Amanda's Lemonade Stand

Looking for a way to spend this beautiful Sunday (May 16th) with your kids, friends or family? How about enjoying a cool glass of lemonade, munching some cookies, meeting sports celebs and supporting the Heart and Stroke Foundation all at the same time!? Head to Amanda's Lemonade Stand from 11-2pm located at 33 Post Road. There will be loads going on - appearances by Dora the Explorer, Pinball Clemons, Dan the Music Man, as well as tasty snacks and pony rides! LEARN MORE!

ALL PROCEEDS are donated to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, in support of the pediatric program at Sick Kids. Not only is the event amazing, but the founder, 12 Amanda Belzowski is an amazing story herself! This year she hopes to raise a total of $200,000 for the foundation! Check out our Season 1 video on the volunteer extraordinaire herself!

Power of the Hour Campaign Featured in Strategy Magazine!

Check out Strategy Magazine's article on the Power of the Hour Campaign, in this month's (May) issue! The article features interviews from business heavy hitters like Ferg Devins of Molson CoorsCanada, Tara Smith of UPS Canada, Paulette Minard of Home Depot Canada - and of course the exectuive producer and series creator of Get Involved, our very own Dorothy Engelman! Read the article, and learn about the power of corporate volunteering!

Become a facebook fan of Get Involved!

Get Involved now has a brand new facebook fan page! Receive live updates of current volunteer postings, get links to our newest videos and blogs, and check out volunteer events and fundraisers that are happening around Canada! Our fan page is a great way to stay updated and get involved with opportunities that work for you! With facebook fan page's you will receive notifications on your home page, so you don't get bogged down with emails and notifications!

Become a fan now!!

12 year old Fundraiser Extraordinare & CEO hit up Bay Street for Volunteer Hours

Mike Tierney, President of UPS Canada and Chair of the Corporate Council on Volunteering and 12 year-old volunteer dynamo and Power of the HourAmbassador Amanda Belzowski hit the streets, with a "guerilla celebration" to promote volunteering. With balloons in hand, and chocolate to give out to hungry Bay Street lunchers; volunteers from Canadian Blood Services, CARD, UPS Canada, Investors Group, Amanda's Lemonade Stand, Habitat for HumanityToronto and Volunteer Canada came together to celebrate National Volunteer Week and ask the public "How do you volunteer?"

AND it worked! The volunteer team received 25,000 pledged volunteer hours from the public!

“Having Amanda alongside powerful CEOs is a great way to drive home the important role that we all play in community building. I encourage the rest of Canada to pledge and track their hours 24-7 online at www.getinvolved.ca/power,” said Dorothy Engelman, Founder, Power of the Hour.

Join us and celebrate National Volunteer Week (April 19th-25th), by pledging your volunteer hours with Power of the Hour!

“Over 46 percent of Canadians volunteer for not-for-profit organizations in their communities and across the country,” said Ruth MacKenzie, President and CEO, Volunteer Canada. “National Volunteer Week, this country’s largest celebration of volunteers, is a time to recognize their tremendous contribution. The week-long event also prompts Canadians to think about how they can roll up their sleeves, share their skills, and better their communities and the lives of others.”

Power of the Hour Reaches 2 000 000 Hours!!

On the morning of March 25th, the Power of the Hour campaign hit 2,202,342 hours! Our goal was to encourage volunteering, by challenging Canadian businesses, individuals and organizations to pledge their volunteer hours for 2010 - and we hit our 2 million hour goal three months into our campaign! That's means that Canadians are doing amazing work engaging their communities and participating in volunteering all over the country! How many volunteer hours do we as Canadians really do a year?!

Volunteer Canada has pulled together facts and statistics on Canadian volunteering - and we see some fabulous numbers. Virtually all Canadians (95%) engage in at least one form of social support. 71% of businesses either support or accommodate employee volunteering. 12% of the population are "top-volunteers" - they contribute 78% of all Canadian volunteer hours! And with Power of the Hour we can see and track this explosion of social commitment and change!

Thanks to our devoted, engaged and involved members of Power of the Hour and Get Involved we know that over 2,000,000 hours are going to be spent creating social good in the year 2010. But what does the number 2,000,000 really mean - it's such a huge number that it can be hard to grasp how much these hours will make a difference.

For starters, there is only 8,760 hours in a year. For one individual to complete 2 million hours of volunteer service by themselves it would take 228 years. But look at what we can do collectively, we are making this contribution in a single year!

2 000 000 hours is enough time to build 1,300 Habitat for Humanity Homes.

It takes 28 hours to fly from New York to Australia - you could fly back and forth 71,428 times!

BUT 2 million dollars would only buy you half a Lear Jet Airplane.

Thanks to all of our amazing organizations, businesses and individuals who are working so hard, and helping their communities, our country and the world! Collectively we are a force that IS making a difference.

Water Week On TVO (March 21-27)

• 2.5 billion people in the world don't have access to adequate sanitation - that's two fifths of the entire world's population!
• 97.5% of the earth's water is saltwater. If the world's water could fit into a bucket, only one teaspoon would be drinkable.
• A person can live a month without food, but only about a week without water.

Makes you think doesn't it?

Monday March 22 is World Water Day and UN-Water has chosen “Communicating Water Quality Challenges and Opportunities” as its theme. To mark the day, TVO will air a week of water-themed programming featuring the world premiere of the Canadian documentary Water on the Table, and encores of films that examine political, economic and environmental issues dealing with water quality and availability. Get Involved is partnering with TVO to support this fantastic endeavor to spread water education.

Check out TVO's Water Week schedule here:

Water on the Table

March 24th at 10pm (repeated March 28th at 10:30pm)

Is water a human right, or a commodity to be bought and sold like gold and oil? That’s the question at the heart of this timely new documentary by filmmaker Liz Marshall. Over the course of a year in Canada and the United States, the film follows Canadian activist Maude Barlow as she campaigns against the privatization of water and tries to bring attention to how industry is polluting the water table.

A World Without Water

March 21st at 8pm

Filmmaker Brian Woods examines the dramatic impact of the battle for water ownership on the lives of four disparate groups of people in Bolivia, India, Tanzania and the heart of the planet’s richest nation, the United States.

Toxic Trespass

March 21st at 10:30pm

Filmmaker Barri Cohen investigates the effects of the chemicals all around us, beginning with her 10-year-old daughter, whose blood carries carcinogens like benzene and the long-banned DDT. She heads to Windsor and Sarnia, Ontario, identified as Canadian toxic hotspots, with startling clusters of deadly diseases.

Strait Through the Ice

March 24th at 7pm

Scientists and explorers weigh in on how the melting of Arctic polar ice, opening up the Northwest Passage, can be both an ecological catastrophe and a commercial godsend.

National Geographic's Extreme Ice

March 27th at 7pm

Photojournalist James Balog and his team conduct the largest photographic study of the cryosphere (the portions of the Earth’s surface where water is in solid form and ground is frozen) ever attempted – in order to assess the rapid glacier melt and its implications on the future environment of our planet.

Learn more at TVO's Facebook Page or reading the Water Week Press Release!

Digital U hits NetChange Week!

GetInvolved.ca's series about digital and social media literacy heads to NetChange for

Internet Week!

Net Change is a week-long forum dedicated to exploring the intersection between social technology and social change.

We're going to be interviewing some fantastic people throughout the week, like Beth Kanter, CEO Zoetica and author of Beth's Blogs: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media, Jeremy Heimans, CEO of Purpose and Dr Ann Cavoukian, Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario.

All great interviews for our second season of Digital U, a series that explores how social media is affecting social change.

Season one of the Digital U podcasts include interviews from Mitch Joel, Twist Image, Jason Mogus, Communicopia, Meghan Warby, Hill & Knowlton Canada, Beka Economopoulos, Fission Strategy, Craig Heintzman , World Wide Web Foundation, Christopher Berry, Critical Mass, and Sacha Chua, IBM. ALL of the 8 episodes are on Get Involved HERE or check out a full schedule and descriptions.

Topics covered range from explaining the crowdsourcing phenomenon and how to create an effective online persona, to online activism and how consumers are being empowered through social technology. You’ll also hear about people’s favourite digital media tools and how not to be overwhelmed by information, but instead how to manage its flow.

Digital U has made learning easy, and if you want to find out even more about social media, listen to our 20+ full length podcasts and become an expert yourself!

Digital U Podcasts

Okay so you get social media. You're on facebook, you've YouTubed and you've even tweeted. Ready to become an expert? Sit back, relax and listen to the advice of fabulous social media experts like; Mitch Joel, Twist Image,Jason Mogus, Communicopia, Meghan Warby, Hill & Knowlton Canada, Beka Economopoulos, Fission Strategy, Craig Heintzman , World Wide Web Foundation, Christopher Berry, Critical Mass, and Sacha Chua, IBM.

Check out the schedule below and watch the ones you are interested in! In no time you'll be creating widgets and expanding your online social network.

Mitch Joel - President, Twist Image and Author of "Six Pixels of Separation": WATCH

Ryan Taylor - Goldsmith, The Fair Trade Jewellery Co: WATCH

Craig Heintzman - Development Associate, World Wide Web Foundation: WATCH

Deanna Zandt - Media Technologist and Author of "Share This!": WATCH

Ryan Coleman - Facilitator & Information Designer: WATCH

Donnie Claudino - Marketing Manager, TechSoup Canada: WATCH

Meghan Warby - Senior Consultant, Argyle Comm.: WATCH

Jason Mogus - CEO, Communicopia: WATCH

Lisa Torjman - Associate, SiG@MaRS: WATCH

Sarah Prevette - Founder & CEO, Sprouter: WATCH

Beka Economopoulos - Vice President, Fission Strategy: WATCH

Sacha Chua - Enterprise 2.0 Consultant, IBM: WATCH

Christopher Berry - Group Marketing Science Director, Critical Mass: WATCH

Tamera Kremer - Founder and Chief Strategist, Wildfire Strategic Marketing: WATCH

Phillip Djwa - Principal, Agentic Communications: WATCH

Roz Lemieux - Partner, Fission Strategy: WATCH

Monica Hamburg - Writer & Social Media Evangelist: WATCH

Sam Dorman - Technology Strategist: WATCH

Marco Campana - Online Capacity, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI): WATCH

Samer Rabadi - Senior Campaign Manager, Care2.com: WATCH

Don Tapscott - Chairman of nGenera Insight: Coming Soon

OR WATCH Digital U - the Series!

Great Turnout for Power of the Hour Launch!

We had 200 guests, 10 CEOS and executives from their not-for-profit partners, all show up yesterday (1/13/10) at the TSX for the launch of Power of the Hour and the Corporate Council on Volunteering's pledge of 814,900 employee volunteer hours over the next year! We're now well on our way to our goal of 2,000,000 volunteer hours for 2010. Executive Producer (and q media Senior Partner) Dorothy Engelman, TVO CEO Lisa De Wilde and Volunteer Canada President Ruth MacKenzie all were on hand. Link here view BNN's live coverage of the event.

Get Your Children Engaged in Volunteering

Check out TVO's fantastic article on how to teach your kids to contribute to society and donate to a worthy cause! You will be surprised by how passionate kids can become when they get involved. There's lots of fun opportunities too, volunteering is no longer about simply stuffing envelopes. It's a great way to give back this holiday season and an even better bonding experience for you and you family.

TVO Parents: Engaged Philanthropy and Power of the Hour.

Need extra help getting your family inspired? Check out this great video on Ryan Hreljac, the seventeen year old creator of the Ryan's Well Foundation - which has provided clean water to over 580 000 people around the world. CLICK HERE

Check out our other videos on superstar volunteer teens: Quinn Runkle, Bilaal Rajan, Amanda Belzowski and Abbey Simbrow.

Get Involved's Digital U Schedule

Do you want to know more about Facebook, Twitter and the power of social media? Getinvolved.ca presents Digital U a series that explores how social media is affecting social change. Digital U begins January 24th on TVO.

The pieces spotlight interviews with over 20 social media experts including; Mitch Joel, Twist Image, Jason Mogus, Communicopia, Meghan Warby, Hill & Knowlton Canada, Beka Economopoulos, Fission Strategy, Craig Heintzman , World Wide Web Foundation, Christopher Berry, Critical Mass, and Sacha Chua, IBM.

Check out Get Involved's airing schedule of all 8 episodes, so you won't miss a thing! Every new episode will be aired here on the stated date.

Episode 1 - Online Activism: An Overview: WATCH

Episode 2 - Transparency: Tell No Lies: WATCH

Episode 3 - The Power of the Citizen: Politics 2.0 - January 19th

Episode 4 - The Power of the Consumers: Consumers Pumping Up the Volume - January 26th

Episode 5 - Twitter and Micro-messaging - February 2nd

Episode 6 - Crowdsourcing: The Wisdom of the Masses - February 9th

Episode 7 - A Virtual Printing Press - February 16th

Episode 8 - A Loss of Privacy? - February 23rd

reConnect December 2009

Happy Holidays from GetInvolved.ca!

The moment we've all been waiting for has arrived just in time for New Year's resolutions. Power of the Hour is a brand new online volunteer tracking tool that allows Get Involved users to collectively pool their hours towards a cause. Already we've had over 1 million hours pledged by individuals, businesses and non-profit organizations. Share your volunteer goal on Power of the Hour for a chance to win one of 3 iPod Touches given away every 250,000 hours pledged. Help us meet our goal of 2 million hours and commit to making a difference in 2010.

Follow us on:Twitter Facebook YouTube Challenges Feed Connect Feed

New Features

Power of the Hour

Power of the Hour has a variety of new features to help you make a difference and track your volunteer progress. You can use your Get Involved account to sign in and easily pledge your volunteer goal for the New Year. Challenge your friends and family by creating a group so that you can collectively track your hours. Search for your favourite non-profit and donate your hours to the cause of your choice. Get inspired by browsing our list of existing actions to build your own personal action list. We give you the tools to engage, motivate and inform your community about all the ways you can make a difference.

This Month

Act:

Featured Challenge - Power of the Hour

Encourage others to sign up and add their hours by sharing your actions and progress with your community. Whether it’s helping out on a school field trip, coaching, mentoring or running for a cure— your hours add up quickly. Take action and pledge your volunteer goal today!

Watch:

Over the Fall we invited our members to be apart of our national campaign to promote volunteering. Featuring individuals, businesses and non-profits, these spots encourage volunteers to take action. The campaign has been airing on TVO, and we also have them featured throughout the Watch section of GetInvolved.ca. You can also see the promos live on q media solution's new website. Special congratulations to featured campaign BeautifulCity.ca whose youth-led advocacy campaign just passed in City Council this month creating millions of dollars in new funds for the arts.

Connect:

At Get Involved there are tons of volunteer opportunities constantly being posted:

CAMH is looking for Drum Circle Volunteers for their mental health programs

Warden Woods Community Center needs Family Sponsors for the Christmas holidays

Kids.now is looking for a Communications and Development Coordinator (internship position) for January 2010

Check out over 1000 more opportunities!

New Tool for Get Involved - POWER of the HOUR!

Wellspring is doing it.
WWOOF Canada has announced 10 000 hours!
Youth Without Shelter is standing up and being counted.

All these great organizations have announced their volunteer hour goal for 2010 at Power of the Hour!!

Power of the Hour is an application tool brought to you by Get Involved that is designed to promote and celebrate volunteer hours.

Help us reach our goal of 2 000 000 000 volunteer hours!

As tool for non-profits, Power of the Hour will allow you to track your volunteer hours, and help you develop relationships with potential volunteers, other organizations and corporations with a strong social responsibility statement. And best of all - it's free! So pre-register your organization now at wwww.powerofthehour.ca.

Individuals can use the free Power of the Hour application as well! Not only will you be able to track your yearly hours, you will get a chance to be recognized and celebrated for all the fantastic time and skills you devote to important and meaningful causes! Power of the Hour's Power Tools page will provide you with all the information you need to find new and rewarding opportunities in your area. Take the Power of the Hour Challenge.


STAND UP AND BE COUNTED NOW!

TVO Launches podcasts and shorts for new series Digital U

Do you want to know more about RSS feeds but are afraid to ask? Are you on Facebook, but balk at the idea of twittering? Getinvolved.ca is launching a new series – Digital U – and it’s aimed at helping people navigate and understand the latest trends and concepts in social media.

Beginning in December, TVO will be rolling out eight different three-minute shorts, the first one is Micromessaging and Twitter, click here for a sneak preview. The pieces involve interviews with over 20 social media experts including: Mitch Joel, Twist Image, Jason Mogus, Communicopia, Meghan Warby, Hill & Knowlton Canada, Beka Economopoulos, Fission Strategy, Craig Heintzman, World Wide Web Foundation, Christopher Berry, Critical Mass, and Sacha Chua, IBM.

Topics covered range from explaining the phenomenon known as crowdsourcing and how to create an effective online persona, to online activism and how consumers are being empowered through social technology. You’ll also hear about people’s favourite tools and how not to be overwhelmed by information, but instead how to manage its flow.

Digital U has made learning easy, and if you want to find out even more about social media, full audio and video podcasts of each interview subject will be available online at Digital U, airing once a week, starting in December.

Technology Meets Sustainability

Here at Get Involved we are passionate about technology as a tool for social change. As social media evolves, more and more the opportunities for global collaboration for sustainability multiply as we are able to share our solutions for a better world. Recently Microsoft commissioned Seattle studio Oh, Hello to produce their vision of a sustainable future in 2019, conceptualizing how sustainability and technology will merge. Get inspired and feel free to post your comments on how you believe what future directions new technology will bring in producing sustainable solutions for the future!

Volunteer Canada Launches NEW SITE to promote Corporate Volunteerism!

Volunteer Canada Launches NEW SITE to promote Corporate Volunteerism!
In 2007 Canadian volunteers gave over 2.1 billion hours of their time - a 4.2% increase from 2004 report Statistics Canada. And increasingly much of the credit for this impressive stat is thanks to companies across the country who have been stepping up and establishing employee volunteering programs.

In an effort to encourage and grow the contribution of the corporate sector Volunteer Canada, in co-operation with the Canadian Corporate Council on Volunteering, is launching the Centre for Excellence in Corporate Community Involvement.

This site brings together Canada’s nonprofits and businesses to explore and further promote the practice of employer-supported volunteerism.

Businesses and nonprofits from across the country are joining the nationwide membership of Volunteer Canada in an effort to better communicate and work together in partnership. This process will be facilitated by the Centre for Excellence’s social networking tool hosted to exchange ideas, best practices, tools and resources.

To register, please visit www.corporatevolunteering.ca

New Features on Getinvolved.ca!

Hey Get Involved Users and Organizations!

We'd like to thank you for all your comments and suggestions. Based on your feedback we have re-vamped Getinvolved.ca to make it more user-friendly and more active! Log In to check it out!

Our new homepage includes quick links that connect you with the latest and most relevant postings, making it easier for organizations to promote their cause and upcoming events!

The new My GI page allows you to tweet your news and life with a status update, and a live news-feed keeps you up to date with upcoming events!

Tell us what you think of the new features - we appreciate all your thoughts and comments!

There's more to come in the next few months - including better matching tools and geographic filtering.

Volunteer Appreciation Week: April 19 - 25

Now more than ever, the work of the volunteer is essential work. National Volunteer Week (NVW) pays tribute to the millions of Canadian volunteers who donate their time and energy – it’s the biggest celebration of volunteers and volunteerism this country has and Volunteer Canada is taking the lead on the celebrations again this year. Volunteers are on the front lines of all of our community services – community health care, heritage and arts, maintenance of green space, disaster relief, volunteer firefighting, minor sports – the list goes on and on.
The 2009 campaign was developed to help organizations and individuals from coast to coast to coast deliver their own NVW celebrations the week of April 19 to April 25. To help you say ‘thank you’ to volunteers, Volunteer Canada has developed a wealth of resources and products. If it’s posters, postcards, volunteer recognition materials or free downloads you’re looking for, or if you simply need some tips in event planning or promoting NVW locally through media – it’s all available through this one-stop-shop website: National Volunteer Week We are also inviting Canadians – from individuals to organizations that work with volunteers – to submit their photos and videos that recognize volunteerism as being an essential part of who we are.
Go on – help celebrate National Volunteer Week, just to show you care!

THE LAUNCH OF Getinvolved! NEWS

CHECK OUT the first installment of Getinvolved! News.
On Feb. 27th we attended the launch of USNOW a film about the power of Web2.0 to drive social and political change. The event hosted by Volunteer Toronto and whiz Celina Agaton was a sold out success. Curious minds from the not-for-profit sector including rabble.ca, taking it global, united way, and techno guru Don Tapscott all attended and spoke to our roaming reporter Anastasia Trofimova.
I encourage you go to our WATCH site and check out the video. I think it will fuel your interest in this exciting wiki WEB2.0 world.

How Does Your Organization Connect?

NFP's tell your story about how the web has helped your organization!
CanadaHelps is seeking workshop abstracts for oral presentations at the MyCharityConnects Conference, June 8-9, 2009 in Toronto. The conference, targeted at small and medium sized charities, will provide a series of workshops on best practices for various online tools that enable increased fundraising and awareness. CanadaHelps is looking for speakers on a variety of topics. Preference will be given to presentations by charities, and those submissions that use case studies and/or best practices with clear ROI indicators for attendees. Submissions should include: Presenter(s) name, title, organization, phone and email; proposed title of session, topics covered, description (max: 200 words), target audience, and "take aways"; and any materials or AV equipment requirements. Please also include previous workshops conducted. Abstracts should be sent to: carlo@canadahelps.org by February 20, 2009.