Messzelátó Egyesület

Yesterday evening at the Central European University in Budapest an interesting event took place: An experienced Greenpeace campaigner and activist presented the basics of Greenpeace's campaigns.

Through a very short lecture he gave a good overview of a campaign's structure. What I had never heard before, but what had been emphasized at the lecture was, that you have to be clear what your goals are before you even start the campaign and that you always have to make sure to have the campaign under your control. He showed positive and negative campaign examples. A negative example was a far too long slogan used in the early years and a positive example was the campaign from 2001 in which Greenpeace forced Germany to take back the waste it had brought to Romania. The campaigner also gave advice how to handle the media and never to offend someone personally.

A lot of people had come, mostly environment students but also members of NGO's. The auditory was not really convinced of the way that Greenpeace had chosen to make its actions happen, but there was a lot of interest.

All in all it was a nice evening in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere and I am happy of having been there.