2013: A year of people-powered change
Derek,
It can often feel like it's impossible to change the things around us. When these people started their petitions on Change.org what they were asking for seemed impossible but thousands of you helped them to victory. Here are just a few of the highlights from a year of winning on Change.org in the UK:
January: 1.5 million people using Change.org in the UK.
February saw Mary Seacole kept on the national curriculum (36,235 signatures) while in March EDF Energy dropped its lawsuit against climate activists following a petition started by one of the campaigners' parents. (64,454 signatures) Plus Lego stopped advertising in the Sun over Page 3. (12,271 signatures)
April saw Kester Brewin secure the payout of a Friends Life insurance policy to his best friend's widow. (63,125 signatures) Nick and Jane Lawton also won their campaign for 17 year olds to be recognised as children in police custody after the tragic suicide of their son Joe. (57,832 signatures)
May: 2.5 million people using Change.org in the UK.
In June Andy Walton started a Change.org petition which helped convince Bolton Wanderers to halt a sponsorship deal with payday lending firm QuickQuid. (4,469 signatures)
July saw The Bank of England announce Jane Austen will appear on the new £10 note from 2017 following Caroline Criado-Perez's campaign to keep a women on English banknotes. (36,161 signatures) Plus 15 year old Esha Marwaha helped keep climate change on the curriculum. (31,225 signatures)
When a lawyer and judge called a 13 year old sex abuse survivor “predatory” in August Jo launched a petition calling on the Crown Prosecution Service to take action. In less than 48 hours it had won, with the judge and barrister both censured by the authorities. (55,783 signatures)
In September Twitter tightened up online abuse reporting procedures after more than 140,000 people signed Kim's petition to protect users from abusive tweets. (140,433 signatures)
October saw The Sun newspaper apologise after a backlash to a front page story which campaigners argued stigmatised people living with mental illness. (84,604 signatures) Plus Harrods stopped stocking 'unethical' civet coffee after a petition by Tony Wild. (51,981 signatures)
In the wake of the typhoon disaster in the Philippines in November, The National Lottery announced an
unprecedented donation to the relief efforts following Rachel's petition. (151,642 signatures) Jolene's petition also forced action from the Ministry of Defence to give her soldier husband his pension after he was threatened with redundancy just days before he qualified. (103,480 signatures)
Jayne Linney & Debbie Sayers also secured questioning for Iain Duncan Smith in Parliament in November over how the Department for Work and Pensions had been using statistics to back up controversial claims. (105,344 signatures)
Finally in December blogger Jack Monroe secured a parliamentary debate on the rise of foodbank usage and causes of hunger in the UK. (144,407 signatures)
End of 2013: Over 3.5 million people are using Change.org in the UK to start, join and win campaigns.
We hope you'll agree that it's been an incredible year of people-powered change. So as we head into 2014, what will you change?
Start your own petition now
Thanks for being part of an amazing year of change,
Brie and the Change.org UK team