Peace One Day is a non-profit organisation that was founded in 1999 by actor/filmmaker Jeremy Gilley with the vision to create global awareness of Peace Day and inspire the global community to make peace on this day. POD Education, the arm devoted to advancing this goal through schools, aims to empower young people to become the driving force behind a vision of a united and sustainable world, providing the tools to empower and inspire a new generation of change-makers.

However, they had a challenge – POD Education had created a set of education materials (DVD, lesson plans, and so on) that were sent free of charge to schools in the UK and USA. They needed a way to manage their contact data for the 86,000 schools they initially targeted; with everything done manually in spreadsheets, tracking and reporting were nearly impossible.

Fujitsu’s SaaS practice engaged with the POD team, and having understood their goals and business requirements, implemented a Salesforce.com solution in May 2009. The solution provides a central repository for all contact data, allowing POD to create and track email communications, integrate registration information from their website, take requests for materials, and provide a dashboard for real-time reporting and tracking.

To date, 498 schools have registered in the UK and a further 478 in the US, with 1,627 individuals registered. Given the cause, both Salesforce.com and Fujitsu provided their elements of the solution free of charge. The founder, Jeremy Gilley said: “At a time of rapid expansion and development for Peace One Day, we enlisted the help of Fujitsu, who were able to grasp the challenges that we faced quickly and effectively, helping us to identify our long-term needs and objectives; ensuring that the solution they created was flexible given our anticipated growth. The team at Fujitsu have been on call throughout the project, allowing us to build a strong relationship with the team. Fujitsu’s support will allow POD Education to transform the way we manage our programmes and the support that has been given will mean that the solution can be shared throughout the company. The solution developed by Fujitsu will radically improve the global outreach of Peace One Day in a user-friendly, effective and expedient way.”

A key aspect of their programme is the establishment of an annual day of ceasefire and non-violence throughout the world. That day is 21st September every year, and has been adopted by all UN member states as the annual Peace Day since 2001. In 2007, over 100 million people in 192 countries were active on Peace Day, with one example being the vaccination of 1.4 million children against polio, in Afghanistan. In 2008 Peace Day saw this number rise by a further 1.8 million children, following an agreement by all parties to suspend conflict in the region to respect the Day. Fujitsu is helping them expand take-up of similar activities this year.

To find out more, and to register the action you will take on Peace Day, go to www.peaceoneday.org. What will you do to make peace on September 21st?