I bless the rains down in Africa!

One of the most exciting things about the launch of ActionAid Australia is our engagement with social media. Please keep in mind that this excitement is coming from a mid-40 something (and I know age is no excuse) who missed MySpace, missed Facebook and almost missed Twitter (I signed up in May)!

The social media trip has been a really steep learning curve for me and I’ve been lucky to have some terrific mentors in Fi Bendall and the Australian blogger Stilgherrian. The folks at Stilgherrian’s blog also helped me a bunch when I bounded into their virtual lounge room and started getting into a few verbal stoushes over women’s rights.

I am absolutely passionate about women’s rights given some of the things I’ve seen in my life, but it took me some time to realise that I couldn’t just launch into these issues with Stilgherrian’s friends until I’d built some relationships in their space.

For us at ActionAid Australia, social media is a way to build connections between people in developing countries and Australians.

Most importantly, we want to help Australian’s understand that poor people in countries such as Tanzania are poor as a result of imbalanced power relationships, inequalities and injustice and not due to anything they’ve done or haven’t done in their lives.

While it’s essential that people who are poor receive assistance from organisations such as ActionAid, we believe that it’s equally important to;