Consider Us during Green Week

The campaign calls for children, between six and eighteen, to explain in 20 words why world leaders should consider them when signing their climate change treaties. What is precious about our world? Why is it worth saving? These messages then appear, in real time, on a dedicated website, serving as a voice of the generation with the most to lose.

A TV, radio and print campaign will advertise Consider Us; a ‘guerrilla' campaign masterminded by Heart (the social enterprise hub that incubates new social enterprises) includes a chalking project, whereby messages are chalked up in the communities and a greening/planting project. Two dedicated websites are now live for the posting of messages. A social media campaign using free MXit and website banner advertising makes up a full digital media campaign to support Consider Us.

Messages on line

During Cape Town Green Week (19-23 Oct 2009), some of the messages will be strung up on washing lines at the Cape Town International Convention Centre so that delegates from all over the world who are attending a series of events can read them. There will be giant screens inside the CTICC showing messages as they are posted live on the Consider Us website.

A selection of the most hard-hitting, heart-rending messages will be collated in a book and delivered to heads of state at the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in December. These world leaders will be asked to sign the book, which will constitute, effectively, a signed oath to heed the demands of children all over the world. Once signed, the book will travel back to Cape Town, South Africa, where it will be buried in a time capsule at a UN heritage site, to be opened twenty years from now. There seems to be a genuine belief that Copenhagen can succeed where its predecessor, Kyoto, fell short.

Zoom's creative director, Deon Robbertze urges everyone to tell everyone about the campaign. “It's high time the children had a say in their future. I defy the world leaders not to listen to them!”

Official launch

Adding his voice to the Consider Us groundswell is SA rock star, Arno Carstens. This singer-songwriter and former front man of Springbok Nude Girls has offered a single off his soon-to-be-released album as the soundtrack to the campaign. Titled ‘Emergency', he will perform this haunting song together with the award-winning Tygerberg Children's Choir at a CTICC gala dinner on Thursday 22 October.

The performance officially launches the Consider Us global campaign and commemorates the historic United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) Global Roundtable when hundreds of the world's top financiers and investors come to Cape Town to plan a new and green economy.

Parents, teachers and children are being encouraged to participate in the campaign so that these messages can be delivered to the world's financiers, who can deliver them to Copenhagen. Follow the campaign on www.considerus.org or www.considerus.mobi.