activism tends to have kind of a radical
connotation doesn’t it boycotts protests
burning bras
unfortunately it’s this radical
connotation that can sometimes push
support away from a good cause students
for example often want to get involved
but at this stage in life many don’t
consider themselves activists you may
not be married to a particular cause you
may not know a whole lot about the
Syrian refugee crisis or about
endangered species because of that you
avoid involvement altogether you think
you won’t be accepted amongst the
radicals because you’re just regular
kids and that’s a pretty big gap now in
my 10 years of non-profit activism I’ve
noticed two prominent methods used to
promote a cause now the first and most
common method used to promote a cause is
called conventional activism
conventional activism is what we are all
used to it’s the use of sad photos and
depressing statistics to guilt your
audience into getting involved our
favorite nonprofits use conventional
activism all the time because it works
it does guilt has a strong emotional
appeal right but we don’t want to hang
on to our guilt you don’t wanna keep
guilt right you want to appease it make
a donation or sign a petition do
something to feel like you paid your
fair share and then get out of there now
in 2007 NFL player Michael Vick was
busted for dogfighting his aggressive
and traumatized dogs were going to be
euthanized until
a nonprofit called Best Friends Animal
Society decided to step in and rescue 22
of these dogs back in 2008 now from a
conventional activism standpoint right
the sad photos and depressing statistics
best friends found themselves in a very
unique position with a lot of ammunition
right I mean you’ve got these dogs with
scars on their faces and heavy metal
chains around their necks as they look
up it’s you’ve behind the bars of their
kennels just hoping for a second chance
you kidding me get the pants off your
audience with that you can target
heartstrings and earn a lot of guilt
money they could call the campaign Vic’s
victimless oh I think it’s brilliant I
also came up with it I came up with it
to give you an example of what a
conventional activist campaign looks
like but Best Friends Animal Society
decided to take a different route they
told these dogs stories from a positive
perspective they got their followers
excited about the dogs progress they
launched a campaign called the victory
dogs this is actually one of Michael
Vick’s former fighting dogs to change
his name to handsome Dan and you are
seeing his new family that best friends
was able to find for him they used
creative and uplifting criteria to get
their audience inspired to get involved
now this example of creative and
uplifting activity arteria to inspire
your audience is what I call positive
activism so the work of best friends and
other nonprofits like them inspired me
at a young age my sophomore year of
college my good friend and I decided to
create the first organization officially
devoted to the concept of positive
activism we call this organization the
heat establishment and our goal was to
bridge that gap between radicals and
regulars so let’s talk about heat for a
second shall we heat stands for the
human environmental animal team we’re a
creative campaign organization and we
launched with a pretty simple premise
address real-world issues through outs
of art
humor me creativity yeah it can be tough
to address these controversial and
divisive issues without pointing your
finger at the bad guy demonizing the
abusers but our goal is not to focus on
what’s wrong with the world you can turn
the news on and see as much of that as
you like our goal is to shine the light
on the people and the companies who are
taking steps forward and doing good in
the world we don’t want to be that
organization that forces you to watch
these bloody factory farm videos and
appalled you we want to appeal to you we
want to cast a wide net and attract
those of you that change the channel
when you see conventional activism at
work you know who you are you see the
sad Sarah McLachlan commercial come on
in the arms of an angel and they’ve got
this like one-eyed kitten who for some
reason is soaking wet and shivering and
they’re like please give us money or
she’ll die and you come home after like
a long day of work and you sit on the
couch and like jeez I and you change the
channel because when you’re dealing with
what you’re dealing with
right when people are working through a
long day you’ve got all your problems in
life sometimes you don’t want to face
another problem you don’t be responsible
for that kittens life or all the
homeless kids in the world or the rain
forests being cut down I get it I don’t
think that these organizations that use
conventional activism are doing anything
wrong and I don’t think those of you who
ignore a conventional activism are bad
people some of you are but most of you
are not link we as activists need to do
a better job of earning your attention
we need to get creative so with that
philosophy in mind we launched this
little Club called heat and within only
seven months of being active we earned
the title of organization of the Year
from Texas State University that was a
big deal for us because we’re just a
little club but fast forward to today
seven years later we are now one of the
largest registered student organizations
at Texas State University we’ve
incorporated as a 501c3 nine
profit and we’ve successfully expanded
to eight universities across Texas it’s
not even the best part
we’re active at large schools like UT
and A&M now were active at smaller
schools like Southwestern University we
even have a high school chapter and our
high school chapter kicks ass they’re
not really allowed to talk like that but
I can and I want to say some more things
about a high school chapter because they
put together one of the best examples of
a positive activism campaign
it’s a cypress woods high school in
Houston Texas yeah okay all right now I
know who I’m talking to
we we we had a chapter there that wanted
to address a pretty serious issue
the malaria outbreaks in Mozambique
Africa it’s a big deal right I mean
people are dying we can’t just tell a
joke and be a positive activist and get
people involved in something like that
so what is an activist to do well a
conventional activist would probably
post some photos of children suffering
from the disease will be posting death
statistics on campus so you know how bad
it’s getting but all it takes is one
student having a rough day to walk up
past a display like that and hit a
u-turn because why because sometimes
people don’t want to face another
problem okay so what brilliant strategy
can bridge that gap cast a wide net
attract a larger audience it turns out
these students all had a passion for
sports
so they wheel in this basketball goal
into the courtyard of their high school
and they set it up with some booths and
some posters with some statistics on the
disease but the focus of this project
was the dunking competition show off
your skills donate a dollar to dunk now
I’m at work right this is all happening
during a high school lunch period I get
a text message from a student I press
play I want you to visualize with this
little video they texted me was was
showing me right so there’s this
basketball hoop in a courtyard where all
the students are eating lunch and
there’s this crowd of students
surrounding it too many to count
there’s one kid dribbling the ball that
drives through the crowd
jumps over another student slams the
ball so hard that the Gulf falls over
the crowd goes nuts there’s hats flying
in the air the screams are overwhelming
the speakers of my iPhone and I’m
thinking that’s a crap ton of people
what a successful campaign right I
thought to myself it’s a big group of
kids half of them probably don’t know
what’s going on in Mozambique I couldn’t
tell you where Mozambique was on the map
when I was in high school but yet
they’re here at our project involved in
a charity event not just watching it not
just bystanders participating because it
doesn’t feel like charity that’s the
brilliance of what we do and it’s very
simple but what we did was cast a wide
net and just kind of increase our
chances of reaching a larger audience an
audience who would have otherwise walked
right past our conventional activism
display now these students may not stick
around they may not become activists but
we got a chance to have that
conversation with them to earn their
involvement that’s more than we would
have had if we didn’t use positive
activism I don’t want to overlook the
fact that these students actually did
have a successful campaign they
attracted a ton of people they raised
well over $200 in the span of a lunch
period for high schoolers that’s pretty
good and considering that a mosquito net
right to prevent malaria cost less than
$10 a piece these kids were able to
create real change in the world do some
real good for people just by
incorporating some creativity this
project became known as nets or nets
basketball nets mosquito nets I don’t
know if you guys got it and it is now a
reoccurring project throughout our
organization and that’s just one example
of a heat campaign we have a few more
that I’d like to share with you we do
animal shelter calendars this one’s
called play toy we have another called
spots Illustrated and it’s just kind of
a fun a fun way to kind of provide an
alternative to what we’re used to all
right none of those I’m gonna be
euthanized
tomorrow pictures right we’re getting
the dogs out or get them dressed up or
get no tension for them through a
positive way this one’s a lot of fun
always pull out this is a
now you like that one huh this is an
environmental awareness campaign to
remind folks to unplug appliances when
not in use
save some electricity surprisingly
popular at our college campuses and I
don’t want anyone here to think that
this is just a one-off like okay
college students are having fun with
activism we have earned well over twenty
thousand hours of community service and
that’s because our students come back
they enjoy the work we’re doing we’ve
taken positive activism to other parts
of the country Costa Rica Nicaragua for
the second time in a row this last
summer we took students to an
organization called Elephant Nature Park
in Thailand where we worked with
rehabilitated elephants rescued from
street performances and thanks to some
awesome coordinators we were able to
take our students to Bali Indonesia for
some coral reef restoration this summer
these are our students dressed up in
scuba gear planting coral polyps in an
area that was hit pretty hard by some
coral bleaching this is real and I could
go on all day just kind of talking about
our accomplishments but my goal for
being here today is not to brag about
the success of my nonprofit it’s to
share an idea positive activism and I
want to summarize bike by making sure
you know that I’m not opposing
conventional activism there’s nothing
wrong with being so passionate that you
get a little radical you can go boycott
go protest go burn all the bras you can
find just know that if that’s your only
approach you’re gonna push some people
away people who could have otherwise
been an asset to your cause think of it
this way there’s a spectrum of issues
people think it’s black and white you’re
this or that you’re a vegan or you’re a
hunter you’re pro-life or you’re
pro-choice but a lot of us kind of fall
in the middle of a lot of these issues
or we’re on one side but could be swayed
with a good argument when you focus on
what is and what is it what you are and
what you are not you’re missing a big
group of people that kind of need you to
reach out to them a lot of us here today
consider ourselves environmentalists but
most of us drove cars to get here today
a lot of us here today stand against
violence but that doesn’t mean we can’t
enjoy an occasional Quentin Tarantino
film an episode of Game of Thrones
perhaps my point is it’s not black and
white when you find that spectrum of
issues you’re tempted to draw a line in
the sand when you figure out what you
stand for right I believe in this that’s
great but your opponent on the other
side of that issue is doing the same
thing drawing a line in the sand and
then what do you have you have two
people on opposite sides of a line in a
yelling competition trying to attract
more people to your cause and pulling
them away from the other cause that you
disagree with no work is getting done in
a yelling competition it’s gridlock it’s
frustration positive activism aims to
surpass gridlock and frustration all
right we want to temporarily erase that
line in the sand for the sake of
building a bridge to the other side have
some conversations with people who
otherwise would not have listened to you
would have paid attention to you just
gotta get creative you got to earn their
attention positive activism is just
another tool you can use to address the
same issues not instead of conventional
activism in addition to I challenge all
of you to incorporate some creativity
into whatever campaigns for whatever
causes you’re passionate about positive
activism is an invitation for everyone
to use creative and uplifting and
unconventional methods to bridge the
gaps you may face in life thank you
[Applause]
connotation doesn’t it boycotts protests
burning bras
unfortunately it’s this radical
connotation that can sometimes push
support away from a good cause students
for example often want to get involved
but at this stage in life many don’t
consider themselves activists you may
not be married to a particular cause you
may not know a whole lot about the
Syrian refugee crisis or about
endangered species because of that you
avoid involvement altogether you think
you won’t be accepted amongst the
radicals because you’re just regular
kids and that’s a pretty big gap now in
my 10 years of non-profit activism I’ve
noticed two prominent methods used to
promote a cause now the first and most
common method used to promote a cause is
called conventional activism
conventional activism is what we are all
used to it’s the use of sad photos and
depressing statistics to guilt your
audience into getting involved our
favorite nonprofits use conventional
activism all the time because it works
it does guilt has a strong emotional
appeal right but we don’t want to hang
on to our guilt you don’t wanna keep
guilt right you want to appease it make
a donation or sign a petition do
something to feel like you paid your
fair share and then get out of there now
in 2007 NFL player Michael Vick was
busted for dogfighting his aggressive
and traumatized dogs were going to be
euthanized until
a nonprofit called Best Friends Animal
Society decided to step in and rescue 22
of these dogs back in 2008 now from a
conventional activism standpoint right
the sad photos and depressing statistics
best friends found themselves in a very
unique position with a lot of ammunition
right I mean you’ve got these dogs with
scars on their faces and heavy metal
chains around their necks as they look
up it’s you’ve behind the bars of their
kennels just hoping for a second chance
you kidding me get the pants off your
audience with that you can target
heartstrings and earn a lot of guilt
money they could call the campaign Vic’s
victimless oh I think it’s brilliant I
also came up with it I came up with it
to give you an example of what a
conventional activist campaign looks
like but Best Friends Animal Society
decided to take a different route they
told these dogs stories from a positive
perspective they got their followers
excited about the dogs progress they
launched a campaign called the victory
dogs this is actually one of Michael
Vick’s former fighting dogs to change
his name to handsome Dan and you are
seeing his new family that best friends
was able to find for him they used
creative and uplifting criteria to get
their audience inspired to get involved
now this example of creative and
uplifting activity arteria to inspire
your audience is what I call positive
activism so the work of best friends and
other nonprofits like them inspired me
at a young age my sophomore year of
college my good friend and I decided to
create the first organization officially
devoted to the concept of positive
activism we call this organization the
heat establishment and our goal was to
bridge that gap between radicals and
regulars so let’s talk about heat for a
second shall we heat stands for the
human environmental animal team we’re a
creative campaign organization and we
launched with a pretty simple premise
address real-world issues through outs
of art
humor me creativity yeah it can be tough
to address these controversial and
divisive issues without pointing your
finger at the bad guy demonizing the
abusers but our goal is not to focus on
what’s wrong with the world you can turn
the news on and see as much of that as
you like our goal is to shine the light
on the people and the companies who are
taking steps forward and doing good in
the world we don’t want to be that
organization that forces you to watch
these bloody factory farm videos and
appalled you we want to appeal to you we
want to cast a wide net and attract
those of you that change the channel
when you see conventional activism at
work you know who you are you see the
sad Sarah McLachlan commercial come on
in the arms of an angel and they’ve got
this like one-eyed kitten who for some
reason is soaking wet and shivering and
they’re like please give us money or
she’ll die and you come home after like
a long day of work and you sit on the
couch and like jeez I and you change the
channel because when you’re dealing with
what you’re dealing with
right when people are working through a
long day you’ve got all your problems in
life sometimes you don’t want to face
another problem you don’t be responsible
for that kittens life or all the
homeless kids in the world or the rain
forests being cut down I get it I don’t
think that these organizations that use
conventional activism are doing anything
wrong and I don’t think those of you who
ignore a conventional activism are bad
people some of you are but most of you
are not link we as activists need to do
a better job of earning your attention
we need to get creative so with that
philosophy in mind we launched this
little Club called heat and within only
seven months of being active we earned
the title of organization of the Year
from Texas State University that was a
big deal for us because we’re just a
little club but fast forward to today
seven years later we are now one of the
largest registered student organizations
at Texas State University we’ve
incorporated as a 501c3 nine
profit and we’ve successfully expanded
to eight universities across Texas it’s
not even the best part
we’re active at large schools like UT
and A&M now were active at smaller
schools like Southwestern University we
even have a high school chapter and our
high school chapter kicks ass they’re
not really allowed to talk like that but
I can and I want to say some more things
about a high school chapter because they
put together one of the best examples of
a positive activism campaign
it’s a cypress woods high school in
Houston Texas yeah okay all right now I
know who I’m talking to
we we we had a chapter there that wanted
to address a pretty serious issue
the malaria outbreaks in Mozambique
Africa it’s a big deal right I mean
people are dying we can’t just tell a
joke and be a positive activist and get
people involved in something like that
so what is an activist to do well a
conventional activist would probably
post some photos of children suffering
from the disease will be posting death
statistics on campus so you know how bad
it’s getting but all it takes is one
student having a rough day to walk up
past a display like that and hit a
u-turn because why because sometimes
people don’t want to face another
problem okay so what brilliant strategy
can bridge that gap cast a wide net
attract a larger audience it turns out
these students all had a passion for
sports
so they wheel in this basketball goal
into the courtyard of their high school
and they set it up with some booths and
some posters with some statistics on the
disease but the focus of this project
was the dunking competition show off
your skills donate a dollar to dunk now
I’m at work right this is all happening
during a high school lunch period I get
a text message from a student I press
play I want you to visualize with this
little video they texted me was was
showing me right so there’s this
basketball hoop in a courtyard where all
the students are eating lunch and
there’s this crowd of students
surrounding it too many to count
there’s one kid dribbling the ball that
drives through the crowd
jumps over another student slams the
ball so hard that the Gulf falls over
the crowd goes nuts there’s hats flying
in the air the screams are overwhelming
the speakers of my iPhone and I’m
thinking that’s a crap ton of people
what a successful campaign right I
thought to myself it’s a big group of
kids half of them probably don’t know
what’s going on in Mozambique I couldn’t
tell you where Mozambique was on the map
when I was in high school but yet
they’re here at our project involved in
a charity event not just watching it not
just bystanders participating because it
doesn’t feel like charity that’s the
brilliance of what we do and it’s very
simple but what we did was cast a wide
net and just kind of increase our
chances of reaching a larger audience an
audience who would have otherwise walked
right past our conventional activism
display now these students may not stick
around they may not become activists but
we got a chance to have that
conversation with them to earn their
involvement that’s more than we would
have had if we didn’t use positive
activism I don’t want to overlook the
fact that these students actually did
have a successful campaign they
attracted a ton of people they raised
well over $200 in the span of a lunch
period for high schoolers that’s pretty
good and considering that a mosquito net
right to prevent malaria cost less than
$10 a piece these kids were able to
create real change in the world do some
real good for people just by
incorporating some creativity this
project became known as nets or nets
basketball nets mosquito nets I don’t
know if you guys got it and it is now a
reoccurring project throughout our
organization and that’s just one example
of a heat campaign we have a few more
that I’d like to share with you we do
animal shelter calendars this one’s
called play toy we have another called
spots Illustrated and it’s just kind of
a fun a fun way to kind of provide an
alternative to what we’re used to all
right none of those I’m gonna be
euthanized
tomorrow pictures right we’re getting
the dogs out or get them dressed up or
get no tension for them through a
positive way this one’s a lot of fun
always pull out this is a
now you like that one huh this is an
environmental awareness campaign to
remind folks to unplug appliances when
not in use
save some electricity surprisingly
popular at our college campuses and I
don’t want anyone here to think that
this is just a one-off like okay
college students are having fun with
activism we have earned well over twenty
thousand hours of community service and
that’s because our students come back
they enjoy the work we’re doing we’ve
taken positive activism to other parts
of the country Costa Rica Nicaragua for
the second time in a row this last
summer we took students to an
organization called Elephant Nature Park
in Thailand where we worked with
rehabilitated elephants rescued from
street performances and thanks to some
awesome coordinators we were able to
take our students to Bali Indonesia for
some coral reef restoration this summer
these are our students dressed up in
scuba gear planting coral polyps in an
area that was hit pretty hard by some
coral bleaching this is real and I could
go on all day just kind of talking about
our accomplishments but my goal for
being here today is not to brag about
the success of my nonprofit it’s to
share an idea positive activism and I
want to summarize bike by making sure
you know that I’m not opposing
conventional activism there’s nothing
wrong with being so passionate that you
get a little radical you can go boycott
go protest go burn all the bras you can
find just know that if that’s your only
approach you’re gonna push some people
away people who could have otherwise
been an asset to your cause think of it
this way there’s a spectrum of issues
people think it’s black and white you’re
this or that you’re a vegan or you’re a
hunter you’re pro-life or you’re
pro-choice but a lot of us kind of fall
in the middle of a lot of these issues
or we’re on one side but could be swayed
with a good argument when you focus on
what is and what is it what you are and
what you are not you’re missing a big
group of people that kind of need you to
reach out to them a lot of us here today
consider ourselves environmentalists but
most of us drove cars to get here today
a lot of us here today stand against
violence but that doesn’t mean we can’t
enjoy an occasional Quentin Tarantino
film an episode of Game of Thrones
perhaps my point is it’s not black and
white when you find that spectrum of
issues you’re tempted to draw a line in
the sand when you figure out what you
stand for right I believe in this that’s
great but your opponent on the other
side of that issue is doing the same
thing drawing a line in the sand and
then what do you have you have two
people on opposite sides of a line in a
yelling competition trying to attract
more people to your cause and pulling
them away from the other cause that you
disagree with no work is getting done in
a yelling competition it’s gridlock it’s
frustration positive activism aims to
surpass gridlock and frustration all
right we want to temporarily erase that
line in the sand for the sake of
building a bridge to the other side have
some conversations with people who
otherwise would not have listened to you
would have paid attention to you just
gotta get creative you got to earn their
attention positive activism is just
another tool you can use to address the
same issues not instead of conventional
activism in addition to I challenge all
of you to incorporate some creativity
into whatever campaigns for whatever
causes you’re passionate about positive
activism is an invitation for everyone
to use creative and uplifting and
unconventional methods to bridge the
gaps you may face in life thank you
[Applause]
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