1 Million Women CEO and co-founder Natalie Isaacs goes behind the scenes of Recipe for Change, our mega weekend of Girls Get-Togethers in November … PLUS posters you can download and spread around.
Before I tell you all about the most exciting challenge we’ve ever taken on, a little bit of history is in order. The seeds of 1 Million Women go back about five years, to a dining room table and a couple of girlfriends getting together for a chat in 2007.
Hey girlfriend … Michelle Grosvenor
I teamed up with Michelle Grosvenor, who lucky thing now lives with her family on an idyllic farm in Tasmania, to hatch an idea for a women-led, practical action campaign on climate change. From the get-go we wanted to reach out beyond the traditional ‘green belt’ and engage in the mainstream of Australian life.
So we started creating 1 Million Women, and built from scratch a new organization of daughters, mothers, sisters and grandmothers getting on with climate action by cutting waste and pollution in our daily lives.
It took time but finally, in mid-2009, we formally launched our newborn campaign with gala events for 300-plus in both Sydney and Brisbane. As you can see, we were starting to get the hang of getting the girls together.
Now we’ve grown from modest beginnings into a national movement of nearly 77,000 members, and we’re holding our biggest Girls Get-Together ever. Actually, we’re coordinating thousands of small get-togethers all around Australia over one big weekend, 16-18 November 2012, and we’d love you to be one of our hosts.
Liane and Nat … Besties for climate action
It’s called Recipe for Change, and it’s literally about making a recipe for living better for ourselves and the planet written with the women and girls of Australia.
We’re asking our members to get their girlfriends together for a meal or a cuppa or drinks over the weekend … to talk about their ideas, questions and experiences for getting on with climate action … and to feedback their solutions, pictures, video clips and more to help us produce our Recipe for Change e-book for International Women’s Day next March, and to make it freely available to women everywhere.
Our theme, created with the wonderful Moon Communications Group who have been our creative agency from the outset, captures the essence of what 1 Million Women has always stood for: when girls get together we can change the world.
Remember, this is all happening on the third weekend of November. So we need everyone’s help to make this the ultimate Girls Get-Together and to write an unforgettable Recipe for Change.
By the way, don’t worry if you aren’t sure how to prepare and what to talk about at your Girls Get-Together.
Hosts will receive great support from 1 Million Women via a Get Together Kit with sustainable recipes and menu tips from celebrity chefs; our how-to guide to save energy, money and earth by cutting waste and pollution; and also rewards such as prizes, giveaways and discounts for selected sustainable goods and services.
FOOTNOTE: I have to confess that when I started on the 1 Million Women journey, I was far from some green role model. When my girlfriend Michelle and I first got together she was a veteran of Greenpeace and the social change movement, while I was nowhere on my own climate change journey, just another working mother in the suburbs trying to make it all work day to day.
I could sit at the dinner table with friends and family and discuss our world’s great climate and environment challenges, and gender ones for that matter, then get up and do … absolutely nothing at all. I was ignorant, but more importantly I was totally disengaged, unmotivated, and disempowered. I thought if there really was a big problem, then others like governments and scientists would fix it, and that there was nothing I could do in my own life to make a difference.
My epiphany, my breakthrough was when I realized that climate change was actually all about me, about my family and friends, and about how we live now and what sort of future we can expect for ourselves and future generations.
So when 1 Million Women was launched three years ago, the core objective was to engage women like I was, women who for whatever reasons aren’t taking action in their own lives to cut waste and pollution, to adopt better and more sustainable lifestyles, and to do it for the benefit of ourselves and the planet.
Nothing has changed, except now we’re making our Recipe for Change. When girls get together we can change the world!
1 Million Women 