This is the first in what may become a series on how bloggers can help with social issues that they care about. My organization is not equipped to respond to natural disasters, but the earthquake in China and the cyclone in Burma hit very close to home. We have a lot of friends and family and partner organizations that are directly involved in providing relief in Asia and raising awareness.
Since I cannot directly help in these situations, I started thinking about how I might be able to use my blog or other social networks to help. Jeremiah Owyang’s approach makes a lot of sense. He personally gave, and then encouraged others to give. His influence could make a big difference in China, because he has some readers who are quite able to give a lot. Burma is a tough situation, though. Since the government is blocking aid, just giving is not enough. What else can we do?
Robert Scoble talks about another social network that has played a part in at least raising awareness about the earthquake. After the quake, phones were out or overloaded, and other forms of communication were damaged as well. But as the quake was happening people all over China and neighboring countries used twitter to give updates on what they were seeing and feeling. Text-messages do not take near the bandwidth of phone calls so they have an easier time getting through a log-jammed system and with Twitter they can be propagated quickly to thousands. Twitter had the news first and other social media followed quickly, hours minutes ahead of official media. I do not know how much of this instant information was used for saving lives, but it certainly has a lot of potential for that.
What about you? Do you have any other ideas about how we can use our new online tools to help in situations like these?