In January, I launched a “lightning challenge” crowdfunding campaign to bring a noted international exhibition on plastic garbage in the seas to Stockholm. It was successful, and the exhibit will open this week. Here is the letter I just sent to everyone who contributed, in amounts that ranged from $10 to $3,000. You can get the full background here.

Dear friends and colleagues who became “Crowdfunders” for Out to Sea in Stockholm,

First, a very big THANK YOU again for choosing to invest in our little initiative. As you know, if you have followed our social media, we succeeded in funding the exhibition OUT TO SEA on ocean plastics, and it will open in Stockholm on March 22 (and to the public on Mar 23).

Your funding triggered, in turn, a wave of funding from others — The Swedish government, the City of Stockholm, WWF, and a few other organizations saw that this was a “happening thing” … and they jumped on the bandwagon to fill in our financial gaps.

Crowdfunding donations covered about 40% of our total budget. A few larger sponsors (AtKisson Group is one of these) covered the rest of the “essential” budget (exhibition fees, insurance, that kind of thing), and others came in to support the educational programming.

Let me tell you more about the impact of your donation below, but first some basics:

There is a website in English about the exhibition in Stockholm here:
https://www.tekniskamuseet.se/en/discover/exhibitions/out-to-sea-an-ocean-of-plastic/

The main website for the global project that created this traveling exhibition is here:
http://www.plasticgarbageproject.org/

And there is a main Facebook page associated with the exhibition, where notes from the Stockholm showing will be posted regularly:
https://www.facebook.com/PlasticGarbageProject/

But there is more. Because of your support, the local version of the exhibition in Stockholm is starting to do what I hoped it would do: raise more awareness to this issue both locally, and globally.

We already know that we will get TV coverage etc. to the opening here in Stockholm. But also, thanks to you again, the exhibition has been noticed by the United Nations. It was too late to bring the exhibit to the UN Ocean Conference for June of this year … but the exhibit will keep going for several years after this, in an updated form. And it is now on the UN “radar” thanks to the Swedish government (which told the UN about it). We’ll see what happens there, maybe it will be brought into the next major oceans meeting.

Also, we (my firm) have decided to launch a new website/blog/social media channel, partly to help amplify the message of this exhibition, but also to just promote attention and action related to the oceans, the UN goal for the oceans (SDG14), and upcoming UN Ocean Conference. We are just building this channel now, but you can already see it — and follow the social media — at the links below.

http://SDG14.net
http://twitter.com/sdg14net
http://facebook.com/sdg14net

So .. your investment is already multiplying.

If you would like to be more directly involved with us in our efforts to promote SDG14 and ocean awareness through these various channels — as a content contributor, a continuing funder, and connection-maker, whatever — please let me know.

And again … thank you. I yelled for help with short notice, for something that wasn’t obviously relevant to people in other parts of the world, and you responded, with great generosity. That matters a lot to me personally, and won’t be forgotten.

Warmest regards,

Alan