Blog Action Day 08 - Are you involved?

[siyab]

It's Blog Action Day today... to describe it briefly, 'Today thousands of bloggers will unite to discuss a single issue - poverty. We aim to raise awareness, initiate action and to shake the web!'

So, are you taking part? How do you feel about it? (I suggest we also drop links to Blog Action Day articles on our blogs... )

I think it's a fantastic idea: to align the massive potential of thousands of bloggers towards one goal...

[guioconnor]

I am involved, but my post stills needs to be finished. I'll point to Christian Heillmann's post instead, which is a great one.

[Sue C]

Participation this year is about half what it was last. From what I've been able to glean from Google, last year over 20,000 took part. This year, a little over 10,000.

I hate to say it, but this year's topic just didn't sit right for some reason. I can't explain, but I think everyone is aware of poverty, and in fact many of us see it close to home. It's action that's needed, not sitting in front of your computer and blogging about it. And I think that is where it needs to start.

We in the US have people with homes being foreclosed (and subsequently in some cases, renters of these homes turned out on the street), jobs are low paying, if you can even find one, cost of living is going up, heating oil and fuel prices are still through the roof, people here in the US have no health insurance, and so on.

Instead of blogging about it, we should be out doing something about it. If we can afford to, that is, because most of us are living one paycheck away from poverty and homelessness as it is.

Just my humble opinion, folks. Let the flames begin.

[Jamie Harrop]

In a way, I agree with you, Sue. But there's no harm in writing about it *and* doing something about it.

My own take on this years post was "Poverty Hits Home". Almost 5 million children in the UK alone are classed as in poverty and the city closest to me (10 minute drive) has just today opened an inquiry regarding its state of poverty. I wanted to make people aware it's not just something that happens in Africa, but is something that happens far closer to home than most might think.

But all topics aside, I'm always amazed at how bloggers come together and unite. The classic example was yesterday when Twitter went crazy with retweets about a bloggers missing 14 year old child. As I sat there watching the Tweets come in, I found myself wondering just how much bloggers can effect the world when a good cause is found. (Hopefully the outcome of this particular case is a positive one. If you didn't see the Tweets, here is the missing child poster: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3185/...c7146a9b_o.jpg )

[ccjones]

Gosh Sue - that explains perfectly the problems I was having posting about it this morning. It is one of those things that I honestly feel guilty sitting and writing about, when I could go for a pretty short drive and actually do something beneficial. But anyway, I participated, and I suppose something is better than nothing. I'm looking forward to the Blog Talk Radio Talkathon today - anyone going to be listening?

[Jen]

I hate to say it, but this year's topic just didn't sit right for some reason. I can't explain, but I think everyone is aware of poverty, and in fact many of us see it close to home. It's action that's needed, not sitting in front of your computer and blogging about it. And I think that is where it needs to start.

Hmm, you may have put your finger on what kept me from committing to Blog Action Day this year: every time I went to sign up, I tried to think of what I might write - and everything that came to mind (particularly for DG) seemed to carry a whiff of hypocrisy, despite my best intentions.

On the plus side, this is the line of thought that made me write a post for WA about Blog Action Day -- not planned.

I started thinking about whether it's a glorified meme, or whether any actual good is done. Does one day's blog posting do anything real to help people in need, or even to help the people who work for the organizations that battle poverty daily, while the rest of us go whistling on about our business?

Have to wonder...

After spending much of the morning knee-deep in my feedreader, however, I came up with an answer that I feel comfortable with personally... and now hoping that some sort of conversation will ensue in the comments, but it's likely that bloggers may be thoroughly saturated with BAD by this point in the day, and disinclined to engage any further.

I'm not ruling out the possibility of posting about BAD on another blog before the day ends - stilll 7 hours to go in this time zone - but no, I'm just not feeling that butt-on-chair/hands on keyboard is entirely what's required for "action" this time around.

[rebecca_m]

I'm with Jen. I had a hard time figuring out what I would write about as a post since my blog is focused more on web marketing and analytics. I'd already done a post on the importance of signing up for causes (and not just doing) when I went Pink for October, so I had a hard time finding another tie in.

Then Jen tweeted this link http://putthingsoff.com/the-22-percent-club/ and I just couldn't think of anything better. So my contribution to Blog Action Day is promoting this post.

[guioconnor]

Very interesting thread. It did help me overcome my sense of hypocrisy, as Jen wisely puts it, and post mine.

[skinnyninja]

This is so interesting. I wrestled with the topic as well and finally tried to tie it in to my blog's topic. I think I basically pulled it off and was able to "do my part" in participating.

But I found it really interesting that other people felt it was a strange and difficult topic to blog about as well......

Hopefully next year it will be something easy (but just as impacting!).

[Jen]

Very interesting thread. It did help me overcome my sense of hypocrisy, as Jen wisely puts it, and post mine.

Great post, Gui!
You know, it may be that the difficulty of tackling the topic of poverty is having an unexpected positive results: I'm finding a lot more deeply-thought-out blog posts for this year's Blog Action Day compared to last year, and a lot more creativity in how the topic is approached.