Change.org is looking for bloggers

photo source: http://www.bpdesign.ca/images/logo_change_1.gif

I'm an avid reader of Change.org; they have an interesting working model and blog on a variety of topics. Most of their bloggers are extremely knowledgeable about their fields of work (I tend to read the Global Health ones). So if you want to blog, get paid, and reach a huge audience, APPLY...

Details below...

Change.org Launches Blog Action Day 2009; Expanding Team of Bloggers Hey Changemakers, We have two exciting announcements to make this week. First, Change.org has been asked to take the reins of Blog Action Day, the annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day. A few weeks ago we asked bloggers everywhere to suggest topics for this year's event, and the overwhelming response was in support of focusing on the gravest threat to world today:climate change. Blog Action Day itself is on October 15th, and we launched the new site this week at www.blogactionday.org to start accepting sign-ups. We've already received a flood of interest from bloggers around the world, with more than 1,800 blogs with seven million readers across 98 countries registered. If you have a blog - either personal or professional - click here to find out more information and register your blog now to be part of the largest social change event on the web. The second exciting piece of news we have to share?Change.org is expanding its team of bloggers! That's right, we're looking for writers extraordinaire who want to join our team and cover one or more of our 20 causes - from Health Care to Education to Global Poverty. If you're interested in blogging on an issue you're passionate about for an audience of more than a million activists and nonprofit leaders - and getting paid to boot - let us know. Contracts range from 1-6 posts a week and details are atwww.change.org/bloggers.

A blogger's dream vs reality

If you are a blogger, no further explanation necessary here.  :-)

(via SansSerif)

The TED Fellows and their blog

In 2007, TEDAfrica Fellow William Kamakwamba took the TED Community by storm. At 15, he had built a windmill generator from bicycle parts using a library book as a guide....this in rural Malawi.

So...somehow I got into the same category. I'm a TED Fellow (phew, finally I can tell you...it was secret until this morning!). Who knew I could be?? (well, other than my mom...thanks mom!). And if I could get in, so can you. Applications open on the 27th for TED Global Oxford, and TED India.

Anyways, the Fellows have a blog and I'm feeding the entire stream through Tworque this week, so that you can get all the voices beyond just mine. I'm not the most tech-savvy person (ironically!), so advance apologies for any issues. If you'd rather just subscribe to the blog directly, go here.

So that's it for this week. See ya next week!

(God, I'm SO scared to be excited!)

Getting the real deal behind Matt's amazing video

Remember Matt Harding's amazingly cool video about dancing around the world?? (if not, see below); well, travelblog Gadling got a great informative interview with him. Check it out here. You can also see a more indepth interview with Payscale blogger where he talks about his career plans and goals.

Oddee

An Indian Schoolbus (photo courtesy: Only in India, Oddee)

Check out Oddee, a blog that highlights interesting things from around the world in pictures...things like:

World's most worthless money (I've used two of those currencies and its ridiculous to be carrying around so much in your pocket. On one hand you feel really rich, and on the other, you feel really ripped off!)

Only in India (I laughed so hard; but ironically too true!)

10 Crazy Japanese Ideas (They even have a word for useless Japanese inventions. It escapes me...but there is a book about it. Here's more to keep you going!)

World's Funniest Fortune Cookies Ever (I've always wondered who these people are who sit around writing the fortunes all day)

10 Most Bizarre Scientific Papers (seriously, PhD's are overrated!)

Recycling posts

In his post this morning, Chris Blattman hit on something that I agree with. There's just a lot of information recycling. Read about something somewhere and then put it in your own post. I plead guilty to that. And I'm sorry.

I'm new to this blogging thing, and I'm not writing about myself or things in my life that are changing. Its been a year since I was last out in the field, where the action is. So I have less first hand information to give, making my posts less vibrant.

Unless I have an original spin on something or it cannot fit into a tweet, I'll do my best to keep it out. My posts will be less frequent, but hopefully when they come around, they'll be fresh.

Also, things are getting a little hectic at the moment. I will be traveling a lot starting this friday through the end of June, and I'm not sure how regular my internet access will be.

As always, thanks for bearing with me. I appreciate your patience and input at every stage.

A blog far superior to mine

I found a blog that covers the same territory and does a far better job than me (does this mean I'm out of a blog??), so I encourage you lovers of Tworque subject matter to add White African to your reader or email list or whatever. Of course, his blog focuses entirely on technology in Africa, so I won't quit my ramblings anytime soon! :-)

Why getting hired by an International NGO is hard

I know I've talked a lot about getting field experience. But I've probably not stressed enough that I understand how difficult it is to get field experience, especially in the more difficult areas. While browsing around, I stumbled on Alanna Shaikh's brilliant blog. If you are a regular blog reader or just are interested in this topic, I highly recommend reading her blog. (she's also a bit of an overachieving :-) superstar...speaks four very difficult languages, has worked and lived all over the world, has a graduate degree, and is a happily married mom!!). She's written a great post on the pitfalls of finding good field experience, and how to get past them. You find the whole blog here; I'm quoting a bit of it for taste.

On the topic of "Why you can't get an international job (and what to do about it):"

This is why: when I worked for an international NGO, it cost us $16,000-$20,000 to put an unpaid volunteer in the field. The cost included health insurance, housing, food allowance, and transport costs. Even if a volunteer paid for their own plane ticket, we couldn’t ethically send them to Sudan or Sri Lanka without providing food, housing and health care. Those costs add up fast. For $16,000 in most parts of the world, you can hire a trilingual local person with better skills than any volunteer American. Add to that the possibility that the volunteer will flip out in the new place, and be unable to cope. For an NGO to justify sending you as a volunteer, you need to be skilled enough to be worth the cost and the risk. In other words, trying to be a volunteer isn't really much different from looking for an entry level salaried position. The following advice applies to both paid jobs and volunteer work.

You can make yourself worth the cost of hiring by having the right skills. Luckily for the international job seeker, NGOs are looking for a decent range of skills. The first and most obvious is clinical skills- doctors, nurses, PAs, EMTs, or midwives. They also need finance people - CPAs are great but a budgets and bookkeeping background will suffice. Technical experts on agriculture are very much in demand, as are water and sanitation engineers. Lastly, and this is what most of us get in on, they generally need writers. Any NGO doing development or emergency relief work spends about half their time writing reports on what they already did, applying for grants to do more things, and writing success stories to encourage private donors. They need native English speakers to write this stuff. If you don't have any of the necessary skills, you can gain them. You can train to be an EMT, or find a job where you work with budgets. Writing newsletters or grant applications for your local animal rescue group, neighborhood association, or homeless shelter isn't exactly the same as writing them for an international organization, but it's close enough to get you hired. [...]