Hi. My name is Ani. I'm from the U.S. based in Hong Kong. I'm part of Mobilization Lab. We go by Mob Lab for short. And we're a collective of global campaigners, trainers, media strategists, communications people. My background is in feminist journalism, grassroots feminist organizing in kind of the South American and Asian context. So I've worked as a reporter. I've worked together with grassroots collectives, fundraising, doing mutual aid, doing campaigns together. And yeah, today we're going to be going through a workshop on how to build a campaign from scratch. And it is in a very condensed format. So this is quite different than what we typically do at Mob Lab. We typically do longer campaign trainings. They're called the Campaign Accelerator. A lot of these different elements of the Campaign Accelerator are open source, free to use, open to the public exercises that you can find on our website. And we run these trainings for global advocacy organizations. We do public trainings. And yeah, this is how to build a campaign. Tony, did you want to say something about 350's Global Trainings Week? Sure. So hi everyone. My name is Tony. I'm the Asia Digital Manager from 350. I'm based in Jakarta in Asia. And this global training week is the series of training that has been done by 350 training team. And we would like to invite people coming from our network to join this global training. There will be more training in the webinar style happening later on. So you can watch the recording later in our training website. So please enjoy this screening. And yeah, wait, there's someone. All right. I would like to invite these people here. Claire, maybe, is that okay with you, Annie as well? Of course. Go for it. Sure. Okay. I'm good like to admit this person. Hey, Claire. This is Tony. I'm the tech support for this session. And apparently you are the only participant for this session. But we would like to try out new kind of things. And Annie is with us now. And we would like to try out how to make this session into resource content for our activities. So over to you, Annie. Yeah. Hi, Claire. Just to introduce myself briefly. My name is Annie. I'm from the U.S. I'm based in Hong Kong. I'm part of MobLab, Mobilization Lab. We grew out of innovation projects at Greenpeace and fully fledged into our own organization today, which we run as a collective of trainers and campaigners from around the world. Yeah, I go by she, her, my background is in feminist advocacy, sort of grassroots movements. I also work as a freelance journalist. So I'm really focusing on communications and media strategy. And yes, we have a little bit of a small turnout for this session, but that's fine because we can run it more as a conversation between us. And also 350 is recording this session if that's okay with you.  And yeah, for anyone to access this. So if you want to introduce yourself, go ahead. If you don't, it's okay as well. Yeah, nice to meet you guys. I was not expected to be the only one. I have to do a task tonight. So I don't know that I didn't plan on staying for the full session anyway. That's fine. Yeah, so my name is Claire. I actually work for Greenpeace, Annie. I'm in the digital and fundraising departments. And I just have an interest in, I guess, some of the sort of the bare bones lines of how 350 sees like campaigning strategy. So that's kind of what I saw in the schedule when I was interested. So yeah, I'm here. I also run I run this sort of side project in addition to working at Greenpeace, where we send an accompany youth from Montreal to COP events. Last year, we went to Glasgow for COP 26. This year we're going to be doing some work, some campaign work and lead up to COP 15 in Montreal for biodiversity. Anyway, so that's a little bit about me and why I'm joining. Okay, great. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. And no worries. If you need to turn off your camera or do a task, feel free to be comfortable and listen and participate as much as you want or need to. This, this workshop is going to be more from mob labs perspective of campaigning strategy. So it's, it is aligned with 350 in what we consider as like people powered campaigning strategy. And I think we're both organizations focused on, you know, people powered systems change. So those are sort of like the two main ingredients of our campaigning strategy. Yeah, I just wanted to make that clear because 350 has been inviting different asking their staff to run trainings and do conversations, but also inviting yeah, lots of grassroots folks or folks from other organizations. So I think it's a mixed bag from what I've seen. Yeah, amazing. I just joined the mob lab slack channel. Like I just just joined it. So I'm so excited to hear, to hear all about that. Cool. Okay, well welcome. I'll get started. Yeah, so we are just doing a condensed format today. I think it's now going to be roughly an hour. Oh, go ahead, Tony. The screen is still on the music. Let's go ahead. Are you guys in Southeast Asia right now? Tony is in Indonesia right now, right? Right, correct. Yes. I'm in Hong Kong right now. So that's where we're both based. Yeah, this is just this is just a short presentation that we came up for this very condensed workshop format. We're typically running five day long campaign accelerators, sometimes condensing them into two full days for organizations. But we're trying to develop shorter formats and to make these trainings more accessible to like a wider audience. So we just thought this was a great opportunity from 350 to and we've had we've had invites from other organizations as well to develop these like two hour formats. So it's just something that I'm really happy to be sharing. Hopefully it can still be useful and as interesting, although not as much of a deep dive into like certain exercises. Yeah, so just outcomes, we're just going to be thinking about some of the key elements of a People Power campaign. Thinking we're going to I'm going to show some examples, and especially I think it's a great time to be thinking about storytelling, the short amount of time that we have, it's just probably the most one of the most important strategies in your campaign. Yeah, so this is meant to be a question for everyone participating in the workshop. Now it can be more of a conversation between the three of us, but I just wanted to ask what are the best elements of a successful campaign that you've seen? I can I can go first if it helps. I think I really remember campaigns that have used like really creative narrative strategies and by that I mean they take a narrative that already exists and a narrative is just something it's almost like a preconception that people have about something like a commonly told story can turn into an area. They take like this pre-existing story or stereotype and then they flip it. So it can be things like a really funny word play or just yeah just flipping a stereotype and doing it in a really creative way like either using irony or humor or flat out just like word play. I can't think of like a specific example of this right now, but every time I see it I'm really impressed. A lot of these things are kind of dependent on language so like it's also using humor like for example humor in Brazil or a word play in French as opposed to word play in English and I'm always really struck by these campaigns. Tony do you have you do you think of any successful campaigns? Yeah for me the key of the ingredients of the successful campaign would be first it has to be inspire people. So how to inspire maybe because of the people because of the stories that behind it and maybe because of the the the closeness of of those issues to us to target. So it has the story it has the kind of closeness part and I think there are some the third one would be on it needs to be able to move people. So yeah for me those are the at least three main feature of the successful campaign. Wow okay three things that's great thanks Tony. Claire does anything come to mind? Yeah I'm just thinking like what my favorite ones have ever been but ones that I guess just come to mind right away are I don't know how many of you guys have experienced in Canada but there was like maybe 10 years ago there was the screen piece just like parody video similar to what you guys are saying like talking about humor and storytelling like in this case it was like the spoof video of the then prime minister he was a conservative Stephen Harper you know having this like conversation with his staff saying you know working to invest like like millions and millions into advertising how good fossil fuels are for the rest of Canada and how that absolutely needed advertising dollars and it was a good investment um anyways it can be looked up on YouTube but I just remember finding it so funny the actors it was like a deal with like great actors and it just sometimes you need that little push um and like a little bit of humor to find yourself laughing and then finding yourself in agreement with like what the line is what what the position is at the beginning so yeah I just that's something I've always liked about orgs like Greenpeace but also like a whole bunch of others that do spoof and it's a way to sort of like make that content carry itself itself um you know and heightens the chances that the content will like you know be seen by more and more people and so I don't know if that's like as much of a campaign strategy as much as like a comm strategy maybe sometimes they're not so dissimilar yeah I think they're very I think they're very similar you know and I say that coming from a communications background and working as part of a campaigning strategy campaign training collective uh I I think communications is you know almost number one together with the message yeah so I think I think both of you talked about that you talked about um these are ultimately communication strategies but the message the core of the campaign itself has to also be you know worthy of those communication strategies it has to be um they have they have it has to be a campaign idea that ultimately like touches and inspires people and without that we can't develop these communication strategies around it right that could be funny or you know provoking outrage or humor or you know engagement depending on what you want so I think both of you mentioned really great examples um yeah it has to be inspiring issues close to people um you know I talked about wordplay narrative flips and uh you talked about like satire and irony and maybe using like a unconventional in unconventional campaigning strategy which might be humor some people might see that as unconventional yeah so I'm gonna give some examples here of of things that we've seen in successful campaigns it's just to take note of um there's a lot of them obviously I can just read some of them out um but really some that stick out for me are is storytelling it's just not just the content we just we just can't be conveying information to people a successful campaign is not just going to convey information because on a daily basis everyone is conveying information to people we have information being thrown at us from all angles so it's a campaigning is going to be taking you know a step above just conveying information but really about the objectives and the strategy um the strategies around it and and telling stories that touch people um another key one that I want to point out is is collaboration um you know at mob lab we're talking about people-powered campaigns and although we can design strategies to maximize the amount of engagement and participation that you can reach outwardly with your campaign if you don't have collaboration from the campaign designing stage with external organizations and collectives and networks then I don't see how it can be so people-powered it has to be a people-powered campaign from its design which means that you're going to be basically already community organizing at the step at the step of designing your campaign trying to reach out to ally organizations ally collectives grassroots communities getting feedback from them designing the campaign with them so there has to be there has to be a lot of collaboration and we see that the most successful campaigns they will never be like the brainchild of just one organization they've typically although although although we see them as products of just one or two organizations um for example when I read about the story of strike debt which is a us-based organization um organizing to eradicate debt like student medical housing debt in the US if you pull into their story they are never never never never working on their own they're never designing anything on their own they're in constant collaboration with so many other orgs they pull from them they share resources um yeah but people know strike debt more but it's it's just not only their work um yeah really some some things here rational facts and figures are important but it's important to reach people on an emotional level um yeah campaigns can continue but beyond their lifetime is another one I want to emphasize um sometimes we think of campaigns as like end products but actually the entire campaigning process can be some form of community organizing like I already mentioned the the process of developing the campaign itself can be part of the work which is ultimately to build collective power um you know to change narratives to change stories to reach your objectives but you can reach your objectives after your campaign has ended many many years ago um and and and not fail you you might not fail just because you haven't achieved those objectives by the end of your campaign um we see this more as a you know continued process and a power building process and yeah there's a lot here um the slides will be available after this so you can sort of run through them and we're gonna go more into steps so um so these are some concrete steps just condensing the sort of bare bones process of building your campaign strategy and um I I like to say campaign strategy because ultimately that's going to be the difference between um just launching a campaign out there and really thinking about a people-powered systems change campaign there needs to be more of an involved process for doing a campaign that is ultimately going to have a longer and wider effect than just the campaign timeline um you know these days we can all build campaigns we all many of us who have access to internet we have the tools to build campaigns people who don't have access to the internet they also have different tools to build campaigns in their immediate communities through different political processes as well so we have digital tools we have offline tools but ultimately today we're talking about campaign strategy how to do it in a way that is going to um really build collective power um and really think about you know systems change so in this training we're not able to do as much of the systems change exercises that mob lab we would normally do when we run these trainings for organizations um a lot of systems change activities are it's really it's really about looking at the whole ecosystem of actors so all of the um all of the people who are affected by this issue all of the actors who are affecting the issue mapping out potential allies current allies um mapping out yeah people different actors and agents who can help and and as you do the activities they can just get more involved and it's actually really fascinating and super interesting that there are many ecosystems around the world for everything today we're just going to focus on the problem the goal engagement um you know tactics and especially storytelling um this is a this is going to be just showing some examples of the five steps identifying the problem there is a there is a green piece campaign again around a oil tanker that was going to be dumped off of the coast of norway and so green piece was campaigning to not dump this oil tanker this was like many years ago so there were a lot of other things going on and they were just campaigning against like any nuclear waste in general oil tankers not being dumped they named the campaign something battle of the brand star does this ring a bell for you claire no and i think there were you know a lot of great campaigns it's hard to choose amongst them um yeah so this was there are some just like concrete things to be taken out here what is the problem the problem is you know waste being dumped northeast atlantic um identifying like the concrete goal of the campaign if there isn't a typically i find that the goal is negative for many campaigns that we do it could also be like an interesting exercise in the future to think about positive goals um but for the majority of the campaigns that we see and especially i would say like the easiest goals to typically identify they typically end up being negative and what i mean when i say negative i mean that they are typically in action to stop or to pull a bill or to block something to prevent as a negative force action and it could be an interesting exercise for organizations and and um you know grassroots groups regional groups as well to think about positive force goals as in to build something to create funding for this to um to you know build this community center to get you know these are the examples that i'm coming up with now but it's just something that i notice consistently across campaigns um they had their sort of target groups like very clearly identified um yeah environmentalists and also people concerned about the oceans um and then tactics are sort of the building blocks of your strategy you have a sort of overall campaign strategy as in um where you're going to run your campaign who are you running it with um over you know what time what what are the sort of the overarching like goals and vision of a campaign strategy but then tactics are like the daily tasks every day and and there can also be really creative we do a lot of like creative tactics brainstorming sessions where you can think of tactics really quickly and using sort of almost randomized processes like association exercises um creativity brain flow exercises and so the amount of tactics that you can use can sort of be endless here they had some um i would say like quite traditional tactics associated with uh campaigning this campaign was also i think like 10 years ago uh policy paper advocacy legal objection advocacy this is also kind of being known as like um strategic litigation today um it's working in some context for some issues like quite well but not everyone can participate in strategic litigation so something to notice uh occupation uh just quite a direct action boycott and um yeah and the story of the campaign which i would say is like the most important thing um we tried to tell the official channels they didn't listen they're ruining our oceans and forcing us um to put our lives at risk now they're attacking us boycott shell and join us and nobody's standing up to these bullies we're hurting all of us um you know this the story can be compelling for different reasons but it is typically appealing to emotions it's appealing to um yeah things that are close to people and also like directly inspiring action i think we're going to be focusing on how can you create stories that are not just inspiring not not just like focusing on on pity or anger or frustration but also there is a compelling ask in it so we are telling a story but not to a passive audience we're telling a story to make this audience like active and engaged and inspire them to do something there is an emotional appeal but then there is also like a specific action and and in open invitation in the story yeah do you have any questions so far or anything you wanted to share Tony or Claire no all good i'm good i'm good i'm good i'm just thinking no i think i'm good are you sure no i you can ask the question unformulated it's okay thank you i um i'll just like this it doesn't have anything to do with this example but i'm just trying to i'm surprised at how clear the distinction is between goals and tactics are for me here like here in this case i can clearly see the difference but i have gotten into problems where like um something like i've been told that like too many times i've like made this mistake between like goals and tactics so um part of me thinks it's a little bit i don't know it's a little i don't know part of me thinks it's a little bit um it's always going to be a little bit blurry but yeah i'm just i'm hoping to in the next couple of examples to sort of get more of a sense of like i i want to have that moment where i'm like oh that's like the easy way to distinguish between them anyways i i get that like interesting i get that like like the the tactics are to accomplish the goal but yeah i guess sometimes it's like not anyways sorry go on this is my own personal i think that's a good i think that's uh perspective from somebody who is you know really working in especially the tactics that's sort of my reading of what you're saying um because i think of the tactics as the uh day to day tasks of carrying out a campaign and like as being part of the campaign strategy i think it's really easy to get lost in the tactics um and you know i i talk about them as if they're small but it's this is really like all encompassing work when you're in the tactics it is your whole life you know there are there can be depending on how big a campaign is depending on how many you know resources there are for it as in like people how distributed it is how many different tactics are there can be entirely different teams for each you know for each tactic and they can take a very long time to do and and so i think that it's very understandable to um yeah to just to just think in that to be like caught up in that um i guess the way that i think of the goals as being positive or negative force that's something that i do personally um everyone has their own reading of campaign goals but the reason why i think about that is because um i think a lot about like hope based narrative especially for campaigners but also for all human rights people and i think that when we are designing campaigns with negative force goals they are very easy to understand it makes something seem achievable to people i understand the importance of designing these campaigns we actually do have to stop a lot of um very harmful things happening so i completely understand it at the same time i'm someone who believes that we need to be designing um campaigns with more positive force goals not because not because i think there needs to be this you know a balance of negative versus positive but because i think we need to build you know we need to build um infrastructure for us it can't just be all the time about stopping this bill or stopping the harmful effects we need to be proposing alternatives um there's a lot of people talking about this right now in the in the human rights space um it's quite difficult to do and there are many reasons for that it's difficult to imagine like um you know more funding for radical work it's difficult to imagine having access to land or access to you know that's why i like i like all of these organizations working on like sort of community land trusts community banks cooperatives mutual aid collectives thinking about you know funding in very community driven ways so there you can kind of look you can kind of identify a campaign goal by just thinking you know what is what are we trying to do is it to is it to stop something or is it to create something and that would be a very clear distinction between the campaigns and i i kind of do that on a personal basis when i'm when i'm going through campaigns this is what i'm looking for and you know sometimes campaigns are also about fundraising which i'm sure you know and this this is very specifically a um like a positive ask for me and so it is about inviting people to participate in a way and to engage in a way um and making an emotional ask for them to participate and engage but also to imagine you know this alternative this more hopeful positive alternative that we could have and we need the resources and we need the funding for it so fundraising for me can also be you know tied to campaigning it is tied sometimes not all the time and it can be a positive ask and there are also other kind of like positive goals as well but i think that's an example that you would you would know a lot about um yeah so we're going to get a little bit more the goal and strategy here um some of this i've kind of gone over but just just as we did with that example um of the greenpeace campaign we're going to think about you know you know everything in metaphors so you know the problem that we are trying to tackle just imagine that you are a person on a road you kind of need to get somewhere and the road is not straight and you don't have a car or a bicycle you you don't have much really so the problem is probably you just trying to figure out where you want to go i think as well i think that's actually a great metaphor for most organizations is they think that they need to get down to the end of the road and i would say well the problem is where do you want to go actually it's not just what where you think that you have to go it's where do you want to go you know um and the problems could be also like the obstacles along the way so yeah the strategies the route that you take um and the tactics are the actions to implement your strategy so for example you can see in this in this image which is of a person on a curving road there are mountains there are sort of desert flora and fauna um there's a river you know and the tactics could be um the ways that they cross this land or river and ocean and to get to their goal and they could um you know they could walk they could run they could hike they could somehow fashion a boat and go down the river they could live off of the flora and fauna for a while to hydrate and nourish themselves as they go very slowly and approach their goal they could go around the mountains they could go over the mountains maybe they could build a para paraglider i think so you go up the mountains then you have a paraglider then instead of walking the rest of your way you just launch off on the paraglider and if you've ever been in one it's it's actually very anti climatic climactic very easy it's like so easy that it's not exciting anymore and then you just travel this long distance and you float down um yeah and the goal is where you want to go and i i would propose like i said before that one of the problems is figuring out what your goal is so i would i would propose that to a lot of organizations because they have the goals you know sort of clearly defined in the beginning of their campaign but in our campaign design strategy we we uh we recommend at every step of the campaign design process to ask for feedback from your partners from your allies from your target groups to constantly reevaluate reevaluate reevaluate reevaluate your goals um i think this quote is a pretty interesting one um because it also implements this um you know power lens and we we want to be talking more about power and anti oppression in our campaign design trainings especially if we're going to be talking about uh people power campaigns we need to be talking about what does that mean what does collective power mean versus um the way that power currently operates in our world and you know individuals with disproportionate amounts of power also creating collective power together as well so what does the type of power that we want to build based on anti oppression what does that mean why do we need that to achieve the change that we want to make so we can kind of uh summarize our our our strategy in this sentence turning what you have all all the resources that you have available to you through um your own organization through your own personal network through your wider networks through your organizational networks all of the resources that you have to do that includes um includes money people time technology languages food art you know so many different types of resources that we have available to us into what you need building collective power people powered in you know in this in our campaign approach to get what you want right which is a change in this situation which is uh which is changing the problem um yeah um yeah like I mentioned um what are all of the different ways that we can think about resources I I'm actually curious if um yeah if either of you can think of some resources you know that are not just just think of them out loud if they don't they can be on this slide or they don't have to be on this slide I would say expertise like I remember we did this like whole like we paid up some consultants a lot of money to um sort of give us sort of like an evaluation of what we call our supporter journey and um one of the ways that we really wanted to improve was to like make use of and sort of like harness like the expertise of a lot of our supporters because a lot of them want to contribute more than just money more than just like let's say to a direct action like they're not the kind that like a professor is not necessarily often the kind of person who wants to go climb a building you know and hang a big sign like they might be inclined to like it's been studying this for years and wants to sort of maybe advise on a policy paper so um I think a lot of forums that will speak for greenbies like we can make things easier for people like that to sort of contribute in that way because it's really valuable and like you know people who work or like salaried employees or whatever don't have that we can't be expected to have like all the expertise on like a given subject of course and you know we can benefit from each other's you know there's so many ways we can benefit from like having allies in the right places so yeah Tony do you have any yeah that's great that's a great one thank you right Tony do you have any ideas yes I'm thinking about when we are going to change supporters into collaborators or allies it's supposed to be all the same but we didn't have those kind of um uh control over our collaborators I mean like they have sometimes they have their own kind of agenda they have their own organizational proposals and everything but yeah at the same time they we are aiming for the same goals but we can really kind of really make some kind of control to do to their time to do the political power and everything but essentially we able to connect or engage with them that's the kind of the thinking because when we change the supporters into collaborators it seems to be the same but we can really um um control what we are going to do uh because they have their own rules and regulation and everything so absolutely yeah yeah how can we do this how can we yes it's a great it's a great question um it's something that we hear a lot from many different organizations we cannot control our supporters I think we can only attempt to understand them more and understand different levels of engagements and we can seek to change their level of engagement with us or with other networks so we use sort of a framework that I think is really useful to many organizations it's called the engagement pyramid a lot of the exercises that mob lab does or uses their open source free for anyone to use they're available on our website mob lab like campaign ingredients toolkit or the commons which is also another great sort of repository of frameworks and and things to use and so the engagement period pyramid just helps you think about the different levels of um yeah engagement of these people with your organization and they can range from you know observing to to leading and I think that speaks directly to how many opportunities a people powered organization would provide to their network so that people can move from one level of engagement to another and it's not I don't want to say that we always want them to move up and up the pyramid I I don't think it's you know either positive or negative people move up and down for all sorts of different reasons the biggest and most the easiest way that you'll see that is in grassroots organizing in grassroots organizing everybody understands that everybody has different commitments and people move up and down this this pyramid all the time and you could just be in a phase of your life where you just had a kid you could be in a phase of your life where you just had a breakup or you could be a phase in your life where you just made a lot of money from something but then you quit your job and all of a sudden you have more time to work on something that you really care about and and and these phases of our lives like last for you know a year five years six months it's really interesting so yeah these are these are some examples of of what all of our supporters can offer us and and all of the amazing resources that we can have if we know how to engage our networks and how to like present opportunities to them right so I really recommend checking out the engagement pyramid and it's it's super key we typically show it as part of our campaign accelerator so this is it's just not in this training today it's a more condensed you know format but that would be a key way in in getting people involved in your campaign and also maybe just using an engagement pyramid for your organization in general you know whether it's grassroots organizing or whether it's an NGO or an ingo I think we all need to really present invitations for people for them to engage with us because if we're not if we're not then we're losing some of these resources we're going to lose some expertise that we can have we're definitely going to lose strength and numbers we're going to lose influence and honestly I would say we're going to lose credibility you know if if people don't have the opportunity to be engaged yeah Claire do you have a question oh my gosh I love everything you just said um yeah I was gonna add there too maybe and this maybe falls like just generally under influence but one thing I was thinking like one of our youth wanted to include something in the speech that we'd all co-written and it was moral authority like we were talking we were addressing the premier and we were talking about intergenerational justice and how obviously inaction on climate disproportionately puts certain age groups like especially young people at risk people who don't have the right to vote often um so anyways there's school injustice about it and I just love this line it was about how you have this moral authority on this issue and I don't know what that did to me but it was just I was just floored and I was like that's like that's that's like what makes some of these stories so powerful it's like you know if you're like a victim of like you know an extreme weather event made more likely by climate change if you're like the victim of like just like flat out intergenerational injustice or colonialism or whatever like you know there are ways to like have these people on board in the same mission and like elevating those people and then you know having influence even more influence that way anyways this is just I think you've already got it but I just I love that term I would put it on here too yeah that's no you're right I I really think that credibility and moral authority are extremely important um they're they're not just resources I think that they are key elements as well successful campaigns and I would just go a step further and and say that you know I love I love self-led organizing and I love self-led campaigns we really think that people-powered campaigns the campaign design should absolutely be informed and led by you know self-led groups so people who are directly experiencing there's different there's different terms for this now kind of in the NGO field it's always really interesting seeing how you know like social change is evolving and language is involving and sometimes like people just don't know how to express these things but um I say self-led other people say lived experience um they're different because one is referring to advocacy and the other is referring to um yeah just lived experience like people who are people who are what you're talking about right and both are powerful and they it just needs to be part of a campaign today I think unfortunately today 2022 this has turned into a little bit of a formula for companies and so necessarily for companies for NGOs this is all turned into a formula for how to use people with lived experience and use them as as tokens or as as I don't know almost like uh like the figure the figure piece like the visual figure piece of a campaign or something and if it's not if this is not incorporated into the design if these people don't have power or resources um you know it's completely tokenistic and I think that in the end there I think in the end people see through it if they don't see through it in the beginning by the end it's it's a little bit more visible you know and I I've been a part of campaigns that happen completely tokenistic and maybe I didn't even realize in the beginning right but you figure out in the end because in the end there's no you you didn't you didn't build collective power in the end that's not what happened when there was just one organization you know trying to do with with good intentions trying to do campaign and ultimately it was not people powered ultimately it was not a systems change based campaign and you don't see any um serious long-term change at the end of it because they didn't address power in in a they didn't address like power inequality they didn't address um the power that they hold relative to others and we didn't build collective power through that campaigning process so anyway it's a great point that you raise I think it's increasingly increasingly important and people are becoming very intelligent about whether whether there is credibility and moral authority there so I think it's a great thing to notice um these are just some examples of you know tactics to do with different supporters resources um there's there's just so many available tactics it's actually completely infinite so I don't want to I don't want us to think uh and just be restricted to these tactics here it's like the more that you think of tactics the more that you can think of um let's say for example this one I love I love thinking about personal relationships I think that when a lot of people are campaigning they are a little bit hesitant to approach their personal relationships they think that they have to speak into this void and somehow we have to reach strangers all the time we have to somehow convert millions of strangers on the streets and uh get them to give us money or to sign this or to like march with us when in reality the strongest relationships that we have are personal relationships and it can feel a little bit uncomfortable like approaching your friends or and family but these are some of them the most powerful stories that I've heard um yeah so these are some tactics to think about affecting your relationships and sort of getting them you know to participate in your campaign and to contribute in all of these other ways that are possible um I've invited friends to for example if there's like a uh a regional an Asian association of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong and I want to influence my friends and family I want them to understand what these activist domestic migrant workers in Hong Kong are doing they just don't know them so I bring them to a dinner that they organized and this association you know does a few speeches and has a few dances and we're all eating together and I actually find at the end of the dinner that my friends and family are very touched I mean they had no idea of all this amazing advocacy that was happening in Hong Kong uh by a group of people that is just basically invisible to them on a daily basis and also in the media here and also in media everywhere around the world so these these are just some examples of tactics Claire did you have uh did you have a something else or other your hand is raised oh no sorry nope that's not just to make sure okay um yeah and and just to say that there are just so many tactics I want to say also for opinion voice that not included in the tactics is you know not just letters to the editor but writing writing in the media so um if you're a journalist if you have connections to journalists or if you have connections to editors in pitching something and writing something yourself and um this is something that I particularly work in as like I work in media strategy and I've worked with different feminist organizations and uh we we just need a really multi-pronged media strategy these days it can't just be social media we really need to be entering public conversations engaging with the media and there's many diverse ways of doing that so yeah all of the tactics are completely endless um it's about having it's about knowing what resources you have and then just being as creative as possible with your tactics once you have your goals and objectives and you know what resources you have right um yeah so this is just to go through an example um are you both are familiar with a just transition um so yeah just transition is still like an ongoing campaign this has really not ended we are still campaigning for this to happen and for I think for for everyone to know what a just transition is as well I find that many it's it's in some ways still a little bit of like a marginalized topic like it sounds a little bit radical to a lot of people most of the uh you know climate justice environmental justice campaigns that I've seen they've been based on this like negative force campaign goal that I talked about so it's typically to cut emissions to cut to you know ban fossil fuels to tax this to there is a negative action that is the campaign goal because in general we want to reduce um yeah we just want we just want to it seems very it seems like very difficult to stop using fossil fuels in general a just transition is a really interesting campaign goal because it is a it is what I call a positive force campaign goal there is a campaign goal that is um it's it's almost like uh also like a rebranded uh you know negative force campaign act well as there's a way to say if you say just transition that it just seems like the creation of so many things but it's also asking there's also some negative asks in it you know but just calling it just giving it a name just um saying that this is what we want this is the future this is the roadmap um for what we want it's really interesting as a campaign idea I mean I really like it and um I think there is a lot of strong storytelling aspects strong like narrative aspects of just transition as a campaign idea um so it was just a great um it's a great example that I like to use I think there's still a lot to do around for example I don't see I don't see a lot of coverage around a just transition I see this mentioned more in NGO circles I don't see it in mainstream media as much I don't I don't see that everyone I know like most people that I know don't know what it is so it seems like there's still an informational gap I think it's a very strong narrative strong story strong image but that the message hasn't been disseminated enough or it hasn't like uh it's not a public discussion yet and it's really interesting because what a lot of people powered systems changed campaigning is is just to in my opinion I think it is to build collective power and to push these narratives and these shifts that just seem unimaginable it has to seem unimaginable to us and it takes years and years and years to do it you know and I wanted to refer to strike debt again because I think that they exist since you know 2012 or so and basically just now you know for the first time the US government announced that they would you know relieve some student debt and this is a little bit unimaginable to most Americans in the US and I think it was you know it took them 10 years and that's something that can be entirely plausible as well obviously we don't have 10 years when it comes to a just transition but the point is that it's a collective effort and that really when I think when campaigns break into public domain and become a talk a mainstream talking point that that's another way that they've succeeded in some ways you know and this is what had this is what has happened to abortion rights in Latin America this is what has happened to student debt in the US they broke into the mainstream consciousness thanks to grassroots organizers thanks to people-powered organizations and you know community collectives and just networks of you know social change like activists and organizations but it took it took a while so just looking at some other like people-powered tactics people-powered approaches to campaigning like how to create invitations for people to participate in different ways there's really going to be like I said like so many more so many more options than just this it's just kind of like I think we know a lot of these tactics but when you write them down you realize how many more there are and for any you know for any of these approaches that we're going to be that we're going to be talking about for this one I think and a lot of them sort of overlap for example I think of you know donating volunteering organizing raising awareness it's it's really interesting but like some tactics can cross over all of these I'm also a DJ and I do parties and in some ways I combine my DJing and like my organizing backgrounds and I do like um in mutual aid parties so we you know put on music sell tickets have a great time and we're talking about you know grassroots groups that are self-led and doing amazing work and they're there as well and they talk about their work and they talk about the issues that they work on and we raise money and everybody has a great time and it's sort of like there are volunteers always ask for volunteers people are always donating much more than you know the ticket entry they're donating in other ways they donate like in-kind goods they donate their time they are donating money beyond the tickets they're donating food we're organizing we're organizing like different groups together we're raising awareness we're storytelling in that night we're storytelling through music we're story we're like sharing content on our instagram about these parties about these issues we're talking about you know the money we raised and being very transparent about it there's just so many yeah I would just encourage people to be as creative as possible with the tactics that they're using and to always search for ways to involve people in any of these in any of these approaches thinking about how to involve people and thinking about how to manage people and thinking about how to organize with other people is probably the most important and most like you know life-changing thing that we can do and in our organizing it's all about people it's all about the relationships that we have that we build that we make along the way so I think it's the most rewarding thing as well about campaigning it's another aspect for me but I also think about what it's like for different types of people like I'm a very extroverted person there is a lot of things that I'm going to do that's in going to be about like face-to-face communication or writing or you know talking or just just introducing people and I always think about what it's like for people who are more shy more introverted what are what are like what are ways to engage them what are ways that they can help and very often there's lots of shy and introverted people who are very like interested in in organizing and volunteering in some way they just don't want to do that they just don't want to like talk to other people face-to-face but there's so many ways to involve them and to you know to enjoy also like their expertise their talents their unique their unique skills and organizing so I do recognize that we have like a very we have a society that really rewards like extroverted vocally communicating people so I just think it's important to point out that we want to be finding roles and finding places for all all different sorts of people people who are comfortable doing different things and just making sure that people feel comfortable and included I think is the most important thing yeah do you Tony and Claire like do you have any sort of examples of you know people power tactics that you really like that are that are not mentioned here or anything you want to share feel free otherwise we can move on I think it's quite like a complete or details of a kind of a option that we have there are some kind of a level of interactivity or we in 2015 we used to say that the only one of engagement maybe because of those the layer everything you need to have those kind of things maybe like a low hanging fruit like China petition in the end we can mobilize people but there are some kind of a degree that we can engage with people so that we're able to mobilize more people to join so yeah this is interesting this is come I think this is quite complete kind of ideas of what we have it's a little bit like a tactic vomit here so just think of it in that way like it's just for it's just to show people all the different examples Claire do you have you know do you have any like tactics that you like the most or anything you wanted to share first I'll be the slightest Debbie downer and say I might have to go nine or for me it's nine so in 30 minutes I do have to finish something by midnight but I by the way like I'm another side note that I love this sort of like intimate presentation I'm so grateful like please add me just for you yeah I feel so lucky seriously yeah I'm just I'm just looking at this and I'm like it's true it's complete it's it's interesting I've never really thought about fundraising as like an example of people power but it's well I feel like I've wanted to believe that but I you know sometimes people say they're so different but yeah I just I'm happy to see that there and because it's true it's like it's its own sort of form of like asking someone to sort of do something difficult like invest part of themselves like part of their like labor and time basically into so um yeah and yeah I love this idea of like sort of social proof I know that like this is more I don't you guys can stop me this is boring but it's just a slight observation is like sometimes I struggle with like the concept of like systems change because it kind of started out as someone who like took a lot of individual action and like wanted to be like a role you know to do what was right and stuff and then I viewed like you know that's how things change and like just an example like just to alienate everyone on the call right away I'm I like was a vegan um at like 18 I still am and like that sort of was like my initial introduction to everything and like that's sort of how I thought about changing things you just stay consistent you know know your argument or whatever if someone wants to talk to you about it and then like you know things progress and and indeed things have in that in that particular um area but so yeah I I think I've like for a long time thought of like behavior change just like the thing um but yeah I'm also just I think Greenpeace for instance has like gone at least Greenpeace Canada has gone like um you know very far away from like sort of focusing on behavior change um which I think is positive because there's like you know groups as big as Greenpeace like they need to sort of put we need to sort of put our money in our power you know and start to start fighting like the bigger players I guess um yeah if you will so I don't know like I'm always anyways this might just be like a just you know pontificating or whatever on this like maybe a distinction without a difference but like I don't know I'm just I always find myself being like you know can we do both like do we have to choose one or the other like I don't know but anyways this is interesting just me thinking out loud so you can just go on this is great no it's interesting um I I definitely there are a lot of organizations not all but there are a lot that like Greenpeace have moved away from a sort of talking about you know environmental or climate justice through the lens of like individual behavior change um and began to focus more on systems change but I also understand what you say like the initial first step for you and your own journey is as an individual like I completely understand this um I think when we talk about system change what we're really talking about like is this is this is an this is an opportunity for or a coalition or a group of or or an organization hopefully an organization in network designing a campaign with lots of different actors and and having access to like feedback and stuff this is an opportunity for them to really design a campaign that tackles systems change so a campaign that is basically going to shift power as an individual beginning to you know get politicized on beginning to understand yourself and your values and what you're interested in what you're going to you know get involved in I think it would be quite tough for you to think about systems change already from that perspective you know maybe young people today are getting politicized at a you know faster rate and have more access to information and are beginning are thinking about systems change like very early on in their political journey for other people it's it's we just have different timelines you know I of course we're thinking about things through our own individual lens first so when we do when we do campaign design workshops for like um people power systems change campaigns these are for activists and organizations that like quite an advanced phase of their you know campaigning lifetime they want to like deepen their their approach to campaigns because ultimately if we don't build collective power if we don't change the ecosystem of actors and players and stuff we're kind of like just running around in circles we're not our campaigns are not going to be effective essentially if we don't approach them from a systems change lens yeah but I I appreciate what you said because I think it's just something that's true like we have to there is an individual aspect to participation as well as well as a collective aspect and I think that's why that's why here that I think you know just some examples of behavior change just you know spreading the word people just telling each other about a campaign or inviting them to something is an example I I've always thought that word of mouth is also like it's a little bit like it's the oldest form of credibility and moral authority as well if people really you know believe in something and they share it with each other it means more to other people to hear it from another person means more to hear it from them than from the internet and from the media and from the government so it's that's that's quite an individual aspect I think to getting involved and to participating in some ways yeah part of the last thing I'll add about that like part of me thinks that like it also depends on like where society is like as a whole like if I'm like trying to let's say like get banks to divest from fossil fuels like 40 years ago like rather than like convincing like I just feel like I don't know maybe I'm just assuming things about like back you know even 40 years ago but my sense is that like there just weren't enough it just wasn't you said the words like it wasn't as much of a well-known issue it would have been harder to like as you said before like break into the public domain without sort of like convincing individuals and converting them first yeah so I don't know like I think there's like part of me is trying to be charitable to myself and other people too and say you know it's also so maybe a different strategy for like different you know yeah I understand I understand what you're saying I think I think that you can it's because we're not getting into our systems change exercises in this workshop so it's like a little bit hard to illustrate but I think you can think about it like this like a campaign strategy that includes a vision of systems change can also feature opportunities to engage individuals you can have a vision for systems change you can map out your system you can understand the actors and the players you can want to change relationships in that system but you can have concrete asks and invitations for participation and engagement for individuals at every level at every level of an engagement period it all depends on your campaign you know goal objectives and then you can design the tactics accordingly I completely agree with you it is it is so different to design a campaign let's say like let's say let's say like adjust transition now it would be like asking banks to divest from fossil fuels like 40 years ago I think now everyone is divesting from fossil fuels you have to do it but right now we're kind of in this moment of people doing like the least amount of reforms that they can like the least amount of cuts that they can and we're not something like really committing to adjust transition like it seems really unimaginable in my opinion this is my like my current reading I still yeah I still I just think it's a problem if people don't know what it is like maybe 40 years ago maybe people didn't know what divestment was you know maybe they don't know like oh they didn't know that banks have money and they don't have they don't know how banks work they don't know that banks like are making money off of their money then they don't know that they're making money off of their money and like very in ways that are harming our planet that are harming people that are harming supply chains so if people don't know what it is then they also can't care about it and then they have to know what it is and then they also have to care about it and then we have to create a whole campaign around that it's like it's like what you say you have to build it starts you know it starts from like one person to one person in the beginning right so if we were going to design a new campaign for the just transition in a very specific context let's say okay I'll give a really unimaginable context because this is where I live if somebody were to start a campaign for a just transition in Hong Kong this would be unimaginable to me I mean this is like Hong Kong and China do not care about the climate crisis maybe this is the first year that China has like ever realized that there is a climate crisis I'm not sure but yeah Hong Kong is like swimming in lots of problems environmentally politically so I personally can't imagine it here and in the beginning there would have to be some aspects of the campaign design that is designed around like small entry points people really using their personal relationships building a campaign design building a campaign goal and objectives but using tactics that are really appropriate to the phase that we're in in the context that we're in and really building I think the I think working on the you know personal relationships this is a core strategy of community organizing you know campaigners are ultimately should be community organizers and this is always going to be my you know line we owe a lot to community organizers for every large scale campaign success that we've had this is built off of the backs of community organizers we all need to be community organizers and we all need to achieve you know success at scale as well right but the fundamentals of community organizing is that this is your community like you are part of your community they depend on you you depend on them you need to you need to nurture these relationships and they trust you more because this is your community this is where you have the most impact this is where you have the most influence this is where you have the most credibility moral authority there is a lot of impact there is a lot of opportunity for individuals to you know to act to get involved to spread to convey information to you know yeah to just invite people around them into these issues and then you know there are tactics for other strategies and and and it's sort of like things can things can scale up but I don't believe that we need to be doing you know global campaigns all the time I think that it's highly dependent and it depends on every group of concerned citizens assessing what they want to do where they want to do it there was a really great report by a uk foundation I have to find the name again but they did a really really great landscape analysis of campaigning in the uk context over the past decade and yeah they they found that most of the yeah most of the most successful campaigns that they found were at the municipal level so you know really embedded groups working on very clear defined maybe not always systems change campaigns but you know campaigns with very clear objectives clear goals and they are obviously building power at a you know at a city level and they were able to change a lot of these laws and legislation and it's just an interesting report because they talk about specifically like all of the obstacles that campaigners face today in the uk context some of this is also preventing successes at you know a national level at an international level so it's it's kind of good to assess this where we are today there's just so many new obstacles against campaign there's like and we can't protest in so many countries and cities around the world now can't be on the streets lots of new sort of like authoritarianisms everywhere so what can you do where we are you know I think that's the eternal campaigning question so we have about like you know 15 minutes left fall run through the rest of the presentation really quickly this is yeah and for the last one we're just going to focus on storytelling one of my favorite aspects of building out a campaign I think it should be you know key to the campaign strategy after doing the the kind of basic building blocks goals objectives strategy tactics if you don't have a campaign story you know maybe hold back on launching your campaign until you find a campaign story yeah this is I guess I should just briefly introduce storytelling as well I mean I think we say storytelling a lot in NGO spheres but really it's just something that everyone does um if you're for example at a dinner party and you want to talk to a group of people you wouldn't talk to them like you're talking to your friend like your individual experiences back and forth you tell a story to the whole group if you want to share something that happened with them and I'm always noticing the way that people are telling stories and these kind of group situations they kind of emphasize some aspects they allow people to ask questions at some moments they do a dramatic pause or I noticed that they're talking too much I noticed something in this story doesn't quite add up so this is a way that we're we're working together basically as a human species and it evolved to you know we evolved this habit out of survival instincts the whole point of a story is to convey meaning and not just the facts so you really want to be thinking about for lack of better words the moral of the story what is the point of this story not just the facts like a plus b equals c but what is the reason why you're telling this story and how is it related to what you want to say like for example I told the story about telling stories at dinner parties because I wanted to talk about how important storytelling is so that's the reason why I told that story what does it give meaning to our societies it's actually you can I think we should be thinking about all of the harmful stories as well as all of the positive stories stories are also myths sometimes they're just plain unfactually you know they're just unfactual they're not true and a lot of stories and a lot of myths are harmful and they also create the basis for all of the you know injustice that we see today all the inequality that we see today and also a lot of nationalism is based off of false stories fake history things that didn't happen patriotism very very masculine sort of nation founding story but it gives people identity and that's that's how we are where we are so I think a lot of what we should be doing as campaigners is trying to identify harmful stories and addressing them I don't think that we can pretend that these stories don't exist I don't think that we can ignore them because they give so much to people they create their identities they are how we communicate to each other as campaigners we need to actively be identifying harmful stories and actively creating news stories based on human rights based on facts based on things that would be for our collective well-being we need to tell better stories than our opposition basically and it's also especially because it's going to be stories that motivate people to act I think if you don't tell them a better story than the one that they've heard they're people are not going to want to change anything a lot of campaigners unfortunately are only engaging people who are already interested and already slightly informed of the issues to act I think when we move from mobilizing to that that's what that is mobilizing is you know mobilizing people who already share our values and who already believe in the same things that we do I think when we go from mobilizing to organizing and organizing is you know organizing massive amounts of people who did not formally share these values were not formally engaged with us are not in our networks I think that's you know that that's that's the really like people powered approach is to motivate you know these people to act and to get them in community with us um so I really take this organizing approach yeah to storytelling need to have an act um kind of shared a lot of this already but I think ultimately um the last part is super important we need to ultimately show that another world is possible and how people can be a part of building it this is also why I'm encouraging people to develop campaigns that don't have these negative force action goals because inherently you're going to be able to show people that another world is possible and how they can be part of building it if your campaign goal is that you say well this is how and this is this is how and why another world is possible because this is our campaign goal we want to build this infrastructure we want to fund this project we want to get we want to have let's say like we want to have a participatory budgeting for our municipal government we want to have clean water by 2030 available for everybody in our city so instead of you know it's we can design our campaigns in a way in which this message this story can inherently be shown just by showing people the goals and objectives while at the same time I don't villainize the negative force um you know campaign goals I understand that they're necessary and this is just this is part of the moment that we're in you know but it's it's another thing to think about so storytelling and communication is uh a little bit also about um the packaging I think we're not going to have time to watch this so I'm just gonna go to the next slide this is where you know communication strategy comes in I think that you can't have just people who are responsible for communications in a in a campaign design process everybody needs to be responsible for communications storytelling is so key to the campaign that if everybody who is not involved is not able to tell the story of the campaign then you know you're not ready yet because we we're all communicators we're all con we're all in network with different people we all need to be able to tell this story and sometimes I like to I sometimes I like to do this exercise where I like to go around like on a team meeting in a in a zoom let's say like we're in a team meeting let's say just of my organization I like to ask everybody I was like um so you know describe describe the work that we do in one or two sentences and you'll see everybody says something different because it's kind of weird to say the organizational mission like word for word it's also strange because why did you memorize it you know you should be able to say in your own words what it is that you do and what it is that you believe and in your own words it's so much more powerful anyway and you'll see that from what people say they have a different they um personally relate to some aspects more than others and it'll be like this for everybody who's involved um with the campaign they will relate to some aspects more than others and they'll emphasize it more in the way that they talk about the campaign but these are all good things to note when you're telling the campaign story is um you know targeting emotions um asking asking people to act in some way reaching different target groups um and then for some of these things there are some like very concrete resources that can help you know more than this slide it's there is a lot of resources and toolkits on how to frame issues in uh on a hope-based way in a positive way in very proactive ways and how to frame also like resources and how to frame issues in ways that are not harmful because in some in some cases some campaigners have the best intentions but they're ultimate some they're using some campaign materials that might be promoting some harmful narratives without them knowing so there's lots of toolkits on like how to frame uh let's say for example abortion rights you know how to frame LGBTQ rights there's ways that we can be um you know using visual material or using some language that without us even knowing is is still perpetuating like some you know harmful stereotypes so there's framing is really important and thinking about framing um you know hope versus fear hope versus anger hope versus you know a lot of negative emotions um and I would say because you know I'm I'm so focused on this like hope-based narrative this is really important for me you know magnifying the negative aspect loudly but not too loudly showing the alternatives what is it that we want besides just the negative right um thinking about there's this huge push for like solutions based journalism what about from what about from social justice organizations whereas the huge push for like solutions based social justice I would say that sometimes it's quite hard for us to find because like this has to be a collective effort so some organizations will not be able to propose the solutions that we need but we need to be you know in contact with each other and constantly collaborating and a lot of the best solutions resources that I've seen have come from collaborations between different NGOs and foundations and think tanks and the like um for example I'll give a good example of a communications resource that is in of itself a campaign so it's called uh Broke the Broke Project and it is uh it's a website and there's a video and resources and research and a framing toolkit and it is a new sort of campaign and communications resource to change the way that we're talking about poverty and wealth in the U.S. The framing of poverty and wealth is that it is inevitable poor people deserve to be poor rich people deserve to be rich and this is a campaign to change that like change the way that we're talking about poor people and like Broke because Broke is kind of slang to refer to people who are poor right it's really interesting it's completely targeting narratives and it is a great campaign and it's the result of like a collaboration across like four different organizations it's not necessarily a people powered campaign otherwise there would be lots of ways for all of us to you know participate and and and act in some way it's really targeting communicators like journalists academics um you know but I wouldn't say that it's necessarily a people powered campaign but it is an aspect of you know framing and utilizing solutions and you know they're also reaching their target audiences I think these are just some basic storytelling um principles that you can really incorporate into your campaign we want to make these stories personal and relatable a lot like with what Tony mentioned from you know their favorite campaigns is that they have to be this is another way in which like individuals can play a strong role clear in informing campaigns we have to be in a while while we're talking about collective and systemic issues they have to be individual and relatable to some aspect and I'll give an example the best articles that I've read by journalists are talking about systemic issues but they open by telling a human story in the first paragraph they tell a story about an individual and what they went through and that immediately pulls us in and then they weave different stories so that it's not just about the individual they share research and facts they relate individual stories to system systemic injustice and this is what we have to do it's so hard to do it's so much easier to just be individualizing and you know use poverty porn and and and all of these things so uh go ahead Claire yeah I'll just say like I write a lot of our fundraising emails um and by like not only is it generally like best practice but it's like it's proven like our data and our you know our numbers that to work like you know sort of like zooming in on a problem and like the individual impact like the the cost to individuals of the problem and then zooming out and saying this is requiring macro solutions and this is what can be done so like I often I find myself too thinking and it's true like these are the best these are these are some of the best like storytelling strategies like for like impactful messages um I took to get this across um it's great and like they're just um close by like not in some other part of the world they're here yeah zooming in and zooming out is great I think if you do one but not the other it doesn't it doesn't work or it's not as good like if you just tell the individual story unfortunately this does not help people to understand how systemic injustice works then they think it's just an individual anomaly or some kind of naturalized uh individual fault it's you know it can be very harmful actually to just share individual stories so it's great to share about zooming in and zooming out um yeah I it is nine on the dot and so I am happy to end the training here especially because I know that you have to go clear um we had a little bit less time than I would have liked today but I think I think I I'm happy with everything that I've shared from my side of really tried to just share these like five principles of campaign strategy from you know from what we can at Wild Lab and there's so many more resources on systems change um and so many exercises that are open source and free on our website and on other sort of campaigning exercise websites and yeah if you have any questions please let me know Claire this was amazing I am so grateful that I was like after dinner I was like I'm gonna go attend that call I think I'm gonna do it and I'm so glad I did because damn what a what a what a gift like anyways it's you know personal attention and all that stuff so um this is great yay yeah I'm just I'm so glad and fantastic presentation like your colleagues said complete like there was nothing really that any of us could had um yeah it was great I'm gonna I've taken screenshots I know that you um you already said that um the slides would be made available all of those too but yeah this is going to even help me with my the thing I have to do tonight so oh that's great that's great to hear yeah thank you so much for joining yeah thanks to me as well


Hey y'all happy vlogmas day 13. My name is Sonali if you guys don't already know me I started the day off pretty early because I'm in the Decatur area taking some photos of my family friends, and I'm currently at Avondale Estates and it's kind of like really Christmas year-round here I just love how in Georgia obviously they do have like a lot more houses. I guess because in Austin I guess I'm like closer to just apartments So maybe I don't realize that they have their Christmas lights out but I feel like so many people here in Georgia really go all out with their Christmas lights and Like little pop-up snowmen and stuff. So it's really cute. So we're gonna take some pictures over here There's just like kind of like a lake thing. It looks very folly I wish the Sun would pop out a little more like I think we should have started a little bit later But no worries because I think they're running a little late. So it's honestly perfect But we're gonna go to breakfast after at first watch and first watch is like the place I used to go to Religiously in college with all of my sorority sisters it was just like our go-to and The great thing about first watch is that you can like hop on the wait list on Yelp So what we would do is we would like tax each other and we'd be like Hey Do you want to go to first watch and then somebody would like put us on the wait list and everyone would get ready Or honestly, we didn't wouldn't even get ready for first watch We would show up in like big t-shirts like I did today. So It's not like a fancy place, but their food is really good. Ryan says otherwise He always says that first watch is like disgusting and I don't know what he got to say that My friends are here. I don't know how much I'll film because I'm using this camera so Change the lens. We just wrapped on our shoe Yeah, and we're gonna head to breakfast gonna meet Ananya and a cool At first watch and I thought it was gonna be a lot sunnier today, but I'm telling you Georgia weather I don't think it's my friend We'll just say that But it's okay. I think the photos turned out really well. So it's very folly over here. We're in Avondale, Estates Never heard of it, but it sounds fancy here Yay got my tail tonic Cheers I'm back home now. It's currently noon. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do the rest of the day I feel like I said that every day this weekend, but I just wanted to show you my outfit of the day really quick Could change but I just threw on this t-shirt for breakfast this morning. Honestly, like my hair fell a lot Frick It's weird because I never really knew that Georgia had humidity when I lived here my whole life But then I moved to Orlando and that place was extremely humid So then I kind of like realized what humidity was in middle school I used to curl my hair all the time and it would stay and like ringlets like for days But now I feel like since I moved to Orlando, I feel like my hair changed Like I don't know. It's so weird. Anyways, it was like really curly this morning And I'm surprised it like felt this much. I didn't really try that hard with my outfit today But this is a new t-shirt. So I wanted to wear it. It's like the urban outfitters graphic tee and then I have my spanks Am I wearing these inside out? Oh my god I don't know and I can't tell But I feel like I'm definitely wearing these inside out and that's what happens when you get dressed so early But anyways, I also am wearing my Doc Martens and funny story this morning Like I was driving Over there and one of my Doc Martin shoes like my toes felt so smushed and I couldn't figure out I actually wore two socks because I didn't want them to like fall And I just I don't know. I just thought it would help To like wear thicker socks with my Docs because they were a bit big on me I was shooting and then I was just like I can't deal with this anymore because my toes were literally about to fall off I took out my foot and I found another sock like wedged into like the toe part It made so much sense. I'm glad I figured that out because it was like unbearable. Honestly, it's such a random story But um, I think I'm gonna clean my room a little bit. It's weird because I actually edited yesterday's vlogmas last night and that never happens like it's already posted and everything I didn't even have to worry about it just because I knew I was waking up so early today And I just didn't really want to worry about it. Um, and that is just a really good feeling So I kind of want to like start editing my vlogs if I have time, of course Like the same day because it just like feels so much less stressful. I also need to like paint my nails I usually redo them like every single week, but I just don't really want to wait for them to dry So I might just like take off my nail polish and like get them ready and then I'll just like paint my nails tomorrow We'll see. I'll keep you guys updated Ryan came over and we are Gonna just uh freaking out. I feel like we don't even have anything to do But we are gonna take some pictures. I don't know maybe in like in Delftown, alpharetta I'm gonna bring my tripod shall be fun shall be interesting. Um, I found this new app though It's called lens buddy and it literally is just uh intervalometer, but like on your cameras or on your phone. So basically it like It's like a self timer that takes your pictures and like refocuses every time And you can like set it to how many pictures you want it to take so it can be like 50 or something Um, and so you can just like keep moving and just keep going and not have to like You know have a clicker in your hand or anything like that So highly recommend that app because I've actually been using that quite a bit We just found a location. We're gonna do this white brick wall and just take a picture Because I feel like I have not taken a picture with Ryan in forever. So we're gonna do the whole tripod bit See how this goes We decided to come down the buckhead and just like drive around. We don't really have anything else to do. So we are um, you know the shops of buckhead and I think we just like passed the buckhead bars, but it's so sad because it doesn't exist anymore What do you mean it doesn't exist? Look behind you. It's buckhead theater. Look. Yes, but the handover was being built when we were at the buckhead bars What they're not tear down Such a liar anyways I remember like We went to buckhead like what like three times or something Yeah, but one of them was my 21st birthday and it was honestly like such a fun night because all my family friends are there My like high school friends are there and then I Went to college and then came back for a break like literally like right after I turned 21 and then The battery was the thing and people hated the buckhead bars and they were like ew buckhead bars That's where the high schoolers go and I was like literally heartbroken Because I just thought the buckhead bars was so fun but I only went to the battery once so maybe I just need to give it a shot again when the world is open but RIP to the buckhead bars because I feel like I'll just never go there because no one ever wants to go But now it's the ivy and midtown bars. Yeah, we passed the ivy and I just I like bar hopping honestly, you know, it's king and do get these behind here. Oh, yeah They're pretty open Yeah restoration hardware I literally always thought this place was like some guy's mansion or like an apartment building, but it's just restoration hardware Oh, yeah shops the buckhead. Yeah So we're at mary max tier room I've had this thing marked on my yelp for so long and when I was looking on their yelp apparently their cinnamon rolls are really good So I'm excited to try It's just traditional southern food So I got chicken and dumplings fried over in mac and cheese and then Ryan got chicken fried chicken And what's that? Oh, that looks good. And then oh, that's tomato pie and then potato salad All right, we got banana pudding. Hopefully it's amazing because this is what I was really looking forward to Ryan oh my gosh So good I don't think we would go back there But I'm glad we went because I've been wanting to go and southern food always just hits I had to build up my courage the whole dinner to ask them if I could have a pencil and he literally gave me four Because at first he was like, oh, let me just find you some pencils And then he gave me these two Then he was like, oh, I need to find you some fresh pencils But like you can have these and so he gave me like fresh pencils that weren't even sharpened And I was like, oh my god, thanks They had this list that you would write your appetizers and it's kind of like a dim sum kind of thing, you know that kind of a situation and When I was like writing We had the best handwriting. I swear we've ever had And I was like, I need this pencil and I was like literally about to hide it in my purse But I didn't want to be that person And he asked for the pencils back when we he like took her order and I was like, shit Like I thought he was gonna leave the pencils But it's okay because I asked for one and he was very gracious earlier in the car Ryan asked me if I had like any chopstick and usually I always have A glossier bomb dot com on me and I actually ordered more because I'm running out on like my last one So I literally ordered like four And I could not find it my freaking purse So like both of our lips were like so chapped and I had lip gloss But obviously he didn't want to use that and like lip gloss can only like sustain me for so long I'm like one of those people that just like need chapstick like literally 100 times a day like at least okay, that's an exaggeration But you get my gist like I always have to have chapstick on my lips And if I don't like I will not talk I will like literally be in a bad mood because my lips just feel so bad Like why would I want to like move them? I just really couldn't find it in my purse So I must have left it here. I need to find it But I just saw my favorite blogger cibon aila. You guys don't follow her. You definitely need to She has like this whole neutral aesthetic and I feel like she's the first person I followed that Like really made it a thing for me. She posted an ad for goop like when a paltrose goop And they came out with a lip balm and it's like 20 bucks And apparently when a paltrow has been working on it for like three years So it's like the best lip balm ever or something and like I feel like everyone says that about every lip balm So I don't know who I can trust, but I'm really Tempted to try it out. I was gonna say that would probably be the most expensive lip balm I bought but Leneige is the same price and it actually is like a really big thing But this one's just like a regular like, you know, like you put it on like this leneige I kind of hate that you have to like stick your finger in and like get your fingers all gross and stuff I know they have a lip glowy balm and I love that stuff, but it's just not the same as like their Like um like pot thing and I also have the fresh lip balm And I think that one was really expensive that might have been like more than 20 bucks So I don't know I think I'm gonna buy it because I'm really just curious to try it out The Sephora VIP sale happened like right before we came home And I bought like a whole new leneige thing And when I got here, like I don't know where the heck they went Like I think they might be an awesome They might be like in my camera backpack at home because I didn't bring that here now that I'm thinking about it But like I'm so annoyed because I like literally only have this one Glossier balm.com And I'm just like patiently waiting for this damn Glossier order to get here I need to like check the tracking on that thing. I honestly had a really good day today And I'm happy that we got to just like kind of explore Um the areas because I think we went to like Chastain Park and that was a really nice area The houses were really really cute and obviously we went to Buckhead And I'm gonna be back there on Thursday because I'm going to my favorite sushi restaurant I think I think that's still happening. We'll see hopefully that is because I always have to go when I'm home And yeah, so I think I'm gonna end the vlog here. I'm gonna try to like edit this tonight. It's only like Almost 8 p.m. So it's not even that late, but obviously tomorrow's Monday and I work So I'm gonna like focus all on that. So I hope you guys enjoyed this vlog and I'll see y'all in my next video. Bye