Valentine's Day is our Birthday

We're good listeners 

Fourteen years ago on this day, Hello Cool World came into being as a company. Our mission always has been to listen first, then co-create projects with our clients. In other words, it's like a healthy relationship! Good communication, respect, commitment to shared goals, and of course pleasure in the process! We can only work with clients we love.

We've put this philosophy to work for audience engagement around the films we take on (like The Corporation & 65_RedRoses), and in the social justice and health promotion work we do. And on the health promotion front...

Valentine's day has become a marker for many of our friends — especially those working for comprehensive sex education and for sexual health. 

The Canadian Federation for Sexual Health launched a "Heart your Parts" campaign a few years ago. Back on our 10th birthday in 2011 we partnered with Options For Sexual Health to get our gay & straight condom ads on the air, with a 'put on something sexy' tag line. The title of these ads, and the flip book we made for Chee Mamuk, came out of  focus test we did with youth at RayCam centre when we were researching sexual health messaging for Opt's prevoius campaigns! Watch "That's so Sexy" (straight version) Watch "That's So Sexy" (gay version)

Today is the day of the 25th annual Women's Memorial March honouring the Missing and Murdered Aboriginal women, many of whom have gone missing from the Downtown East Side, which is also where our studio is located. We'll be standing in solidarity at the march today and also documenting the event for our ongoing project with the Vancouver Aboriginal Community Policing Centre. "Sisters Speak" is a digital story telling project that has the ultimate goal of creating educational materials and a workshop for schools in Vancouver. This project will be geared to 11-15  year-olds addressing the root causes of sexual exploitaton, racism and most importantly exploring how building strong communities and promoting health relationships, sexuality, and self esteem and traditional culture can empower Aborignal youth and help protect them from violence. 

It's an important and sadly all to necessary project. But today, we reflect on too many sisters, taken from us through violence. We stand in solidarity with their families, and we say, this has to stop. We join all those who call for an Inquriy into the Missing and Murdered Aboriginal women and we pledge to work to undermine racism, build up communities of strength, and to use every opportuntity to amplify the dialogue about violence and exploitation, especially in the media.

We are working with Lorelei Williams on the Sisters Speak project, here in rabble.ca she writes why she is marching today:"My cousin Tanya Holyk went missing in 1996.  Her DNA was later found on Pickton’s Farm.  My Aunty Belinda Williams who I closely resemble went missing around 1978.  She disappeared without a trace.  She still remains missing today." — Lorelei Williams

So while we firmly believe that sexy messaging should be used to sell safer sex, we are equally firm in saying: Violence is not sexy.