Open call: Plan an innovative marketing campaign for Openhands

Smrekova straža (Spruce Watch): walkers who find dying spruce before the bark beetle spreads Who it is for Members of the mountaineering societies (planinska društva) of Bled, Bohinj and Radovljica who walk the Pokljuka and Jelovica plateaus every week. They gather at their societies' monthly meetings, in their newsletters and Facebook groups, and in the huts on Pokljuka such as Blejska koča na Lipanci. These plateaus are mostly spruce, and bark beetle (mainly the eight-toothed spruce bark beetle, osmerozobi smrekov lubadar) has been killing it after the windthrows of recent years. What they would do on Openhands Answer a spruce check: walk to a pin on a marked trail, photograph the spruce around it, and say whether any crowns have turned red-brown or there is brown boring dust at the foot of the trunks. Each check pays €3, locked on chain before anyone sets out. Why they would do it: it pays for a walk they take anyway, and it is the earliest warning the forest gets. A tree found infested in autumn can be felled and taken out over winter, before the beetles fly again in spring. Every approved check carries a public receipt with their name on it. How it runs: the campaign is itself made of asks - 160 trail points become one series of "look" asks, a single card on the board. Each photo must be taken within 400 m of its pin and is checked before it pays. - A check that reports damage is followed by a chained second ask: a different person confirms the same spot within 7 days, for €5. - Each confirmed spot goes, with its receipt link, to the Slovenia Forest Service (ZGS) office for the area, which marks infested trees for sanitary felling. - Every photo is taken from a marked trail; nobody leaves the path or goes onto private land. Budget: €900 for one month - €480: rewards for 160 trail-point checks at €3 - €150: rewards for up to 30 second-opinion checks at €5 - about €70: review fees on those 190 checks - €200: printed QR cards for the huts and trailheads, and one evening talk at each of the three societies What would show it worked, and by when By 18 November 2026: 120 approved checks from at least 40 different people, at least 30 of whom had never answered an ask on Openhands before. The campaign runs 19 October to 18 November 2026, so the checks are done before the plateaus are snowed in. Why it only works on Openhands A hashtag cannot pay a walker per photo, prove the photo was taken at the pin, or have it checked before money moves. Here the money is locked before anyone walks, each photo is held to its place and judged before it pays, a second person confirms it through a chained ask, and every step leaves a public receipt a forester can open. If it works, forest owners can back the same checks on their own parcels next spring: owners paying their neighbours to watch their trees.