From the post “Raising funds on Twitter isn’t just about getting money for your charity. It’s about connecting with people, creating awareness and it’s about giving.” …you can read the rest on Twitip.
How easy is it to tell a story? Easy – so I thought. I’ve been trying to think up a story for a Slideshare competition for a few days and had grand plans of creating something unique with hand drawn charcoal images. But first you need a story, right? I felt just like my six year old who freezes up when his teacher asks him to write about his weekend – overwhelmed by the sheer number of possibilities. I did manage to come up with a starting point for a story, but then the weekend swallowed up my idea.
Eventually I was left with a couple of hours last night. I was going through some files on my computer when I saw some photos from the Shout Out Social exhibition, and thought to myself ‘I really ought to do something with those’. Voila! Instant story.
Please vote for these slides in the Fuze Tell a Story Contest, because if I win the prize money will be donated to women in poverty through Opportunity International (Grand Prize is $5,000.) I hope you like this short story ‘about love, beginning with you’. It might not be the story I had hoped to write, but I think you’ll enjoy it nonetheless.
While there’s nothing new about charity bike rides I think it’s great that people are starting to use Twitter to share their personal journeys as they cycle for a cause, raising funds using sites like Chipin and First Giving.
image originally uploaded by Pieter Musterd
Their use of Twitter, blogging and video gives us an insight into their experience and allows us to interact with them as they hit the road, and the fundraising widgets help us to visually track their fundraising efforts over a period of time.
Do you feel better connected to non profit causes when individuals use social media to share their experience?
Despite what some people say, it’s not difficult to find the time to use social media. You can write a blog post to share your knowledge, rather than answer the same question multiple times via email to a limited audience, for instance.
However, have you considered how social media has become almost too easy to use? It becomes too easy to quickly skim through the blog posts in your RSS feedreader, even the posts you enjoy. It can be too easy to read a blog post and move onto the next task, rather than engage in conversation by commenting or sharing it. A lazy retweet is easier than adding a couple of words with your own point of view. We become consumers and regurgitators of information again, when we could really be participating in something more valuable.
When I saw this animation, I nearly wrote a quick tweet about it. But I thought it was worth posting for posterity. Watch it in full screen, with a cup of tea (or coffee or whatever takes your fancy) and enjoy.
Watching this reminded me of my animation lecturer explaining how animation allows you to create illusion and make something out of nothing. The definition of animation is - from Latin animatus,give life to, from animabreath, soul. As you know, it takes a lot of time to create an animation and only a few minutes to enjoy the results of an original idea.
I hope you were able to take your time to watch this little creative 3 minute refreshment and catch your breath in a fast paced day.
This month I’m wrapping up my fundraising activities for Opportunity International and need to raise another USD$4,000 for a 2 year program providing small business loans and training for Filipino women currently living in poverty.
So I thought I would ask 1000 people to donate USD$4 - the price of a drink – to raise the total funds for this project. A coffee costs $4 at some places these days – I would be really grateful if you could shout me one
Many thanks to people who have chipped in so far already raising 50% of funds for this AUD$10,000 program including:
Somewhere tucked in-between focused hours spent with my loved ones, work, fundraising, moments of chaos and moments of rest (and maybe a cup of tea) I love the discovery of serendipitous and colourful things you share with me online. Like this striking photo of of tyre marks in dew that my younger brother August shared on Flickr.
Thank you for having the boldness, audacity, confidence and joy to share such lovely and striking images. I appreciate the time you take to add colour to the web. It feels like finding treasure, especially when friends live interestate or overseas and the images allow me to see things through their eyes.
When you ‘discover treasure’ like this in-between all the information you process each day, you really appreciate it, don’t you? And even then, as Marigo Raftopolous so beautifully pointed out in the Worldshapers ebook, there is still something wonderful about the treasure you find in your own letterbox.
“despite my love of technology and social media, I still get a buzz out of receiving a letter from one of the children I sponsor from India, Bangladesh or Ethiopia.
Light-weight paper envelopes arrive in my letterbox, battered from traveling from the other side of the world, laden with a row of mysterious colorful stamps and with handwriting scrawled by a hand unfamiliar with our language.“
Perhaps it’s something about the connections we make as we share these lovely things with one another.
wonderchatter