Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Coldplay

We got the opportunity to spend a few nights out with Coldplay earlier this summer, helping our our partners at Oxfam. Lokahi has really expanded the training component of our organization over this past year, and likewise we were excited to be invited by Oxfam to help train their on the ground touring team. During our nights out on the tour, we helped create
systems, volunteer trainings and other mechanisms to ensure that the field efforts over the course of the tour would maximize Oxfam's ability to engage as many fans as possible in their campaigns, encouraging them to sign up, take action, and get involved!

As always, these trainings also provided us with the bonus perk of a chance to be on the ground, working with volunteers and supporters, which is by far the most rewarding part of this work! Having ran the field efforts on the 2005 Coldplay tour for Oxfam, it was also pretty cool to see the impact our efforts made some three years on. We had a great time meeting and working with volunteers in Los Angeles and San Jose, and talking to fans about the amazing work that Oxfam is doing around the world.

You can check out our photos from the Coldplay shows here, and learn more about our training programs on our website.





Monday, September 01, 2008

Back on the road with Warped!

Brian and I got to hit the road a few weeks back now, doing work on the California dates of the VANs Warped Tour. In addition to building support for our friends at ONE and Oxfam, we also registered voters and spread the word about our newest partner, Face AIDS, an amazing student led organization doing work to fight AIDS in Africa. Our Face AIDS volunteers in Mountain View, in fact, were quite adept at adopting the Warped Tour aesthetic, as you can see by the evidence below:

Face AIDS vols learn the punk rock aesthetic

I've always loved working Warped - this was our 7th year out in some capacity - it seems to always remind me of why I got into doing this work to start with. Talking to people, especially so many young people, about these issues, and knowing that they might not have gotten informed or inspired otherwise is incredibly rewarding. I always go back to thinking about how music was what politicized me in a lot of ways, and how cool it is that someone could go to a show and literally have their life changed because they talk to one of our volunteers - as I always tell our volunteers, it might seem like what we are doing is simple, but it makes a big impact!

By the end of the week Brian and I had gotten several thousand people signed up to learn more and (hopefully!) get involved. A big thanks to all of you who came out to help, and do keep checking back here for updates and more ways you can get involved!

If you are not yet on our volunteer list, by the way, please be sure to get signed up for ways you can be involved.

Thanks!
-Brande