I really enjoyed both speakers that we had in class on Thursday. I think one of the things that stuck out to me the most was when Jason Zietz was explaining how to use social media to connect people with an easy way to make a difference. The hardest thing I am trying to overcome with this project is how to invoke change in other people, especially with issues that don't necessarily hit home for them. Also it seems the common solution for this is to donate money to a cause, but that's hard for me as I am sure it is for other people too, when we don't actually know where that money is going? How do you know when you give money to a website that the money is actually going towards something good rather than straight to someones pocket?
It starts with looking at all of the angles of an issue and then seeing where there is possibility for change. People will be more inclined to help if it is easy for them to do so. I will need to think of the easiest way to get people involved and I think that starts with awareness. Then perhaps I will focus on one issue at a time starting with educating people on overfishing and encourage them to find out where the fish comes from that they are eating. It is also important to know that the labels are correct in what you are buying as we have seen in Japan that is not the case, people are unknowingly eating hazardous dolphin meat. Then next step would be to get involved. It would be interesting to compile a list of all of the restaurants and groceries that sell fish state where each place gets their supply. If this information was made widely available people might be more conscious of the fish they are eating. If there happen to be restaurants who get their fish from harmful practices and enough people stop going there, they might change their ways.
Where does our money go when we donate it? Does it go to something good, or are we getting scammed. The websites Sue Salinger showed us were very interesting. The one where you could donate loan money was a good example of this. This site is called Kiva. For a long time and still to this day this website has been helping a lot of people, and our money has been going to a good cause. However, she pointed out Kiva was recently caught distributing money to places/people it should not be going. This caused the site's reputation to falter.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I like your strategy on making people aware of your issue. If we can let the general population know where they get their seafood, then this will make them aware whether it is safe or not. Like I said earlier, I am excited to see where your project will take you and the impact it will make in the long run.
Awareness of our food is key. It would be great if you could find a way or just explore options of finding out which restaurants get their food from where. This is almost exactly like what I am doing with getting GMOs labled on food products. If people knew that their fish was farm raised or caught by unsustainable methods there would far more people advocating against those practices. I believe the same would be true if GMOs were all labeled. I’ll be interested to see how you go about this because I’m still struggling to tackle this similar problem.
ReplyDeleteI believe that in this blog you stated the number one problem with social good. Typically people lack motivation to join a cause. Wether if it is because people are lazy or simply do not care, it is hard to get followers moving forward in the same direction. You mentioned that donating money is not a sufficient way to instigate social change. I completely agree with this statement; the reason donating money does not work is the following: People who care about social change (college students) do not have any money, whereas people with money (businessmen) do not care about helping out. This is why for my project I chose to have people join the cause not by donating money, but by participating in social media. Remeber cognitive surplus, people do not have excess money to spend, but they do have excess time to spend. The easiest way to have people donate to a charity is if it is free. (Free meaning that they are not donating any money, just time).
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