PICKED: Beautiful Short Film for World Water Day

Today is the 19th annual World Water Day and French nonprofit Solidarités International marks the occasion with a beautiful short film to raise awareness about safe drinking water: It’s estimated that 3.6 million people, of which 1.5 million are children under 5, die of diseases caused by water contamination every year, making it the world’s leading cause of death. Yet both the public and political leaders remain largely unaware and thus unlikely to take action against this preventable epidemic.

This film, produced by agency BDDP Unlimited and directed by young director, illustrator, musician and photographer Clément Beauvais, is both a moving reminder about the importance of this fundamental substance and a specific call to action for journalists to spread awareness about it and appeal to readers to sign a petition that will be personally handed to the French president during the 6th World Water Forum in March 2012.

Looking for meaningful ways to support World Water Day beyond awareness? Here are a few actionable ideas. And to further grasp both the beauty and the gravity of the subject, don’t miss the remarkable Blue Planet Run.

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PICKED: Waste Land

The world’s largest landfill, Jardim Gramacho, lies in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, where an eclectic group of local “catadores” — self-assigned pickers of recyclable materials — live, work and play. Jarred by the disconnect between these pickers’ bold creative spirit and the desolate conditions of their lives, acclaimed artist Vik Muniz decided to help. So he set out to change their lives through the very material of their livelihoods, creating powerful portraits of the garbage pickers that hover between dignity and desperation, selling them as high art, and giving all the money back to the community.

Waste Land is British filmmaker Lucy Walker‘s fantastic documentary about this beautiful social experiment, following Vik from his homebase in Brooklyn to his native Brazil for nearly three years as he collaborates with the pickers on these portraits and eventually helps them form a political association that empowers their existence. The film swept Sundance last year, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Thanks, Carr!), and is out on DVD this week.

The moment when one thing transforms into another is the most beautiful moment. That moment is really magical.” ~ Vik Muniz

It’s not just that Waste Land is a beautiful piece of cinematic storytelling. It’s also the kind of film that will make you look a bit more closely at your own life in a heartfelt, non-pedantic way, and maybe, just maybe, make you want to live a richer, fuller life.

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Climate Kid: UNICEF’s Platform for Preparedness

What evolutionary fantasies have to do with the future of practical education.

The true litmus test for the value of education is how well it equips us for navigating modern life. And while it might be an uncomfortable one, climate change is one of its increasingly urgent realities. Yet traditional education rarely equips kids with the essential lifeskills for dealing with the consequences of climate change, many of which will reach threatening proportions within the lifetimes of today’s youth. To address this, our friends at Do The Green Thing (remember them?) have teamed up with UNICEF to launch Climate Kid — a new platform for UNICEF’s work in helping children around the world adapt to climate change.

Though wonderfully animated and playful in tone, the short film raises the important question of how we adapt — biologically, maybe, but certainly socially — to a world changing before our eyes.

The effort is accompanied by a Twitter competition to win some lovely original artwork by talented independent illustrators who have developed their own interpretation of climate kid. To enter, simply tweet about what evolutionary enhancements you think a climate kid would need in the future, and hashtag it #climatekid.

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Worldchanging: An Updated Vision for a Better World

Since 2003, Alex Steffen’s nonprofit online magazine Worldchanging has been a beacon of sustainability, social innovation and thought-leadership in bettering our planet’s future. In 2006, this essential toolkit for conscious modern living was packaged in Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century — a densely informative 600-page synthesis of the iconic site, dubbed The Whole Earth Catalog for the iPod generation. At the time, sustainability was just a budding meme, which over the past five years evolved into an essential part, and some would argue a bare minimum, for our cultural ethos. This week, Worldchanging is back with Worldchanging, Revised and Updated Edition: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century — a timely compendium of the smartest strategies and most exciting new tools for building a better future.

One of the book’s most valuable aspects for us, given our deep fascination with and passion for urbanism, is its insightful angle on cities as living organisms capable of catalyzing social change.

The first Worldchanging book looked at the most creative and high-impact solutions available for solving the planet’s most pressing problems. WC2.0 takes the same solutions approach, but raises the bar, asking how we can participate as individuals in creating systemic change.” ~ Alex Steffen

From food justice to carbon-neutral homes to alternative transportation, the Worldchanging, Revised and Updated features 160 noteworthy ideas and vital solutions that maybe, just maybe, offer real, tangible hope for a world we’ve cornered into near-hopeless vulnerability.

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