weLOG #2: We're setting the stage

🇯🇵 日本語はこちら💌

Hello Friends,

It’s been an eventful week. I (Ian) crossed oceans from Japan to Mexico. I’m typing this right now from Mexico city. It’s colder here than I thought!

You might be asking: why the move?

Well, in a few days, Alex, co-founder of weMORI, will be joining me. For the last 10 months, Alex and I have been in a long distance working relationship. This move allows us to prepare for launch together, and we’re super excited.

App side, a more definitive timeline of launch should be with you next week. Alex and I have been getting on daily calls to align on to-be-completed tasks before launch. We’re almost there. Almost.

In other news, we applied to a competition called ‘Reimagining Charitable Giving’ by Open Ideo. Up to 10 winners receive a share of $100k in prizes! We’re one of 400 submissions.

Right now, is the ‘evaluation & selection’ round. And we want to ask for your help. Could you access our application and give it a ‘heart’ or a ‘comment’? This could hugely boost our chances to be selected. Help us get to #1 hearts!! (You need to create an account − sorry...).

Lastly and most importantly, Joanna (weMORI global organizer) gave an amazing pitch for an event organized by an accelerator program we were chosen for. It’s a must watch. Click here and scroll over to the 2 hour mark to watch her passionate delivery!

Finally, from this edition of weLOG, we’re adding some additional stuff underneath this top message. This includes news, and other favorites from the web. For this edition, I’ve also included a word on the election. Ignoring it felt strange.

I hope you’re all enjoying a wonderful mid-week and thanks always for your support,

Ian Shimizu-Pughe

Help us improve! Send me feedback, comments, questions directly right here.

👽 AROUND THE WORLD 🌍

All eyes on the forest.

9 global investment firms are investing in satellite technology to monitor deforestation. They’re hoping to discover exactly who is doing the slashing. Amazing. The question: will they be able to stop the perpetrators?

Try this for a tongue twister:

The Taskforce for Nature-Related Financial Disclosures. TNFD for short, are pushing corporations to disclose their ‘nature footprint’. Why? Because the first step towards regeneration is to understand the extent of your degeneration. And, investors have a right to know how much a company is degenerating. Keep an eye out for TNFD -- this one will grow!

A blue forest? What’s that?

It refers to forests in the ocean. Mangrove forests, kelp forests, that kind of thing. They sequester huge amounts of carbon, and mangrove forests in particular have really high biodiversity, too. The bad news is, they’re disappearing quickly in Asia. The good news is, scientists are learning how to better plant them. Can’t wait to plant blue forests in the future.

There’s a monster in my kitchen...

Is the name of a new animated video produced by greenpeace highlighting the links between industrial meat and deforestation. It’s quite poetic. And very Greenpeace. Check it out here.

“The earth laughs in flowers” Flutter as a flower petal in this game called Flower and regenerate the world from gloomy grey to floral explosion. The most beautiful smartphone game I have ever played. Regeneration x gaming = win!

Did you miss weLOG #1? Check it out here.

🇺🇸 NOW... THE ELECTIONS 🇺🇸

The presidential see-saw game had all of us on edge over the last week. Whether you’re celebrating or shunning the results, we hope you’re healing from the shock of the whole shindig.

At weMORI, we’re not interested in bipartisan politics, and we don’t stand to represent a political party or ideology. We're interested in empowering people, creating impact, and building a regenerative world.

Left, center, right, backward, forward... This kind of reductionist, political positioning isn’t really important to us. What is important is that we create an equitable, regenerative future, and doing so requires everybody; we need to work together.

The word on the street is that this election was a victory. Yes, it’s great news that the president-elect is someone who’s promised to put $20 billion towards tackling deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. It’s a far cry from the incumbent POTUS who recently opened 17 million acres of old growth Alaskan forests up to potential development. The planet certainly needed this.

But ‘victory’ is only half of the picture. The most powerful nation is the most divided it has ever been since their Civil War, and this ideological polarization is not an isolated incident; it is a global trend. What can we accomplish in a divided world? Much less than in a united one.

Nobody merits from a dying planet. Ideology should not stand as a barrier against restoring the biosphere. So we welcome Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s emphasis on healing, unity, and justice, and see this election as an opportunity to collaborate across the board to bring about a regenerative future.

And as always, we hope you join us.

See you next week!