Mark Shearer and Nick Gardner combined their green hearts and business smarts to develop an online e-community for urban greening projects. Their community, Project Dirt, is a place connecting eco-conscious individuals with down-and-dirty greening projects in London. The duo, part of the Timberland’s Earthkeeper Heroes ’09 campaign are being recognized for their awesome contributions to creating sustainable environmental change through community projects.
Project Dirt has an estimated 2,000 projects in the pipeline. Mark and Nick will be sharing their stories on the social networking platform Changents.com through their blog, videos and photos while they green London. Timberland and Changents, as well as Project Dirt, invite the public to learn more about their work and join in the movement to create environmental sustainability.
The Earthkeeper Heroes is comprised of seven activists who are achieving major feats like creating back packs for the homeless made entirely of scrap metal and recycled materials and testing it while living as a homeless person or swimming 1,000+ miles to raise awareness about water pollution and ocean health. Together the Heroes are trying to start a global movement to raise support for key environmental issues while sharing their stories.
As part of the campaign, Timberland and Changents is also launching a widget competition. It’s a race for each Hero to reach 100,000 downloads of their Earthkeepers widget which shows a mini-news feed with story updates, pictures and videos. Timberland will award the winner with a publicity stunt to get them on national TV so they can promote their cause.
Last year, Timberland partnered with Changents.com in an effort to create a unique consumer engagement engine to “break” emerging eco-change agents onto the global environmental scene. The Timberland Earthkeeper Hero ’09 campaign combines the evolving stories of dynamic environmental heroes with a interactive social media experience. The result is a platform that connects this generation’s most exciting agents.
Article by Jennifer Simckowitz
