...LACE time! We're thrilled to be gearing up for Pap Awareness Week again this year! As you might remember, last year was a huge success. We're hoping to bring LACE to even more communities, clinics and women this year -- and we couldn't be working towards that goal without the support and participation of people all over BC who are spreading the word about the campaign.
We've been busy since Pap Awareness Week 2010 wrapped up almost nine months ago! We brought LACE to Vancouver Fashion Week, raised money for BC Cancer Foundation with the Underwear Affair, and met new friends and supporters at events around Vancouver. We were also honored to receive an award from the BC Medical Association for Excellence in Health Promotion. We had a great time at the award ceremony back in June!
Michelle is a freelance writer and anthropologist with a Master of Public Health from UBC. Her passions are promoting health and building community. She's worked in grassroots community organizations in Vancouver, Victoria and Oceania.
Orgasm Inc. is a fine and funny film about a subject that in 2011 shouldn't be shocking, but that still is. The shock factor, for me, was not in any explicit sex scenes, but in the revelation that after Kinsey and decades of feminism, not to mention South Park, too many women and men still have no idea how to find the clitoris! What should be shocking, but is intead business as usual, is how big pharma preys upon our desire for desire in order to pitch us more pills. Orgasm Inc. is playing in several cities this June - including Vancouver's Cinemateque. For details on upcoming screenings click here.
I went to to the film with friend and research associate Cindy Masaro when it was part of SFU's conference "The Medicalization of Sex". Then I caught up with director Liz Canner to do an interrview with her. We'll be posting clips of the interview as part of our Hello Cool World Vlog series. We'll also be talking to Cindy about her research and thoughts on the film. For more about the film, links to the trailer etc. read on...
Katherine Dodds AKA "Kat" is the founder of Good Company Communications and HelloCoolWorld.com. Trained in renegade advertising & branding through her work with Adbusters in the '90s, Kat's early induction into the possibilities of the web-world was inspired by the term hypertext, which she immediately found comforting. She is dedicated to cause-related communication and to the development and use of tools that promote democratic processes.
Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada heard the Federal Government's Appeal of the decision to allow the Insite supervised injection facility to continue to operate. Tomorrow, May 17th, join Pivot Legal Society, the SFU Woodwards Community Engagement Office and moderator Donald MacPherson for a forum exploring what this case is all about and what the Supreme Court's decision will mean for people living with addictions and for the future of Canadian drug policy.
We will see footage straight from the courtroom in Ottawa. We will hear from Monique Pongracic-Speier, lawyer on the case and a representative from Insite. Dr. Thomas Kerr of the Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and Maxine Davis, Executive Director of the Dr. Peters Aids Foundation with offer an assessment of the health impacts of this decision. Plaintiff Dean Wilson will reflect on his journey through the court process and Downtown Eastside activists Bud Osborn and Dave Murray will talk about what the fight for a legal supervised injection facility has meant to them and their community.
Doors open at 6pm. Suggested Donation $10. No one turned away.
Bella is the newest addition to Hello Cool World, enlisting for the cause at the end of 2010. A graduate of BCIT's Broadcast Communications for TV program, she's worked in all aspects of production and has a knack for new media & technology.
Heading off to OpenGovWest this weekend in Portland to be on a marketing panel. Check out the full schedule here.There is still time to register!
When asked to be part of this conference by the organizer Sarah Schacht who I met a few years ago at Hollyhock i began to think about Hello Cool World and what we might have to do with the idea of 'open government'. As it happens, of late our main clients are government agencies. The work we are doing would have been unthinkable even a few years ago.
Specifically we are creating grassroots campaigns, that engage real people as advocates using all the lovely tools social media now has to offer. And we manage databases that intersect issues and encourage involvment. Plus our websites don't look at all like the standard issue government fare. Two examples of this are the LACE Campaign we created for BC Cancer Agency, Cervical Cancer Screening Program, and our most recent is the I Have Immunity campaign for ImmunizeBC. We've also been doing some interesting work with BC Transplant, as official distributors of the film 65_RedRoses.
Hello Cool World is thrilled to be a communty partner for the upcoming DOXA screening of Raw Opium on May 7. We think this film is a timely and much-needed look at the impacts of the war on drugs, from our own DTES 'hood to the case study of Portugal as a decriminalization success story.
And of course we also are big supporters of InSite Safe Injection Site. Now that Harper's conservatives are in again, we really need to go to battle keep InSite open. the story of insite is woven through the film Raw Opium, and we hope the film will spark debate over this issue. And of course we hope people will want to take action!
To this end we are working with the filmmakers to engage audiences as the film launches. Please JOIN US and help us in getting the word on the street by printing and distributing some flyers:
Katherine Dodds AKA "Kat" is the founder of Good Company Communications and HelloCoolWorld.com. Trained in renegade advertising & branding through her work with Adbusters in the '90s, Kat's early induction into the possibilities of the web-world was inspired by the term hypertext, which she immediately found comforting. She is dedicated to cause-related communication and to the development and use of tools that promote democratic processes.
Heading off to 
