MAKE SMTHNG WEEK YUCATÁN
“Yucatán joins the world movement MAKE SMTHNG-BUY NOTHING”, “Yucatecan Organizations against consumerism and generation of waste”, “Mérida becomes part of Greenpeace’s “Make Smthng”, “Yucatán organises boycott against december’s loose consumerism” were some of the event headlines, released during the last days of November of this year as Mérida joined the behaviour-change movement through 22 different activities all around the city. Fab Lab Yucatán worked as a local ambassador, invited by the Fab Labs world network and the Fab City Global Initiative. The purpose? Reduce the impact of Black Friday and Mexico’s Buen Fin consumerism. The means? A global movement supported by Greenpeace International, pioneers of sustainable fashion and the makers’ network, among others.
A movement of simultaneous action across the world.
To elicit change against consumerism at a global level is a task for everyone but makers can be the key. That’s why the Fab Lab Network was invited to participate as a global partner in MAKE SMTHNG Week (MAKE SMTHNG), an international Greenpeace campaign to challenge consumerism and reduce the quantity of waste that our lifestyle creates. The campaign encourages recycling, exchanging, repairing and supra recycling among others, and looks to put a spotlight on and hack our daily life; for example putting a patch on a ripped shirt, repairing “impossible to work again” electronic devices, not accepting single-use plastics, being more responsible when generating waste. Simple strategies that when applied in our own homes can start to make a change through common action.
MAKE SMTHNG Week in Mérida: provoking a local change with global achievements.
We made the announcement to collaborate as local ambassadors just two weeks before the official MAKE SMTHNG week date, Friday 23 November. Nonetheless, we had a great and immediate response. What was the reason about the fast organization and response?
- The international organizers provided a media kit to facilitate the work of the ambassadors, providing the press release, a graphic design for the publications on the social networks and a “step-by-step” for the event guidelines to follow.
- The topics to work with were of high importance now, as well as being on trend. Upon the announcement, there were already several people interested in becoming involved in the events and we were able to link many activities to the MAKE SMTHNG campaign. This meant community members were involved in choosing the topics of the activities that were going to be scheduled throughout the whole week.
- The digital and social strategy proposed by the MAKE SMTHNG International is so fresh and trendy. Besides promotion by local press, printed publicity and word-of-mouth promotion, the global strategy set by MAKE SMTHNG promoted taking advantage of the power of digital masses, like online publications and live streamings. The campaign even engaged ‘influencers’ who are in touch with millenials and the rest of the population that are part of the movement.
Change is a common interest NOW.
Mérida joined the MAKE SMTHNG WEEK 2018 edition for the first time, from November 23rd to December 1st, with 22 distributed events at 11 different venues, from public spaces, ecological food stores, education centres and digital workshops. The events addressed different topics and provided a meaningful experience for event organisers and participants to participate for free, in an active way, in the organization, execution and delivery of events which promoted change-making. Many of the people involved were already interested in making change at a local level and this campaign gave them a platform to use global connectivity to promote and exchange new and innovative practices for changing the current consumption paradigm. After the success of all 22 events, the main conclusion from the participants and organizers was to continue the good work of the associations and activities which took place in Mérida for MAKE SMTHNG and a citizen intention has arisen to link up and commit to an ongoing collective pro-action initiative.
The success of the overall program was evident at each event, where people not only noticed the entity or the institution that had organized the event, but the presence of several different people in a collective movement. Participants took away exchangeable experiences, advice for good practices at home, work and even at school. Once idea which arose in these exchanges was “Naked Monday” that encourages sending kids’ lunch to school without plastics.
Participants at each event provided feedback through online forms which gave insights into the public interest that was sparked during the campaign events.
MAKE SMTHNG Week and road to Fab City Yucatán AC.
The immediate and high response and the enthusiasm shown by the organizers and citizens that participated in the campaign events provides a rich environment to promote change-making projects and start working on them as a community. It has inspired Fab Lab Yucatán to take not wait any longer and take advantage of this collective moment to launch a solid approach to Fab City Yucatán.
MAKE SMTHNG Week Mérida worked as a concrete first step for concretising Fab City Global Initiative (Fab City Global Initiative) in the state. A non-profit civil association in the Yucatán locality like Fab City could continue to gather the MS Week participants with the rest of the population and develop existing interest in changing the paradigm of production and consumerism in a local way with a global impact. The Fab City Global Initiative, and now in recent days Fab City Foundation, could provide Yucatán community with not only important strategies to be implemented locally but access to a collective of experts and a network of cities and regions. This would allow us to be integral to the opening of the path towards 2054 when we can have local and productive Fab Cities connected globally.
See the full documentation at:
Facebook fan page MAKE SMTHNG YUCATÁN
Instagram fan page MAKE SMTHNG YUCATÁN
MAKE SMTHNG web page
