Tactics of Hope
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the problem:
Whether it was during my summer in Africa working to raise educational awareness among women about HIV/AIDS at health clinics, churches, and schools, or while visiting the orphanages in Phnom Peng, Cambodia, or helping to build a community plaza in Greece in honor of a young girl whose death had recently brought the town closer together...in all of these experiences, the greatest problem repeatedly I experienced among volunteers, NGO staffers, think tank policy advocates, social entrepreneurs, and other change makers is an information barrier.
While in Tanzania, I remember two organizations, one bringing clean water and the other medicines and vaccines, but which were unaware of each other. They focused on the same goals of sanitation, health, and poverty alleviation, but they were not collaborating or sharing information.
The world's toughest social and environmental challenges like disaster relief, climate change, and poverty, are problems that are too interconnected to treat as completely separate issues. Global warming, for example, is in fact human habits being reflected in major ways to negatively affect the natural environment with catastrophic consequences of our population size, for example, leading to vast species extinction.
vital stats:
people impacted:
650people involved:
3why it's important:
My work with Collaboraid (www.collaboraid.org) and The Tactics of Hope (http://www.tacticsofhope.org/mosaic) is to help build communication bridges between individuals, organizations, and information resources specifically targeted to help you move from passion to action. I believe that in the nonprofit sector especially, connectivity is productivity. An NGO digging wells in Uganda, a health organization tracking the work of all its volunteers, a medical supplier for natural disaster relief in an emergency, the National Boyscouts of America tracking all of its Eagle Scout projects around the country, an advocacy campaign about climate awareness for the 350.org, a student led nonprofit raising funds for Darfur, soup kitchens in Atlanta as well as health clinics in Oakland, the Fulbright Scholarship tracking all of its scholars around the globe, 100 Projects for Peace Competition tracking the progress of all 100 of their fellows, each of these players experience barriers to accessing information that could serve their immediate interests.
The tools offered by Collaboraid and Tactics of Hope are geared towards better informational collaboration and sharing of opportunities that are desperately needed in the nonprofit sector.
I believe firmly in the power of collaborative connections between individuals sharing and helping each other across boundaries is what's needed to make a greater positive impact in the world. This will help bring about the urgent change and improvement for organizations and leaders trying to help those who own less, are treated unfairly, or have no voice.
We are offering an opportunity for individuals to connect with others who share their passion in community development, whether focused on the environment, disaster relief, health, microcredit loans, conflict resolution, education, or human rights & social justice (please see http://www.tacticsofhope.org/mosaic).
This project is extremely important to me, because I believe with your help it can grow to affect so many other thousands of activists, who in turn would share with thousands more.
We are merging the "My Circle" tool on http://www.tacticsofhope.org/mosaic, with CollaborAid (www.Collaboraid.org), and I am asking for help to fund my project of bringing young leaders together in this effort.
the plan of action:
My plan of action is to bring individuals who share a passion for helping solve a specific social and environmental challenge increase their ability to connect with one another.
We are hoping with your help to fund a process of merging the "My Circle" tool on Tactics of Hope - http://www.tacticsofhope.org/mosaic - which I helped conceptualize and create - with new tools being offered by a new platform called CollaborAid (www.Collaboraid.org) started by a group of young leaders at Colgate University.
In addition, I am the co-founder of a startup website called BeRewarding (www.BeRewarding.com), which raises funds and educational awareness through a fun game about social and environment causes.
The plan of action is to bring these 3 projects to collaborate and combine efforts, which would bring thousands of volunteers, activists, social entrepreneurs, and young leaders closer together using the tools.
Because we are bootstrapped with volunteering time and no budget, the funds from the grant would be instrumental in allowing me to work with others to help make a big difference bringing people together.
how you can get involved:
Others can help in many ways. First of all, the community is open to anyone with internet access who has a passion they want to share, and to staffers of a nonprofit, and to international volunteers and donors alike. It is meant to be totally open source and "collaboraidively" structured so as to connect all the pre-existing communities of people doing good into centralized tools that allow them to learn from one another.
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