the harry potter alliance

The HP Alliance

The HP Alliance takes a creative, outside of the box approach to activism by taking parallels from the Harry Potter books to educate and mobilize over 100,000 young people across the world on issues of social justice and personal empowerment. The result has been the building of a thriving, effective activist community that gets results, media attention, builds chapters, and opens the door to a new kind of activism that uses new media platforms in the most cutting edge ways.

By translating some of the world's most pressing issues into the framework of Harry Potter, it makes activism something easier to grasp and less intimidating. We often show our members how easy it is to take action by working with one of our partner NGO's. The results that we have found in this quirky quest for social justice has been astounding.

Results

Each one of these campaigns was complemented with a lot of education as well

Darfur:

We gathered 2,893 signatures for Dream for Darfur's "Switch Over Campaign"

From small donations, we have raised over $15,000 for the Genocide Intervention Network's Civilian Protection Program for Darfuris and Burmese

Over three quarters of the 10,000 signatures that our UK partner Aegis Trust sent to the UN Security Council in Spring 2008 came from the HP Alliance

Downloaded over 120,000 times, our July 2007 podcast on Darfur featured exclusive interviews with Ambassador Joe Wilson and Co-founder of the ENOUGH Project John Prendergast, got our partner organization STAND to see a 40% increase in high school chapter sign ups and a 52% increase in calls to 1-800-GENOCIDE during the 2 week campaign compared to normal rates. It was was played at house parties across the world.

Literacy:

In our Accio Books! campaign HPA members donated over 13,000 books to local community centers in need, a youth village in Rwanda, and schools in Sierra Leone.
Accio Books! was also used as a to educate about the genocide in Rwanda

New Media and Rwanda:

The HP Alliance started the The Rwanda Video Project where in one week, members sent in over 300 videos for Aegis Trust's Candles for Rwanda. The videos will soon be posted for Rwandan survivors to see on candlesforrwanda.org and the best ones were shown during Rwanda's 15th commemoration that took place in Kigali for the 1994 genocide

Voter Registration and LGBT:

Our "Wizard Rock the Vote" campaign registered nine hundred new voters.
Wizard Rock the Vote mobilized young people across the country to call voters in California to protest Proposition 8. From there we continue our work on LGBT advocacy.

Media Reform:

In conjunction with the "Stop Big Media" Coalition the HPA produced an online compilation CD that got thousands to take action for media reform

Interpersonal Empowerment:

Our Magical Acts of Kindness project involves members and chapters finding anonymous ways to show kindness to loved ones and strangers (leaving thank you notes, leaving tootsie rolls on people's desks, etc).

Our work to provide exercises to help our members "Break out of the Muggle Mindset" and into the magic of their creativity and a healthier relationship with their bodies has been met with tremendous enthusiasm.

Media Coverage and Appearances

So far the HPA has been featured in:

  • the NY Times best seller "Not On Our Watch: the Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond"
  • MIT Professor Henry Jenkin's "Culture Converence"
  • the front cover of the Chicago Tribune Business Section
  • the front cover of Politico Newspaper
  • the front cover of the Boston Phoenix
  • the LA Times (we've been covered in the Times twice - one time was a piece that our Executive Director Andrew Slack wrote which ended up being the most viewed and emailed article for two straight days)
  • the Associated Press (this article appeared in over 170 publications)
  • the San Jose Mercury News
  • MTV News
  • UN Radio
  • Wired News
  • nypost.com
  • startribune.com
  • three pieces in the Huffington Post (including one by Exec Director Andrew Slack)
  • In These Times
  • Time Magazine (in which JK Rowling who I had no previous established relationship with, is asked about the HP Alliance: "When asked about the group, Rowling practically levitates off the couch, spilling her coffee along the way. 'It's incredible, it's humbling, and it's uplifting to see people going out there and doing that in the name of your character,' she says. She's especially pleased by the group's choice of mission, and the old Amnesty International worker in her surfaces. 'What did my books preach against throughout? Bigotry, violence, struggles for power, no matter what. All of these things are happening in Darfur. So they really couldn't have chosen a better cause.

Presentations

HP Alliance Creator and Executive Producer Andrew Slack has presented on the HP Alliance at MIT, Brandeis, Tufts, the National Conference for Media Refrom, Netroots Nation, and countless Harry Potter events.

Communication, Structure, and Goals

Our message is communicated regularly through the use of an email list; social networking sites: Facebook/Ning/Myspace, a blog, Youtube and podcast channel and live conference calls through ustream.com; Twitter and another SMS list, a network of HP sites and Wizard Rock (bands that sing about Harry Potter).

Our online work is facilitated offline by over 50 chapters across the US and world. These chapters, as well as our volunteer staff, Board of Directors, and distinguished Board of Advisors is committed to our short term goals of making this organization more effective as well as our long term goal of building a vibrant educational constituency dedicated to using the Arts, Humanities, and New Media for social change on our world's most pressing issues.

Upcoming Projects

We will continue our "Yes We Can End Genocide In Darfur" campaign, our work on personal empowerment, media reform, LGBT issues, literacy (with a book club that brings in guest authors) as well as our fostering our chapters and our new House Cup Competition.

We are also about to launch What Would Dumbledore Do: a collectively written (what we call "book writing 2.0") project where our members will generate a manifesto of the core values in Harry Potter and how they can be applied to our lives and world before the 7/17/09 release date of next Harry Potter movie. The media has already expressed interest.

In partnership with several UK and US based new media organizations, the HP Alliance is starting the "New Media Alliance" which is effectively creating a coordinated effort for new media creatives and organizations to use the arts and new media to elevate the human condition. While our first foray with this new project was the Rwanda Video Project, we are quickly building a project with partners in the UK called "Fifteen Minutes of Friendship" where young people in the first world have real time video pen pal relationships with young people in developing/war torn countries- and work collaboratively on projects together. We feel that as far as genocide prevention goes, it is the building of authentic relationships that will be the most effective long term prevention tool. Expected launch date of "Fifteen Minutes" is Fall 2009.

Evaluation

We continue to evaluate the effectiveness of all of our efforts by tracking and analyzing petition signatures, chapter activity, growth email list, earned media, and member suggestions.

The HPA Staff

As long as there are those that are aware that the weapon we have is love and that more than ever, it's time to use that weapon.