The event also served as a “send-off” for Assemblywoman Skinner as she heads to Copenhagen, Denmark this week for the 2009 United Nations Convention on Climate Change. This conference brings together 192 countries and 100 heads of state or government in negotiations to deal with the growing threats posed by global warming. Assemblywoman Skinner will represent California alongside State Senator Fran Pavely and other state leaders, and will speak about her energy efficiency legislation and California policies. She will also interact with the University of California delegation that is attending the conference to provide expert testimony through panel discussions.

Recognized as the California Assembly’s 2009 Rookie of the Year, Nancy authored landmark legislation this past year, including bills that will give foster youth better access to college housing, (AB 1393), make AC Transit buses more bike friendly (AB 652), and bring thousands of energy efficient jobs to California (AB758).

The Madera Group congratulates Assemblywoman Skinner for all of her achievements in 2009, and wishes her a victorious 2010!

Photo: CPUC Commissioner Dian Gruenich, Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, and Janice Lin from Stratgen Consulting
Photo Credit: Erik Johnson

Success in social marketing and fundraising means making our clients visible in a crowded online marketplace. Our agency works with clients to develop a strategy that not only uses social networks, but also persuades others to pass the word on. That means creating inspiring and thoughtful messages that work for both email inboxes and social networking sites. It means telling a story that communicates the meaning of the work we are describing, and showing the results that come from it.

The desired goal is to have the public, or the media, pick up a story and carry it even further — a bonus that is the reward for hard work and creative thinking.

Even better, is when an agency partners with a once-in-a-lifetime client who needs no introduction to the social marketplace — in our case, President Bill Clinton and his foundation, the William J. Clinton Foundation. On August 19th, President Clinton celebrated his 63rd birthday. To celebrate, The Madera Group collaborated with his foundation staff to launch an online birthday card fundraising campaign with the culminating message sent by his beloved friend Nelson Mandela.

By the way, it is not too late to send President Clinton a birthday wish and make a donation.

Happy Birthday President Clinton! We thank you and your foundation for all that you are doing around the world to fight climate change, eliminate childhood obesity, and give access to HIV/AIDS medicines to millions of people. Your work is an inspiration to us all.

The Madera Group supports United4Iran.org’s global day of solidarity on Saturday, July 25th. Untited4Iran is a non-partisian group of individuals working to end the widespread and systematic violations of the people of Iran’s human and civil rights. In just three weeks United4Iran participation has grown to over 110 cities worldwide.

The Madera Group has been assisting United4Iran.org with website strategy, social networking and video production and coordination.

Nobel Peace Laureates, prominent Iranian poets & artists, and many others support the global day of action including: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Shirin Ebadi, Sean Penn, Dariush, Jody Williams, Betty Williams, Mairead Maguire, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Simin Behbahani, and Ismael Khoii.

Please watch this excellent video, produced by a participant in Amsterdam to support the event.

The Clinton Foundation and Madera Group launched a new video about the Clinton Foundation Millennium Network’s work to inspire young philanthropists to become the “How Generation.”

President Clinton joined more than 600 young leaders in Los Angeles at the Millennium Network reception on April 30th. Actors Jessica Alba and Adrian Grenier were hosts, and Will.i.am performed. President Clinton challenged the audience to answer the great questions of our time: How can we leave a positive impact on the next generation? How can we make individual changes in our lives to make a large difference in the world? As Madera’s Executive Producer, I produced the “How Generation” video for the Clinton Foundation, with David Driver as the Director of Photography. We shot the video on location with a high definition camera. As you will see from watching the video, the overflow crowd provided a lively backdrop for our interviews.

As a follow up to the Millennium Network reception, the Clinton Foundation and Madera Group created an email message to share the video with the network’s supporters. (Click Image)

To learn more about the Clinton Foundation Millennium Network, visit their Facebook Cause page.

My Madera Group colleague Erik Johnson recently completed a trip to Alaska, where he worked on a series of videos to capture a deeper understanding of Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Erik joined a team of highly respected Bay Area producers, camera operators, editors and musicians … and the Wasilla Project began.

The goal of the project is to produce a series of short video portraits of Sarah Palin and her hometown that could be a valuable addition to the national debate and the mainstream media news coverage, and to produce videos that can speak to issues that touch undecided voters on “Main Street.”

The team determined before arriving in Alaska that they were going to interview both Republicans and Democrats—what mattered most was getting to people who knew her and had knowledge about her policies and beliefs first hand. The team has just completed its first video that focuses on victims of sexual assault who have to pay for the gathering of forensic evidence for their own cases. The team interviewed people involved in the issue to make their interviews available online.

View the Wasilla Project videos on YouTube.

On the bus last night to hear Senator Hillary Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention, I met a young City Council member and nonprofit executive from Albany, New York. Corey Ellis, a Barack Obama delegate, is the Program Director of Trinity Institution’s Family and Neighborhood Resource Center. The institution serves the poor in his city, for example providing a successful program tutoring young adults who want to receive their GED (General Education Diploma).

Corey understands that for many young people in his district, a GED can be one of the only gateways to a job rather than prison. I was moved by Corey’s passion and positive influence in his community. Corey is knocking down barriers that for many of his parents’ generation were concrete and absolute.

Corey left a successful consulting practice in New York City to go back to his hometown of Albany to serve his community—a path in many ways similar to that of Barack and Michelle Obama. After hearing Michelle Obama’s speech at the convention Monday night, Corey realized he had internalized his own barrier—could he too become President some day? In his work, perhaps a greater number of young people, who see a role model in Corey, will be motivated by his leadership to achieve their own personal goals.

Corey is one of the most dynamic young leaders I have met at the convention this week, during a week overflowing with unprecedented inspiration. If Corey is an indication of the kind of unified civic leadership Barack Obama will attract throughout American cities and rural areas in the next administration, the country has exciting times ahead.

So when I read Thomas Friedman’s article a few days ago about the work of Van Jones (pictured at left) and the Ella Baker Center on the new national project they are launching—the Green-Collar Jobs Campaign: Green For All—I got really excited. I live near Oakland, home of the Ella Baker Center, and have been hearing about the project. However this week while I happened to be in D.C., the project and the concept of greening the workforce began to take hold on the national level.

Green For All’s goal is to secure $1 billion in funding for green-collar job training in order to lift 250,000 people out of poverty across the country. It works in three main fronts:

• National Advocacy in the federal government and the private sector to ensure that the United States has an abundant supply of well-trained “green-collar” workers and entrepreneurs, focusing on those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Technical Assistance in “green-collar” job training and to align business, labor unions, community organizations and educational institutions.
• Public Education to impact news coverage, produce videos,
  host convenings, create advocacy toolkits, employ new media and anchor
  a Web 2.0 strategy for shaping debate, organizing discussion and
  sharing best practices.

In a speech Senator Clinton gave in Oakland a few weeks ago, in front of 14,000 people, she introduced Van’s concept of green-collar jobs to the crowd to roars of excitement. To have Van Jones’s visionary leadership shape the Democratic front-runner’s message on the environment and job creation gives me hope. Another statistic I heard this week is that Oakland, California, has a high school drop-out rate at 47%.  Like all those that heard this shocking number, I realized that Van was really up to something significant. If you create green jobs in communities across California and eventually the nation that support sustainability and job creation in vulnerable communities, then we can begin to radically shift the tide of the detrimental policies.

Learn more about Green-Collar jobs and Van Jones’s work at the Ella Baker Center.