The Four Years Project

The Four Years Project:

 Excerpted from Jean Hudon's Earth Rainbow Network compilation at http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2010/InconvenientTruths2.htm :

Recommended by Rudolf Schneider (res0@bluewin.ch) - Note from Jean: I've already registered the support of the Earth Rainbow Network at http://www.fouryearsgo.org/

FOUR YEARS. GO.

A movement to change the course of the world.

What we do – or don’t do – in the next four years will determine the quality of life on this planet for generations to come. And you have a role to play.

We are living in a unique and critical time of human history – a time of great threat and even greater chances. On the one hand we rapidly approach dangerous tipping points where life as we know it will change irreversibly. On the other hand we already have the technologies and solutions we need to tackle this crisis of humanity. All that’s missing is a common awareness about the possibilities, and the political and public will to do anything at all.

We invite you to collaborate in what could become the largest grassroots campaign in history. Its central focus is an unprecedented level of organizational and individual collaboration to shift the trajectory of humanity’s impact on the world

Perhaps most importantly, it isn't run from the top according to some big master plan that everyone is supposed to work on. It comes from everywhere and nowhere, and it aims to spark a self-organizing movement, inviting all NGOs, companies, communities, and people to choose their most potent and visionary social improvement projects and commit to accomplishing them within the next four years – in the context of millions of others making the same decision. Its guiding principle is "Take responsibility for what you love as an act of service." FourYears.Go. seeks to catalyze a newly vibrant world of wildly diverse and inspired initiatives to co-create a better tomorrow now.

Spurred on by imminent planetary crises and the immediate opportunity for social transformation, hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals are coming together to launch a global campaign that will motivate and align the actions of thousands of organizations and millions of individuals.

This growing coalition of NGO’s, in partnership, participation, and creativity of the world’s largest independent advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy, creators of such memorable ad campaigns as Nike’s “Just Do It” and Lance Armstrong’s “Live Strong,” has created FourYears.Go., a global initiative including a massive communications campaign executed.

The initiative is called FourYears.Go. (http://www.fouryearsgo.org/) because a time frame of four years is needed to apply the solutions we already know and to develop those we will still need. Four years to finally do it the right way. Four years that can determine the course of the coming thousand years of human experience. And the time to get going is: NOW.

Pachamama co-founder Lynne Twist describes the campaign and how it started in a very inspiring 30 minute video: http://www.dynamicvideos.net/FourYears.html

Dan Wieden one of the top ad men in the world was profoundly touched during a recent, Amazon rainforest tour he was on, organized by http://www.pachamama.org/. He decided that doing pro bono work for the Pachamama Alliance could start to make up for forty years of selling people things they don't need. His ad agency is now working on videos to kick off Pachamama's new FourYears.Go. campaign.

The official start of the campaign was 14 February 2010, but in the run-up there are already more than 250 organizations committing to the idea and implementation of FourYears.Go.

The first step for you would be to register yourself or your organization on http://www.fouryearsgo.org/ and start designing the projects you could commit to.

As this campaign builds there will be many opportunities for collaboration, and I ask that we continue the dialogue exploring how your organization can play a role and how the initiatives that you are engaged in can be enhanced with more participation and potentially more funding.

With enormous gratitude for the work you are already accomplishing and excitement about the potential of working together to generate the “great turning,”

Marion Callahan
Clinton Callahan