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The HPA Campaigns - Past and Present 2013

Not in Harry's Name ’s story is filled with heroes; , , , and so many others repeatedly stand up to injustices in their world and inspire readers to do the same. It goes without saying that Harry and his friends wouldn’t tolerate child slavery and poor working conditions that are endemic in the chocolate industry. The Harry Potter Alliance was disappointed to learn that Harry Potter chocolate products distributed by Warner Bros. had earned an “F” grade in human rights, based on Free2Work’s independent report. The likelihood that heinous practices such as human trafficking are utilized in the production of Harry Potter chocolate is something that we simply cannot tolerate as fans of the Harry Potter series. Thus, we’ve launched a very straight-forward campaign, ShowUsTheReport.com, the goal of which is to obtain a report cited by Warner Bros. as proving that their chocolate is ethically sourced. They’ve been unwilling to share this report with us after multiple years of reasonable requests. So far, over 60,000 people have signed our petition, and we’ve also had support from prominent YouTubers like Alex Day, Lauren Fairweather, Kristina Horner, Dan Brown, and Alex Carpenter. In an effort to prove how easy it is to sell fair trade chocolate, we’ve even released our very own chocolate frogs using fair trade chocolate! Mmm… social justice is delicious.

Accio Books! Accio Books! is an annual book drive for children around the world who do not have easy access to books. Harry Potter fans across the globe have come together each March to donate more than 86,000 books to communities both in the United States and foreign countries since the campaign’s inception in 2009. The goal for the first book drive was to collect and donate 500 books. Instead, the HPA’s members donated an overwhelming 13,481 to local communities across the world and our partner ASYV (Agohozo Shalom Youth Village) in Rwanda. In 2010, the HPA’s members broke their own record and donated 41,415 books to local communities. Half of those donations went to our partner The Delta Center for Culture and Learning, who distributed the books to communities in need across the Mississippi Delta. In 2011, our campaign was dedicated to helping the Bedford-Stuyvesant New Beginnings Charter School create a library for its students. HPA members and chapters collected over 11,000 books, and our local NYDA chapter helped sort donations and create the first ever Imagine Better library at the New Beginnings Charter School! In 2013, we are partnering with Read Indeed, a non-profit literary organization built around the vision of seventh grader Maria Keller, whose dream is to donate one million books to children in need by the time she’s 18.

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Equality For The Win From August 15 to September 8, 2012, the HPA expanded its ability to affect change in education, immigration, and marriage equality with a very successful fundraiser. We received a total of $94,803 from 2,289 donors across the globe via our Indiegogo campaign. Donors gave money in exchange for exclusive perks from a variety of vloggers, musicians, artists, authors, and internet celebrities, including John and , Potter Puppet Pals, , , LeakyCon, Starkid, and more. Our goal was to raise $50,000 for our equality-related initiatives; incredibly, we nearly doubled that initial goal. Since achieving this awesome victory, we’ve followed up on our promise with multiple equality-based campaigns, including Equality FTW: Vote 2012 and Accio Books 2013.

Equality For The Win: Vote 2012 The HPA was on the front lines of social change in multiple areas of equality during the 2012 election season. In keeping with the goals and message of our EqualityFTW fundraiser, we teamed up with our members to phone bank in support of marriage equality in Maine and the DREAM Act in Maryland. Both efforts ended in resounding victories for each cause. Our campaign received a huge boost from our DFTVA House Cup. This friendly competition put HPA members to the task of phone banking in support of Maine marriage equality and earning points for their chosen house with every call made. We also encouraged people to share house-themed banners on Facebook, in order to spread this simple message: Don’t Forget To Vote, America! Ravenclaw ran away with the title, amassing 5,939 points in the name of equality and civic participation.

2011

Wrock For Equality 2011 On February 26, 2011, the HPA hosted its second Wrock 4 Equality event on Livestream. Drawing inspiration from previous efforts in Maine, we joined forces with MASS Equality and Marriage Equality Rhode Island to encourage Rhode Island residents to tell their representatives and senators to support their state’s marriage equality bill. We spread the word and engaged our membership with an all-day internet block party, including live appearances by a variety of wizard rockers and internet celebrities. We also conducted phone bank training, and our Livestream chat served as a central location for volunteers to share information and cheer each other on. The end result: HPA members made 6,200 phone calls and processed 214 digital postcards, shattering previous MASS equality phone banking records! Heck yeah!

2 The Deathly Hallows Campaign The Deathly Hallows Campaign spanned the nine months between the last two Harry Potter films. Just as Harry and his friends struggled to hunt down and destroy several elusive horcruxes, Harry Potter fans across the globe joined the HPA on an epic journey to destroy seven real world Horcruxes. Each horcrux was introduced through a Livestream event on the HPA’s Livestream channel: www.livestream.com/imaginebetter. At each Livestream event, Andrew Slack explained to members how to get involved and make a difference in defeating a variety of injustices, including economic inequality, poor working conditions, negative self- image, bullying, illiteracy, child slavery, and global warming.

2010

HPA for the Win In June 2010, the Harry Potter Alliance competed against 10,000 other charitable organizations to win a grant from the Chase Community Giving Contest on Facebook. Thanks to the extraordinary dedication of our members, partners, and staff, we received 38,689 votes and won the first place grant of $250,000. Our message was translated into four different languages and reposted by international Harry Potter fan communities across the globe including Potterish.com and HarryLatino.com. Popular YouTubers such as the , Tom Milsom, Wheezy Waiter, Dan Brown and many more promoted the HPA in their videos. Celebrities such as Neil Gaiman, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day tweeted their support and fans of Twilight, True Blood, Eragon, and more posted and asked their readers to vote. During the last 12 hours of the contest, LeakyCauldron.com and Mugglenet.com completely redirected their websites to the voting page. The $250,000 is helping the HPA expand its reach and improving its literacy and LGBT rights programs.

Wizard Rock the Vote During summer of 2010, The HPA teamed up once again with Wizard Rockers to register voters at shows across the nation. In 2008, Wizard Rock the Vote met with tremendous success, registering over 900 voters. In 2010 the HPA registered another 200, bringing the total to over 1100 registered voters between both campaigns. Volunteers attended more than 70 performances, clipboards in hand, encouraging Harry Potter fans to choose their Congressional representatives and vote.

Helping Haiti Heal In January 2010 the HPA joined forces with members of from other popular books, movies, and television series (including Heroes, Lost, True Blood, The Wire and Firefly) to create Helping Haiti Heal, a home-grown effort to contribute to the humanitarian aid and relief activities in Haiti. With the help of our partners and the Wizard Rock community, in just two weeks the HPA raised over $123,000 for Partners in Health (PIH), an organization in

3 Haiti that works to provide health care for impoverished communities. With the money raised, PIH was able to charter five airplanes to Haiti full of medical supplies. Four of the airplanes were named after characters from the Harry Potter Universe: Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Dumbledore; the fifth airplane was named DFTBA (Don’t Forget to be Awesome) in honor of the help from our friends in .

2009

Magical Acts of Kindness The Magical Acts of Kindness (MAK) campaign encouraged members to look for ways they could introduce magic into the lives of others through simple, random, anonymous acts of kindness. Members used Twitter and the blogs and forums on our Ning to develop and spread MAK ideas. MAK campaigns occur on a sporadic basis, whenever a little more magic is needed in the world. The first MAK ran in 2008, then for one week in October 2009, and most recently in September 2010 to celebrate the birthday of the HPA’s Executive Director Andrew Slack..This campaign also gave the HPA the opportunity to partner with GivesMeHope.com, a website featuring real-life stories to encourage and empower readers. GivesMeHope featured MAK stories from HPA members during our October 2009 campaign.

Wrock For Equality In October 2009 the HPA launched Wrock 4 Equality to stop the passage of Proposition One in Maine that would have repealed equal marriage. The HPA’s members in Maine canvassed in the middle of the pouring rain, knocking on close to 700 doors, reminding people to vote No on Proposition One, and collecting about 30 absentee ballots so that Maine residents would vote early. In addition, members across the nation spent hours phone-banking, calling more than 3500 residents of Main in just one day – a 1200% increase over Massachusetts Equality’s previous record. As a result of this work, Wrock 4 Equality was mentioned in several major media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Change.org, the Orlando Sentinel, Portland Phoenix, Tips-Q, and Irish Central.

What Would Dumbledore Do In July, 2009, the What Would Dumbledore Do (WWDD) campaign took over Twitter, movie theaters and CNN. As part of the campaign, the HPA asked members to tweet about life lessons that they had learned from Dumbledore with the label #dumbledore. The HPA amassed over 12,000 tweets in which people described how Dumbledore taught them important lessons about life and themselves. In addition, the HPA’s members brought name tags to releases of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince to spark discussion and engagement with movie attendees about lessons learned from Dumbledore, not just in the US, but across the world as well. The campaign was also featured in an article in the Huffington Post, written by our own Andrew Slack.

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