Happy Holidays! This is our last newsletter before the holidays — we’re really looking forward to taking a couple of weeks off to hang with our families, ski a little bit, and, as always, eat a ton of food. Of course, if you have anything you’d like to share over the next couple of weeks, please just reply to any one of our newsletters — we’d love to hear from you!
Here’s another quote to just carry with you as you cross into new year:
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.
So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.
- Neil Gaiman
As always, if you missed yesterday’s newsletter, you can find it here. Let’s dive into what the community is up to.
Lauren Singer, Founder of Package Free
"My goal in life is to create large-scale positive environmental impact. I was inspired by being involved in activism around the oil and gas industry, reading Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, and realizing that I was so passionate about the environment and sustainability, but that my day-to-day actions weren’t in alignment with that. I would talk about how much I hated the oil and gas industry, but I was subsidizing them every single day, multiple times a day, through consuming single-use plastic products. I felt like such a hypocrite and so I decided to do something about it. I decided to stop using plastic and then trash altogether to live zero-waste in order to align with my daily actions with my values for environmental sustainability."
Check out her journey and more guidance here.
After studying Environmental Science and Politics at NYU, Lauren Singer started a blog called Trash Is For Tossers to make a zero-waste lifestyle more accessible and comprehensible to everyone.
In 2017, she decided to launch Package Free, a little pop-up shop for sustainable CPG brands to show off their wares in a brick-and-mortar environment in Brooklyn. Last year, she raised $4.5 million in seed funding to scale this retail concept.
Learn more about Package Free’s history and vision here.
Free Money for Social Enterprises. Techcrunch released a long list of institutions that are supporting for-profit social enterprises with cash and community support, and in many cases without dilution.
Action Network. An organizing platform for activists.
Social Impact Venture Capital. You can find a list of funds here and here.
CAA. If anybody is looking to get involved with the CAA protests, check these out:
Protest Posters — printable posters, designed by Anjali Chandrashekar
Creatives Against CAA — images for social media
Tech Jobs for Good helps mission-driven companies hire the best tech talent in the United States. Every Friday, we’ll highlight a few amazing recent opportunities.
Methods for Inclusion Research Fellow – Partnership on AI · San Francisco, CA
Civic Digital Fellowship – Coding it Forward · Washington, DC
Data Analyst (National Justice Database) – Center for Policing Equity · Remote
IT Specialist – Center for Policing Equity · Los Angeles, CA/New York, NY/Remote
For more, check out their site here. If your company’s looking to post a job and reach purpose-driven and passionate people, please reach out.
Monday: India passed the highly controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) last week, sparking protests across the country – the police have reacted violently and internet access has been shut down in key areas. Also, very little was accomplished at COP25, the global climate summit, primarily because of the US’s refusal to participate.
Tuesday: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is launching the Bluesky project to create an open standard for decentralized social media to address today’s systemic issues. The UN Security Council decided to discuss India’s occupation in Kashmir, driven by a request from Pakistan and China (since the announcement, it’s been postponed).
Wednesday: Mitt Romney and Michael Bennet announced a bipartisan plan to give children basic income to drastically reduce child poverty, and they are hoping to repeal the “stepped-up basis tax” to pay for it. Also, many people criticize technology for the distance it is drawing between people – Alex Pentland from the Human Dynamics Group at MIT Media Lab is hoping to use wearable tech to understand how humans connect with each other to change the way we think about and engage with one another. Finally, India’s Supreme Court declined to block the CAA.
Thursday: The first UN Global Refugee Forum took place in Geneva earlier this week – check out our key takeaways and some resources on how you can help address the refugee crisis. Similarly, as protests continue to surge in India over the CAA, we’ve provided some resources to help you get involved. Finally, impact investing in the emerging markets is a tremendous growth opportunity in 2020, provided that capital moves the right way.
Tomorrow Today
🎟️ We’re thinking February 6th! We’ll have a sign-up link and more details soon.
Change cannot be achieved alone, only together. In that spirit, we are hosting community events at our space in New York City. Eat some food, learn from some seasoned, unconventional activists, and meet others aspiring to change the world!
Why are we hosting this?
For us, community is the center of everything. In an age of prolific digitization, there's a great need for greater human connection. It's almost necessary to carve out time and space to purposefully engage in person. While it's amazing to be able to discuss and interact with multiple people online and exchange stories and insights, we don't think anything beats the experience of sharing a meal.
Igniting Tomorrow
💰 $100k-$250k Pre-Seed Funding
UPDATE: We’ve already had multiple people reach out and share their ideas. It gets us super excited to learn more about the projects and companies everyone is working on. Please keep reaching out. We’ll be releasing more information around this in the upcoming year.
Many of you are either already working on a number of world-changing things or have ideas bursting out of you every day. Our goal is to see unconventional activists like you succeed. Let us help connect you into the space and access the financing you need to get started. If you’d like to share your ideas (or know a friend working on something exciting), please reply to this email!
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