Social Actions

Over at Philanthropy 2173, Lucy wrote about a new website called Social Actions. The site is designed to “make it easy for you to make a difference.”

This is how they do it:
We help you find and share opportunities to change the world.

- First, we collect ways to get involved in the causes you care about from these 30+ action sources, including Care2, Change.org, DonorsChoose.org, DemocracyinAction, GlobalGiving, Idealist, Kiva, SixDegrees and VolunteerMatch.

- Then, we make it easy for you to find these opportunities by presenting them in a user-friendly search engine.

- We also encourage nonprofits, companies, and third-party developers to create online tools that help you share ways for others to take action on your website, blog, or mobile device.

The web is becoming a series of social networks connected by social networks. If you, like me, have a tough time keeping up with the many social networks you take part in, you will find things like this extremely handy. While you will still need to log on to the individual sites to update your profile (this I predict will change in the new year) you can at least see if there is anything you find interesting at a glance with less effort to look for it. As they say – you can make a difference, they will make it easy.

Destiny In The Stars

When I was on the school tour a couple of weeks ago with George, Eternia, Masia One and the crew from 411 Initiative for Change, we had some deep conversations on the road trip. We would talk about the best place to get a shwarma, what our favorite apple was, and the room service menus. Half joking. We also had a few serious moments that I found really interesting.

George had some very intelligent and intriguing things he had studied to talk about. One particular conversation has had me thinking ever since. He has always been very interested in the stars, as have I, so when the topic came up my ears perked up. He explained to us that destiny is written in the stars. I will try to condense and sum up the conversation:

According to the theory of light years depending on how far away a star is, by the time you see one or it reaches your eyes it no longer exists. In essence it is happening in the future. If there was a telescope that far away that could relay information back to earth then it could see things happening many ‘light years’ ahead or before they happened. The future exists and can be seen, unfortunately we just don’t have the ability to see it yet.

Now whenever you look up in the stars you can know you are looking at your future. I have always believed in destiny and now this just grounds it in a theory.

Girls of Latitude

If you are an MTV fan you may have caught a glimpse, or even the entire half hour, of the documentary that my employer Plan Canada developed with MTV. The show follows Diane as she travels to Colombia and follows a young girl as she deals with peace and conflict resolution, AJ in Sudan as a young woman stands up against the issue of early marriage, and finally, Nicole as she travels to Haiti and looks at Juvenile Justice. It is a really great piece of television that is unusual for MTV to produce. Kudos to them for recognizing the value of educational programming! In all seriousness the program gives a great glimpse of what it is like for girls around the world.

When statistics are examined, quite often it is broken down into male-female, or adult-child, but rarely does it go further to pull out the disparity in girl-boy. What the statistics show when one does is that the world is a very different place for girls and if we have any hope of achieving the millennium development goals by 2015, we need to pay special attention to the rights of girls. At Plan, and I apologize if it seems a bit like a marketing ploy since I work there, we have an advocacy campaign called “Because I am a girl” which targets the girl demographic and follows it to make sure our work impacts them positively. I know many other organizations are also doing similar things.

Girls are at a distinct disadvantage in the world and we can all play a roll in improving the world if boys and men treat the girls and women in their lives with the respect and dignity they deserve, and if girls and women respect themselves and those of their fellow gender. Around the world 1 in 3 women are physically or sexually abused – including here in Canada – which is a truly staggering amount. That is on men almost exclusively and something needs to be changed. Women also need to take an active roll in making people aware of the problem.

I hope I can continue to raise some of the particular areas that need awareness and that with any luck one of you will take an interest in one that is raised and then do something about it. Part of the distinct problem in the world is that people just don’t know the extent to which these problems persist. Just a little more discussion can go a long way.

Akoha

I heard about this great new game called Akoha by my friend Kevin. The more I think about it the more I am just blown away by the possibilities for it. I signed up for the Beta launch but I will have to wait until they let the next round of invites goes out. This is what the website has to say about the game:

Once upon a time…

In just a decade the Internet’s advances have made the world a better place. At Akoha, we want to take that a step further. With six billion people covering seven continents and five oceans, our planet is the ultimate playground, a place for real people to engage in meaningful interactions. Akoha was founded by Austin Hill and Alex Eberts, long-time friends and entrepreneurs. After attending the TED Conference in Monterey where the theme was “Ideas Big Enough to Change the World”, and the Sundance Film Festival where some of their friends were discussing movies that could make a difference, the two began a series of conversations about the future of online entertainment. These discussions about the power of online communities and the changing nature of play were the spark that led to Akoha.

If you are already a member then let me know what you think so far. I think this has the chance to be really special and I can’t wait to start. I was really hoping I could get it going in time for the holiday season but who knows. I will keep you posted!

School Tour

So you may have been missing me lately. I know I have missed posting! Well I was on a school tour for work throughout Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto and area. In total we visited 20 schools and made 22 presentations in two weeks. It was an intense 10 workdays! I was working from 5am to midnight some nights as I tried to keep up with everything. However, even with all this whining, it was an incredible experience. The tour was a presentation entitled “Girls Rights are Human Rights too” and just like it sounds it was about girls rights. The interactive, multimedia presentation included live performances by Masia One and Eternia, two female MC’s, and George, Toronto’s own music sensation. It was a mind blowing educational experience. It also included interviews that were done with three of the female MTV VJ’s (Nicole, AJ, and Diane). Plan Canada, my employer, took them to Haiti, Sudan, and Colombia to raise awareness about different issues affecting girls and what is being done.

The combination of artists and television personalities managed to keep the interest of the students for nearly an hour and a half, and many lingered around well afterwards to speak with the performers about the issues raised. It really showed the disconnect between regular educational presentations and one designed with young people in mind. There is no doubt that young people are bubbling with enthusiasm and passion for making a difference in the world. I think the issue is that not enough is done to stoke their fires. What I witnessed from young people during this presentation was deep feelings about these issues and that they were really just waiting for a reason to let it show. I can’t wait to see what will come of this new and renewed enthusiasm.

Pop!Tech Hub

A friend sent me this link the other day and I am just now getting around to looking at it. The tag line for Pop!Tech Hub is "a digital home base, where people come together to make change." Sounds like a very interesting site! On the Hub, you can:

- Establish a personal profile, including a bio and photo, with complete and detailed privacy controls, and browse for new friends
- Join or start a new social group, post messages and share your thoughts with other members of the group
- Create, find, vote on, or join a collaborative project, or track it by its RSS feed
- Participate in a Resource marketplace, where you can offer resources to projects, or browse resources being offered by other members

There is also this to say about it:

The Pop!Tech Hub is a social network and collaboration platform for people interested in vanguard-edge emerging ideas, trends, tools, and technologies, and their application to significant social challenges. It’s open to everyone: past Pop!Tech participants, members of the online Pop!Tech community or anyone with an interest in social innovation. Here you will find people of many different disciplines and perspectives meeting, creating, tracking and evaluating projects; exchanging ideas; and working together on change initiatives of every scale.

Another online world for people to link into. Check it out and let me know what you think. If you have previously written a post about this or are currently a member link back here and let me know what you think about it. I have joined but don't have much time currently to surf around and get any idea what it is like.

Designing for the other 90%

A friend turned me on to this art exhibit currently showing here in Toronto. If you are in the city or plan on coming through check it out. Here is what is available on the website:

Design for the Other 90%
Professional Gallery
Saturday October 4, 2008 to Sunday January 25, 2009
Opening Reception: October 4, 2008, 6:52 pm (coinciding with Scotiabank Nuit Blanche)

A touring exhibition organized by the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
The OCAD Professional Gallery will host Design for the Other 90%, a collection of design solutions addressing the basic needs of poor and marginalized populations not traditionally serviced by professional designers.

The exhibition, organized by the New York-based Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and curated by Cynthia E. Smith, explores a growing movement among designers to design low-cost solutions for the “other 90%” — that is, the 5.8 billion people (out of the world’s total population of 6.5 billion people) who have little or no access to most of the products and services many of us take for granted. Design for the Other 90% looks at how individuals and organizations are finding unique ways to address the basic challenges of survival and progress — for example, nearly half of the other 90% do not have regular access to food, clean water, or shelter.

"Unconventionally, this exhibition highlights products that are economically self-sustaining, yet affordable to people living on a dollar a day — inexpensive irrigation systems for farming, for instance," says Charles Reeve, Curator of the Professional Gallery. "The new forms of ingenuity here focus on pressing issues like poverty relief and environmental sustainability, both of which are key themes in what we teach and research here at OCAD."

Launching as part of OCAD’s Scotiabank Nuit Blanche programming, Toronto is the only Canadian stop for the touring exhibition, which is currently showing at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. An extensive website, including a blog, discussion forum and additional resources is available at http://other90.cooperhewitt.org/.

In addition to the exhibition at the OCAD Professional Gallery, the Design Exchange will present a complementary program of exhibits and events as part of Design for the Other 90%.
Gallery hours: Wed. to Fri., 1 to 7 p.m; Sat. and Sun., 12 to 6 p.m.