Wolverine Taps Social Net For Clean Water

On April 14, Hugh Jackman tweeted: “I will donate 100K to one individual’s favorite non profit organization.Of course,you must convince me why by using 140 characters or less.”

He couldn’t decide on one winner, so he chose two: Operation of Hope, a medical foundation, and Charity: Water, a non-profit dedicated to providing safe drinking water in developing countries.

Charity: Water president and founder Scott Harrison, tweeted the photo above, and added: “dear @realhughjackman — just snapped this near eritrean border at a school of 1400 w/o clean water.”

According to the Media Shift article that leads with this story, “Although the media is always abuzz about the latest corporation to open a Twitter account or YouTube channel, research indicates that it’s actually non-profits that are most likely to make a push into the world of online social media — and reap its benefits… Nearly half of the major charities surveyed made use of social media; in contrast, earlier Dartmouth studies suggested that only 8% of Fortune 500 companies had any social media involvement.”

Charity: Water’s Harrison is clearly tuned into the power of social media. Charity: Water posted daily videos of its well-drilling projects on the Twitter-based charity drive Twestival, and it was the first charity to use YouTube’s Call-to-Action feature. “It’s a powerful way to tell a story to hundreds of thousands of people,” says Harrison.

Charity:Water’s Twetival videos pull you right into the unbridled joy of African villagers getting abundant clear clean water for the first time.

Charity: Water’s featured video on YouTube resulted in about $10,000 in donations, which covers cost for two Central African Republic wells that will provide over 150 people with clean drinking water for 20 years.

Harrison noted that the trick to making a compelling case in 140 characters is to include a link to a three-to-four minute video. Ramya Raghavan, YouTube’s non-profits and activism manager comments, “Video has this amazing power to compel someone to want to take action in a way that just reading text wouldn’t. But non-profits have to up their game since so many users have interesting videos.”

James Norris of Social Uproar, a blog that monitors charity use of social media, posted a list of suggestions for charities hoping to encourage donations with online video, including:

> Watch and research other charities’ videos
> Make your video interesting
> Include a call to action at the end
> Seed the video using relevant keywords and descriptions
> Let your user base know that the video exists by sending out an email with a link to the video
> Once you have the embed code seed it on social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, blogs, etc.)
> Encourage people to share the video

For Harrison, the advice for charities using social media was even simpler: “Just do good work and produce quality content.”

Thanks to Mike Rosen-Molina for his great article. He is a Northern California freelance reporter and an associate editor for MediaShift. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley schools of journalism and law, he has worked as an editor for the Fairfield Daily Republic and as a managing editor for JURIST legal news services.

Jhai Harmony – Your Support Needed

Laotian youth crowd JhaiPC

“There are tens of thousands of dead computers in rural villages all over the world,” says Jhai Foundation Chair Lee Thorn.

“The real problem of sustainability is how do people make money off this technology so they stay interested in it for a long time. Otherwise it’s just some white guy’s dream.”

Jhai Foundation uses community organizing techniques to understand the potential ICT needs in a given village.  They go beyond needs assessments to needs dialogues.  They then train the entrepreneurs in business and the technology.   A local entrepreneur  comes up with a business plan that will employ villagers, maintain the computers, and pay for Internet access and electricity. Jhai is experimenting with partners who are setting up sustainable businesses in clinics, community centers and schools.

How did Jhai come to this approach?

As a naval serviceman in the Vietnam War, Lee Thorn helped load planes with bombs meant for airstrikes on Laos. Thirty years later, after working as an activist, business consultant, and teacher, Lee traveled to Southeast Asia in search of reconciliation, and found it through lasting friendships and projects to reinvigorate rural villages.

Since 1997, his Jhai Foundation has helped Laotians and others secure medical supplies, build schools, and establish coffee farms and other businesses.

Jhai listens carefully to the local villagers, and helps them identify needs and opportunities, and create business plans. Local solutions then meet the unique needs of each community,  providing sustainable incomes.

Jhai is up and running in Laos and India, and is in discussions in Viet Nam, Ghana, Rwanda, and Bangladesh. The Foundation needs your support at this juncture, to bridge the gap between seven years of R & D, and widespread deployment. Click the hands logo at Jhai.org and donate NOW! (A new website is in the works.)

What’s next for Jhai?

Jhai Foundation has had a 90% success rate over the last 12 years helping local entrepreneurs set up 70 local businesses.

The new JhaiPC 2.0 has been tested in schools and, now, clinics.  Jhai with partners will deploy next in sustainable telemedicine implementations. Sustainable telemedicine allows good record-keeping and sharing, measures of five vitals, including EKG, and 2 A/V windows – all at low bandwidth, low cost and low power.  Jhai has had inquiries from 60 countries for their tools.

As Chairman of the Jhai Foundation Board, Lee is now focusing on the expansion of operations. He is also working to develop the sustainability of the Jhai Foundation.

To learn more, please visit Jhai.org or contact Lee at lee@jhai.org.

Thanks to Gisela Angela Telis, and her article in the Christian Science Monitor for Lee’s quote.

Can Social Networking Aleviate Poverty?

Image 8-550-1 Photo © David Sanger

Laos, Vientiane , Young girls on the bank of the Mekong

Taking off from this site and article by Frederick Noronha

Slumdog Millionaire was inspired by an experiment in a Delhi slum: Young children taught themselves to use computers.

Children know, intuitively, what they need to survive and grow.

In fact, people everywhere know what they need to survive and grow. We need to make friends and listen. So social networking may have a prominent place, not just for fund raising, but for making sure that solutions meet problems on the ground.

Indian electrical engineer Mohit Garg highlights these Web 2.0:

• Kiva (which lets you lend to a specific entrepreneur in the ‘developing’ world to get out of poverty);
• MicroPlace (investing in people’s livelihoods, not charity);
• RangDe.org (where borrowers met social investors);
• dhanaX (social lending); and
  
• Drishteehaat (fair trade).

AZUR Development uses Web 2.0 tools — such as a blog and a photosharing site — for its work for empowerment of indigenous women and their families in Congo.

Relative to information and communications technology in general, my friend Marco Figueiredo says of his work in rural communities of Brazil, “The best news comes from our telecenters. One of our volunteers was admitted in a highly competitive federal university for a degree in Information Systems, and he studied for the test using distance learning in the telecenter. It’s a first in the history of the community. Six women are graduating this year in college through distance learning in the telecenter. every saturday they go to the nearby city to take live classes…. one of the telecenters is making enough money to pay one employee’s salary.”

Next: Jhai Foundation’s work in Laos, Vietnam, India, and Africa.