Today we mark one hundred years since the first International Women’s Day (IWD) was celebrated in 1911. The idea of the annual day was introduced by Clara Zetkin, a German women’s rights advocate. Clara proposed that every year, in every country there should be a celebration on the same day to help press for women’s rights. In the 1975, International Women’s day was given official recognition by the United Nations and was also recognized by many governments. For themes, highlights and events for this years celebrations, visit the IWD website.
Though there is still far to go till we reach social, economic and political equality, significant steps forward are made each day.. below for example, the World Food Program’s video demonstrates how, when empowered, women break free from poverty and hunger.
In any emergency scenario, governments and agencies need good, up-to-date maps in order to respond effectively. While accurate maps exist for bigger cities, such as Conception in Chile, many remote rural areas tend to be poorly mapped out.
Yet thanks to thousands of online volunteers, more complete maps have been built to aid in both the Haiti and Chile response. For example, Crisis commons has a wiki page for the Chile earthquake, with a list of online tasks for volunteer helpers, including the Open street map project. Various online communitites have also been started to support crisis mapping, among others by Google. The maps often contain specific info on the state of hospitals, location of camps, cut off roads and so on, as in the Ushahidi mapping project.
The below animation of the progression of the Openstreetmap coverage in south-western Haïti following the January 2010 earthquake illustrates the rapid global mobilization of volunteer mappers to assist humanitarian operations in the field:
DoGooder is organizing it’s 4th annual non-profit video awards in collaboration with See3 Communications and YouTube. The winners will be treated to great prices including:
Web for Development – a community devoted to applying Internet related technologies towards the achievement of the UN’s Development Goals – will be organizing its sixth annual conference in Brazil 25-26 February. The conference focuses on developing governance and management of web strategies, as well as facilitates innovative dialogue around the issue.
The specific objectives of the UNESCO- hosted Web4Dev conference are:
Fostering an intergovernmental dialogue, exploring existing similarities between UN and national governments with relevant background on Internet use as development tool, as well as potential complementarities and joint actions
Exploring learning opportunities, knowledge sharing, and best practices exchange between UN and national government participants on designing and implementing integrated web policies, regulatory frameworks, engagement strategies and on-line expressions
Improving coordination and synergies within the UN Web System, aiming at a more efficient “Delivering as One” online
The event presents a range of keynote speakers from UN agencies and web 2.0 professionals from companies and non-profits, who share the passion for leveraging web tools for development. Related workshops and brainstorming sessions will also take place including events like Wiki-camp, focusing on challenges and opportunities of future online collaboration. The event will take a broad focus, themes ranging from professional knowledge exchange and application of tools in the developing country context to engaging global audiences in development work.
M4ID’s Mari Tikkanen has been chosen as one of the 10 speakers for the largest global fundraising e-conference, IFC Online, to be held May 11-13, 2010. The conference will have a focus on raising funds and building constituency online for non-profit organizations worldwide. In addition to Mari, the three plenary speakers will be Randi Zuckerberg, who spearheads Facebook’s work with nonprofits; Geoff Handy, who directs the massively successful online fundraising efforts of the Humane Society of the United States; and Roger Craver, a direct mail legend.
The IFC Online 2009 engaged 400 sites in 42 countries around the world, with more than 1,800 fundraisers attending. This year’s IFC Online is projected to attract at least 3,000 attendees.
The impressive text message donation response to the deadly Haiti earthquake disaster has resulted in fundraisers throughout the non-profit world analysing relief groups’ experience with mobiles.
To hear a good summary of lessons learnt, listen to the podcast released by The Chronicle of Philanthropy where Wendy Harman, social media manager at the American Red Cross, and Geoff Livingston, chief marketing officer at Zoetica Media, discuss the opportunities and drawbacks associated with this emerging fundraising tool.
Google has launched it’s new social networking site Buzz, with features built directly into Gmail. Users can post private or public status updates and share content from other sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Picassa. Private updates are automatically added to a user’s profile page, whilst public updates will also be available to search engines. The site also incorporates elements of Twitter, such as the ability to “follow” people that share updates, and features that appear in Facebook such as the ability to “like” content.
Google has also integrated it with its mapping service and mobile platforms. Status updates sent from phones will record the location of the sender and add it to the message, other users can then search public messages from their phone .. this way one can see what people in ones neighbourhood are saying. Public updates will also be added to Google Places, a directory of businesses that include reviews of restaurants and theatres, for example.
These are pretty attractive features, remains to be seen whether they’re enough to drag people away from Facebook and Twitter. Nice little video intoduces Buzz below:
On 4 February, YouTube launched a health awareness round on their Video volunteers Chanel to mark World Cancer Day. Through the initiative, anyone can make/upload up to three minute long videos promoting a chosen health organization’s work.The three most popular videos will be featured on the YouTube Homepage at the end of the month, offering a unique chance at global visibility. Thus far, non-profits such as Face AIDS and HopePhones have joined in to raise awareness for their cause. One can support health organizations by viewing their videos on the Volunteer Channel, or by uploading new videos for other health non-profits by the 23rd of this month.
Below, spokesperson Jesse McCartney tells more about the project and speaks for the project’s non-profit partner Stand up to Cancer.
We’re pleased to read Bill Gates’s annual letter for 2010 where he stresses the need for innovation in development and health. He states that society under-invests in innovation in general but particularly in two important areas: ones that would mostly benefit poor and in sectors like education or preventative health services, where there isn’t an agreed-upon measure of excellence to tell the market how to pick the best ideas. The Foundation is hence also going to be backing innovation that may otherwise go unfunded, with a special emphasis on education, food, and health as well as some related areas like savings for the poor. The letter can be read here.
“Melinda and I see our foundation’s key role as investing in innovations”
Was a bit disappointed about the lack of engaging social web material produced for intl Womens Day
about 20 hours ago
from txt
Happy IWD: women perform 66% of world's work, produce 50% of world's food, but earn 10% of the income and own 1% of property
07:24:45 PM March 08, 2010
from web
heading out to Finnish mobile firm armed with maternal health arguments and project ideas
09:13:31 AM March 05, 2010
from web
