On stage as one of the three finalists of the TEDxChallenge, Egon de Bruin certainly made an impression during last year’s TEDxAmsterdam. Passionately talking about Treemagotchi, he convinced the audience of the importance of this idea. And although Treemagotchi didn’t win the TEDxAmsterdam Award in the end, a lot of good things happened since last November. Egon told Tim all about his adventures.
- A flourishing Treemagotchi
Treemagotchi is an online tool that helps people take the step from thinking to doing in relation to global and socially fair issues. People plant a tree on their blog, facebook or website, which they feed by taking actions that better the (social) environment. Just as with the old-school tamagotchi your tree flourishes when you take good care of it (by doing a lot of the environmental to-do’s) and deteriorates when you neglect it (by ignoring the to-do’s). Last November, 25.000 people already took 120.000 actions.
Since then, the organization behind Treemagotchi, Kairos Tools, further professionalized. “The magic of TED”, as Egon calls it, played an important role: ”Partly because of the name we made at TEDxAmsterdam, we were able to address a whole new and higher league of people to come and work for us”. This inspired Egon and his team to set higher goals and start new projects.
One of the most important new projects is Treemagotchi@Work, a version of Treemagotchi aimed at involving any organisation’s staff with its CSR. “Not only by stimulating the personnel to be more environmentally friendly in their work, but also by giving them the chance to exert influence on what the organization should do in relation to CSR”, Egon explains. The first pilot starts within a month and after that Egon hopes to implement Treemagotchi@Work at more and more organizations. In achieving this, Egon calls in the help of all “passionate professionals” working at organizations that could use Treemagotchi@Work.
- Image of Treemagotchi@Work
But that’s not the only way you can help Treemagotchi. “For the @Home version, we can really use the expertise of marketing people, who can help us in reaching a lot of consumers and in developing a mobile app”. Oh, and Treemagotchi can also use all the help it can get in their international expansion. International expansion? Yes, Treemagotchi will launch in Belgium, Norway, and Sweden within a year!
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