Today is the Blog Action Day 2012 with the theme this year being "The Power of We". I was pretty excited when I read that this would be this year's theme. I know that when you look around today, you don't have to look very far to find problems and it can make you feel helpless and rather quickly, this is why I really believe that this theme is no less important than previous themes (in fact it may even be more important). One person can make a difference and this is one of the core points behind the theme. One person joined up with at least one more person becomes "we" and if there are enough people behind the "we" amazing things are possible!
I've been participating in Blog Action Day since the first one in 2007. There were over 23,000 blog posts written about that first theme, this is a very big "we". The Environment, Poverty, Climate Change, Water, Food, and now "The Power of We", pretty much every theme has been an excercise in "The Power of We". Alone it might not seem that you can do anything to change the problems of the world but when we harness the power of "we" it is possible to change things that you might not have thought possible before. People change the world all the time, you don't have to look far to see examples of this application in terms of good and bad. While the history books can't be written about the Arab Spring, there is little doubt that this is one example of how "The Power of We" that sticks out and that is very familar to many of us (if only be the name "Arab Spring")
In May of this year I attended Re:campaign in Berlin. I had a chance to meet with lots of people from the NGO world including Duncan Green from Oxfam. Duncan writes a blog called From Poverty to Power. He is a strategic advisor with Oxfam in Great Britian. His book From Poverty to Power is about to go into second edition. I found his presentation "How Citizens Can Overcome Poverty Using ICT for Development" to be quite educational and inspiring. I was excited to see that Oxfam became one of the sponsors of these year's Blog Action Day. One of the campaigns that Oxfam is currently promoting is to get the Wolrd Bank to Stop Land Grabs. Duncan wrote about it here.
Here is a short video explaining the situation...
If the Stop Land Grabs campaign doesn't seem like your cup of tea, there are plenty of othe ways that you can take part in "The Power of We".
Find a cause or issue that you feel strongly about.
Find out what is being done about it
See how you can help the effort.
By spreading the word to people you know, you start to become of of the "we"
I do hope that you won't sit on the sidelines saying that you can do anything. Alone you might be limited in what you can do, but when you and me become part of "The Power of We" amazing things are possible!
*If you don't see the video in this post please go here.
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