Did you know?

• Friends of the Earth groups around the world demonstrated against the US-led war in Iraq in the early months of 2003. In March, an e-mail action on the Friends of the Earth International website calling for an emergency session of the United Nations General Assembly in order to put a stop to the war resulted in 13,000 e-mails being sent to UN ambassadors in less than 24 hours.
• In 2003, the total number of visitors to the Friends of the Earth International website www.foei.org was 374,159. This is an increase of 79 percent from the total number of visitors (209,342) in 2002.
• Friends of the Earth International has approximately one million members and supporters around the world.
• The Friends of the Earth International publication "Clashes with Corporate Giants" was downloaded approximately 30,000 times throughout 2003 (23,000 times in English, 3500 each in French and Spanish). "Water Justice for All" was downloaded more than 40,000 times in the three languages. And our publication for the WTO Summit in Cancun, "Business Rules: Who Pays the Price?" was downloaded nearly 25,000 times in the last few months of 2003 alone.
• In 2003, Friends of the Earth International financially supported forest conservation projects in Argentina, Brazil, Cameroon, Colombia, Costa Rica, France, Ghana, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Paraguay.
• 253 Friends of the Earth activists are now logged into Friends of the Earth International’s internal website, the "insite". 92 of these people have received individual training by Sisi Nutt, our insite coordinator.
• By the end of 2003, there were 1200 people on the Friends of the Earth International cyberaction list taking part in our regular action alerts.
• An October 2003 Friends of the Earth Europe cyberaction to convince European decisionmakers to regulate chemicals resulted in over 30,000 e-mails being sent to Commissioners.
• The 2003 Goldman Prize went to three individuals nominated by Friends of the Earth groups: Julia Bonds, an Appalachian woman defending her West Virginia community against the devastating practice of mountaintop removal coal mining and Eileen Kampakuta Brown and Eileen Wani Wingfield, two Aboriginal elders from the Australian desert blocking construction of a federal nuclear waste dump.
• In 2003-2004, the Friends of the Earth Secretariat team included staff and volunteers from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Poland, Spain, Suriname, the United Kingdom and the United States.
• In 2003, Friends of the Earth Uruguay and Friends of the Earth International launched a children’s website, www.somosamigosdelatierra.org , in Spanish. The site uses clay figures and, animation, sound and video to explain environmental and social issues to younger members of the public.
• An average of 30 groups request membership information from the International Secretariat each month. From these, a handful of new groups fulfilling the membership criteria are admitted by the Biannual General Meeting.
• In 2003, Friends of the Earth International’s Membership Support Fund distributed nearly 500,000 Euros to 30 of our members worldwide. We also recommended that US$90,000 be granted by the Global Greengrants Fund to non-Friends of the Earth groups around the world.