(Cross posted from the Official YouTube Blog)

Please join us in congratulating WorldFoodProgram as YouTube’s featured “ On The Rise” non-profit partner for June! Thanks to your support and the strength of of their channel optimization, this organization is featured in the “Spotlight” section of ...Read More

(Cross posted from the Official YouTube Blog)

Please join us in congratulating WorldFoodProgram as YouTube’s featured “On The Rise” non-profit partner for June! Thanks to your support and the strength of of their channel optimization, this organization is featured in the “Spotlight” section of our homepage today.

The World Food Programme has been in existence since 1963, when it was established as a multilateral food aid program by the Food and Agricultural Organization Conference and the United Nations. Over the last 40+ years, the organization has worked tirelessly to fight hunger and poverty globally, with the ultimate goal of eliminating the need for food aid. Their channel features a variety of video content that describes the magnitude of the global hunger problem, highlights specific issues and emergencies, demonstrates the impact of the WPF’s initiatives, and identifies opportunities for supporters to take action to assist the organization’s mission.

Here are a few words from the WPF organization:

Thanks to everyone who voted for us, and especially to YouTube, for this incredibly cool opportunity. At the World Food Programme, we believe that hunger is the world's greatest solvable problem. It affects nearly a billion people worldwide and yet we have the means to solve it. WFP is the world's largest humanitarian aid agency on the front lines of hunger. When we're not saving lives in emergencies, we're helping families get back on their feet. When we're not serving meals in schools, we're protecting mothers and children from malnutrition. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and find out what it's like to drive across the Sahara, ride a yak through the Himalayas or fly a helicopter in South Sudan as we deliver food assistance to some of the most dangerous and remote places on Earth. We’ll see you there. 

You can learn more about YouTube's nonprofit program and the 17,000 organizations in the program here. If you’ve enjoyed this monthly On The Rise blog series and want to see more rising YouTube partners, check out our On The Rise Channel. Keep an eye out for next month’s blog post, as your channel may be the next one On The Rise!

Posted by Christine Wang and Devon Storbeck, YouTube Team

(Cross-posted from the Google Green Blog)

This month, heads of state, NGOs, scientists and business leaders from around the world will meet to discuss how best to reduce poverty, advance social equity and better protect the environment at the ...Read More

(Cross-posted from the Google Green Blog)

This month, heads of state, NGOs, scientists and business leaders from around the world will meet to discuss how best to reduce poverty, advance social equity and better protect the environment at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+20. As a company that believes deeply in sustainability, we wouldn’t miss this for the world. So from June 13 - 22, a group of Googlers from our Google Earth Outreach and Google Earth Engine teams will be joining many of our partners, including Chief Almir Surui, The Jane Goodall Institute, Imazon, Aliança de Terra, Amazon Sustainable Foundation and others to show how technology can support the conference’s core themes. We’ll be posting updates on the Google Green Blog from the conference throughout the week, but we thought we’d offer a quick preview of how we’ll be participating:

• Wednesday, June 13th - Friday, June 22nd: We invite all conference attendees to visit us at our booth in the Rio State Government Pavilion at Athletes’ Park. You’ll be able to tour the Earth and beyond in our Liquid Galaxy, an immersive Google Earth experience, and explore some of the work our partners have created using Google tools. 
• Friday, June 15th: Ronaldo Barreto, Strategic Partner Manager for Latin America, will participate in Megacities Forum 2012, at a roundtable on “Future Cities and the Use of New Transport Technologies.” Ronaldo will show how tools such as Google Maps, Google Transit and Google Street View are being used to modernize Rio de Janeiro’s transportation infrastructure. 
• Friday, June 15th: Rebecca Moore, Engineering Manager for Google Earth Engine and Google Earth Outreach, will speak at “No Roads to a Green Economy: Mapping Earth´s roadless areas and their services,” a discussion at the European Union Pavilion about the need to promote roadless areas as a means to conserve biodiversity and secure the rights of indigenous people.
• Saturday, June 16th: Rebecca Moore will be joining Chief Almir Surui at the Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum to share the latest news regarding our ongoing partnership with the Surui tribe. 
• Sunday, June 17th: We’ll be holding an SD-Learning event, “From the Ground to the Cloud: New Tools for Sustainable Development,” which will be introduced by Brazilian Senator Eduardo Braga and will feature a presentation from Imazon on their work to create a deforestation monitoring system for Brazil, powered by Google Earth Engine. (Registration has closed for this event.) 
• Monday, June 18th: All visitors to Rio+20 are welcome to join our Side Event, "Tools for Data Collection and Mapping: the Ground to the Cloud Story" at the Arena de Barra. We’ll be hearing from a number of partners about they work they’re doing with Google tools. Among others, the Jane Goodall Institute and Woods Hole Research Center will share their work estimating forest biomass over Tanzania with Google Earth Engine, and Aliança da Terra will talk about how their use of Open Data Kit and Google Maps Engine has transformed their operations. 
• Tuesday, June 19th: we’ll be at the U.S. Government Pavilion to participate in panel discussions and demonstrations of our work with the Governor’s Forest and Climate Taskforce. 

These are only a few examples of the fascinating ways technology can help address some of our world’s most pressing challenges. Stay tuned for updates throughout the conference about the news our partners are sharing, and if you have any thoughts about how technology can help save the world -- or at least help us all be more environmentally responsible and support a sustainable future, let us know at #googleatrio20.


Posted by Rick Needham, Director, Energy & Sustainability

(Cross posted from the Lat Long Blog)


Founded in 1988, The HALO Trust is the world’s oldest and largest humanitarian landmine clearance organization. Dedicated to the removal of the hazardous debris of war, HALO has cleared over 414,000 acres of land and removed over 13 million landmines and other explosive remnants. Their work allows families to return home, land to be used for agriculture, roads to be re-opened, and children to walk to school safely. When HALO visited the ...Read More

(Cross posted from the Lat Long Blog)


Founded in 1988, The HALO Trust is the world’s oldest and largest humanitarian landmine clearance organization. Dedicated to the removal of the hazardous debris of war, HALO has cleared over 414,000 acres of land and removed over 13 million landmines and other explosive remnants. Their work allows families to return home, land to be used for agriculture, roads to be re-opened, and children to walk to school safely. When HALO visited the Google Earth Outreach team at Google headquarters two years ago, we were proud to hear how they use our tools to clear landmines around the world. Since 2006, they have leveraged their Google Earth Pro grant for minefield survey, data validation, quality control and to produce maps for donors, governments, and other NGOs. They have since received a Google Earth Outreach Developer Grant to fund creation of their Explore a Minefield project. Now you can take a tour of the mine-affected areas of Cambodia and Angola with the HALO Trust using Google Earth, and see how landmine removal efforts have helped build safe and vibrant communities. Angelina Jolie, who has visited mine removal efforts in a number of war-torn countries, lent her voice for the narration.

Learn how HALO’s Cambodia staff maps and clears mined areas. Watch the YouTube video or download the tour in Google Earth.

Watching these tours, we were amazed at the sheer number of mines that were laid in Cambodia and Angola and the size and scope of HALO’s effort to clear them in each of the 13 countries where they work. Using Google Earth’s historical imagery to provide time-lapse images of mined areas before and after clearance, they can clearly show how landmine removal is helping war-torn communities rebuild. While this scale of landmine clearance is staggering and inspiring, the tours also show the minefields that still remain.

Learn about Angola’s war-torn history and how HALO is helping communities to rebuild. Watch the YouTube video or download the tour in Google Earth.

To learn more about how you can help The HALO Trust clear these remaining minefields, visit their website. 

Posted by Raleigh Seamster, Google Earth Outreach

Read More

Back in April we were fortunate to meet many wonderful nonprofit organizations at NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference (ntc 2012). We wanted to let everyone know that the recorded trainings from the conference are now live on the Google for Nonprofits YouTube channel for your viewing (and learning!) pleasure.

Get insight and actionable next steps for putting products like Google Apps, Analytics, Earth, Google+, Grants, Mobile and YouTube to work for your organization.

We had a great time at NTC 2012 and hope that it comes through in the videos you’re about to watch.


Posted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team