Tag Archive for 'social change'

Creating Social Change with Social Media

Published in case studies, socialchange and storytelling. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

nten

Over the last week, technology has played an unprecedented role in bringing aid to and saving lives in Haiti. Over $22 million has been raised by the American Red Cross via text message (about a fifth of total Haiti-related giving to the organization so far). And then there’s the role that Facebook and Twitter are playing.

Those social media tools, along with dozens of others, have been used to help family and friends locate one another, to direct food, clothing and medical support to specific locations, and to help direct rescue workers to individuals alive and trapped under rubble.

That’s social media for social good, and that’s exactly what NTEN and NetSquared want to highlight with Beth Kanter this spring at SXSWi.

Of course, we don’t just want to talk about Haiti — we want to highlight some amazing work from around the sector, while also building a nice little library of case studies we can all learn from. So, we invite you to share your social media for social good story. We’ll choose three to highlight in our session, and we’ll share all the stories we can on our sites and at We Are Media.

Submit your Social Media for Social Good story today!

Published on January 21, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments

Eartly Adoption: Not Just For Tech?

Published in community and socialchange. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , .

There is a great post from Louis Gray that I’ve been thinking about lately with an interesting view of 5 Major Stages of early adopter behavior.

The Five Stages of Early Adopter Behavior include:

  1. Discovery, QA and Spreading the Word
  2. Promotion and Collaboration
  3. Mainstream Use and Engagement
  4. Sense of Entitlement, Nitpicking and Reduced Use
  5. Migration to Something New, Call to Move Followers

You can read the full descriptions of the 5 Stages here.

I like to read insightful posts like this because I REALLY love to think about how tech-centric insights and trends may apply to behavior generally.  If these are trends that have emerged from a set of people who happen to all adopt social technologiy tools ahead of the mainstream and they share enough things in common to produce a set of general trends and characteristics, it isn’t a stretch to think that those behaviors or insights may be applied elsewhere – whether it’s online or not.

Do you think these Five Stages of Early Adopter Beahvior of social technology can be applied to social change adoption?

Are social entrepreneurs and changemakers possibly following these trends in their birth of innovations and campaigns, promotion to colleagues and networks, public engagement, further promotion and partnerships, and then handing over of the project to start the process again…?

I would love to hear what you think about this and am looking forward to a lively discussion in the comments!

Published on June 10, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 8 Comments

Dancing: It’s Just Like Social Change

Published in community. 9 Comments Tags: , , .

I want to share a terrific video with you, but you will need to read the explanation, too.  Stick with me, I’m going somewhere with this one…

This video brought tears to my eyes.  Okay, stop laughing at me, hear me out:

One guy can start a dance party.  One person can change the world.

What did this guy do right?  Lots of things that we can replicate in other areas of our work (though, I’d recommend following his lead with dancing, too!):

  • Bring your heart: Your community will know if you aren’t creating opportunities for action or support that are from the heart of your mission.  Had this guy just been “going through the motions” then none of those others would have been inspired to join him.  We all get burnt out, whether we are dancing, canvassing, emailing or speaking for the changes we want to see happen.  If you feel like you need a new jolt of energy to be inspiring others from the heart of your mission, then reconnect with those you are serving, listen to their stories, share their stories, and in the process you’ll be inspired, too.
  • Stay focused:  We all create goals and benchmarks and metrics.  But when we get down in the weeds of our projects and campaigns it is easy to take our eyes off the mission and direction we are headed.  Had this dancer been happy to recruit one or even a handful of other dancers, he may have turned around, talked with them, and maybe even stopped dancing to go hang out with these new friends.  But his eyes were on the mission at hand: dance.  He continued dancing with the same spirit and mission when he had no one with him, when he had one and a handful of others, and when he had a crowd.  Obviously measuring success and evaluating our programs along the way is crucial to reaching our goals, but staying focused on the mission is incredibly important so that we don’t get caught up in thinking we’ve reached the goal when we get a few others to dance with us.
  • Empower the community:  We can’t change the world completely alone.  It will take the collaboration, support, and hard work of many people who will never be listed on your website, included on your payroll, or even meet you in person.  It’s important that your mission, your work, your message be something others can pick up and carry with you to help stretch your reach.  This dancer provided an opportunity for others to join him and in turn inspire others from their networks to join the cause, too.
  • Choose your moments:  Timeliness is important, so is strategy and planning.  But when you nail something, when you give the community what they need, when they need it, you’re going to be successful.  How do you know what they need and when they need it? You listen, you participate, you join the community instead of watching it or trying to manage it.  We’ve all seen folks strike up a dance on a street corner and have witnessed that those people rarely inspire others to join them. Why? Because it isn’t what the passerbys really need or when they need it.  At this concert, out in the sun in a beautiful location (I miss the Pacific Northwest!), some heartfelt dancing is exactly what the community needed and right when they needed it, too.

Dancing my be contagious, but so is social change – go out there and dance with all your heart!

I big, heartfelt thanks to @EngageJoe for sharing the video :)

Published on June 8, 2009 by Amy Sample Ward. 9 Comments

Follow along with Millennials Changing America!

Published in issues. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Originally posted on the NetSquared blog.

The tour is underway, and you can follow along!

Millennials Changing America is a research tour that seeks to paint a portrait of millennial activism as it exists today by traveling throughout the United States talking with millennials of all backgrounds, ideals, upbringing, and political persuasions.

Check it out!

What is a ‘Millennial Activist’

Here’s how Alex Steed, the Millennial behind this project, describes it:

To put it simply, a millennial activist is someone who is:

a) an activist

b) a member of the millennial generation (Generation Y; those born between 1980 and 1992), defined by their digital connectivity

and thus:

c) integrates computer savvy into their service, civic participation, and activism.

Or in the words of someone who has been focusing on this topic for longer than I have, social entrepreneur and writer Allison Fine, “Young people, ages 15-29, who practice a nascent model of civic participation that combines immersion in social causes, idealism, digital fluency.”

A great example of a Millennial Activist is Alex Steed, who is developing and carrying out the MCA tour.  A freelance journalist and activist, he has worked with The Point, Change.org and even NetSquared.  Learn more about Alex here.

How to follow the MCA tour

Throughout October, November and December, Alex will be traveling around the country posting audio, video, observations of, and interviews with millennial activists.

With the content collected and created along the way, Millennials Changing America aims to:

  • Inspire young, budding global citizens with the stories, techniques, and testimonials of millennial activists far and wide.
  • Share with as large an audience as possible the empowering potential of interactive communication technologies.
  • Highlight new and existing ways that young people are using the Internet to come together both on and offline.
  • Shift reportage of activity within the millennial realm away from non-millennials.
  • Observe what Internet activism and civic participation looks like beyond the well-covered campaigns of Rep. Ron Paul and Sen. Barack Obama.
  • Pump some constructive and positive stories into the info-sphere.
  • Dispel disproportionately reported stories about the dangers of Internet usage (without undermining efforts to ensure intelligent and cautionary usage).

Because the goal of the MCA tour is to ignite conversation and open dialogue, all of the media produced throughout the tour is posted and distributed in many different locations.  You can check out the MCA website and see an archive of all information, videos, and updates here.

Are you or do you know changemakers of the Millennial generation?  Let Alex know!

Published on October 21, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Millennium Development Goals in Action!

Published in socialmedia. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Originally posted on the NetSquared blog.

WSYA logoThe World Summit Youth Award is a global contest to create inspirational online content promoting the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations to create a humane, just and liveable world.

“The World Summit Youth Award showcases you as young developers and serves as a platform for people from all UN member states to work together on the efforts of reaching the Millennium Development Goals!”

Award Guidelines

The World Summit Youth Award (WSYA) is the global contest for online or mobile initiatives to raise awareness and help resolve the most pressing global issues.

If you rely on the web for creating culture, overcoming gender inequality, lack of education and access to clean water or to address hunger, poverty, disease and environmental degradation, then you should take part!

There are five categories for online content development, including:

  1. Fight Poverty, Hunger and Disease!
  2. Education for All!
  3. Power 2 Women!
  4. Create your Culture!
  5. Go Green!

To be eligible for the contest, platforms/projects must be led by youth under the age of 30, be fully functional, and accessible online.

The reward in the WSYA contest is primarily global recognition through the UN, invitation to the winners event in Mexico, and networking contacts on a worldwide scale. The last WSYA contest was in 2005; you can read about the three winners on the WSYA site.

Award Timeline

Sept. 2008 – WSYA website relaunch, online application form open for submissions at
http://competition.youthaward.org/reg/reg.asp

Dec. 31, 2008 – Deadline for online submissions (midnight, GMT) at http://competition.youthaward.org/reg/reg.asp

Jan. 15, 2009 – First round of judging to select finalists

Feb. 15, 2009 – Second round of judging to select winners

March 1, 2009 – WSYA winners and finalists announced to the public and media

March –June, 2009 – Winners and finalists showcase projects and get honoured at the WSYA Winners Events and Gala

To learn more about the Youth Award, visit http://youthaward.org

Published on October 14, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

Social Actions & Social Actions Labs – Lot’s about to come your way!

Published in socialchange and webtools. 3 Comments Tags: , .

Social Actions “connects individuals with actionable opportunities. By helping people to take action, our work is increasing the scope and impact of the citizen sector,” while the Social Actions Labs builds web applications that draw on the Social Actions API.

Great, but why am I interested?

What Social Actions is really doing is combining the ‘what-you-can-do’ stuff of the social change web into one place that you can search, link to, rely on, and even (with a widget from the Social Actions Labs) integrate into your web site or blog!  How great is that?!

Social Actions helps individuals and organizations use social media to plan, implement, and support peer-to-peer social change campaigns so that grassroots solutions to local and global problems can flourish.

Toward this end, Social Actions:

  • Provides a search engine of peer-to-peer social change campaigns;
  • Aggregates peer-to-peer social change campaigns from 14 unique social action platforms;
  • Publishes materials for individuals on planning and implementing peer-to-peer social change campaigns;
  • Distributes materials for nonprofits and foundations on engaging constituents;
  • Connects technology consultants and thought leaders with nonprofits and foundations;
  • Encourages collaboration among social action platforms.

I may be biased (full disclosure: part of the project mentor group), but think I’m understandably excited.

That IS awesome! What can I do?

Do you want to take action now?

Maybe you want to help identify the 3 -5 initial applications for the Social Actions Labs!

Try out the new (beta) search interface to find social actions you are interested in!

Or, you can sign up to stay abreast of more developments!

Wanna hear more?

Social Actions founder, Peter Deitz, has a great interview with Corey Pudhorodsky on the 501c3Cast from July 14th.  You can listen to it here!  If you don’t already, you should also add Corey’s awesome 501c3Cast podcast to your itunes or RSS library!

If you were able to integrate actions for volunteers, supporters, and interested citizens to take part in, where would you put it? On your organization’s home page, blog, action center page? Would you want it on your personal site or other social networking pages?  What about the social networking spaces for your organization?

Published on July 15, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 3 Comments

Bloggers for change

Published in blogging. 2 Comments Tags: , .

Britt Bravo has accumulated a wonderful list of ‘change bloggers’ through suggestions and referrals from readers and facebook members.  If you are looking for a good lead on a new blog to add to your reader, check out the list here!

Published on May 28, 2008 by Amy Sample Ward. 2 Comments