World Ocean Day Activities
Project Kaisei will be sponsoring a global water and coastal cleanup for World Ocean Day on June 8, 2009. This will unite some of the world’s ocean sports communities (paddling, diving, sailing and surfing) who will compete in a three-hour trash clean-up in their respective waters. Donations will be collected by each group, with 50% of the proceeds to be earmarked for local charity, and 50% for Project Kaisei. Project Kaisei will collate the total number of participants on that day, and total tons of trash collected. Click here for more information.
The Children’s Book
Project Kaisei already has an illustrated children’s book that will be used to bring awareness to the Plastic Vortex. With its partner FH, Project Kaisei will use this as an educational tool to inform youth about the dangers of plastic in the ocean.
University Outreach
Project Kaisei will reach out to university faculties and departments to identify volunteers (students and lecturers) to join the Mission. These volunteers will be able to bring knowledge back to their home countries and will be given teaching tools by Project Kaisei.
Digital
The Project Kaisei website will be regularly updated with interesting news, visuals and information on the Mission. An e-newsletter will be sent to subscribers and the full range of multimedia techniques will be used to build a global community of committed supporters. Project Kaisei is working with Ojingo Labs, one of the world’s leading video widget makers, to enable one of the first video blogs used for environmental causes. Its social networking and engagement capabilities are highly complementary to promoting environmental messages and activities.
Google Earth
We will use Google Earth’s ‘geo mapping’ capabilities to track every kilometer of the Mission using an android application called my tracks, which allows you to track our location via GPS and automatically upload it to a Google My Map. This will let people stay up to date with our progress in real time, and will allow us to add photos, videos or other rich content.
For Google, the Mission has the added benefit of building awareness of its tools that also have an environmental use. Co-promotion will mean that Google Earth users (with hundreds of millions of downloads to date) can be regularly updated on the Mission site and be able to track its progress online. The new Ocean feature in Google Earth makes it easier for people around the world to visualize the problem in the oceans without physically having to go there.
Speaking Engagements
Speaking engagements will be conducted pre and post launch. Founding members of Project Kaisei will regularly speak to select audiences to build awareness of the issue and grow the supporter base. Project Kaisei members have already spoken at a number of functions in California and Hong Kong, for both school children and the broader community interested in ocean related issues.