Tonight is Earth Hour 2014, a movement which was started 7 years ago by the WWF. Wherever you are on the planet, at 8:30pm local time, you are encouraged to switch off your lights (and any non-essential electrical equipment: computers, mobile phones etc) for one hour. My family and I have participated every year since Earth Hour was brought to our attention, however, I am always hugely disappointed when looking around at my neighbourhood to find that virtually no-one else has bothered or has somehow missed all the publicity surrounding it. I hope that by publishing this post, that a few more people will learn about it and join in.

Why You Need To Take Part in Earth Hour 2014

Let’s face it, switching off your lights for an hour is hardly going to make a blip in the grand scheme of things. By participating, what you are actually doing is showing solidarity, raising awareness and most importantly actually making a real difference to the planet. In fact, there are many projects around the globe that benefit. How? Visit the Earth Hour projects page to see how you can make a difference by backing a project or donating.

How To Encourage More People To Join In

Get social. Almost everyone who owns a computer or smart phone is connected to one social media site or another. Tweet about it, share it to Facebook, add a picture to Instagram. You can download pictures to use direct from the site.

Be direct, ask your friends and family if they are participating. If they are not, share the site with them, send them this page to read. Change their minds one by one.

What You Should Do During The Hour

You might think that going without your computer, phone and lights for a whole hour is going to be really boring. Here are a few suggestions for what you can do.

1. Hold a candlelit supper. Serve dinner just as the lights go off, light lots of candles and sit down to a meal with conversation and a great ambience.
2. Tell stories. On the first year that my family participated, my mum was visiting, we sat in our hall with candles lit telling a story. Each person took turns to make up their part and then they handed the story on to the next person to add more. It’s amazing where this can lead. We laughed lots.
3. Play board games. When was the last time you put down Candy Crush and played a board game with friends or family? Why not dust off that box of Cluedo, Monopoly or Chess.
4. Meditate. What better excuse do you need for a little bit of peace and tranquility?
5. Go star gazing. Head out of town to where there is less light pollution, lie back and look up at the stars. Take in the vastness of our amazing universe.
6. What else? Leave a comment below with your ideas.

If nothing else, you will learn just how reliant we are on electrical power in our everyday lives and make us appreciate what we take for granted that other less fortunate fellow humans do not have access to.

This year, I will be taking my own advice by serving supper under the stars followed by gazing up at them and contemplating the universe.

Are you taking part? Tell us what you will be doing by adding your comment below.

Suz McDonald is a Certified ThetaHealer®, an Access Bars practitioner, a blogger and a fudge maker. Originally from Scotland, along with her husband and two teenage children, she has made Dubai, UAE her home for the past 16 years. However, her heart belongs to Greece which she believes to be her spiritual home. Suz loves life and aims every day to make someone’s life better. Her ambitions are to climb Kilimanjaro, practice ThetaHealing in many countries around the world and to change the world for the better one day at a time.