I recently attended the Social Good Summit in New York City, an event that brought together world leaders, celebrities, journalists and bloggers to look at how social media is being utilized to make social good. The event paralleled September's United Nations summit in New York and focused on initiatives helping to move toward the UN Millennium Development Goals.
In attendance were do-gooder celebrities including award-winning actors Edward Norton, Gina Davis, and musician Craig David, promoting new online platforms for philanthropy, bettering girl's representation in children's T.V. programming, and the fight to stop Tuberculosis.
Following these celebrities around were two young Kiwi women, who were anything but paparazzi. The were part of a delegation of young New Zealanders asking celebrities and world leaders for a unique kind of autograph--to sign their "flip flop" (known in New Zealand as a Jandal) in hopes of raising awareness about the Millenium Development Goals and cutting poverty in half. The idea is, that while many New Zealanders may take their flip flops for granted there are people around the world who don't even have access to basic footwear.
They managed to get signatures from several world leaders, including Helen Clark, Melinda Gates, Jeffrey Sachs and Chris Hughes (co-founder of Facebook), for the UN Millennium Development Goals Summit. And they're collecting more signatures at www.p3foundation.org
Can you handle the jandal?
