Please Help! Hope for Darfur

[swatie]

I am not sure if the general population has been aware of this but there has been a war in Darfur for about 7 years. The Janjaweed have done horrible things that include genocide. But sadly, not much has been done about this genocide.... I'm not asking for much but to help those people in Darfur we need big ideas. And as a tribe we could do something about this. Please help me in my cause. The people in Darfur have lost children, mothers, friends. Put yourself in their shoes.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict

Thank you

[Sean]

What are you suggesting we as a tribe do?

[swatie]

The first step is informing. Once people are informed then how can they just turn away and do nothing? I was hoping that we could do something to inform people not sure what at the moment. But It would help if people threw in ideas.

[helenwk]

Well maybe the site could do an awareness thing every once in awhile. Like they could have a "Darfur Awareness Day" where there could be an announcement thread detailing the issue at hand, and then telling people how they can help, where they can send money to, etc etc.

But I think that if they did that, it shouldn't be just for Darfur, because there are a lot of issues that need awareness raised. It could maybe be like a weekly thing, like every Monday is an awareness raising day, focusing on one issue that desperately needs attention. Maybe in that thread people could write letters to their Congressional leaders and have them proof-read them or something. I'm just spit-balling ideas here, I'm not really sure of how you could raise awareness to people outside of the pogotribe.

[swatie]

I believe the pogotribe has the power to raise peoples awareness but thats only if we get the members informed and passionate about the subject. And you are right there are many subjects that people do need to get informed about. Good Idea!

[Sean]

^ As much as I love charity... I doubt many people will donate, me included.

Lots of people already donate their money to a charity of their choice. Plus I don't think the image that we as a community portray should be "Donate money HERE:_______"

Because many people already do their bit and lots of us don't have the spair cash to donate more. On the other hand we should raise awearness to other people outside of the community, but not make it be "Pogotribe all donate"

[helenwk]

I agree with the donating point. Maybe it could be like an optional assignment then, where you make it a goal to tell at least three people outside the pogotribe about it, or tweet about it, or make a blog about it, or something..

[RabbitWho]

So how about a reputable (not Wikipedia) link to information and a charity that we can tweet?

[Piccard]

Apr 12, 2010 3:36:47 GMT -5 RabbitWho said:

So how about a reputable (not Wikipedia) link to information and a charity that we can tweet?

After a quick Google search, I've found www.savedarfur.org/ which seems to be a credible website about the whole situation.
Also, there's www.helpdarfurnow.org/ , which is another one.
I must admit, I just skimmed the pages, but they both seem to say many things about the crisis in Darfur.

[Deleted]

Darfur is a huge problem, but I thought that it was well known. It is here in Belgium..
I think a weekly awareness-day would be a bit too much. Maybe bi-weekly?

[RabbitWho]

That's a great idea!

Why not have a bi-weekly awareness link? We can make a list of candidates and the admins could put a link on the top of the forum (where the pogotok announcements go) to a different awareness campaign every two weeks.

It could teach us what's happening in the places that aren't covered so much by the media. Starting with Darfur... There's loads of stuff, it wouldn't always have to be negative, but just awareness. Like AIDS awareness, the situation for aborigines in Australia, sex-ed awareness, Transsexual awareness (There are some awesome vloggers on youtube that document their transition and explain the situation really well) situation in Palestine/Israel awareness, Animal Welfare awareness... I could be here for hours thinking of a list of things that don't only need charity (or don't need it at all) but need the people of the world to be informed.

What do you think?

[Deleted]

that seems like a great idea to me

[RabbitWho]

I'm gonna go for it, I doubt we'll get mod support (they said don't usually have time to look in the projects forum) but it will be great anyway.
I'll do some research on Darfur, compact it into a nice thread of short pieces of information and pictures for those of us with short attention spans along with links for those of us with long attention spans, and donation pages for those of us who can afford it.
Then someone else can do something for next week (or failing that I can keep doing it till someone else has time or is interested) and the first post of the thread can be edited to include the new inform-tok or whatever we call it and the previous one can be posted as a post so the thread gets bumped and always serves as an archive.
I'd like to alternate between awareness of negative things (Like the situation in Darfur) and awareness of positive things (like Transsexual life)
Everyone who wants to write something send me a PM or post here and we'll work out a calendar! If there is enough interest we can make it weekly instead of bi-weekly. If people want to also make it into a personal vlog that'd be great too, but there should be a text transcript of the important bits for the forum.


What should we name it?

I was thinking
"What the flip is going on in _________"
Name of place
or
"What the flip is going on with ____________"
Name of issue

Something with tok could work, but it won't be a talk thread, we can post simultaneous discussion debate or question threads in the relevant forums every time and link back. (Which is great because a large part of the community don't watch the Project forum carefully)

[Deleted]

changing between negative and positive is certainly a good idea
<3 the name.

[Sean]

Great suggestion!