Emma Crane
From May 1-21st, the 2015 Ethical Living Challenge (ELC) will take place. Participants in the nationwide program will receive a daily e-mail with information, activities and a challenge to undertake – everything from writing a letter to a politician to planning an ethical holiday. Each day will have a different theme like fashion, food, or cosmetics, plus dedicated action days and plenty of resources.
19 year-old founder and director Emma Crane created ELC in the hopes of inspiring a generation of young leaders to act on injustice and to understand how their actions affect the world beyond our borders. She argues that through our consumer choices, we often facilitate harm in the developing world – for example through fuelling slavery, causing deforestation, sustaining poverty and supporting child labour. But by educating, inspiring and motivating people to act on these issues, ELC aims to change the everyday choices of consumers. How were your clothes made? Where did your dinner really come from? What impact is your laptop having on the world? These are the questions that ELC seeks to answer and respond to.
“People are often not aware of the reality behind our purchases,” Emma says. “We need to know this reality so that we can hold companies accountable, motivate political action, and purchase ethical alternatives.” Emma is a student at the University of Melbourne and has been a social justice advocate for several years, having lived in Indonesia as a child which inspired an appetite for activism. She believes that living ethically should be the norm for society, and a standard to be adopted by everybody rather than a select group of the population.
ELC is open for registration on the website until the start date, and is open to anybody – and it’s free! It’s currently sponsored by Ethical Switch and the Fair Trade Association.
For more information or to sign up: www.ethicallivingchallenge.com
Emma Crane, founder and director of Ethical Living Challenge
