Project Global Cooling Update: Hawaii, Seoul, Kazakhstan - Week 3 and Growing

The only thing worth quitting is smoking. (I’m on day 4, by the way.) This project is not worth quitting. It’s growing in a really fun, easy, fascinating way.

Here’s an update about developments on the planning Ning (the “Global Cooling Collective,” which is again now open for easy membership or lurking), in our school in Seoul, and - thanks to two other people on this planet - oh, but I explain all that in this update from the Ning:

Just a quick update: one educator at an international school in Kazakhstan is getting active, and working his network in Bangladesh and Qatar to get active and make things happen as well. So we’ll see how that evolves. His name is Gary. Gary and I have emailed a good bit over the last week, and he’s serious about doing fun stuff for real-world change.

Chris in Honolulu and I skyped this morning, and he’s presenting the project on the community level at his private school, and as an activity club. He’s also got an IB Economics class interested in producing work for publication on the website. That class might be able to do some interesting collaboration with Mr. Ski’s AP Econ class here in Seoul, since Ski likes the idea of real-world project-based learning for his classrooms too.

So keep the faith, Seoul. There are a few movers and shakers out there starting to come to life like you have

Other news (local): we got the okay for the pro-level video camera for our documentary about this project (and about the psychology of schools).

We’re sort of competing to see who can get a response first from Al Gore.

We’re working on building the PCG website and blog (it’s on WordPress, with a static page as the home page, and the blog on a navbar link). 30 students contributing to the blog would be too unfocused. We’re working on a way to blog our progress in a more orderly way, but still inclusive of everyone.

There are now 35 students in our high school (total population: 235 or so) participating in two separate club blocks - one on Tuesday, one on Wednesday. Each block only meets once a week, for forty minutes, but we’re talking about voluntary weekend or after school meetings as well.

Despite our school’s “No Cell Phones” policy, in our club, we use them to call corporations, music club owners, and other contacts to request appointments and propose ideas.

We’ve started filming the documentary. It’s already interesting.

Finally, OUR NATURAL NETWORK IN SEOUL IS AMAZING. We have parents in the film industry, in the major corporations, in television, in universities, and more. Ideas are exploding about how to tap these community members to help us make this movement grow and spread.

And we’re only two weeks into the school year. We have about 30 weeks left before the Earth Day PGC Concert in April ‘08.

We will do it this year. Several bands are already saying they want to perform.

And we will do it better next year.

And our futures will be better for it.

Seoul members, so many of you are already inspiring. You’re outside of the school “box” and connecting to the real world for a real good cause.

You make life worth living.

Thanks for that.

Clay