How To Do Good on the Internet

One of Enquiro’s core values is to make the world better by contributing to the community. This topic was delved into at Northern Voice by Darren Barefoot, who led a great session on how we can do good deeds online (he also took a little time to bash Luongo). Good deeds don’t necessitate spending money. They can be as simple as retweeting a valuable post or liking something on Facebook – just spreading the message can help to advance social causes. Here are six websites Darren highlighted that are creatively allowing for people to contribute to social issues:

-          Procrasdonate – Have you been wasting time surfing around the internet aimlessly? Need an incentive to be more productive online? Procrasdonate is an application that tracks when you are spending time online on time wasters rather than working – and if you spend too much time surfing or on Facebook, you have to make a donation. It gives you a reason to be more productive and if you are not, you are still supporting a worthy cause.

-          Nabuur – Nabuur is a site that allows for online volunteerism in your area of expertise. If you are an accountant, a lawyer, a marketer, or have some other specialized field of experience, Nabuur will match your talents with local communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

-          Blog Action Day – Blog Action Day is a day in October where bloggers around the world write about one specific topic. In 2009, over 13,000 bloggers participated by writing about climate change. It’s a great way to bring visibility to critical issues by harnessing the crowd.

-          No Impact Man – This site arose out of the No Impact Experiment, where a journalist and his family tried to live without making any impact on the environment (no trash, carbon emissions, etc.) – while living in New York City. He has since launched No Impact Man, which allows anyone to tell stories about how they try to impact environmental change – no matter how big or how small – to inspire others.

-          Relay for Life – one of my favourites. Relay for life is a virtual walk-a-thon for cancer research. It takes place in Second Life. People raise money and walk their avatars in an online environment in the same way that is normally done in an offline one.

-          Avaaz – Avaaz.org tackles a wide range of social issues. This community has a bottoms-up approach when it comes to deciding just what issues to focus on. Members of the site get to vote on what they believe are the most critical issues, which is how they decide what to take action on.