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Slacktivism - Why Snopes is Wrong About Internet Petitions
Apr 28, 2010

If you've ever wondered whether signing an online petition makes a difference, please check out my post today in our Trailblazers for Good Cause Channel.

I wrote it in response to an ill-conceived post on Snopes.com that questioned the value of online activism.  If anyone tells you signing petitions doesn't make a difference, please consider forwarding a link to my post to help set them straight. 

Have no doubt, online activism is a powerful force, changing the world.

Here's the link:  Slacktivism: Why Snopes Got it Wrong About Internet Petitions
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Posted: Apr 28, 2010 10:17am
Inspiring Young Activists Speak Out for Dolphins
Nov 13, 2009
I love when Care2 helps inspire new activists. We recently received a touching package from New Zealand that helped reinforce why all of us at Care2 do what we do. The package contained the following letter:

Dear the lovely people at Care2.com,

We are Room 2 at St Mary's School in a small town called Milton, New Zealand. We are a class of 18, 6-7 year old children. We have taken a huge interest in helping to free the dolphins from captivity. We took the liberty of signing our own petition and writing some valuable reasons about why we think dolphins do not deserve to be kept cooped up in captivity.

We know we have only 19 signatures, however, we wanted to do all we could in order to make a change in any dolphin's life.

We hope you like our letters and photos of our art work that we have done in support of this cause.

We hope we have helped to make some kind of change for the dolphins.

Free the dolphins! They are too precious!

Yours sincerely,

Room 2 at St Mary's School, Milton

With the cover letter was a package of individual, handwritten letters from all of the kids with reasons why they wanted dolphins freed, along with their photos. Their NZ school children w dolphinresponses are adorable. But what inspires me the most is that each personal letter is filled with care and compassion: "It can hurt the dolphins and it's not enough room for the babies," writes one.  "They are friendly and they have friends in the ocean," says another. "It's like hurting God's pets," another letter says. Letter after letter, all implore people to get the dolphins out of captivity.

The petition, letters and photos now adorn a wall at Care2’s headquarters in California.

We wrote to the kids' teacher,  Luchia Hermens. Miss Hermens found out about the plight of the dolphins through Care2's Facebook group and was inspired to bring the message of saving the dolphins into her classroom (I've previously written about Care2's work to save dolphins).

"I asked the children if they were interested in learning more about the dolphins and asked them if they would like to help get the dolphins out of captivity and they really wanted to. We looked at your website and we researched lots more about dolphins and saving them and the children became very concerned and wanted to do as much as they could," Miss Hermens explained. "They wanted to help save their lives, and they did not want the dolphins being hurt and we want their babies to be happy and survive with their mother and have enough room to live, play, and learn."

In addition to writing letters, the children created dolphins in an art project. One of the farmers in the Milton area had extra vinyl, so Miss Hermens drew outlines of dolphins. The children used ripped up magazine pages to make a collage on each of the dolphins; the result is three adorable dolphins that now decorate Miss Hermens' classroom.

Miss Hermens used this as a starting point for further research; the students did an assembly presentation with the information they discovered about the dolphins and continue to do artwork and writing about these magnificent creatures.

Best of all, the children in this very small town in New Zealand are learning how to be stewards of the earth and its inhabitants -- and we hope they'll grow up to be activists for dolphins on Care2! Thanks to Miss Hermens for getting them started on this path and for sharing their story with us.  Miss Hermens class
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Posted: Nov 13, 2009 4:08pm

 
 
 
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Author

Randy Paynter
male , single
Hillsborough, AA, USA
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