socialwrkr asked: This is a comment, not a question. :)
Just wanted to say thank you for your encouraging note on one of my posts! It warmed my heart!
I appreciated it a lot and I appreciate seeing your insightful posts in my queue.
Thank you for taking the time to comment, and for your kind words!
Always glad to help in whatever way I can.
South African newspaper clipping about “Ubuntu girl”, who travelled across the country on R100 (roughly $14), finding a sense of shared humanity throughout her journey.
Mother Teresa (via azspot)
(via squashed)
Help fund the Supergrannies exhibition!
Hundreds, if not thousands, of grandmothers across South Africa are having to cope with the consequences of the Aids pandemic, at a time when they had hoped to retire and be cared for by their families.
These grannies are taking on greater responsibility than they could ever have imagined as they care for their own ill and dying children, and become parents to their orphaned grandchildren.
Supergrannies is a photo exhibition about a group of these grandmothers who are showing extraordinary grit, care for others and even humour, despite the heavy burdens they carry. The grannies in the exhibition are among the many who have formed a support and activist group called Grandmothers Against Poverty and Aids. This organization, they say, “is keeping us alive”…
Wanderson da Silva is an incredible person.
He grew up in one of the most dangerous areas in the city, the Complexo do Alemão slum. It was in this poverty-stricken and violent favela in northern Rio that he was raised by his single mother. By the age of 13, he realised he had to earn money himself to help supplement his mother’s income.
As many young people do in the favelas, he joined a drug-dealing gang.
Dom Helder Camara, a Brazilian archbishop (via dominilucy)
(via lickystickypickyshe)
This is an introduction to the work that CDI does.
Take note of Wanderson - I met him last Friday, and you can find out more about him here. He has an incredible history and is currently an educator at CDI.
Oh, and the room that Wanderson’s in, visible in the preview - that’s the computer room at the juvenile rehabilitation centre in Santa Cruz that I went to last Thursday. He passed through that centre, and it was his first contact with the computers that changed his life.
The “Digital Divide” is an increasingly prevalent problem globally.
My work in Rio, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, is for an NGO working to bridge the digital divide. It’s called CDI (the Centre for Digital Inclusion), and they work largely in favelas, and other poverty-stricken areas, in Brazil and across Latin America. Their principles of “digital inclusion” are not solely based on ICT literacy, but rather encompass broader goals: basic education including literacy, active citizenship and creating awareness about the opportunities and possibilities available.
Last week, I visited two of their community centres. One is based at a juvenile offender’s reintegration centre in Santa Cruz, in the greater Rio area; the other is at the Fundição de Arte e Progresso in Lapa, central Rio. The two are worlds apart in terms of their setting, but also the facilities present. The centre at the offender’s institute is everything you would expect from a stereotypical “computer literacy centre” where the hardware is antiquated donations and the staff are often volunteers; while the centre in Lapa could easily pass for a trendy internet café.
Genius idea. In order to improve your health, combine social networking, gaming, relaxation, self-help, self-improvement, achievements… etc etc etc. into one place. Allow the community to aid your motivation for improvement.
I’m interested in seeing a similar service that helps me to learn Portuguese and French.
Do you have the knowledge and desire to live healthier, but still never fit a way to put that into practice? Do you start new good habits only to have them fall by the wayside a little later? Waiting indefinitely for a kick-in-the-pants?
Health Month is a new social game about taking the SCIENCE of nutrition and behavior change and combining it with the SOCIAL GAMES of the recent social web to help people improve their health habits in a fun and sustainable way.
The formula for living healthier has 4 incredients:
- The information (most people have this, and we can help fill gaps)
- The ability (most people have this too)
- The motivation (who doesn’t want to be healthier, at least a little bit, right?)
- The fun and sustainable trigger. The reason. The self-challenge. The game.
The game that helps you live healthy, not because you have to, but because it’s fun. Fun simply motivates more than guilt, and the end result is the same.
The next game starts on October 1st, and runs through October 31st. There are currently 2,627 people signed up to play.
(Source: healthmonth)
(via Fast Company)
This does, however, require buy-in from ‘friends’/users. If the friends who share your tastes covet the idea of online privacy, they may not ‘like’ anything, which means you don’t necessarily get more accurate or better search results.
I don’t like the idea, as it encourages wanton usage of a ‘like’ or ‘recommend’ button (please ignore the shameful irony present on the right of this post). I don’t want to Facebook-like every website on the internet, nor do I think every page should have such a button - it’s not always appropriate. If, however, the way to actually appear in search results is to be ‘liked’ by people, then clearly it encourages both the presence and use of such a button.
Most of all, I just don’t really like Facebook or Bing.
And if you agree with anything I’ve said, you should recommend this post to your friends.
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