FREE THE CHILDREN’S WE DAY EVENTS weday.com We Day events are an offshoot of the work done by Free The Children, an international charity whose programs educate, engage, and empower youth across North America and the United Kingdom. At the events, which feature figures from the Jonas Brothers to the Dalai Lama, young people join to celebrate the actions they are taking to give back. There’s no cost to attend — instead, youths earn their way in through their own fundraising or com- munity-service efforts. We Day events don’t just inspire children, though, said Jacqui Sullivan, CMP, with Absolute Conferences and Events Inc. They are “an exceptional example of how power- ful an event can be to inspire and lead to real change for the better.”
ARCHITECTS OF HEALING AT AIA’S 2012 NATIONAL CONVENTION convn.org/aia-healing The American Institute of Architects (AIA) honored the lead and project architects of post–Sept. 11 restoration projects at the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, and the Flight 93 National Memorial in the Architects of Healing ceremony at its 2012 National Convention last May — as many of those projects are nearing completion. “This was the first national gathering where honorees [publicly] shared their feelings and observations about how, as an architect, they responded,” said Phil Simon, CAE, AIA’s managing director of communications and publishing. Honorees presented “a first-person observation about what it meant to use passion and the architect’s skill to help inspire hope for a better world.”
MARKETPLACE 2.0 AT ISES NYC’S 2012 SUSTAINABILITY SUMMIT The International Special Events Society (ISES) NY Metro Chapter’s 2012 Sustainability Summit focused on fostering green practices for the meetings and events industry, with the specific goal of providing stakehold- ers with the education and resources to achieve their own sustainability goals. One of the event’s standout features was Marketplace 2.0, a unique approach to the trade show, billed as a “marketplace of ideas” and made up of social spaces to encourage discussion between attendees, sponsors, and green experts. “I believe sustainability is not a cause, it is an imperative,” said Jill Taub Drury, ISES NY Metro Chapter’s direc- tor at large for CSR and sustainability. “I didn’t want us to just talk about sustainability. … I looked to create a sustainable event for our attendees to experience firsthand.”