Blog Action Day Unites Bloggers to Raise Awareness on Poverty, By Easton Ellsworth, Event Coordinator for Blog Action Day
Spotlight onPoverty and Opportunity has shown that no country is immune to the problem ofpoverty. Even in the United States,nearly 40 million people live in poverty. Yet poverty knows no borders. With new media like the Internet and blogs, we can ensure that ourdiscussion about global problems also transcends national boundaries. We started Blog Action Day for this purpose,to spark a conversation around the world about urgent priorities that touch allnations.
Our first experience with poverty began in Papua NewGuinea, one of the most diverse countries in the world. There are almost athousand indigenous languages and even more old tribes, many still living atraditional way of life while the minority of the nation۪s population live inmajor cities and urban areas.
Despite its natural beauty and great culturaldiversity, Papua New Guineais a country in poverty. The GDP is surpassed by 131 countries from a list of179 beneath many starving African nations according to the International MonetaryFund.
This is the country where Collis Ta۪eed firstencountered poverty, the country where he grew up. His father, the CEO of amajor IT firm that brought technological infrastructure to the country, wouldoccasionally take him into the settlements shanty towns with houses builtwith left over timber and corrugated panels, and vehicles in disarray and acommunal fear of going out at night where he۪d witness, from the outside, theeffect that poverty and the absence of resources can have on fragilecommunities. In the midst of this he sawthe generosity of humankind as what little was available was always shared. He also heard the conversations a desirefor a better world for their children; not just their own, but all children.
Ta۪eed is the founder and CEO of Envato, anAustralian-based Internet start-up that produces resources for creative professionals.The company creates websites and services for graphic designers and artists,web developers, audio engineers and all manner of creative individuals workingto make a living from doing what they love.
Through providing free educational resources tofreelancers of all kinds, the company۪s websites have built a worldwidefollowing and garnered a great deal of respect. But that wasn۪t enough forCollis and the team behind Envato, including his wife, Cyan Ta۪eed, Envato۪sco-founder.
“The idea for Blog Action Day started last year in adiscussion with a couple of other bloggers. We were looking for ways to use ourmedium in a socially conscious way and someone said, What would happen if every blog did something at the sametime?۪” said Ta۪eed.
The idea became an annual non-profit event with theaim of uniting the world۪s bloggers, podcasters and other new media producersin posting about the same issue, on the same day, in order to raise awarenessand start a worldwide discussion.
In less than a week, the project was ready to go andstart recruiting participants.
“We had a brochure that we sent to a bunch of bigblogs, some that we knew, many that we didn۪t. At first no one wrote back, andthen a big SEO [Search Engine Optimization] blog sent me an email saying theywere in. From then on, it was like a floodgate had been opened.”
With each email the team sent out, they added thenames of big blogs and websites that had already joined, which got even more inthe door. Within three days of the site۪s launch, a thousand blogs hadregistered. It was a certain successespecially given that they had two monthsof campaigning time to go.
* * *
Papua New Guinea is but one ofmany developing countries in a state of poverty, and even the developed nationsof the world aren۪t free of it. In the United States, 37.3 million peoplelive in poverty, 13.3 million of whom are children. Poverty is a worldwide plague with far-reachingconsequences.
There is poverty at home in every country around theworld. Perhaps the only system that truly transcends these boundaries andborders is the Internet, a system that gives the citizens of Earth a voice.People become something greater when they act as citizens of the planet andtranscend arbitrary borders.
This is the kind of issue that Blog Action Daytackles. These are big issues, important issues, and most importantly, urgent issues. But what makes theseissues so suited to the discourse and conversation of blogs is theirmulti-dimensional nature. There are so many factors, facets, points of view andstakeholders to consider that one book or even one library couldn۪t adequatelytackle them all.
Around 133 million blogs are currently online, anumber that۪s growing by the day and will be outdated by the time you readthis. Of those, about 1.5 million post on a weekly basis, and another 900,000post on a daily basis (if not more). That۪s a lot of conversation.
Of those, 6,347 are registered to participate in BlogAction Dayanother figure that will be outdated by the time you read this.These blogs have an aggregated readership of 10,258,856. That number representsmore people than the entire population of the Czech Republic and is a hair۪sbreadth away from the population of Belgium. That۪s a figure that outweighs thecirculation of the New York Times by ten times.
It is evident that the 6,347 people writing for theseblogs people from all walks of life, and all of them passionate for change havethe capability to cover the many dimensions of such a heavy issue.
That makes the blogosphere the best forum for thisdiscussion. The answer to the question, “What would happen if every blog didsomething at the same time?”is that,out of this conversation, people find new ways to have a positive impact. Theyfind new ways to examine and understand the situation, which might not soundlike much, but this forms the foundation for what they do about it.
If just one reader of each of the 6,347 blogs canthink of one thing to do about poverty, that۪s a success. If this level ofdiscourse brings new solutions to the forefront, that۪s a success. Successcomes from every step no matter how small that brings us closer to asolution, the final eradication of poverty.
* * *
Choosing a topic for an effort such as Blog Action Dayis a difficult decision to make. There are thousands and thousands of importantissues clamouring for attention across the world.
But so very few of these issues are this urgent. Sofew of them demand action, and solutions, right now.
Last year, Blog Action Day brought the important topicof the environment to the forefront; another issue that demands immediateaction and solutions, and an issue that has a direct impact on manymoreincluding poverty itself.
Poverty is another such issue: an issue that needs tobe talked about and tackled the world over.
It doesn۪t matter if we۪re talking about poverty inPapua New Guinea or Africa, or America or Australia. What matters is that themore people who are focused on this issue, the more we can do about it.
The medium of blogging avoids centralized mainstreammedia, which has long been criticized for its tendency to ignore tough,long-term problems without easy answers, like the issue of poverty.
The social nature of the Web means ad hoc socialnetworks form, reaching more people: the NewYork Times can reach its own readership, but when a group of decentralizedblogs form together the way Blog Action Day has, the potential readership isvast.
Recently, an active member of an Internet communitythat provides a discussion forum on cars posted a photo of a car that had beenstolen. Within a few hours, another forum member had seen the car and taken aphoto of the driver while pulled up at the lights. A few hours after that,another forum member recognized the driver and found his Facebook profile,which he also shared on the forum. And shortly after that, his address wasfound with Google Maps.
This ad hoc group of people who had never met decidedto go to the individual۪s residence, and block the car in until the policearrived. The car was returned to the owner in less than 24 hours of theoriginal posting.
If action like this can be spontaneously generated onsuch a small scale thanks to the Internet, surely it can generate action andsolutions on a large scale with massive issues such as poverty.
Policymakers and advocates in the United States havejust as much to teach those fighting poverty in other countries as they have tolearn from them. That is whygovernments, policymakers, foundations, non-government organizations and otherleaders all need to embrace the power of the Internet, social media, andinstant communication in their search for solutions to bring to the policyagenda.
Blog Action Day is one place to start looking forthese solutions.
Blog Action Day 2008is October 15. For more information, goto http://blogactionday.org/