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Tomorrow is Blog Action Day. This year : Poverty

By Andrew Redfern @ 14th October 2008 12:37 pm

Tomorrow bloggers all over the world will be dedicating their blogs to discussing global poverty as part of Blog Action Day 08.

As with last year’s Environmental discussion people are being encouraged to sign up and have a global dialogue through this ad hoc network of blogs.

As the Blog Action website puts it “In 2008, the Blog Action Day theme is Poverty. Bloggers are free to interpret this as they see fit. We invite bloggers to examine poverty from their own blog topics and perspectives, to look at it from the macro and micro, as a global condition and a local issue, and to bring their own ideas, views and opinions on the subject.

Because Poverty as a subject for blogging can feel a little daunting, we’ve prepared a series of resources to help bloggers get started with tackling this issue”

“We invite bloggers to examine poverty from their own blog topics and perspectives, to look at it from the macro and micro, as a global condition and a local issue, and to bring their own ideas, views and opinions on the subject.”

They also suggest that if you are participating and you blog is monetarised (via Google adSense for example) you might donate the proceeds to a relevant charity project.

The event is accompanied by a 12 hour live debate hosted on BlogTalkRadio. A post on the their site says “On Wednesday, October 15, the network will host a 12-hour Talkathon for Poverty Relief. Airing from 12 p.m. to 12 a.m. EDT, the program will be anchored live from Denver, Colorado, by BlogActionDay.org’s Easton Ellsworth, with BlogTalkRadio hosts sharing co-hosting duties from throughout the U.S.

Leading bloggers around the world are scheduled to appear as guests, along with notables from the political, entertainment and literary arenas. More than 7,800 websites have already signed on to participate in this year’s Blog Action Day by blogging about poverty and aiding poverty-relief efforts. Among the blogs currently involved are TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, LifeHacker, Mashable and ProBlogger. The organizers estimate that some 9.6 million people worldwide will read about the event on October 15.”

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

It’s an interesting project and will certainly energise the blogging community. With this many people participating generating that much content it’s certain to highlight the issues that are on people’s minds.

So far they have 8,635 sites signed up so the results will be well worth a read. It is a prime example of how the nature of the internet lends itself to truly global, un-censored debate on global issues.

Catherine Bray, commissioning editor of Channel 4 site 4Talent Central, writes a blog which normally gives her personal take on her professional projects, whether that’s interviewing actors or going on the set of TV shows. She said, “I wanted to be involved with Blog Action Day, but initially wasn’t sure how to do that as I didn’t want to crowbar in something for the sake of it. Then I realised that although I had blogged fairly superficially about a triathlon I did last month to raise money for Shelter, the UK housing and homelessness charity, I hadn’t talked about where that sponsorship money was actually going and, most importantly, why. So I’m going to be approaching it from that angle, hopefully getting to the relevant information behind what was originally just a fun personal project”.

Stuart Fowkes, online press officer for UK charity Oxfam, says “Obviously for Oxfam, blogging about poverty is something we do every day, but to have the entire global blogging community focused on poverty issues for a day is a great way for people to ask themselves – and each other – how poverty actually affects them and what changes need to take place. Blogging in and of itself won’t achieve anything concrete, but it can shift opinion and motivate people to begin to make a difference. And for us, Blog Action Day couldn’t come at a better time because almost a billion people are now being affected by the rises in food prices around the world, which is one of the most serious threats to the lives of the poorest people.”

Involvment like this and that of the 1000s of other readers and participates is what the organisors are hoping for so if you have a take on these matters sign up and get invloved at blogactionday.org.

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