About Our Founders: OMG was founded by two students of the Fayette Montessori School here in Fayetteville, GA. The founders are Carter (now 10.5) and his Sister Olivia (now 9), who are both extremely passionate about animals and conservation. They have been adopting Cheetahs in South Africa over the past few years and when they heard that Cheetahs, along with so many other species were close to extinction, they knew they had to act.
They started their One More Generation organization in late 2009 and officially filed with the state of GA as a nonprofit late in January of that year. OMG was then granted their 501(c)(3) status by the IRS in May of 2010. Here is a brief list which spells out just a few of the initiatives both Carter and Olivia have started, which is pretty impressive.
OMG founders just launched a “Say No To Plastic Bags” Coalition in their community and just partnered with the great folks at the ISFoundation (Ian Somerhalder, you may know him from his role in the hit TV series “Lost”, or more recently, his role as Damon Salvatore in the TV Hit “Vampire Diaries”). Together we hope to raise awareness to the problem plastic bags are causing to our environment and to endangered species.
Here are a few more of our coalition members:
Atlanta Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation
Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church Environmental Committee, Atlanta
Center for Biological Diversity
Chico Bags and the Bag Monster
ISFoundation / Defenders & Warriors 2011
US Green Building Council – Georgia Chapter
GEORGIA TECH THINK GREEN WEEK 2011
Ocean Revolution / LiveBlue Cool People Care
Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeepers
Fayetteville First United Methodist Church
IDEAS (Intellectual Decisions on Environmental Awareness Solutions)
Surfrider Foundation Rise Above Plastics
OMG founders recently had a great meeting with North Georgia Annual Conference UMC Sustainability Committee. The North GA Conference represents over 900 churches, and we have the opportunity to educate and affect change in many caring communities. They presented their plans to get as many communities in GA to enact a “Say No To Plastic Bags” program. They showed the “Bag-It” movie trailer and are hopeful this meeting will lead to many more communities inviting us to come and speak about our initiative.
Also, the folks from KooDooZ are going to help us set up a Nation-Wide challenge for kids to get involved. One such Challenge with be about Endangered Species Awareness and the other about Plastic Awareness. GenZ … the Eco-Warriors …
Our two young founders will also be featured on Chicago’s Progressive Talk Radio on their new segment “Our Town” with host Julia Shu coming soon, and were just interviewed by New Zealand’s most popular Motivational Radio station with host Lisa Lomas. Carter and Olivia were also featured on German TV (ZDF/Logo) in August for their work with saving Sea Turtles caught up in the Gulf Oil Spill.
They are scheduled to be featured on KooDooZ by Brandi Milloy later this month and Good Morning Atlanta aired their story in Dec as well. The folks from the ISFoundation just flew up to Atlanta and did an interview with the kids at Zoo Atlanta which will air soon. They were just featured on the Live Radio Show on The Recognition Network sponsored by “Kids Are Heroes”.
Carter (age 10) and his sister Olivia (age 8.5) are so passionate about wanting to make a difference. Their goal is to help clean up our environment, save endangered species and helping kids “Give Back”. What these guys are accomplishing should be shared with youth around the world. The two students have been adopting Cheetah’s in South Africa (from the Ann Van Dyk Cheetah Center) for years.
Since starting OMG, Carter and Olivia have been involved in numerous initiatives both locally and globally to include: Last August, they returned from making a trip to the Gulf where they delivered badly needed Animal Rescue Supplies to the folks at the Marine Mammal & Sea Turtle Rescue Center in New Orleans. You can check out what they did in the Gulf to help save Sea Turtles: http://onemoregeneration.org/2010/09/07/animal-rescue-supplies-delivered/ and watch their video about the trip as well: http://vimeo.com/14798358 Also check out what they are doing to help Sharks and Whales http://onemoregeneration.org/2010/09/17/save-the-sharks/ and http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=163429810347176
They have been in communications with Pete Bethune (Ady Gil Captain from Sea Shepard) who suggested we attend one of their Nov World-Wide Anti Whaling demonstration in Atlanta. This was Carter and Olivia’s first demonstration and they absolutely loved it. Here are the pictures from the event: http://on.fb.me/9GnIdX Carter and Olivia also won the Grand Prize in a Nestles Heroes Contest in 2010. The prize is essentially an ice cream party for them and up to 50 of their friends. They both decided to share the prize with their classmates at their school since the entire school has been so helpful with our organization from the start. The ice-cream party was held at the Fayette Montessori School in Fayetteville GA. All the kids had a blast. Here is a link to the story: http://bit.ly/bDt23G
Olivia and Carter are working with our State Legislatures on proposing Legislative Language changes to the current laws written by the GA DNR (Georgia Department of Natural Resources) in an effort to help stop the Rattlesnake Roundups in our state. They have partnered with the folks from the Center of Biological Diversity out of AZ and their legal team has helped them write the language changes we want to introduce in Spring. So far these two enterprising young students have collected over 1,200 signatures on a petition asking for change to the Roundups. They recently met with the head of the GA DNR to discuss changes for the future of these events.
They are working to try and raise $50,000.00 for a Cheetah Rescue program in South Africa. The Ann Van Dyke Cheetah Center runs the program and they are doing a tremendous job. The process is slow and funds are extremely hard to come-by but they held a silent auction at a local art gallery where they auctioned off painting kids in the community did of their favorite endangered species.
They are working with various organizations in our immediate area on raising awareness to the plight of the many endangered species across the globe and about ways to help clean up our environment. We have an educational program that we present to the visitors of the Atlanta Zoo, The Fernbank Museum in Atlanta, the Georgia Aquarium, The Atlanta Botanical Garden, Cochran Mill Nature Center and at our local Public Library. They are in talks with the folks from The Art Miles Mural Project (http://artmiles.eplanetsystems.com/), which is an international organization that raises awareness to various initiatives globally through art. We recently proposed to them that we collaborate on such a project about endangered species. We are very excited about the prospect of organizing such an event.
Carter and Olivia were guest speakers at the Caring for Creation 2011 Conference at Lake Junaluska, NC in April of 2011 and also at the United Methodist Church Mississippi Annual Conference where they spoke to a crowd of over 2,700 attendees.
Thanks to a meeting these two kids had with our State Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, a further meeting was just held with Deputy District Director Andy Bush were Carter and Olivia discussed the needed support for HR14 which covers Ocean Acidification. Carter and Olivia enjoyed the meeting and we will be reporting on the results in the coming weeks. Here is our link to the issue (http://bit.ly/aoaziw) along with an image of the two during the meeting.
They hosted a “Water Event” at the Fernbank Museum where they discussed the importance of water on all living things and also partnered with an organization called Ryan’s Well which helps build water wells to poor villages around the world to ensure everyone has access to clean drinking water. Also on that same day, they participated in a celebration at our Sate Capital by being part of “Uniting Voices”: An Interfaith Worship Service Calling for Climate Justice, which is an event that hopes to raise awareness to the problems with our climate do to pollution etc. Both events were videoed for inclusion in the “One Day On Earth” organization that is hoping to document historical events from this special day and preserve them for future generations.
Finally, they are attempting to work on a joint project with Jungle Jack Hanna from the Columbus Zoo and or Jeff Corwin to help raise awareness of the issues regarding endangered species to kids nationwide. (This is one of the projects which they really want to move forward with. So far neither have returned our calls or answered our emails, we are still trying 
Well I think that about covers it. We hope you will agree that this story shows kids and adults everywhere that Anybody Can Make A Difference. Getting students involved now, is our only hope to help change the global situation around and what these two have accomplished is impressive. We hope you too will see the strong commitment OMG has to making a difference and that you also consider showing your support as well, and we look forward to sharing more with you again soon.
Best regards from the entire OMG Team
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