Rowan's blog

How to start a movement (Hint: it takes two)

Interesting TED talk from Derek Sivers on how to start a movement (incl. the importance of leaders and followers). It's based on footage from a video you have probably seen on YouTube.

:-)

Russell King's Open letter to Conservatives (US)

I was left speechless after reading the recent Harris poll which revealed Republican attitudes about Obama.

Russell King, clearly, was not. Read his 'Open letter to Conservatives'. Brilliant!

Saving the Asian Elephants

The highlight of our Thailand trip was staying at the Elephant Nature Park, approx one hour north of Chiang Mai.

Asian Elephants are currently on the move towards extinction. There are only 3,000 Asian elephants in total left in Thailand. The wild Asian elephants are protected by law, but the life and treatment of domesticated (working elephants) in Asia is not protected in any way. These magnificent beings are often treated very poorly.

The Elephant Nature Park was founded by award winning conservationist Sangduen ‘Lek’ Chailert. She began rescuing injured and mistreated Asian elephants in 1992, and in 2003 (with the support of a Texan millionaire) was able to establish a permanent home for them in a beautiful lush valley.

There are now over 30 rescued elephants at the park. They are free to choose a family, form small herds and live amongst people who love and respect them. They are not expected to work or perform. Instead they are able to wander the park, feeding at their leisure, bathing in the river and playing together in the mud pit. Each elephant has a distinct character, which becomes more evident as they come to regard the park as their home and leave their past behind.

Visitors to the park help feed and bathe the elephants. If you stay overnight as we did, you may get to walk around the park in the morning, meet many of the elephants and hear about their working lives. Most of their stories are unfortunately heartbreaking.

I was in awe of all the elephants; their wise eyes, huge heavily grounded bodies, their gentle natures and their ability to forgive humans for the pain and suffering we, as a race, have put them through.

Personally, I fell in love with Mae Khum Kaew (also spelled Mae Kham Gaeo). She was radiant and gentle. Even her skin was soft!

You can read her story here. Read all the elephant’s stories via the links on this page. 

Creating the Elephant Nature Park was a huge achievement by Lek. Unfortunately there is much more work to be done to save and improve the lives of Asian Elephants. Lek Chailert is working on a variety of additional projects:

• Lek is in the process of setting up more properties for rescued elephants including 2,000 acres of land in Surin.
• She set up Jumbo Express, an outreach program that endeavors to improve the lives of domesticated elephants as well as offer free medical assistance and education to their mahouts and people they work for.
• Lek speaks out about the cruel practice of the 'Phajaan' or training crush, the horrific, violent traditional method of ‘breaking in’ an elephant to be ridden and worked. This practice is still used widely in Asia. Lek is campaigning against this, in favour of training methods that use positive reinforcement. For those of you reading this and thinking ‘Monty Roberts for elephants’, I agree there are strong similarities between Monty and Lek’s missions. With Lek's blessing, I emailed Monty’s office introducing Lek to him and inviting him to contribute his support to her excellent work.

What you can do to help:

1. Visit or volunteer at the Elephant Nature Park (you can go on a day or overnight trip from Chiang Mai or you can volunteer at the park for a week or two).
2. Volunteer as part of the Surin Project.
3. Foster an elephant (this makes an excellent gift). 
4. Make a donation to support the activities of the Elephant Nature Foundation.
5. Shop at the online Ele store (more great, socially responsible gifts).
6. Help raise awareness and funds (there are lots of ideas to get you started here)!
7. Join the Elephant Nature Foundation. 
8. If you’re in the USA, join the Serengeti Foundation which supports ENF. 
9. If you are in the UK and want to help, contact ENF UK.
10. Join the ENF Facebook Group.
11. I recommended the organisation set up Flickr Groups for: Elephant Nature Park, Surin Project, Elephants that need saving. Will update with links if/when available. ***UPDATE: ENP Flickr Group is now live.***
12. Read the recent media articles about Elephant Nature Park and please talk about the plight of the Asian Elephant. This National Geographic video featuring Lek is an excellent resource to share. The more awareness and people involved, the better!
13. Join 'Elephants in Crisis' (EIC), and ElephantVoices, two other organisations doing excellent work.
14. Discuss the plight of elephants, potential solutions, pilot projects etc in the 'Professionals Protecting Elephants LinkedIn Group'.

Note: If you are in Asia

• Please do not support elephant street begging, elephant painting or elephant shows.
• If you feel you must go trekking on the back of an elephant, please take a long hard look at the elephant’s health and enthusiasm for its work before you pay for the trek. If you really think about it, you may prefer the idea of walking beside a free elephant to riding on a working one!

Some of my photos from the Elephant Nature Park can be viewed in my 'Thailand' set on Flickr, starting here.

'Join the revolution'

I stumbed across this (now old but still) interesting post about the Kazaa 'Join the revolution' campaign which I worked on in 2003.

Reading it brought back so many memories. I miss those days of optimism!

What if?

I had a tough week last week and really needed to find some inspiration. I picked up an old book off the shelf. It's titled 'Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned About Life In School - But Didn't' by John-Roger and Peter McWilliams.

It is a fantastic book, containing lots of useful tools. I thought I'd share the prelude with you. It made me smile.

PRELUDE:

What If?

What if life were perfect?

What if you lived in a perfect world of perfect people and perfect possessions, with everyone and everything doing the perfect thing at the perfect time?

What if you had everything you wanted, and only what you wanted, exactly as you wanted, precisely when you wanted it?

What if, after luxuriating in this perfect world for the perfect amount of time, you began thinking, "There seems to be a lack of risk, adventure and fun in perfection. Having it 'my way' all the time is starting to get dull."

What if, after yet another perfect length of time, you decided, "Perfection is a perfect bore."

What if, at that point in your perfect world, you noticed for the first time a button marked, "Surprise."

What if you walked over, considered all that might be contained in the concept of "surprise", decided, "Anything's better than perfect boredom", took a deep breath, pushed the button...

...and found yourself where you are right now - feeling what you're feeling now, thinking what you're thinking now, with everything in your life precisely the way it is now - reading this blog.

Disorderly conduct arrest leads to White House drinking session

Ok, so Obama is the master of reconciliation. It seems to be rubbing off on many around him.

This story is as gold as the beer. The headline: Obama Beer Photo Op Now White House History.

IBM's grand plan to save the planet

IBM's CEO Sam Palmisano has outlined a new formula for changing the world: Find problems, throw in billions of dollars in R&D, add consultants and an earnest ad campaign - and watch the profits roll in. Read about it in this CNN article. 

The ad campaign is called Smarter Planet, keep an eye out for it. I'd love to hear what you think.

Cute lion

Two guys reared this lion from a baby in England but the authorities would not allow them to keep it once it reached maturity so they were forced to give it up.

They took it back to Africa and placed it in a wildlife sanctuary, a year later they went to see it. They were told it would not remember them. Watch the WMV file: Download D2_-_friend.wmv (there's no sound).

:)

The Green Rant

I mentioned in an earlier post that Green issues seem to be gathering momentum. Yesterday's Question Time in Canberra was filled with heated questions on global warming, no doubt partially triggered by the UK's Stern Report. Dad sent me a link to the BBC Stern Report Q&A page.

I think I made a little bit of a difference last week.

Sunrise (TV breakfast show) the week before last featured David Suzuki discussing awareness in Australia. Great that they were talking about the issue but they didn't mention what people could do!! I jumped online and sent them a long detailed email, something to the effect of: "Please tell people they can switch to green power, buy carbon credits, go carbon neutral etc. And why doesn't Sunrise walk the talk and go carbon neutral (win the hearts of viewers and invite other co's to follow their lead)??"

Guess what happened last week? Sunrise addressed every item from my email, in order, on prime time TV!! And they're investigating going carbon neutral. I still haven't had a reply to my email (perhaps the production team received hundreds saying the same thing) but I felt I'd made a difference in the world last week :)

Are you helping? Really?

I've felt good about being a UNICEF Global Parent for years. Until I saw before and after photos of the lake at Darfur. Darfur is one of the areas my donations have been going to.

The before and after images were in the movie 'An Inconvenient Truth'. The photos show glaciers, mountains and lakes. Glaciers have retreated, the snowline on mountains is higher, lakes have dried up.

The before shot of Darfur shows a huge full lake (that UNICEF could derive water from) and the after shot shows a pocket hankerchief sized area of water in one corner of the original lake (where can UNICEF get water from now?)

The average Australian emits approx 15 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide into the atmoshere each year, so at the same time I thought I was helping, I was contributing to the drought in Darfur.

I'm now 'Carbon Neutral'. It's very easy. Find out how you can become Carbon Neutral too (I listed what to do in my post below).

Sorry if I'm going on about this but I think it's really important.

By the way, UNICEF has a wide range of blank cards, Christmas cards, gift wrap, toys and pressies for sale. The cards work out cheaper than most cards from other shops and profits go to great causes. Check out their online shop or go to their little store at Level 7, 171 Clarence St (next to Comm bank near Cnr of King). The store is only open from 9-5 weekdays.