Out on the road with John Mayer

We've been out on the road with John Mayer for the past few weeks, building support for a really great initiative building support for veterans.

John has partnered with NCIRE, a northern California based research organization that is focused revamping veterans health care services. By looking at the 'whole picture', NCIRE hopes to help veterans young and old be healthy, happy, and productive.

NCIRE and Mayer have together launched a joint pilot project called the Veterans Health Integration Program. VHIP has four key areas of research they are conducting that related to veterans; the program is funded entirely by John Mayer and Mayer fans.

We are partnering with our friends at REVERB to take this program out onto the road for John. Working with volunteers at each stop, we are talking to fans about the importance of veterans issues, raising consciousness and funds along the way. 

More updates to come. In the meantime, check out vhip.org for more info, and some of our photos below. You can also search the hashtag #paradisevalley on Instagram and Twitter to see fan photos taken in our booth!

    Our volunteers at the Gorge!

    Fans showing support!

    Houston volunteers!

    Cincinnatti volunteers!

    Photobooth action

    Use the 'John Mayer Tour App' filters!

Updates from the Brad Paisley tour!

The Brad Paisley H2O II tour has been going strong, and Water = Hope has had a lot of success along the way!

We’ve made stops in 14 different cities now, have talked to over 4,000 people about clean water issues and worked with close to 100 volunteers in the process. And we are well on our way with our fundraising goals, using our time on the road this summer to once again involve the country fan community in bringing clean water to communities in need.



This past weekend we made two stops: Chicago and Columbus. Chicago saw our biggest volunteer crew yet, with 17 people joining us, some of whom drove from as far away as Milwaukee to be a part of the action. The team did great - it was our biggest night ever on the Paisley tour.



Columbus had smaller team, but they were very committed and ready to work! The torrential downpour of rain right when the doors opened didn’t even slow them down - they kept right on talking to people that had taken cover in some of the covered areas of the arena!

Our volunteers reflect the diversity of support that surrounds the clean water movement: last weekend alone with had students, retirees, non-profit executives, huge Brad Paisley fans, huge water.org fans, and a long time supporter of Senator Frist (co-founder of Water = Hope) among many others. It’s always exciting to see how issues such as this unite people in one common goal.



We are also pleased to see a lot of ‘return support’ on the tour itself; many fans have told us they supported the campaign last year, and are eager to do so again, buying a new shirt, signing up friends and family for more information, taking our info cards for classrooms, and so on.

We have five more stops ahead, Florida, Philly, DC and Raleigh. You can still sign up to volunteer, and if at one of the shows, be sure to stop by the Water = Hope tent to learn about how your support can enter you into a raffle to win an autographed Gibson guitar from Brad!

AF volunteering update

A big thanks to everyone who has signed up to volunteer thus far! We'll be in touch soon.


We still need more volunteers for the following shows:

Denver, Utah, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Phoenix, Santa Fe, and Memphis.


We are still taking sign ups for ALL shows, though the Texas shows are looking close to full - you can still be put on the wait list though!

Visit our AF Volunteer website for more info and to get signed up!

Arcade Fire volunteers needed!

Arcade Fire is about to hit the road again, and volunteers are needed in:
Denver, SLC, Phoenix, Vegas, Santa Fe, Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Indy, Austin, Houston and Dallas. Volunteers might also be needed for Coachella - more info on that soon!



Visit the Arcade Fire Volunteer page for more info. You can sign up there, or using the form below!

We hope to see you at a show soon!

Dublin and the UK

The second half of the tour has been spent in the UK and Ireland. We hit up London first, two big shows at the O2 arena. Our volunteers both nights came out and braved some pretty nasty weather and even nastier transportation problems to join us! The shows were a blast, really supportive, friendly fans, and our volunteers worked like crazy (and went up and down lots and lots of stairs) to talk to as many people as they could.







We moved onto Dublin from there, and I quickly learned why the band loves playing shows there so much! The crowds there were rowdy, but fun and supportive - some of our best nights on the whole tour were during our two nights in Dublin, in fact! Because of the layout, we set up three mini tables spread throughout the O2; our volunteer team really went above and beyond, with some of them staffing the tables, and the rest really working the floor; one volunteer signed up over 200 people on her own, which was really incredible! Our team in Dublin was a lot of fun: students, the brother of a volunteer from Madrid who does music therapy and his co-worker (they joined us straight from playing at a retirement home, ties still on!), former volunteers... as always, the amazing list can go on and on! We also had Shane join us, who works at Google Dublin.



Shane and I had been coresponding via email for a few weeks, as he was working to raise money for PIH at work ahead of the show, and he asked if I’d like to come speak to the Google team at his office. I asked Marika and Regine if they’d like to join, and the three of us went to Google Dublin on Monday and found a receptive audience of a few hundred staffers (and we later found out they recorded it to share company wide!) waiting to hear us talk about PIH, Haiti, and individual actions people can take to engage and make their own unique impact. It was a lot of fun, the team at Google was great, and we even got treated to lunch in their cafeteria!





After Dublin, the tour moved into Birmingham, Cardiff, Manchester and Glasgow for our final week. Our English crews in these cities were FANTASTIC - we got so much support for what we are doing from UK fans, it’s really unbelievable! A big shout out has to go to team Birmingham; though our smallest team in size, six amazing people, they nonetheless had the highest average of sign ups & conversations per volunteer than ANY of our other teams (and we had some really hard working impressive teams!), with each volunteer engaging with an average of 84 fans! That also means they won our ‘friendly competition’ among European cities to see which team could do that, so they’ll have a little Arcade Fire thank you gift coming in the mail soon!





All in all, it’s been an incredible run; 14 cities, 143 volunteers, tens of thousands of fans talked to, and hopefully even more inspired by our volunteers, the band, and PIH.

France

The Arcade Fire tour moved into France this past week, with dates in Marseille and Lyon.

We started out the week with only a handful of volunteers in Marseille; not sure entirely why, but I started to really work our social networks, and also asked the volunteers that had already signed up to help me in recruiting more people to join us. By show date, we had a full crew - I’m always so grateful for all of the work our volunteers do, esp when they rally together at the last minute for us, such as in this case!



We were joined as always by a diverse crew, including a teacher, several students, two mobile app developers and a public health worker. The team did great, giving us our best night on the tour thus far! All night they talked to fans, really focusing on getting them excited and inspired by what Kanpe and PIH are doing. As with most of our trainings, Marika came out and joined us to talk about the band’s involvement and support for these campaigns - her help was especially appreciated at these two shows given her fluency (and my lack of) in French! Our volunteers have all for the most part been bi-lingual, so no big issues there, but it’s always great to have someone else on hand who can help with translations. Team Marseille did really great - they signed up almost 20% of the audience in attendance than night (a pretty impressive feat for ten people to accomplish!), which in turn means that they talked to and inspired hundreds of people!

After a day off (and a band/crew ‘Thanksgiving Dinner’ in France) we moved onto Lyon. The venue was really cool - I was told it was an old meatpacking warehouse. Team Lyon came in ready to work; I found them all gathered together ready to go at the meeting time, and I assumed most of them already knew each other since they were chatting away. As it would turn out, they just found each other, and were excited, and started to talking to one another outside in the cold - I always love to see teams form a bond like that at the get go, they were such a cute group!



They worked like crazy too - it seems each show we do, the more people we end up talking to! They all stayed for a long time after the show ended as well, talking to fans for nearly an hour - it was a pretty crazy end of the night in Lyon!

The tour moves into Germany next, hoping it’s not too cold!

PIH and Kanpe in Spain with Arcade Fire!

The European leg of the Arcade Fire tour started up with two dates in Spain this past weekend, building support for Haiti, Kanpe, Partners in Health along with way!

Day one in Madrid: Palacio De Los Deportes sits in the middle of Madrid, flanked by a lovely plaza that quickly filled with fans lining up early to get a good spot on the floor. This was going to be a big show, nearly 15,000, and we were excited to get going!



As always, we were joined with an amazing crew of volunteers. Several were students at an American University in Madrid - and a big thanks to Maya O’Cadiz for helping us to recruit for this first show! We were also joined by teachers, musicians, community members and business professionals - all committed to the idea of helping Haiti forge a prosperous future. After a brief talk from Marika on behalf of the band, the crew got to work practicing how they were going to explain the work of PIH and Kanpe to fans. Once the doors opened, they hit the ground running, having nearly 600 conversations about Haiti in just under two hours - very impressive! A big thanks to our Madrid team - Neil, Andreas, Joseph, Maya, Susan, Stephanie, Didier, Diarmuid, Leticia, Bruno, Stephen, Curry, Ray, and Madelyn - for getting our tour off to a great start!



We arrive in Barcelona late - at least in tour terms! - the next morning. Palau Sant Jordi has an incredible view of the city and the sea from the top floor, where we were lucky to set up our Kanpe table! We were joined by a smaller but mighty crew of volunteers that night: Ines, Andrea, Patricia, Marina and Maribel who did a fantastic job and managed to talk to and inspire lots and lots of fans! It’s so exciting to see people really check out our set up, read about Kanpe and PIH and tell us about their own connection to Haiti or other parts of the world, or their desire to become engaged and involved.





As an added bonus, Regine and the band are still writing out and autographing set lists every night to give away to PIH/Kanpe supporters as well!



Our nights in Spain provided a great preview of the weeks to come as the tour moves into France, Germany, Ireland and the UK. We can’t wait to talk to and inspire fans across Europe about what they can do to support Haiti!

Volunteers needed for Arcade Fire shows in Europe!

Update Nov 8th: All of the UK and Ireland shows are pretty much full at this point, but feel free to sign up to be added to a wait list. We DO still need more volunteers for our Spain, France and esp German shows - please forward this link on to anyone that you think would be interested. Thanks for the great response so far - we'll be in touch with all of you soon!

We are about to head back out with Arcade Fire, this time to the UK and Europe, continuing to build support for Haiti and the important work that Kanpe and Partners In Health are doing.

We need volunteers to join us to make it a success! Volunteering is an amazing opportunity - in a matter of hours, you can talk to hundreds of people about the incredible work these organizations are doing, inspire them, and get them involved. And yes, you might even get to see an awesome concert in exchange for your hard work!

We need volunteers in Nov and Dec in Spain, France, Germany, UK, and Ireland.

Sign up below, or visit our Arcade Fire volunteer page to learn more, and please pass this on to anyone you may know that would be interested in joining in and helping out!

H2O Tour Wraps Up!

The H2O tour has wrapped up its summer run, and Lokahi is proud to have partnered with the Water = Hope campaign to build lots of support for clean water issues amongst country fans!

Our final two weeks on the tour were a bit of a whirlwind, with stops in San Francisco, San Diego, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Boise, Salt Lake City and Denver. Along the way, as always, we were joined by some amazing volunteers!



San Francisco and San Diego brought out lots of veteran volunteers, many of whom worked with us on tours with the ONE Campaign in years past – it was great to see familiar faces like Rochelle, Mary and Christine – all of whom were among the first ONE volunteers we ever worked with! It was a lot of fun to get to talk to so many fans while in California. From there, we moved on to Phoenix, where we were amazed to learn it can be over 100 degrees in September, go figure! We were joined by a massive crew of volunteers, including some veterans from our work on the Warped Tour and with Dave Matthews, and lots of new volunteers from local high schools and colleges as well. Albuquerque proved to be one of the best nights on the entire tour; we were joined by an AWESOME team of volunteers: college students and high school students and community members who all are passionate about clean water issues. We had one of our best nights of the entire tour in Albuquerque, a direct result of our awesome volunteer team! We also met author Sandra Postel who has written extensively about clean water issues; she was in the crowd and saw our PSA show on stage before the show, and came out to find us! You can learn more about her here.



As we headed out for out the very final weekend of the tour, we made our first stop in Boise, Idaho. After an eventful first couple of hours (including trying to track down our missing tour bus!!), we met our awesome volunteer crew for the night. The venue that we were at was on the Boise State campus, so we weren’t surprised that we had many dedicated BSU do-gooders! We had Katelyn and Daniel, freshman year roommates who actually went to their dorm and signed-up their whole floor, as Tara with her friend, as well as a couple other students. We also had a mother with her three daughters who were huge Brad Paisley fans and did awesome throughout the night!! All in all it was a great first night back, thanks to all the cool people and Water = Hope supporters that Boise had to offer.

After a three AM bus visit from Easton Corbin and his crew due to their bus breaking down, we landed in Salt Lake City and met our one man volunteer crew for the night. Josh, who had just moved to SLC recently to pursue his love of skiing, worked by himself and helped get the majority of our sign-ups for the night. He is really dedicated to volunteer work, and expressed over and over how much he really liked Water = Hope’s vision and goals. It was great working with him and we are so thankful to him for helping us out in Utah!

Next we were off to Denver, Colorado, a bit unhappily because it would be Water = Hope’s last night working with the tour. We weren’t ready for it to end! However we couldn’t have ended the whole journey with a better crew, twelve dedicated and hardworking individuals who agreed that we should end it all with a bang! We had a group of four people that came individually and throughout the night bonded over the Water = Hope work, and they ended up leaving as friends after watching the show together. Then we had our basketball girls, who all played together on the local high school team. Michaela, Lindsay, Bree and a few friends worked the entire night to get those donations and raised almost two hundred dollars between them, as well as getting a ton of signatures. All you Colorado-ians were so supportive of Water = Hope and we had such a huge amount of people walking up to the table that we could barely talk to all of you! In between watching the crew play pranks on the artists as they performed and watching the donations pile up, I think everyone agreed that we had a great last night in Denver!



After four months of weekends full of talking to fans about clean water in 33 different cities, we are proud to announce that Water = Hope hit our goal of raising $20,000 to build wells, and signed up nearly 14,000 people in support of the Simon Water for the World Act. Perhaps more importantly, this means that some 14,000 conversations about clean water happened over this summer between our volunteers & campaign team and the fans in each city, and we can only hope that some of those 14,000 people are going to share that message, get inspired to volunteer themselves or even lead clean water initiatives in their own communities.

None of this would be possible without the hard work and help of the 239 volunteers that joined us this summer; they inspired us night after night with their dedication – again, a HUGE thank you to all of you that joined us! We are proud to know that they’ll take what they learned and work to inspire thousands more this fall and spring on their campuses and their communities so that we can bring clean water to even more people.

Water = Hope and Lokahi truly believe in this idea of ‘a small drop making a big ripple’; the work of our volunteers and the fans that supported the campaign this summer is all the evidence that we need.

Keep checking in for more campaign updates and ways you can get involved; visit the Water = Hope/Hope Through Healing Hands Facebook page to stay updated, and check out all of our pictures from the summer!

On the road with Arcade Fire

On the road with Arcade Fire

A quick update on what I’ve been up the past two week: I’ve been working with Arcade Fire on joint project with Reverb and Partners in Health, greening the tour and running the fan engagement for PIH.

On the greening front, Reverb is coordinating backstage recycling, water stations and biodiesel fuelings. The band and crew were all given a reusable water bottle at the start of the tour, which they are then using to cut down on the amount of plastic water bottles being used each day.



I make sure there are ample water coolers or five gallon water containers with our cool little ‘dolphin pumps’ backstage and in dressing rooms for the crew each day, in addition to placing recycle containers throughout the backstage area, finding out what the venue recycles, and taking care of all advancing issues related to greening. We get biodiesel fuelings about twice as a week as well, fueling our trucks and buses with B20. The band has been really committed on this ‘green front’, even taking their reusable bottles on stage with them!




My afternoons and evenings are spent running an outreach program for Partners in Health, an organization I have long admired and am thrilled to be working with. Night after night we talk to fans about the work that PIH is doing and the relationship between the band and the organization, get fans to sign our ‘Stand with Haiti’ declaration, and take small donations to support the work that PIH is doing.



Each night is filled with incredible conversations with fans doing amazing things; people that have volunteered in Haiti, that work in global health, that work for local health organizations in their own towns, doctors that want to help PIH.



In New York at one of our Madison Square Garden shows we talked to a fan who had come in from Mexico City for the show, and really wanted to volunteer and help with PIH efforts where he lives. In Baltimore we met several people whom had just returned home from working in Haiti the previous six months. Our Philly show included a visit from several Haitian families that Partners in Health had placed locally for medical treatment following the earthquake - meeting the young, funny, smart, resilient little kids among them was a particular treat!



Doing engagement and organizing on a concert tour always reminds one of how much of the world is full of people silently doing their own thing to make things a little better, a little more just, and a little bit kinder. This tour has been remarkable on that front; night after night after night we get to hear incredible stories, and it feels great to know we are linking all of these amazing people together through the PIH community.



Our volunteers have been nothing short of amazing. Many of them have been students: high school students, college undergrads, grad students in public health, law, pre-med, and medicine leading efforts on their campus for both Partners in Health and other global health organizations, many inspired by the work of Paul Farmer and the story they read in Mountains Beyond Mountains.



They have come to us through student list serves, forwarded emails, Facebook and Twitter, and some have driven as much as three hours in each direction to join us. Our student volunteers in particular have been remarkable, I’m always so encouraged to hear about the efforts they leading on their campuses and in their communities, motivated by a strong sense of compassion and justice.



We have also been joined be a steady stream of volunteers that are no longer in school but are committed to the work that Partner’s in Health does and want to donate their time. All of our volunteers have worked incredibly hard, talking to thousands and thousands of people about the work of PIH, inspiring the Arcade Fire fan community about the work of PIH and the potential we have to forge a new future for Haiti and all of the developing world.

We wrapped up this short two week run in Toronto on Saturday night, where instead of Partners In Health, the set up was for Kanpe.



Kanpe is an organization that Regine Chassagne established with a close friend, and is focused on working in a very grassroots, one on one manner with Haitian families, linking them to the resources they need to end the cycle of poverty. Kanpe works to address health, nutrition, housing, education and financing/banking in part by partnering with organizations like Partners in Health and Fonkoze, helping families navigate the confusing stream of NGO resources available to them in their country to get what they need to literally ‘stand up’ and become self sustained.



The Toronto show was a lot of fun; we were joined by a Kanpe board member and Ambassador, as well as an awesome crew of volunteers who helped us have an absolutely incredible night - the ideal way to wrap up a tour!



Check out more photos here!

Be sure to become a fan of Reverb, PIH and Kanpe on Facebook to learn more and stay updated!

Water = Hope goes to Texas!

Another guest post by our blogger/campaigner Kelsey Neff!
-Brande



After a 16 hour bus ride, we started our Texan adventure in Hidalgo. At first we were a little concerned about how the night would pan out, especially when we heard that the Brad Paisley H2O tour was the first show of this magnitude to perform at this newer venue. We were pleasantly surprised when our AWESOME volunteer crew arrived, consisting of eleven Water = Hope supporters.

We learned that Konsuelo heard about Water = Hope through an ad on Facebook, and she told her brother Jesse who then told all of our other volunteers about it. By the end of the night we decided that we wanted to hire Jesse and his friend Isaac to recruit all of our volunteers, they were that awesome! We had our best night in Texas in Hidalgo, even though we had a crowd a third of the size as our other shows, which is a direct result of our great team. Thank you so much for coming out guys, we really appreciate all the work you did!

Our next stop (after a 3am bus visit from the Mexican border patrol…no joke!), was Houston where we were expecting a pretty large crew for the night. We started and ended the night with nine individuals who sweated it out with us in the hot Houston heat!! We had five high school friends, a mother with her two daughters and also Kallie, who was our big earner for the night. About half of our volunteers had never volunteered before and we were grateful that they decided to come and help us get those wells built! We were happy that at the end of the night they told us that they didn’t know that volunteering could be so much fun. Glad you guys could make it out!

The last city we visited was Dallas, which turned out to be a really great night! We had a smaller volunteer crew of three high school aged girls, Chelsea, Melody, and Lauren. They heard about Water = Hope through their aunt, who had volunteered for us in Cincinnati, and really wowed us with their hard work! We really enjoyed talking to them and were glad that they could make it out.

We also had Nicolas come out, who started out as a fan that we talked to in Chicago. He really liked Water = Hope and what we are trying to do on the tour, so he came back and volunteered for us. He was also so inspired that he wants to start a Water = Hope campus program on his college campus!! In Dallas we also had a visit from Jane Lynch Crain, who works with Hope Through Healing Hands.

She came by to check out the tent and see what we were up to and we were glad that she did!! We had a great night in Dallas and loved the response that we got from country fans there. Everyone that we talked to was so gracious and responsive to the goals we have for the H20 tour. Thank you so much Dallas, you were all amazing!!

This week we’re in Florida, starting in Daytona Beach then moving on to Tampa and West Palm Beach, come out and volunteer for us!!

Check out more photos here!