Reflection on my Social Media Campaign

"Social Media campaign for the importance of volunteering in the nowadays world". This is the whole idea what this blog is about. Through all the GNML sessions I was learning a lot of important knowledge about understanding of Social Media and developing of my idea through the nowadays online social media tools. I get to work with a lot of other exchange students from all over the world, experienced their views on the different issues and ideas of solving them. That was an amazing and very important experience for me.

There were a lot of different social platforms I got to work with, and I would like to list them and write a little, but of my own impression working with them and it is importance in my project. So, lets start it!

1. Blogger platform - is a amazing tool, which is very easy to work with for everybody, and does not require a lot of advanced knowledge from the user to create the blog. We started to use this tool in Session #3 and had to work with all the way till the end. I feel that it was the most crucial and important tool in my project because it worked as a roots in the tree. First I post the article on my blog and then, I use it as a source of all the information which later sent it over to other sources like Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

2. Twitter - is an amazing platform which is getting more and more popular everyday. I probably would never be able to fully described the importance of this tool in any project. If you don't use Twitter, you are totally disconnected from the world.  It is such  a huge network with a millions of users checking their profiles everyday, and connecting with each other through the 140 words which is make such an easy access to all the information.

3. YouTube -  is the most popular video service in the world, there millions of new videos are downloaded to this service everyday, and even more people watch those videos. If you have an idea, but you do not have a video to present it, you lose such a big advantage. Personally I and a lot of other students used YouTube for their elevator pitch, and it was an amazing experience of presenting my project to the public. At least when you start working in it, you start to ask yourself very important questions about your own project, which helps you to develop it.

4. Instagram - As for me it is the same idea of Twitter, but using images. A lot of people observe information the way better with visual examples, and that what the Instagram is all about. Giving people an opportunity to share their news, stories or experience with their friends, family or just random people om the internet using pictures and short description. Just genius!

5. Facebook - is the biggest social network in the world, which reached the number if billion users just last year(2013), and still growing. Personally I am not the biggest fan of the Facebook, because along with all the great opportunities of staying connected with your friends and family, there are a lot of danger online. Once you registered on the Facebook you start to fill your personal information and put all kinds of personal images or videos on your social network page. And never forget that it is very accessible to everybody who has a connection to the internet. Yes, you can hide a lot of personal information about you on your profile form the people with whom you are not friend, but there is still tons of information people can find about you.
Of course, I am now trying to say that you should never use a Facebook, No. You should use it and you should make your project benefit from so many advantages which Facebook provides you with for your project, but remember to be careful with everything you do online, not only with Facebook!

6. LinkedIn - last, but certainly not least important tool in my project I  got to experience. A lot of knowledge and experience I received from Session #9 about LinkedIn was not only about my project, it was all about all the important aspects of professionalism and all the skills and experience which is valuable in professional world. I just want to say that it made me much more closer to the understanding of what is important and what is not!

As you can tell from what I have told, there are so many great opportunities for the social media projects you can use, and the great thing that it does not require you to have a lot of advanced knowledge. All over through the GNML course I got to use most of them, and I think it was a great experience for me.

Corporative Volunteering

 Corporative volunteering is getting more and more popular every year. It is basically encouragement of the  employes working as a company group spent some of their time, either work time or free time for the community service. It is a great idea to get closer together and spend some time with a great purpose!

It is working all over United States, but now it is getting popular in Ukraine. And if you want to know why, read the article:

http://www.companion.ua/articles/content?id=270269

(Unfortunately it is in Russian only)

The great journey of the FMSC meals

Reading the FMSC blog, I found very interesting story that I would like to share with you, the story about example  of journey the meals have to go through, and what kind of emotional feedback you receive from the people whom it reaches!

Not going in a lot of details, because I really want you to read it from the web-site with all the great pictures of the kids and families who is so happy to finally receive the food, and try to understand the importance of those food for the families!
The only I thing I want to point out is that without all those people who is so passionate about their job at FMSC and all their partners, who is making everything to make food delivery possible, people would suffer, people would starve and die. Sometimes we do not even realize that with a small steps and actions we can make a huge difference in someones life!

Please read the original article: http://fmscblog.com/from-the-field/philippines-update-from-mark/

Happy Women's International Day with Peace Corps

 There  are so many great opportunities and organizations around the world for volunteering and community service.
 One of them is - Peace Corps, organizations with  a great goal to promote world peace and friendship around the world, through the community service. They send American citizens all over the world to "tackle" serious issues and problems and provide solutions through the encouragement of community changes and active citizenship.
All of us, in nowadays world are equal and have equal rights in life and need to have equal opportunities. But there is still a problem in some countries of inequalities and discrimination in different aspects and parts of the society. One of the most important changes which Peace Corps organization  trying to accomplish is - to provide equal rights and opportunities for for women.

There is an interesting article about how Peace Corps fighting  inequality, trying to provide equal opportunities for women and girls around the world.

"Peace Corps volunteers regularly organize activities that promote gender equality and empower women and girls to think beyond traditional gender roles. "








Link for details and the article: http://www.peacecorps.gov/media/forpress/press/2341/

Pack half a million meals a day? Lets do it!

Not a long time ago I wrote about the FMSC Mega Pack(You can find the post in archive). The goal was to pack 3 million meals, and I can happily announce that they achieved the goal!
Personally I went only on Friday, the last day of the packing, but it still was amazing, there were hundreds of people ready to pack 24/7. I felt incredible! But enough about that.
Last Saturday, Phoenix made a news, over 2000 volunteers gathered there with a goal to pack half a million meals for the Philippines. A lot of know about natural disasters which happened in Philippines, but how many of us did something about that? Read this report from the packing event and next time be thereto make a difference!

http://fmscblog.com/in-the-packing-room/ctw-phoenix-recap/

Feed My Starving Children Mega Pack!

Volunteers needed for FMSC Mega Pack!

The last time I went to church I found amazing announcement on the wall about upcoming FMSC Mega Pack which is going to be in MN Prior Lake in February, the goal is to pack 3 millions meals!!! Isn’t that great?! Can you imagine that? I am certainly going to go for a least one shift and help as much as I can, and you can help too. Follow them traveling around the US and maybe next month they will come to your city!

I hope they organize such events all over the country, and if you know about something like this share it in comments, and for more information about event see the link below:

http://fmscblog.com/in-the-packing-room/large-mobilepacks-2014/

Facebook page for my campaign!

Staying up to date with all the nowadays opportunities of social media all the GNML students created their Facebook community page, according to the specific social issue they want to find solutions for.

You can visit my Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/activelifeposition

Of course it is not enough just to create the Facebook page, you to attract audience to it and give people an information.

Just answering some questions I want to share with you two ideas - "How do I plan to use your Facebook Page to engage your audience for your “Social Media For Social Change"

- The first idea which came to my mind is to provide people with information about the volunteering opportunities in the community,city, country. It can be possible by posting all the different organizations addresses and contact information. Also, when the group will have enough users, they will be able to share personal observations and experience with other users which will help them to find the "best fit" places to help!

- Also posting all the latest news and updates about the world and everything what is going on. First most of the people spent tons of their free time on the Facebook and don’t use specific utilities or websites which provide them with latest information about interesting projects and campaigns. So, just sharing ideas, news and information about all kinds of different issues will attract people to the community service and make them active citizens! 

Thank you for your time, have a great rest of your day!=)

Inspirational story from family in Guatemala!

Working as a volunteer for the Feed My Starving Children Organization is an amazing feeling for me!
I wish I would volunteer there more often, but unfortunately it is not close to my house. and it takes a lot of time to get there. But every time I go there, I come back home with an amazing feeling of satisfaction and inspiration, you might ask why?
The reason is - that you get to meet all the volunteers who is ready to help others donating their time and sharing desire. Every time before the shift starts packing process, you get to watch this amazing video about one kid whose life was changed forever just because of the ONE MEAL a day, how crazy it is, all the people I know have at least two meals a day, when we say: " I am hungry", we basically mean that we did not have a breakfast, or maybe missed a lunch. For those kids it means not having a food for WEEKS, or simply have ONE meal a month.

One of the stories I found which will give me a inspiration and wish to visit FMSC one more time came from Guatemala, from the family who received food help from FMSC. Please read an article and volunteer at Feed My Starving Children organization, if you can!

Visit: Please, visit: http://fmscblog.com/from-the-field/hope-in-guatemala/

Video introduction to my project

As most of you might now, I am a current exchanger student and this blog was created for my online course provided by PH International - GNML(Global New Media Lab). 

I am certainly enjoy my time learning all the new information in the classroom and gaining important knowledge. 

There is a video for one of my assignments, I hope you will enjoy it!

Feel free to write your suggestions and feedback's. Thank you!

"New Year" opportunities

The New Year is coming up! Christmas is a great time to make differences in someones life or just simply give a feedback to your community.

Today, I found very post about the Peace Corps, and more than 160 new Peace Corps volunteers were sworn into service in the month of December.

All of them went through the hard process  of preparation to live their country next year, and spent two years serving a great purpose to the "new" home, working on different kinds of community and social projects and campaigns. The went through the long process of learning all the information about the country they are going to stay in. And all of that happed through month of December.
 Isn't that amazing?

Original  article - http://www.peacecorps.gov/media/forpress/press/2317/.

Also, please watch this nice video about all the work and projects done by the Peace Corps.

How to train information to find you!

I very excited to post a new message in my blog about all the new things I learnt.

My new blog is going to be about using RSS and Google Alerts and "Training information to find you". 

 I would not say that it was very easy challenge for me, cause you need to specific with your goals and all your requests, because only you know what kind of information you need. You can find tons of it, but the purpose to find sort of information which will be useful for YOU!

Fortunately one of my Google Alerts found very interesting post for me from Red Cross organization, here is a link for it - http://www.redcross.org.ua/modules/news/index.php?id=567.

All this post is about all the accomplishments of Red Cross organization in Ukraine, all the difference they made, and all the help they provided, I was amazed by the statistics and all the facts which were in this post.It also helped to find out all kind of areas which Red Cross in Ukraine deals with, to be true I was impressed by that amount.It gave a vision and understanding of where I can go, and whom can I ask for support or help during my community campaigns!

To make a conclusion I want to say that RSS and Google Alerts not only save your important time, it allows you to skip reading all those unimportant information which doesn't have no value to you, just start to use those tools and you will see a difference.

Welcome!

Welcome everybody!

My name is Denys, I am 16 and now I am spending an amazing time in USA as an exchange student. It is going to be an introduction post about all the ideas I have, and which I want to share with you, so lets the show begin!

The topic I am going to talk about is volunteering and peoples attitude and vision of it. Yes, Volunteering - helping other people or your community without expecting to get any profits and benefits, spending your time for helping others and making differences. I strongly believe that right attitude and vision is important for my young and developing country. And now I am going to explain you "why".

“It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.”  –Aristotle

A lot of people all over the world, and in my country might say: "No, I am  not going to waste my time for unimportant things, like volunteering, I wont get any profits or benefits and my time would be wasted." And you know what, They are ABSOLUTELY WRONG! Here is why:

• While you are volunteering you spent your time making changes and being an active citizen, you are the master of your life, for example if you don't like trash on the street you go and clean it up, instead of sitting in front of computer and spending time with any purpose;
• You increase your knowledge, receive important information and learn new and important things for your future, probably you need an example, here is one, you organize your own project, its helps you to learn how to interact with people, plan your time and resources, fundraising and a lot, lot other important stuff.
• And last, but not least, it actually can help you to have a great job and stable future, just because you meet new people, you ,making new friends, you communicate with people who provide you with funds and resources. You never know, but one day some of them might give you high paying job!

So, now we know why volunteering is that important, and personally I am going to continuing share and providing information for people back in my country - Ukraine. I am going to tell people how amazing volunteering is!
That is one of the reason why I participate in GNML, to learn how to provide people with important for them information and encourage them to participate and be an active citizen.

There is an example, during my time in United States I volunteer a lot, and one of the places I go - is Feed My Starving Children. For those of you, who don't know, FMSC - is an organization which provide people with food in more that 72 countries all over the world.

Back in Ukraine, unfortunately we don't have FMSC, but we have a great organisation Red Cross, which is,probably working together with FMSC. But a lot of people in my country have never heard about this one, and the reason why - lack of information and knowledge. 

 To make a conclusion, I want to say that when I will go back home, I will start to promote and share information with people,because a lot of people don't even know what kind of great opportunities they are missing and how great it is to volunteer. And the audience I am going mostly work with is young generations, because all of them, together with all the important information and resources will make a difference in the future and WE WILL CHANGE OUR COUNTRY FOR BETTER!




P.S. Comments, feed backs and following very appreciative!=)