International Justice Day

How many people at your office knew today was International Justice Day?

How many people at your school?

How many people in your home?

How many people around you did anything about it?

Today is just one day that is supposed to remind people to fight for justice. Supporting Mocha Club is one way you can fight for it every day.

Media Relations for a New Generation

Saturday I drove to Atlanta with my roommate to participate in The Rescue, an event in 100 cities across 10 countries by The Invisible Children. If you’ve never heard of The Invisible Children, educate yourself.

The Rescue was (and still is) an attempt to end Africa’s longest running war, Joseph Kony’s war in Uganda with an army of abducted child soldiers. The event started Saturday at 3 in every city and is still happening in the cities that haven’t yet been “rescued.” The plan is essentially a non-traditional media relations strategy: To be rescued, each city must attract major media coverage and a celebrity to the site to make a statement of support for The Rescue. The hundreds and thousands of people who gathered won’t leave until they’ve been rescued. In Atlanta, we were rescued 8ish on Saturday by Jeff Foxworthy and Fox 5 News. While I’m writing this, 11 cities still haven’t been rescued– and they’re holding out.

What makes this event different than a protest or something of the sort is the connectivity of 100 cities in 10 different countries all supporting each other online at the same time. Even in the cities where the media has refused to come, the longer the participants stay, the more exposure the movement gets and the more desperate their cries become. The Invisible Children set up an online hub for everyone involved that includes a live-streaming video at the headquarters (the hosts have not slept, making them very interesting at this point in time…), a real-time Twitter update down the side (#therescue was at the top of the Twitter trending topics this weekend), and hundreds of pictures, videos, montages, and articles from every city involved. People in London voicing support for the unrescued in Chicago. People united in a cause and able to encourage thousands of others from their vantage point on the other side of the world.

The thing is, with or without the so craved national media attention, this event is hugely successful. The Internet is a medium, and The Rescue has been ALL OVER IT for the entire weekend. It will continue to be as the stories of people not going to work to stay at the site make the story more and more dramatic. This media relations effort is different because the demonstrators are also creators of media. The event produced (and is producing) more pictures, more videos, and more interviews than media outlets could or would produce. And they’re all available 24/7 on the Web site, on blogs, on YouTube, on Twitter, etc.

Spokane, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Austin, Chicago, Huntington, Charleston, Richmond, Baltimore, and Harrisburg still need help. If you have any influence with media or moguls in any of these cities, please do what you can to aid their rescue. The last city, Chicago, was rescued yesterday by Oprah and her friend Gayle. They’ve invited the Invisible Children people to be on the show today at 4 pm! Check it out!

I need Africa more than Africa needs me

So last week I promised to follow up blog for Mocha Club on December 1st. I was still out of town on Thanksgiving holiday yesterday. So unfortunately typical me–but better late than never. Here’s what Barret Ward (from the US but is living in Ethiopia right now) has said about all this:

“When I think of Africa, the following images immediately come to mind: Starvation.  AIDS.  Child soldiers.  Genocide.  Sex slaves.  Orphans.  From there, my thoughts naturally turn to how I can help, how I can make a difference. “I am needed here,” I think. “They have so little, and I have so much.” It’s true, there are great tragedies playing out in Africa everyday.  There is often a level of suffering here that is unimaginable until you have seen it, and even then it is difficult to believe.  But what is even harder is reconciling the challenges that many Africans face with the joy I see in the people. It’s a joy that comes from somewhere I cannot fathom, not within the framework that has been my life to this day.” [read more]

The Beauty and the Cause

Today I’m joining with Mocha Club and hundreds of bloggers to explain why ‘I need Africa more than Africa needs me.’ Mocha Club [www.mochaclub.org] is a social media venture that allows people to build teams of their friends and family to support projects in Africa–each team member gives up the cost of two mochas a month, or $7, and makes a huge impact on individuals and communities.

Here’s what that sentence means to me:

I think that we westerners have had a mistaken perception of ourselves in relation to Africa. We know of the problems on the continent, but they seem very far away. We’ve been asked to help on TV ads and at concerts. We tend to see images of starvation, of militant ravaging, of desolation, and of poverty, and we define the land by the pictures. And we either give something and think of ourselves as heroes or we carry on as if that place does not exist. But there is so much more.

Africa is 54 different countries, each with its own beauty and its own problems. We all have our beauties and our problems. The stories I’ve heard through MC of the strength of individuals and communities, the renewal of hope after horror, has affected me more deeply than my $7 a month could’ve possibly affected them. See, my gift contributes but theirs profoundly affects. My heart has been widened, my love has been stretched as I’ve seen the faces of the boys and girls in the orphanage in Darfur that my money has helped build. And strangely, giving does not build pride in me and what I’ve done. It only makes me realize that life is more than its exchange rate among cultures; sharing is God-woven into our beings.

I get more excited the deeper I trek into this cause: to see Africa portrayed for the beautiful land it is, and to see its people live well. The cause is to inspire partnership over pity, and MC has some things up its sleeve. Share your thoughts in my comments section and check back Dec 1^st to see what Mocha Club is doing about reforming the image of Africa in this country.