D&AD has launched the White Pencil, an award for “a creative idea that changes the world for the better”.

One White Pencil will be awarded each year at the D&AD Awards, and each year D&AD will set a new live brief with a different partner or cause, and challenge the creative community to find a solution. The first White Pencil will be awarded at the 2012 ceremony, which will mark the 50th anniversary of D&AD. For the inaugural award, it is partnering with non-profit organisation Peace One Day, and inviting creatives the world over to create a campaign/design that will help raise awareness of Peace Day, which takes place on September 21.

Peace One Day was founded by filmmaker Jeremy Gilley in 1999, with the aim of establishing an annual day of global ceasefire and non-violence. In 2001, September 21 was adopted by the member states of the United Nations as Peace Day. In the interim ten years, Gilley has spent time raising the profile of Peace Day (with the help of celebrities including Jude Law, Angelina Jolie, Jonny Lee Miller and others) and also lobbying politicians and armies to respect the day of peace. The organisation has achieved significant moments of success, including on Peace Day 2009, when a ceasefire was respected by all warring factions in Afghanistan and a polio immunisation drive was carried out in eight provinces.

The brief from D&AD is simple: help institutionalise Peace Day around the world so that it is familiar to people as Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day. Anybody can enter, and all entries must be created and executed before the submission deadline: there is no client approval process, entrants are encouraged to just get their ideas out into the world. In this way, the cause will benefit not just from the winner’s efforts but from the efforts of every entrant.

The submission deadline is yet to be announced, though will the scheme will open for entries in October this year. More info on the White Pencil can be found here, and on Peace One Day here.

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