ONE Moms discuss how to #blog4good

Sep 28th, 2011 10:56 AM UTC
By Lauren Balog

With all the high-level meetings happening at the UN last week, ground-breaking commitments being made at the Clinton Global Initiative, and inspirational talks by the likes of Desmond Tutu, Jose Andres, Elie Wiesel and Christy Turlington at the Social Good Summit, it’s easy to forget what everyday folks can do to make lasting change in the world.

Last Thursday, in partnership with Women Deliver and Vestergaard Frandsen, ONE hosted the Blogging for Good panel in New York City. The purpose of the panel was to prove that social media can be a powerful tool to educate, inform, inspire and make real change on important issues such as maternal health, HIV/AIDS, clean water and more.

The event was a smashing success, attended by a select group of bloggers, NGO representatives and others from the social media community. The panel had a lively discussion about the role of awareness, blogging for non-expert readers and where advocacy and action converge. Attendees were also treated to a showing of the new mini-documentary by Vestergaard Frandsen, “Carbon for Water,” which tells the story of their product, the LifeStraw, and the monumental effort to — with the help of 4,000 trained health workers — install 900,000 of them in homes across the Western Province of Kenya to help provide clean water to 4.5 million people in just five weeks.

Social Media Manager for Vestergaard Frandsen, Elisabeth Wilhelm, told a story about the project that really opened her eyes to the universal appeal of social media. While traveling through Western Kenya, watching the Life Straw project unfold, Elisabeth realized that Kenyans were following her tweets, and asking when the project would come to their town.

“I didn’t expect to have Kenyans tweeting back at me,” she said.

Women Deliver’s Director of Communication, Janna Oberdorf, also joined the women on the panel, saying that there is no one mechanism that works, and bloggers should leverage their platforms to tell the stories of people in the developing world.

Representing ONE on the panel was two of the ONE Moms who traveled to Kenya in July: Emily McKhann of The Motherhood and Jennifer James of the Moms Bloggers Club. Both women talked about the enormous impact Kenya had on their lives, and how social media helped them share their story with the community of online moms.

“Readers want to know what bloggers care about,” said Emily.

“My readers are ready for the complex issues,” said Jennifer. “Moms care. We need to keep them caring.”

Blogger Rachel Cernansky, blogger for Treehugger.com, spoke on the panel about her experiences seeing the Life Straw first hand on her recent trip to Kenya as one of the winners of the Women Deliver/Vestergaard Frandsen blogger contest.

In the end, one universal theme was clear: women shouldn’t have to die in silence. It’s up to all of us – and moms everywhere -– to tell their stories and work for change in their everyday lives.

TAGS: Facebook and Twitter, Mother's Day Every Day Campaign, Mothers Day 2011, ONE, ONE Mom Bloggers