Sunday 3 February 2008

Ethical Campaigner of the Year

If you find yourself short of things to do over the next couple of weeks... I'm encouraging people to vote for my friend Anna in the Observer/Guardian Ethical Awards. I've known Anna for years and she has always been committed to living as environmentally-friendly as possible. Last year, she actually made it to the shortlist, alongside the likes of Al Gore and George Monbiot.

Anyway, this is what her hubbie, Nathan has to say on the subject

"I'd like to ask a massive favour (again) which is to spend a couple of minutes of your time voting for her a second time in the 2008 Observer Ethical Awards as campaigner of the year.
We got the feeling last year that we caused a bit of an upset in that the Observer had been hoping for another star nominee.
"There is rumour that she could be up against Leonardo Di Caprio for his film the 11th Hour and Sheherazade Goldsmith for her book ‘A slice of Green Life’.
"She was voted last year for her work in setting up the "Sound Impact Awards" with the inspirational Jamie Agombar and it's now in its second year. It is an environmental awards scheme for Students’ Unions and I attach the guide so that you can see the excellent work that has been done as a result of the scheme. Here is link to one of the press stories about it from last year to give you an idea of what went on.

"This year over 60 Students’ Unions are signed up. The inaugural ceremony was held last year and Ray Mears was the host.

"To enter the yearly award, unions have to set up and adhere to a strict set of environmental criteria. She set them up after ticking her students union off for using Pizza boxes and finding out that they and a large number of students didn’t care. She thought that an awards ceremony and a bit of competition might do the job and it has. To give you an idea of the numbers involved, over 1 million students this year would have seen some of the environmental best practice in place as a result of these awards and over a five year period that then becomes about at least 5 % of the UK population. Lets also not forget that HE students and typically officers in the unions go on to become major decision makers (Gordon Brown, Jack Straw..) so getting them on board is crucial.
"The Observer has just launched their third ethical awards and I, and a number of others, have started voting for Anna for SECTION 3 -Environmental Campaigner of the year.

"If you could vote for Anna that would be great and please pass it on to your friends so we can perhaps see a local campaigner in place this year. We know that there were just over 6000 votes last year so we really need all hands on deck.

"Even by coming in the top 3, the exposure has meant that more publicity has been gained for the awards resulting in an increase in attention and support for them and the Sound Impact Awards now has it’s own full time staff member, Catherine Dishington.
"I’d also like to point out that Anna does all this and her Journal work for free.
"To vote for Anna is very easy and takes 2 mins max , go to http://observer.guardian.co.uk/ethicalawards/
You don’t have to fill in all questions and can just click next, go to question 3 and type in: Anna Heywood and put Sound Impact Awards as the reason and click next etc through the other ten questions.

"You do have to fill in your details to make the vote count but I promise it takes less than two minutes.
Deadline is March 2nd 2008."

Before you make any decisions about whether you want to vote for Anna, here are a couple of links to have a look at:

Anna's campaigning with The Journal http://blogcentral.journallive.co.uk/anna_heywood/
Sound Impact Awards - some info - http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2007/06/02/mum-in-star-line-up-for-a-top-eco-award-61634-19235610/

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