General | WeCanEndThis

3may.

Share Your Idea – End Hunger – Win $1,000

By wecanendthis | Published: 3 May

We invite disruptors and innovators of all types to join the online portion of the SXSW CauseLab.

Now thru Friday, May 28, you can add your ideas and suggest ways to improve other peoples’ ideas. Thanks to our friends at Goodzuma, we will award $1,000 to the best original idea and $500 to the person who helps others take their idea to the next level.

If you’d like to research the issue first, you can read this welcome letter and visual briefings provided by our charity partners, Share Our Strength and Feeding America.

Or, feel free to get started now.

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3may.

Tyson Foods to Meet Summer Needs

By wecanendthis | Published: 3 May

Congratulations again to the ten states who won the Digital Can Drive contest. Thanks to the generosity of Tyson Foods, each state will receive enough food to provide 150,000 meals.

Large donations of frozen protein to food banks are always welcome, since they aren’t that common. This is especially true during the summer months when families who rely on school breakfast and lunch programs are forced to look elsewhere for help.

Starting this month and going thru August, Tyson Foods will deliver the ten semi-truckloads of protein to our local partners in the ten winning states. Here’s the delivery schedule for each state:

May: Connecticut and Vermont
June: Oklahoma, Indiana, and New York
July: Wisconsin, Missouri, and Oregon
August: Idaho and Tennessee

The plans for our first two truck deliveries in Connecticut and Vermont have been set. On May 19, the first truck will make stops at the Connecticut Food Bank (East Haven, CT) at 9 am ET and Foodshare Food Bank (Bloomfield, CT) at 2pm ET. Specific dates and times for the rest will be announced in the coming weeks.

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20apr.

Spring Cleaning: Getting Ready for April 29

By wecanendthis | Published: 20 Apr

We’re doing some Spring cleaning at WeCanEndThis.com and thought you’d like to know what’s coming next.

First, we decided to relaunch the virtual CauseLab brainstorm on the same day we unveil the refreshed WeCanEndThis.com. The big day is now Thursday, April 29. (We wanted to avoid the Earth Day churn and allow our partners at Goodzuma the time to finish building out some new functionality into their platform.)
In addition to tweaking the website’s layout, we’re putting the finishing touches on two new videos. Both will play prominent roles on the updated website. One will be used to promote the truck deliveries in the Top 10 States, while the other is a high energy recap of the SXSW CauseLab that will serve as a call-to-action for the virtual brainstorm contest.
To prepare for the April 29 refresh, we’re lining up promotional partners to help us spread the word that day and encourage more people to submit their ideas for the $1,000 and $500 cash prizes. If you want to help promote the effort, let me know and we can make sure you have what you need to join us.

Thank you if you’ve taken the time to visit the Goodzuma platform to upload your new ideas and offer your ideas for improving what’s already been submitted. We’ve seen new ideas sprout up and more people helping out there.

You can go there now to see for yourself (use “sxsw” as the user ID and code).

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9apr.

Open Letter to SXSW CauseLab Attendees

By wecanendthis | Published: 9 Apr

Dear Disruptors and Innovators from the SXSW CauseLab:

Wow. Hard to believe that it’s a little more than three weeks ago when Brian, Scott, and I had the pleasure of working alongside you in the inaugural SXSW Interactive CauseLab. CauseLab was just the beginning of the year-long initiative we launched with our cause partners, Feeding America, Share Our Strength, and Capital Area Food Bank to spark innovation and broaden engagement to end hunger in America.

Since CauseLab, our team has been busy sifting thru the notes and ideas generated from both the morning and afternoon sessions. We noticed some similar themes and nuggets of intriguing ideas that we are working on fleshing out. Three, in particular, are potentially game-changing and will help fuel greater awareness, access, and advocacy:

Create a Data Consortium: collect, organize, visualize and make available comprehensive information down to the local level on hunger statistics for any hunger organization to utilize.
Hunger Think Tank: a sustained collaborative, cross-disciplined, coordinated team to generate and share ideas of how to address issues of awareness, access, and advocacy that organizations — particularly, smaller community-based — can implement to reduce hunger in the community and start to build a hunger free community. Many of the ideas that were generated during the sessions, for instance, might be developed further by this think tank.
Army of Davids: to help accelerate local advocacy, create training, resources and tools to activate local advocacy. This might include mobile capabilities, online tutorials, virtual volunteering, etc.

With your help, we’ll be developing these three big ideas out with the goal of attracting entrpreneurs, social and otherwise, to adopt and run with them. So please, stay in touch with us and share your thoughts on how to shape and enhance these bigger ideas. With the creative, innovative brain power, and different perspectives that each of you bring, we know we can develop these into truly game changing approaches.

A few more updates for you:

The Goodzuma platform will launch officially on April 15. Before then, we need your help to continue to shape the 24 ideas we generated together in Austin and to populate it with your own individual ideas. Because of the unexpected delay in the launch, we will be running the idea contest from April 15-May 31 for the $1,000 and $500 cash prizes. You can add your ideas by going here.
Tyson Foods, the sponsor of the Digital Can Drive, and our team are working out the specific food bank recipients for each of the Top 10 States. You can go to http://wecanendthis.com to see the Top 10 States that will each receive enough food to provide 150,000 meals.
We are encouraged by the public feedback we’ve received about the CauseLab at SXSW. It seems to have stood out in people’s minds as one of the highlights of this year, thanks in large measure to the participation of people like you. Here are some links to blogs and photos taken: Alternet Post, Thought Gadgets, Techcocktail, and SXSW Official Photos. Let us know if you have seen or written about CauseLab and we can add it to our list.

Thank you again for your participation in the inaugural SXSW interactive CauseLab. We look forward to the work ahead to bring your ideas to life. And, trust that you will continue to participate during this year so that together we can end hunger.

All the best,
Anne Mai Bertelsen

P.S. As a reminder of our year long initiative, you can view the slide that Brian Reich shared during his presentation at CauseLab.

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6apr.

Local Partners Announced for the Top 10 State Deliveries

By wecanendthis | Published: 6 Apr

At the beginning of the Digital Can Drive, we asked for your input on how to select the local partners that would receive the Tyson Foods truck deliveries in the winning states. Your response was loud and clear: the food banks and communities that were the most active promoters of the Digital Can Drive should receive the deliveries.

We agreed with this idea and spent the past two weeks asking those who donated digital cans to let us know who led the winning states to victory. We also reviewed the blogs, Twitter accounts, and Facebook pages in each state to see what we could learn on our own. After considering these factors, we’ve come to a decision and are pleased to announce our local partners for the Tyson Foods truck deliveries:

Oklahoma: Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma (Tulsa) and Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma (Oklahoma City) decided early into the contest to share their state’s victory
Vermont: Vermont Food Bank (South Barre)
Oregon: Oregon Food Bank (Portland)
Idaho: The Idaho Food Bank (Boise)
Connecticut: Connecticut Food Bank (East Haven)
Missouri: Harvesters – The Community Food Network (Kansas City)
Indiana: Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana (Muncie) will be sharing with other Hoosier State food banks
Tennessee: Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee (Nashville)
New York: Foodlink (Rochester)
Wisconsin: Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin (Madison)

Each food bank serves a multiple county area, some even covering their entire state. The Tyson Foods trucks will be loaded with much needed protein and feed many, many people thru the various food agencies supplied by these food banks. The exact dates of each delivery are being determined now with the help of our local partners. We’ll announce them when we’ve finalized the schedule.

Given the quantity of trucks, we will deliver them over the next 4-5 months. Not only will this give each food bank the opportunity to showcase their state, it will help meet the increased demand on the food bank system during the summer months when school children aren’t able to benefit from school breakfast and lunch programs.

Congratulations to these great local partners! We look forward to the upcoming deliveries and shining a bright light on hunger in America with your help. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be asking for your help to compile photos, videos, and written stories about hunger in your state while showcasing the good work already being done and how people can help end hunger in America.

Let us know if you’d like to help us by leaving a comment!

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