I’ve really enjoyed following Stilgherrian on Twitter as Toto visits Africa “again”. Come to think of it I’m not sure that Toto (the band) ever visited Africa, although that film clip has a touch of Africa about it…. but maybe I’m being too generous!
Stilgherrian’s journey in Tanzania has been a busy one. As soon as he arrived on Saturday he went straight from an international flight to Dar es Salaam to a domestic flight to Zanzibar and then spent most of that day and evening with ActionAid staff members in the office.
Sunday was then spent visiting ActionAid projects including a project where people living with HIV/AIDS produce soap, a small micro finance organization supporting clove farming, and a school in a very poor community. All this in a place that most people associate with resort holidays!
On Monday blog training kicked off in Dar and the first question coming from Albert and Abdul (the two ActionAid Tanzania staff members who will be blogging from Tanzania) was “please tell us what a blog is”.
Our colleagues tell us Stil ran an excellent training throughout the afternoon and covered the basics of what blogging is as well as what approach to take on sites like Facebook and Twitter.
With only half a week left, Stil has no small task ahead of him. To make Project Toto a success, he has to ensure that the skills he passes on are useful for ActionAid in Tanzania – and not something that they simply feel compelled to do, as this will never work.
Another major concern is that blogging in Africa is not like blogging in Australia – there are far more serious consequences of “getting it wrong” than a few negative comments.
While social media has massive potential to link people in poor countries with people in rich countries, such as Australia, it is critically important that our trainee bloggers develop an understanding of the power and threats of social media in a country such as Tanzania.
In spite of the challenges in training people to use technology it’s far more complex to explain the implicit threat in the use of the technology and how bloggers engage with that risk. For example a blogger could be posting some confronting views on the activities of mining companies in Tanzania and then face severe backlash from Government if that is seen as opposing economic development.
If a blogger understood the risk and is prepared to take it that’s one thing… if a blogger is unaware of the risk and stumbles in to a situation where he or she places themselves, colleagues and communities at risk, we potentially have a disaster on our hands.
This is all part of the challenge, we’re all learning as we go and that’s the exciting part of Toto!
Tags: actionaid, Africa, blogs, Project TOTO, Stilgherrian, Tanzania, twitter
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Trackback from Servant of Chaos on 5 July 2009 at 3:05 pm
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Absolutely. Having done a few live blogging world jaunts myself in the past, it is sad to witness ‘un-interest’ from your home base and as you say support needs to go way beyond attending goodbye parties. Also contributions don’t have to necessarily be indepth articles/blogs and I encourage commenting on Stils blog but even more importantly connect to the new bloggers Stil has helped set up back in the poverty stricken areas themselves eg: http://blogs.actionaid.org.au/tanzania/2009/07/04/walking-bare-footed-into-unknown-to-reach-the-poor/comment-page-1/#comment-12
Gary Hayes´s last blog ..Are You Authentic Online?This comment was originally posted on Social Network by Laurel Papworth
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Thanks for your post Laurel. I must say I’m surprised as well by the lack of support from the blogging community… to date.
We hope the second phase on Project TOTO (the search for the next outreach blogger http://blogs.actionaid.org.au/toto/) along with Stilgherrian’s posts about his trip, once he’s back, will raise the interest levels.
If not…what will?
I might as well through the questions out there: What will it take to get the Aussie social media community to engage on issues of poverty and injustice? And what can ActionAid do to help?
Mark Chenery´s last blog ..ActionAid appoints John Dowd as PresidentThis comment was originally posted on Social Network by Laurel Papworth
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Buggered if I know…
Oh ok, lemme think…. how about something for US – off the top of my head, a widget that says “I support Stilgherrian”. We copy and paste the code to our blog, linking back to the Hub Content page (I had trouble figuring out of there was a hub content or if it was all spokes). Similar to Yahoo’s An Inconvenient Truth widget. Bloggers are a community of Caring Not Committed – if it’s easy and wins us kudos, we do it.Then, those who added the widget get invited to vote on either the next victim err blogger and/or the place they go to, within .reason, multiple choice.. Sort of “The Social Network chooses The Social Action”
I’ve run out of steam… anyone else?
This comment was originally posted on Social Network by Laurel Papworth
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Actually, I have just thought of something else. Ask us what we think should be done in Tanzania re:blogging – and what we could offer. I would’ve adapted some of my social media courseware/instructions that could be used as powerpoint or PDF or printed (?) if asked. No biggie and I’d have a sense of “ownership” in the program even from a distance. I’m sure other similar bloggers would’ve had stuff too…
This comment was originally posted on Social Network by Laurel Papworth
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Thanks for great post Laurel. Uptake has been slow, but I think to be honest now we have some real actions people can take, nominate, participate in this program to give poverty a voice, we hope for more coverage. People can get involved here
http://blogs.actionaid.org.au/toto/
Banners and badges can be found here http://blogs.actionaid.org.au/support-toto-challenge/
We are sending out a new alert this week.
In terms of traditional press it has been an uphill struggle to get traction, a few raised eyebrows at whether bloggers can replace the role of a foreign journalist. I think when we get more of Stil’s content published from TZ I hope this will engage even the most cynical of the trad press outlets.
We are still pressing on and thanks for your support of a great cause. ” Aussie Blog friends… get out there go overseas with ActionAid and give poverty a voice!” Nominate yourself or a friend.This comment was originally posted on Social Network by Laurel Papworth
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ayep social media can be slow – everything happens in the long tail of rippled content, rather than the short head of traditional campaign activitiy.
I’ve added the widget to sidebar – thanks for letting me know!
This comment was originally posted on Social Network by Laurel Papworth
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I didn’t know about Stil’s trip until the day of his sendoff party, and only because Neerav mentioned it. I can’t recall Stil mentioning it in the Link list, where I normally “see” him. This made me realise that I wasn’t following him on Twitter. Fixed that.
Ash Nallawalla´s last blog ..SEO Permalink for WordPress – the real dealThis comment was originally posted on Social Network by Laurel Papworth
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What’s the “link list”? A twitter feed perhaps?
This comment was originally posted on Social Network by Laurel Papworth
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