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Blog Action Day 2008 – Bloggers Against Poverty

Last year saw the first ever Blog Action Day rolling out on October 15th; the subject matter was Environment, and the bloggers, podcasters and videocasters were invited to join the gBlogger: Notebooks – Los Cuadernos de Julia – Edit Post “Blog Action Day 2008 – Poverty”lobal discussion on the topic. In my post “Nature and Memory” I looked at my school lessons in Naturology, my first (and the only) herbarium, and at how children could be taught to empathise with Nature.

This year Blog Action Day is back, and the subject matter is even more serious – Poverty. As the organisers state, there are many systemic reasons for poverty, whereby it has become one of the biggest problems in today’s world. The aim of the B.A.D. 2008 is therefore to generate the global discussion on what and how can be done by individuals, as well as by organisations, to tackle the issue.

As before, online publishers can support the B.A.D. in many ways, including donating one day’s earnings from the blog (that is, if you sell advertisement or products). If this is a publisher’s choice, then Blog Action Day 2008 officially supports The Global Fund who are particularly involved in combatting the AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria as some of the biggest hindrances in the fight against poverty. Another charity involved in the event is Kiva, which is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending site, allowing individuals to offer financial help directly to an entrepreneur in one of the developing countries. Of course, the publisher can donate the day’s earnings to another charity, in which case they are welcome to send the receipt to the B.A.D. organisers who will tally it to the total sum of the Blog Action Day donations.

Blog Action Day was started by Collis Ta’eed whose passion for the Internet combined with the Bahai ideal of “Unity in Diversity” led him to join forces with a few colleagues and co-thinkers to start the initiative of holding a global discussion on a certain subjest throughout one day. The previous B.A.D. saw the support of the United Nations Environment Programme, the EU Minister Stavros Dimas, Google, and more than 20 millions of blogs. This year is set to see another EU Minister and many organisations joining forces to discuss and debate what can be done to alleviate the conditions of the poor and to rise the well-being of affected people and communities.

There are many ways in which to support the Blog Action Day, and I have used two of these: I added the banner, and I contributed the Russian translation of the website (overall, it seems the site will be available in nearly 30 languages). I have not decided yet exactly what I will write in my blog post on October 15th, but the organisers stipulate that the post on poverty should relate to the general topic of the blog. There are some Resources available to help you start thinking about the problem or how it is being solved elsewhere, or you can read the FAQs, for some tips on what your post or podcast can be about. And if you decide to take part, head over to the B.A.D. site to register and mark October 15th in your calendar as Blog Action Day!

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