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Read MoreWorking together to make great things happen
We’re talking about people who are working together this week at Live UnLtd. Yesterday we posted about projects we’ve backed which bring people together, and now we thought we’d tell you about some other projects we like where they’re doing similar things.
Sometimes the whole point of a project is to bring people together, and sometimes it’s a happy by-product of what they’re doing. Take a look at these:
Breaking down barriers
A restaurant in the Gaza Strip is raising awareness by only hiring people who are deaf. The employees have been “training for six months learning how to best communicate with customers who don’t know sign language.”
“deafness was until very recently considered to be a mental disability in the country” the report from Sprinwise says. So this is a way of bringing different people together and changing their perceptions.
Find out more here.
The Ludo
What if you could do good while you play? The Ludo lets you earn points as you play with it, tallying up your points with every throw or kick. The points are then transferred wirelessly to your account using your football’s unique serial number. These points are then converted to currency which you can use to support charities of your choice.
By playing with Ludo, you’re earning points to give to charity. And by encouraging people to want to earn these points, Ludo encourages people to get together and have a kick-about!
Repairing and Upcycling together
A way of bringing people together can be through a collective task. At repair cafes people work together to repair things that would otherwise be thrown away. People bring items along that they think are beyond repair, and a group of volunteers have a go at fixing them.
Find out more here.
Using Social Media to create change.
People can be physically brought together to make great things happen, and they can also be brought together through social media and the Internet. Here are a couple of examples of the way the Internet is changing the way people make a change.
Crowdsourcing and Microfinance
The way that crowdsourcing and microfinance work is by collecting lots of small payments from people who want to support a cause or a start-up. Sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo help people who want to make a certain product or start a certain project, and sites like Kiva are a way of getting people to contribute to help people in developing countries to get businesses up and running.
Microloans to Kiva get paid back to the people who make them, giving you the chance to invest in another business! Collecting all of these small payments together can create a big difference for someone.
Find out a little more about crowdfunding here.
Thunderclap
This site works in a similar way to crowdsourcing, but instead of crowdsourcing money, it’s crowdsourcing online influence. Thunderclap asks people to sign up to send a collective message all at the same time. The message only goes out when enough people have signed up to spread the word about a cause they care about.
So a charity could ask for 5000 people to send a tweet and post to their Facebook walls at the same time about a fundraising event they’re running. Once 5000 have agreed to send a message out about it, they all go at once, creating a “Thunderclap”, a loud noise all at once to try and gain as much attention as possible.
Find out more here.
Does Slacktivism Work?
Some people call this sort of thing “slacktivism”, because it’s a way of being an activist without having to make much more effort than a couple of mouse clicks. For some that makes it pretty far from activism, but this report from Mashable suggests that a proper change can be made through slacktivism.
And this infographic says a similar thing.
Are you a slacktivist?
Top photo credit: Massimo Zeppetelli
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