
students starting spring semester?
Fund an intern. Even as we progress towards wild goals,
SpaceShare has mostly been feeding off the efforts & pocket of
one person, and Green Events has no budget at all. If your job
keeps you busy but you'd like to contribute to some amazing
work for the planet, you could work miracles. A relatively small
stipend of $500 or $1000 would help us attract a stable,
consistent intern for an entire semester as we launch this
project.
If you would like to donate to Green Events in any amount,
we'd love your assistance. These projects have been powered
mostly by volunteers and we've avoided asking for money as
long as we can, but a little bit of funding would go a long way
right now. Can you help?
http://www.postcarbon.org/index.php?page=membership-
greenevents (please let me know if you do, as you'll also be
testing out this new web form.)
Growing Volunteer Activism
Along with the new outreach team, a big thank you to Ann
Yahmail and Tom Yamaguchi, who have been doing some
great work editing our new documents and website.
And belated thank-you to Eugene von Raesfeld, who came out
of the blue to run our exhibit at the Sustainable Resources
Conference in Colorado!
Be the Change,
Stephen
PS. Tips from the SpaceShare geeks: Email Privacy
Google your email address. Spammers use "spiders,"
automated programs that browse the web, going from link to
link, collecting email addresses for spam lists. Google does
something similar, but for more worthy purposes. If your email
address comes up on a Google search, you can be pretty sure
that web page will get you on a spam list.
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