[Coral-List] Beautiful Oceans - a corporate framework for coral reef conservation asking for support

[Stephan]

Dear List,
 
My name is Stephan Becker – I am the co-founder of Beautiful Oceans
(www.beautifuloceans.com), a company offering coral reef science courses
to scuba divers and snorkelers. 10% of our profits or 1% of our sales –
whatever is greater – is donated annually to three partner NGO’s working
in the field of coral reef conservation. We are member of 1% For The
Planet (www.onepercentfortheplanet.org), an association of businesses
donating at least 1% of their sales to the environment. My initial idea
was actually to set up a not-for profit organization, but my experience
as a marine expedition leader for Coral Cay Conservation in 2002
(www.coralcay.org) taught me that there are lots of very talented NGO’s
out there already, but mostly struggling for funding. So I changed plans
and set up Beautiful Oceans as a corporate framework for marine
conservation. We think that in giving back to the natural environment,
businesses can have a tremendous impact on the future of our planet. We
are profoundly convinced that there is a way of doing business while
doing good. 
 
Together with my partner, Ian Popple, a marine Scientist from McGill
University we spent two month in the Caribbean, where we have set up two
‘Science Dive & Snorkel Centers’ in Barbados and Grenada respectively.
These dive centers will now start selling our educational courses to
diving tourists. At the same occasion, we have contacted local secondary
schools to offer our first online course ‘Coral Reef Architecture &
Organisms’ for free to their students. Currently, students in Grenada
are learning about coral reefs in the Beautiful Oceans eAcademy – our
state-of-the-art eLearning environment. The first secondary school in
Barbados is going online this month as part of an island-wide pilot
project with plans to extend our course offerings for free to nine other
secondary schools in the island. At the same time, we have entered a
partnership with the Caribbean Conservation Association, CCA
(http://www.ccanet.net/). Besides offering our courses to their staff,
CCA will be using the Beautiful Oceans eAcademy for uploading a coral
reef course for kids called “People & Coral”, spreading coral reef
education to the younger generation in the island. 
 
The reason for my post to the list is two-fold:
 
1. We are a young Canadian start-up company and need all the help we can
get to succeed our original business concept. We would like to be able
to tell other businesses 'Please, change your focus, and give back to
the environment!'. We would like to be living proof that 'Doing good is
good for business’ and thus convince more businesses to donate more
money for environmental causes. 
 
You can help us achieving this in two ways:
 
a) Take part in our affiliate program and spread the word about
Beautiful Oceans while perceiving a commission: Besides our annual
donation to coral reef conservation, we have set up an affiliate
program, allowing us to reward organizations and individuals that talk
about us and thus help us in achieving our objectives. Affiliates obtain
10% for each customer coming from their website or blogsite, whether
this customer buys a coral reef course from us now, tomorrow or in one
year. We are hoping that our affiliate program will provide additional
income to NGO’s maintaining a blog or website. Signing up is easy:
http://www.beautifuloceans.com/idevaffiliate/
 
2. Colette Wabnitz of UBC yesterday talked about the fun involved
answering ‘kiddies mail’ (snip) “ 
 Students registered here at UBC and
working as part of Project Seahorse, regularly have to answer 'kiddies
mail'. These are letters from kids any age asking questions they have
relevant to seahorses - it is an incredibly fun and enriching experience
for kids and students alike! Again, potentially something similar could
be set up at a number of schools/universities (through formal or
informal partnerships for example?)
” (snip). Our Beautiful Oceans
eAcademy will soon be filled up with school kids from Barbados learning
about coral reefs – and the idea of marine biology students being
available to answer some of their questions through forums seems very
enticing to me
 maybe to you too? If there are interested people or
organizations reading this message, please get in touch with me, I would
be more than delighted to make this happen
 :
sbecker at beautifuloceans.com 
 
I hope you do not find this posting too intrusive – and I apologize in
advance to those who may find it ‘inappropriate for the list’ – but I
also firmly believe in the power of partnerships between the private and
the not-for-profit sector in our quest of advancing coral reef
conservation on all levels
 what better place than sharing this idea
with you in an open list?
 
I wish you all a beautiful day,
Stephan
  
Beautiful Oceans
Stephan Becker BBA, MMH, DiplEnv.
President CEO
1125, Avenue Lajoie, unit #1
Montreal (QC) H2V 1N7 
Canada 
 
Phone 1: 1-800-930-4078
Phone 2: 1-(514)-907-1935
Fax: 1-(514)-461-0878
sbecker at beautifuloceans.com
www.beautifuloceans.com 
 
"In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what
we understand, we will understand only what we are taught."