Consciousness raising (also called awareness raising) is a form of activism popularized by United States feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group on some cause or condition. Common issues include diseases (e.g. breast cancer, AIDS), conflicts (e.g. the Darfur genocide, global warming), movements (e.g. Greenpeace, PETA, Earth Hour) and political parties or politicians. Since informing the populace of a public concern is often regarded as the first step to changing how the institutions handle it, raising awareness is often the first activity in which any advocacy group engages. However, in practice, raising awareness is often combined with other activities, such as fundraising, membership drives or advocacy, in order to harness and/or sustain the motivation of new supporters which may be at its highest just after they have learned and digested the new information. The term awareness raising is used in the Yogyakarta Principles against discriminatory attitudes and LGBT stereotypes as well as the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to combat stereotypes, prejudices and harmful practices toward people with disabilities. Terminology Until the early-17th century, English-speakers used the word "consciousness" in the sense of "moral knowledge of right or wrong"—a concept today referred to as "conscience". Issues and methods In feminism Consciousness raising groups were formed by New York Radical Women, an early Women's Liberation group in New York City, and quickly spread throughout the United States. In November 1967, a group including Shulamith Firestone, Anne Koedt, Kathie Sarachild (originally Kathie Amatniek), and Carol Hanisch began meeting in Koedt's apartment. Meetings often involved "going around the room and talking" about issues in their own lives. The phrase "consciousness raising" was coined to describe the process when Kathie Sarachild took up the phrase from Anne Forer: On Thanksgiving 1968, Kathie Sarachild presented A Program for Feminist Consciousness Raising, at the First National Women's Liberation Conference near Chicago, Illinois, in which she explained the principles behind consciousness-raising and outlined a program for the process that the New York groups had developed over the past year. Groups founded by former members of New York Radical Women—in particular Redstockings, founded out of the breakup of the NYRW in 1969, and New York Radical Feminists—promoted consciousness raising and distributed mimeographed sheets of suggesting topics for consciousness raising group meetings. New York Radical Feminists organized neighborhood-based c.r.