Everybody wants to know what happened to the charities after Charity Hack. How did they feel about the day? Was it worth their taking part?
Here's a blog post from one of the participants. It that was previously published here
CHARITY HACK 2013!!
“I think I’m a little bit in love with everyone” declared Bernadette from Care after Prison, a charity that offers ex-prisoners a safe environment and support to continue with their goal of leading free lives, during the first (and hopefully annual) Charity Hack.
See the video here.
Charity Hack, the brainchild of Kevin Delaney from the Irish Cancer Society, brought together five charities and around 25 hackers (people with fundraising, communications, charity and other experiences) to develop new campaigns. Charity Hack 2013 was held last week for 12 hours on a beautiful Saturday, though none of us regretted being inside. It was an incredible and invigorating experience!
Voice of Irish Concern for the Environment (VOICE) was one of the charities chosen to participate. I felt honoured to be included with such amazing charities as Rainbows Ireland, Irish Deaf Kids, Care After Prison and ACT for Meningitis.
The day kicked off at 9:00am with much trepidation and excitement. Four extremely talented people with fundraising and communications experience were assigned to work with VOICE for the next 12 hours. I was privileged to team up with Matt Lewis from the Irish Cancer Society, Ed Hurrell from Fundraising Ireland, Christine Brennan from theUniversity of Limerick and Maria Martin from Look Good Feel Better.
My original plan was to create a campaign around reducing plate waste in the food service industry and developing a ‘clean your plate’ initiative. Through this campaign I had hoped to encourage restaurants to offer ½ portions, substitution options and doggy bags to take uneaten food home. This plan was thrown out of the water and a new campaign was developed.
After much naval gazing and analysis of what VOICE excelled at and where we needed work, it was determined that we should build on our hugely successful Feeding the 5,000 event that was held last November. What was our new campaign to be?
We worked on a plan to empower local communities to take action to reduce their food waste and to become more aware of this issue through organising mini-Feeding the 5,000 events throughout the country. ‘Funky feasts’, ‘the recycled dinner club’ or ‘food rescue’ events (let us know what name you like best or add a new one!) will feature meals prepared with ‘ugly produce’ or food that would have been discarded by supermarkets or farmers. VOICE will develop an event planning pack for communities and help in the initial organisation.
Local champions will be identified to take on this challenge which will not only bring the community together, but will educate and raise the consciousness on the issue of food waste. This will be a fun event which will be different for each locality according to the organisers. There could be cooking demonstrations, kids activities, educational talks, menu sharing and leftover food recipe competitions. Donations for the meals will be sought to help finance this initiative.
This is just a concept for now, but with some continued help from my team and some hard graft, we should be able to create something special. Watch this space and let us know what you think.
Would your community be interested in taking part?
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