Tag: social change

Tags: click-to-donate, development, philanthropy 2.0, social change, Web-native projects for social change, world food programme, Add more tags...,

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Every click counts: this is what they surely think at FreeRice. This project, run be the United Nations' World Food Programme and supported by Harvard's Berkman Centre, could be labelled "click to donate".

The term is by now fairly widely used: the changemakers network Care2 dedicates an entire section to it, named in fact Click2Donate: several websites, search engines and, increasingly, Facebook applications, populate the Web of "clicking for good".

I am not trying to make the case here for the disappearance of any form of activism and collective action in light of a sort of easy-to-click, automated philanthropy. Rather, I am only painting the picture of a sophisticated and at the same time sustainable use of the fundamental element of human-Web interaction as we know it, the click. 

 

 

 

FreeRice is one of the most established examples of this particular category, but not simply or its affiliation with UN or Harvard. It is a simple, yet not lame, very nice concept blending quiz gaming, learning outcomes, basic sponsorhip and progressive social change through food donation.

 

 

 

By entering the site, you got instantly faced withthe first question of a quiz game involving wording (English grammar basically), language learning or recently introduced subjects like art, geography of maths. Select your favourite subject and start answering questions.

For every correct answer your score will increase and so your level after a while, but way more importantly 10 grains of rice will be donated through UN's World Food Programme. Yes, 10 grains of rice, for free. Apparently more than 71 billions since 2007. Not bad.

Who funds that? Simply, from the site: "This is made possible by the generosity of the sponsors who advertise on this site".

 

 

 

I find the gaming/learning outcome still rather weak, poorly advertised and a bit clumsy in ots objectives. But I do love the idea.It seems to be much improvable, as mostly focused on the 5-spare-minutes kind of gaming..

 

Any suggestion is here welcome? How would you enrich this model? Gaming Competitions? Incentives? More visual? Partnership with game-makers? Stronger, branded sponsorships? More explicit in the targets?Simply more grand in its learning or entertaining objective?

Perhaps, these could be a good starting point for other attractive options..

Tags: development, education, philanthropy 2.0, social change, Web-native projects for social change, Add more tags...,

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Here we are, third step in our Web-native social change review series:EducationGeneration.org.

 

 

 

As a project born from Global Agents for Change, a California-based "social change catalyst, driving sustainable solutions to global poverty and inspiring youth to create a better world", EducationGeneration is "dedicated to providing access to education for students around the globe" (from EducationGeneration.org).

 

Beta launched in fall 2008, EducationGeneration has already funded 130 scholarships and raised over $30,000.

 

 

 

As in several other known platforms across the Web (think about Kiva.org), here we witness the Web enabling a process that closely resembles child adoption: users are asked to make their donation directly to an individual, in this case deciding to invest in that boy or girl's education.

 

The process is again as simple as it gets: users browse students' profiles on the EducationGeneration website, pick a student to support, click on the donate button (minimum is 20 dollars)...that's it!:money is processed by PayPal and 100% of it (if we exclude PayPal fees) goes directly to the chosen student's personal education. This is possible thanks to fairly advantageous partnerhips with local institutions, one of them for example being the Canadian SEED. There are not many information about this passage on the site and we will further deepen the matter in the next days.

 

 

 

Information about schools and their costs, partnering institutions in loco, the student' educational stage and even some individual notes on her or his favourite topics and skills, are included.

 

Some of the best assets of EducationGeneration appear to be:

Tags: africa, environment, philanthropy 2.0, social change, tree planting, Web-native projects for social change, Add more tags...,

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The goal in its simplest formulation: planting 100,000 trees by the end of 2009. This is Tree-Nation , a multicultural, Barcelona-based venture, in a line..

It will soon sound like a constant tune across our reviews of Web-native projects for social change: I like simple goals of change or, rather, I like the simplification of those to the public eye that the Web is able to encourage.

I am not trying to make the case for every world's most complex problem to be reduced to a bunch of links and clicks: I am rather saying that attaching rich information to social change goals and allowing them to be manipulated online could increase our ability to crumble, repackage and distribute their parts into something more affordable, approachable, flexible and, why not, likeable.

 

 

Imagine a giant 8 million-trees heart in Niger. A wonderful, utopian challenge..

Now consider the same trees one by one, create packages of them costing from 7 to 200 dollars, allow Web users to choose one or more of them through a seamless Web platform; give them a sophisticated mapping system where they can place their trees as if they were actually planting them, reflecting real land configuration and finally allow users to attach a message or an inscription to every tree planted: what you have is one of Tree-Nation's projects.

Other declared goals involve desertification fighting, water protection, CO2 offsets and poverty alleviation, specifically in Niger.

 

 

 

Tags: donorschoose, education, philanthropy 2.0, social change, teaching, technology for change, Web-native projects for social change, Add more tags...,

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DonorsChoose is surely one of the most successful and intriguing projects out there. Indeed not the latest, but I feel it is good to start with a charitable venture that has been able to become an landmark example for everybody in the philanthropic field.  

 

Like many of the Web-native platforms we will investigate, DonorsChoose is far from being a project that exhausts its impact in online discussions and information spaces.

DonorsChoose is, in fact, producing material change by choosing, buying and delivering goods aimed at educational projects. It does so by connecting American teachers (since 2000, more than 103,000, apparently) with the general public through a simple Web interface where teachers advertise their educational projects and the general public chooses to fund one or more of them on the basis of their innovativeness or any set of personal criteria.

The site itself suggests three interesting keywords in this sense: "get local, get inspired, get choosy". :)

 

 

 

A DonorsChoose user might thus end up funding a project because of its innovativeness and originality or rather its simplicity; because of its cost, high or low, or its need in respect to the "poverty level" (calculated in terms of students free/reduced lunch eligibility and thus associated to the average income level of the class); some other users might instead prefer find special, even personal attachment to a theme (for example a particular literature having impacted their lives) specified in an educational proposal or, ultimately, an objective of a learning project, be it science, sustainable living, peace, understanding of diversity, history or any other goal.

 

 

 

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Tags: online games, social change, technology for change, videogames, Add more tags...,

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I just came across this site, Games for Change, while reading Allison Fine's deserve-to-be-RSSd blog.

No doubts this isa very interesting and challenging project, especially if looking at all the different categories -Human Rights, Public Policy, Environment, Global Conflict, Politics, Public Health and so on.

 

I tried with "Economics", as it appeals my interests and I also felt I could compare it with some popular "civilization" games, and specifically launched 3rd World Farmer (see picture), an intriguing simulation of farming life in the third world (I suspect Africa in this case, looking at the landscape); the game includes different crops, animals (an elephant costs 500 dollars), tools, buildings and "ideas", this latter category including communications, infrastructures, schools, hospital and even insurance, which I guess can summarize financial services.

 

 

 

This is definitely already great, and I like the simplicity and immediacy of flash games, always playable through a couple of clicks.

On the other side, I would love to see if it would be possible to produce, maybe with the contribution of an open source-oriented and surely connected community, something that could involve the immense experience in the field of a coalition of NGOs, for example in microfinance, or the rich interaction produced by meta-organizations such as Change.org and others.

 

Ultimately, this is another example on how most applications, technologies, media can be of great use when mixed with social change goals, even when such mix appears least obvious (not that videogames are the least obvious, it is simply not obvious to produce games that are catchy, educational but still fun and engaging).

If corporate ventures are able, in the Social Web, to "commercialize freedom" and make money out of our interactions and life publicization, then changemakers can liase with new market forms and entertainment-driven spaces to advance positive social change.