WATCH: ‘4 Days to Save the world’ was a reality show with big ambitions. See a preview of the Star’s investigation that led to this week’s story
Last week, the Star ran an important expose on Canada’s new $100 million ‘4 Days to Save the world’ fundraising campaign, an ambitious project that has raised more than $1.8 million so far.
But the Star couldn’t cover every aspect of the campaign. We focused on the project’s goals, its structure and the people behind it, so here is a look at how the initiative got off the ground.
The project was created by the non-profit CanWest Global Business Leaders, a group of executives from the world’s largest corporations, seeking to harness the power of the internet to help solve the world’s biggest problems. The group hopes to raise $100 million by raising awareness, bringing together businesses and social entrepreneurs, and collaborating with other charitable donors.
CanWest, which was founded in Toronto in 1999, quickly realized the potential of the internet, and created a platform that is different from traditional fundraising.
“The internet is full of ideas,” says CanWest CEO and president Dan Sullivan. “But most of them are not very good ideas.”
Instead of waiting for large donors to come to them, the CanWest team relied on internet users. They collected donations through the website and encouraged people to share ideas for how they can use the internet and the internet’s potential to solve social and environmental problems.
The platform is the brainchild of the ‘crowd,’ people who have donated to CanWest in the past and who are now using CanWest’s platform to connect, collaborate and help others. And it’s the users who are changing the world, according to Sullivan.
“I’ve started to build a movement of people who are starting to take a real interest
