• winner joins a P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program expedition
• possibility to win $15,000 for your favorite charity that’s working in the front lines of the global water crisis
• every vote for your entry means P&G will donate a day’s worth of clean drinking water (2L) to a person in need in a developing country

The contest runs most of this month, so register your blog today and start rallying supporters to help get donated water to those in need, and join the Children’s Safe Drinking Water expedition!

Learn more about Clean Water Blogivation!

Have you signed up? If so, leave your blog URL below so we can be sure to check out your post and support you!

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• FT.com / Weekend columnists / Tim Harford – Perhaps microfinance isn’t such a big deal after all – "Last December, I showed some unwitting prescience by worrying about a backlash against microfinance, the practice of providing small loans – or perhaps savings products or insurance – to poor people. I fretted that there was little compelling evidence that it worked. A year later, the evidence is arriving and the backlash has begun. The Boston Globe published an article in September, subtitled, “Billions of dollars and a Nobel Prize later, it looks like ‘microlending’ doesn’t actually do much to fight poverty.” " – I'm interested to hear what you all think about this issue, especially now during the 'giving season.'
• Open Source Is Dead! Long Live Open Source! | NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network – "That's right, I said it. Promise to read the rest of this before you send me hate mail, though. What I mean is that open source, as we knew it, is dead. For the last decade, what we've been talking about when we say "open source" is "open code" — a set of zeroes and ones that we can configure to our heart's desire."
• Net2 Think Tank Round-Up: Best of 2009 | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – Check out the diverse submissions to the December Net2 Think Tank that simply asked for the best blog posts of 2009! I'm sure there are some resources, conversations and pointers in here that are new to everyone.
• What Matters Now eBook – Get the ebook now for free! "We want to shake things up. More than seventy extraordinary authors and thinkers contributed to this ebook. It's designed to make you sit up and think, to change your new year's resolutions, to foster some difficult conversations with your team."
• Orchestras and Social Media Survey: Key Findings and Full Report | Dutch Perspective by Marc van Bree – "In short, the survey found that social media activities, familiarity and usage seem to be widespread among orchestras. Managers find social media important and organizations are generally enthusiastic. However, the efforts are far from organized and strategic. It seems many orchestras are dipping their feet in the social media pool, but do not have the policies, budgets, and metrics in place to effectively use the tools at their disposal, even if they do recognize the need for checks and balances."

Learn more and show your gratitude!

Scheduled for November 24 – 26, 2009, the 48-hour event created by Epic Change will encourage participants to express their thanks using online tools and at live events. In honor of the people and things that make them grateful, guests will be invited to give to a common cause at events held across the globe.

Why TweetsGiving?

Last year, funds from TweetsGiving helped build a classroom in Tanzania.  This year, the Epic Change team are working on building a technology lab there.  Earlier this month, we interviewed Avi Kaplan from Epic Change, and asked him what they were up to in Africa:

What are you up to right now in Africa?

We just spent three weeks at Shepherd’s Junior near Arusha, Tanzania setting up a technology lab and wireless internet at the school. Together with our fabulous volunteers Melissa & AJ Leon of theLacProject, we taught the students and teachers about computers and social media. The students of Class Five at the school are now on Twitter and Tumblr and you can follow them all by clicking their pictures in this blog post. The internet has opened up the world for these students and their teachers are increasingly using the web in their curriculum.

For more details from our recent work here, including video, photos and more in-depth coverage of all about the work we’ve been up to in Tanzania on the “I <3 Epic Change” Blog created by theLacProject and in a recent article in the Huffington Post.

(Read the rest of the interview here.)

Get Involved

• Attend a gratitude party
• Spread gratitude on the web
• Host a gratitude party
• Join the TweetsGiving Community

I recently had the opportunity to connect with Avi Kaplan, the Community and Events Director at Epic Change, to discuss the upcoming TweetsGiving campaign and events.  Avi is just back from Tanzania where he and other Epic Change team members were working with the students in the classroom built with last year’s TweetsGiving proceeds.

Find out more in the interview below!

What is Epic Change?
Epic Change is a US nonprofit dedicated to helping social entrepreneurs harness the power of their stories to create change in their communities. We are a very heartful organization and a lot of what we do is thanks to an incredible group of volunteers.

What is TweetsGiving?
TweetsGiving is a global celebration of gratitude and giving on November 24-26. Participants will share what they are grateful for through Twitter and other online media and attend gratitude parties around the world. People donate to a shared cause in honor of that for which they are most grateful. Where do the funds go? Funds raised will go to support the work of Mama Lucy Kampton (@MamaLucy), a ChangeMaker who has transformed her community in Arusha, Tanzania through her school Shepherd’s Junior.

What was last year’s celebration like and how do you think it’ll be different this year?
TweetsGiving last year was overwhelming because we put the program together so quickly and really didn’t know what kind of response we would get. Once the tweets of gratitude started to flow in we new we had identified a very powerful emotional chord with people. The tone of the messages and the level of participation we saw were hopeful and inspiring. The addition of gratitude parties this year is significant. A different kind of reflection is accomplished face-to-face than you can achieve behind a computer screen. I expect the parties to be lively gatherings and for people to form new relationships and to come with open hearts ready to share.

How can people get involved?
You can find an event to attend on our website TweetsGiving.org, volunteer to host a gratitude party (it’s not too late!), and join the Epic Change Community online to receive continued updates on the project.

What are you up to right now in Africa?
We just spent three weeks at Shepherd’s Junior near Arusha, Tanzania setting up a technology lab and wireless internet at the school. Together with our fabulous volunteers Melissa & AJ Leon of theLacProject, we taught the students and teachers about computers and social media. The students of Class Five at the school are now on Twitter and Tumblr and you can follow them all by clicking their pictures in this blog post. The internet has opened up the world for these students and their teachers are increasingly using the web in their curriculum.

For more details from our recent work here, including video, photos and more in-depth coverage of all about the work we’ve been up to in Tanzania on the “I <3 Epic Change” Blog created by theLacProject and in a recent article in the Huffington Post.

I hope you’ll join us for TweetsGiving and I’m really excited for what’s next at Epic Change.

About Avi
After over a year working as a volunteer, Avi is excited to join Epic Change as the Community and Events Director. He is a South Florida native and currently lives in Washington DC. He’s interested in using technology to organize for social change and is a recent Harvard graduate. You can find him on twitter (@MeshugAvi)or by email (Avi@EpicChange.org).

Location: Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa (participated via ReadyTalk conferencing)

Topic: Social Media, Nonprofits and the Role of Individuals

Description: I presented via ReadyTalk in SANGONeT’s opening plenary for the Johannesburg and Cape Town events, covering data from research on social media use by nonprofits in the US, the UK and a case study.

Related Links:

• Blog post with slides and notes
• Slides
• Notes

Steve and 3 self-funded volunteers (found for free via Google Grants!) are headed to Zambia to document a community who doesn’t have a school, in as close to real-time as possible.  They plan to ask the community what they need and give them a platform to share their story with the world.  They will tweet constantly and upload their photo-led blog stories every day between May 11-22.  You can ask members of the community questions via blog posts, @replies on Twitter and via email (zambia@learnasone.org).

Before they head home, they will train the local community and the NGO partner how to use a Flip video and digital camera so update can continue.  Longer-term, the plan is to become similar to Kiva.org, but for schools.

Follow along and connect with the community!

• Follow LearnAsOne on Twitter
• Follow the blog updates or the Flickr photo stream
• Email the Zambia LearnAsOne team

Learn more about LearnAsOne:

What is LearnAsOne?
LearnAsOne is a charity that works with local partners and communities in Africa to fund schools and support their running costs.

What do you need?
This is the key question we will continually ask to every community we meet.

No imposing western ideas. No impractical solutions. Just listening to the communities real educational needs and helping to provide the funds and training so they can meet them themselves.

It could be teacher training, classrooms, a feeding programme, sanitation and clean water, books, school fees or teacher’s accommodation. Whatever the need we’ll give the community a way to tell you. Plus we’ll provide a breakdown of the costs of every project in the form of a simple shopping list.

What I am most interested in with LearnAsOne’s trip and engagement in Zambia is testing the idea in practice of helping answer the needs of a community without directing or dictating the response.   This will certainly be an interesting project to follow!  What do you think?  Will you be following along or asking any questions via the methods above?  What would you ask?

“All over the UK, organisations will be using the focus of this day to run their own events and activities. Check out the Ideas Bank for some tips and stories to help you plan a successful Women’s Enterprise Day. Search using ‘women’s enterprise’ to bring up lots of activity suggestions.”

But, my world, and I think yours, is wider than just the UK.  In honor of today, I’d like to shine a bit of spotlight on The Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre and the Blogs for African Women.

The Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre works to encourage Nigerian girls and women to learn about and use technology as a means of empowering themselves socially and economically. W.TEC, is a Nigerian non-governmental organization working to encourage Nigerian girls and women to learn how to use technology as a means of empowering themselves socially and economically.

This is done through projects which build technology skills among women, as well as other technology literacy workshops. W.TEC will also research and publish works examining pivotal issues related to how African women use technology, barriers preventing or limiting technology use, and strategies for more efficient technology use.

“Blogs for African Women (BAWo)” Mentoring Project was created by Ore Somolu and Sokari Ekine as a way of encouraging and supporting Africans who want to start blogging. Initially there will be a pilot project limited to Nigerian women.

I encourage you to check out the W.TEC and BAWo – get involved if you can.  It feels great to share your experiences across the cubicle; just think what sharing around the world feels like!

Learn more about Women’s Enterprise Day here.