Awakening, by Grace Ayaa (East Africa)
"...When I look at Africa, most of its land is fertile and very good for any kind of agriculture , but there are the people who are going hungry and have to live on handouts. It puzzles me a lot. So I feel that the agricultural sector should be the most looked at area. lots and lots of food should be grown by a family to feed themselves and then the surplus sold ." full post
Darkness2Light, by Norbert Okec (East Africa)
"If a child in a poor nation gets infected with some disease but the parents, friends and neighbours are all convinced that the child is sick because he/she climbed a mango tree belonging to the local traditional healer/spirit medium.... and the poor child dies do we say that the child died because of the disease or because of lack of correct information?..." full post
In Search of Mindfulness, by Linda Nowakowski (S.E. Asia)
"...There is enough food in the world to feed every person. That is a distribution problem. If you look at the wealth in the world, I suspect that there is enough wealth in the world to eliminate poverty as well. It's a distribution problem." full post
Kireka Concerns, by Peter Ndelo (East Africa)
Remember I mentioned we're all learning to blog? Well, Peter posted his thoughts at the Blog Action Day website instead of on his blog :-) "poverty is lack of knowledge, ability, cooperation and spirit of helping each other to come out from this problem. No body wants to be poor but how can one come out of this?" You can see the full comment here, and as soon as Peter gets it moved to his blog I'll edit this bit and put a link here.
Shawnstudio, by Shawn Kelly (North America)
"...bottom-up strategies seem to me the only way to create real change, as it has now been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that top-down economics leads only to disaster. The battle is exponentially more difficult in Africa, where government corruption is the norm and enriching oneself at the expense of the citizens has been the prevailing leadership strategy for decades." full post
pArtY @ christinaswwworld, by Christina Jordan
"Please join me in welcoming the ourwwworld team officially to the blogosphere!" full post
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Blog Action Day 2008: ourwwworld roundup
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Sustainable blogging, from and for Africa
Just in time for Blog Action Day 2008, we've redesigned the ourwwworld team blogs to have our say about poverty, and to start using our blogs to raise money for a poverty-related cause.
The ourwwworld team is a small global group of people who are learning to blog together. More than half of our team is blogging from East Africa, where poverty is rampant and the costs of blogging are very high. The ourwwworld team blogs are monetized with the double intention of raising money for Life in Africa - the cause that binds our team together - and sharing revenues with the bloggers to offset their costs. Ideally, we'll develop a way that can make it financially feasible for more people who are affected by poverty to participate actively in the online world, and possibly even some extra income.
As we begin on this blogging journey, the ourwwworld team revenue sharing plan is as follows:
Team revenues will be earned through adsense, the sale of electronic books related to sustainable living, and other jointly promoted income generating mechanisms to be introduced at a later date. All team funds raised though the end of December 2008 will be subject to the following split:
- 20% to the blogger who raised the funds
- 20% for the bloggers' monthly cash prize fund
- 20% for ourwwworld site administration & promotion
- 20% to Life in Africa USA for overhead and admin support
- 20% to Life in Africa USA for disbursal to community projects in Africa
In order to make this revenue sharing model meaningful, the ourwwworld team blogs will need broad exposure to audiences that will read, click, purchase and resonate with the social message that each of the blogs has to offer. This blog will explore promotional and cross-promotional techniques that others in the blogosphere are using to develop their audience, and post regular round-ups of content created by the team. Cash prize contests designed to encourage team members to cross-promote each other will be announced at the ourwwworld blog monthly. The first round of ourwwworld team promotion contests will be announced on 1 November 2008.
Until then, the focus is on content! Ourwwworld bloggers must make at least 4 new posts between 16 and 31 October in order to participate in the November contests.
