ENDING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN - TAKE YOUR PLEDGE

‘One million men’ to promise an end to violence against women

 

Friday March 08, International Women’s Day, the actor Patrick Stewart, best known for his roles in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “X-men”, stood in the center of the Diplomat Ballroom at the UN Hotel in New York to advocate and call for the end of violence against women. The event was attended by about 200 actors, activists, politicians, filmmakers and musicians.

He pounded his fist against the podium and with each thump he counted ("One ... two ... three ...") until he got to nine.

"Every nine seconds a woman is assaulted or beaten in the United States," Stewart said.

Serving as host for the launch of "Ring The Bell," a global campaign calling on one million men to make one million "concrete, actionable promises" to end violence against women.

"Violence against women is the single greatest human rights violation of our generation," Stewart said.

"This is a call to action—not an act that will make things better in six months or a year's time," he continued. "This is action that might save a life today, or tonight, or tomorrow."

Patrick also told attendees his personal history with violence against women as a 5-year-old child at home; he witnessed the repeated violence his mother had to endure. He proceeded to tell attendees:

"I became an expert on when to open the door and throw myself between my father's fist and my mother's body," Stewart said.

He said his father "was unable to control his emotions—and his hands."

"My mother did not do anything to provoke my father," Stewart added. "But even if she did, violence is not the answer."

Read more and pledge:

 

One million men. One million promises. 

 End violence against women.

 

Credits:

Photo and logo: breakthrough.tv

 

On this day

By: Sil Gabriell  

For:  Connecticut victims and families

On this day
A tragedy happened
We must all pray
Do not be frightened

We need to be as one
Shift  consciousness
Do not bear a gun
Celebrate togetherness

Start with your family
Then your neighbors
Expand it gradually
Till we change our behaviors

We need to look inside ourselves and see
To be connected to the world as one and free

What is Wiser.org?

Fear not my Facebook friends

Facebook will be here for a while, otherwise what would I do not knowing what you ate for breakfast today or where you went for your vacation and even worse what would I do if I did not know you liked that or this page?
Well, life is not shallow and even though we need to share and know what little things our friends are doing, life is more than that.
Would you add someone to your Facebook friends list if that person lived in another continent just because the Facebook add says that person likes Starbucks too? Well, I certainly would not.
Instead would you add someone to your network if that person liked water conservation or was an activist to end social injustice? Well, I would.
Wiser.org, is the Facebook for people that want and need more than to know what each other  eat, drink or go on vacation.
It is a social media platform for those interested in issue areas such as: Education, Biodiversity, Community Development, Peace War and Security, see full list here. 
Now my friends, when you sign up to be part of this social network you need to be ready to do more with your life, to expand beyond the boundaries of the shallowness that we are fed every day of our lives. You need to be ready to actively participate either on your community or even online if you prefer helping others, providing support on a project or just adding a word of wisdom to someone's postings.
Here you can hit the "like" button but it is about giving more than just a nod, it is about involvement, collaboration, sharing.
Do not be discouraged my friends, you are not going to change or fix the world in one day just by joining Wiser.org but be sure to know that every action counts and we should all strive to take the first step today!

Here is how you can use Wiser.org

Photo by Bart Hoffstein

1. Discover. Find out what information has been shared by others in our knowledge commons.

2. Connect. Meet and connect with people doing good work in your area and around the world.

3. Share. Share your knowledge and work with the community and beyond.

4. Collaborate. Work together online with your colleagues, community and network.

Read our community guidelines and Wiser.org's Principles as a guide to this virtual global village.

If you support the work that is being done here, please consider making a donation to WiserEarth, the not for profit which runs this site. We are a community-driven, nonprofit organization and guarantee that your generous contribution will generate action!



Books on sustainability

Wiser.org fundraising challenge

BENEFITING: Wiser.org
ORGANIZER: Wiser.org
EVENT: Mozilla Firefox Challenge
EVENT END DATE: Jan 10, 2013


HERE'S THE STORY: 

When a group of social entrepreneurs needed a communication platform for their initiative in China, and additional multilingual and external social networking capabilities to facilitate dialogue between change-makers in Chinese and English….
...they turned to Wiser.org
When transitionners needed a space to support dialogue and the creation of their Transition Town initiatives, share their work through wikipages as well as events across France…
...they turned to Wiser.org
When ecocity visionaries needed to find an NGO with whom they could collaborate to pilot a fully functioning ecocity in a favelas of Rio is a viable solution to addressing today's city-related problems...
...they turned to Wiser.org


Here is how you can help:

BECOME A WISER.org SUPPORTER!
WiserEarth is the not for profit that runs the Wiser.org community - the global social network for sustainability. By supporting us, you are directly strengthening the vital global movement of 10s of 1000s of people, organizations and groups working to create a more just and sustainable world.
Please consider donating today to support our visionary program!


2012 HAS BEEN A REVOLUTIONARY YEAR for Wiser.org:

• We celebrated our 5th Anniversary and underlined our long-term vision for greater collaboration and connectivity among changemakers around the World.
• We expanded face-to-face WiserLocal gatherings to 20 countries
• We launched Wiser.org in Chinese and German, and our collaborative platform is now available in 8 languages
• We are connecting over 72,000 members across sectors and over 114,000 organizations from all around the world and helping more than 3,000 groups

YOUR DONATION WILL BE MATCHED

WiserCatalyst: $25 ...run the Wiser.org site for 1 DAY!
WiserAmbassador: $50 ... issue area sponsor
WiserSteward: $100 ... launch a face to face WiserLocal event in a new city
WiserLeader: $250 ... support our community manager to expand in their region
WiserVisionary: $500+ ... expand our global reach in a new country
Please consider making a year-end donation that is meaningful to you and empowers us to expand the reach and scope of our work as we continue to keep Wiser.org free of advertisements and free of charge.
It’s time for us to come together, to break down the silos and connect up our work!

My personal history with Wiser.org
I started as a volunteer in 2012 did not know what wiser.org was about but over the months I have come to know how important this platform is.
It is not just an online tool that you use to get connected with your friends, it is an online and offline tool to make connections outside your circles, connect with people in the fight for social justice, environmental protection, education and many other issues of our time.

The way it works

You join Wiser.org this can be done with sign on using other networks username and passwords or creating your own on the page. Choose at least 10 issue areas that you are interested about or personally working on. 
Write about yourself so other members can know what you are most interested in. 
Start sharing with the other members, you can also send request to join to someone's network, you can join and create your own groups.
The wiser platform is created by using Wiki technology which means you can create your own group or page with the look you want without knowing any HTML or any other web development tools, now if you are into web development you can also do all of the above using HTML.
The biggest plus for non profits looking for a place to find members and people that can offer help is that Wiser is a free platform to use, you will not see ads on your pages either.
Come join me in this fundraising campaign! Thank you 

This is my Wiser fundraising page:
   

What is Peace?

Suse Sampaio Simões travelled the world on a ship to 12 countries, including Bahamas, Dominica, Brazil, Ghana, South Africa, Mauritius, India, Singapore, Vietnam, China and Japan. She wrote this article to share her perception of peace after experiencing so many cultures and customs.  Versão em Português

Lately, all humanity wants is to live in peace; but what peace?

I see protests, people fighting, yelling, crying, and dying over the same request for peace.

I hear people saying constantly “stay in peace,” or “I need to find my inner peace.” What kind of peace is that? Apparently, we don’t even know the peace we necessarily need.

An interesting fact about a traveler is when he goes on a journey, it ends up being an inner journey. The frequent battle between you and yourself is the hardest one, when you start to challenge yourself.

During these fights, I realized that the universal language is a smile. It does not matter if it comes with a sad look or filled with tears. The smile is what matters, especially the sincere ones. Those bring me peace on moments when words cannot express a true emotion.

In a small village called Senase in Ghana, Africa, I met poverty up close and people who had many reasons to cry. However, there was the place I found the most beautiful smiles filled with pride when showing their teeth, where I found the funniest laughs of the kids that barely had water to drink, and smiles of the proud parents when I carried their babies in my arms. I saw the people dancing with the rhythm of the drums and their sweat streaming through their bodies expressing their passion for dancing. In the middle of all that rhythm, I saw peace within that community. Despite all the daily obstacles and the frequent battle seeking for help, they had peace.

Peace depends on the individual. It could be a millionaire with his mansions in Singapore or a rice farmer in Vietnam. It could be a Rasta in South Africa fighting for his rights or citizens in China for their freedom of expression. It could be the religious in India seeking for faith, or a driver in Mauritius trying to sustain his family. It could be the native in Dominica haunting for their place in society, or a student trying to grow in Japan.

Peace depends on our reality.
It could be a gay couple holding hands on the streets, women fighting for equal rights, marches from the youth to legalize marijuana, the strikes to raise salaries, or desperate wishes for an end of war – everything reflects upon a wish to live in peace.

It was amazing to discover the first step to find your own peace is to accept others. Among all these countries, it’s easy to see all the differences. The hard part is to feel and notice that deep inside we are all the same.

All the misery, corruption, and everyday difficulties make it hard to find that balance. That is the reason why I found the strength of a smile, everywhere I went, never failed me.

It doesn’t matter where we come from; we are all seeking for the same food to feed our soul – the peace that brightens us.

Smile, always!

---

Find more on Suse’s blog. Visit Suse on Wiser.org and send her a message of peace.

Learn more and share with us on Wiser’s Peace Day group.

Volunteer recruited for Wiser by: Sil Gabriell

Online Community Management

                                                        

What is like to work as an online community manager?

COMMUNITY BUILDING 

Well, let’s start with a few considerations about the job.

You can not build an online community overnight so it takes patience, dedication, determination, passion, maturity, hard work among others.

The first action when becoming a community manager is to get to know your community by introducing yourself as the person that can help the members with any questions, let them know you are there anytime they need thus making yourself trustworthy. You also have to track members activity to determine what they are interested in, asking them is not enough because most people can not give you an straight answer on what their interests are, by tracking activity you will be able to determine that for them.

Once determined what they are most interested in you can start sharing such content. It takes a lot of experimenting to start building their trust, slowly you will see that they will start sharing resources themselves and that should be the ultimate goal of a community manager.

You have to ensure that members receive more value than they contribute.

COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT

Be passionate about the brand you are representing and by any means do not loose sight of that. As a community manager you have to engage users/members and to do so you have to think outside the box and share content that is always aligned with your brand’s vision and goals but that fits people’s interests, so you have to share content from other brands as long as they coincide with your brand’s visions and goals. It is important to show that you are open to collaborate and share content that is not just generated by your brand but that will be aligned with your community interests.

Be careful when sharing content just generated by your brand because it will eventually look like spam and it shows your lack of interest for anything else going on out in the world. You need a world vision in order to captivate different interests.

My almost 6 months of community management experience for the WiserBrasil group on Wiser.org and the WiserBrasil Facebook page has taught me another important aspect of community building and it is about being multi cultural and best of all, multilingual. So consider that on your next community management job. Learn about different cultures and language if possible.

Know the resources available that can provide translations such as: Google translate, Bing translator among others. That can make a huge difference on whether or not members will stay.

Here are some online resources on Community management or community building:

Community management fundamentals

http://www.slideshare.net/rhappe/community-management-fundamentals

What is online community?

http://www.communityspark.com/what-is-an-online-community-manager/

Bridging language and culture

http://www.wiser.org/article/afffa16698ac601ac4c7f31d458735c7?

Ideas on building communities

http://www.wiser.org/article/118175f9845ae5e657041481490b2a61

By: Sil Gabriell

Wiser.org Community Editor and WiserBrasil Online Community Manager

Wisergiving tool evaluation

How important it is to know your charitable giving style?

Well, it is extremely important.

Wisergiving à is the new online tool to help you understand your style and make more informed decisions when donating to charitable organizations.

If you know your style you will donate to those organizations fitting your style thus making your efforts much more effective and over time you will see that your donations are doing what you envision them to.

I just found out my giving style by taking the WiserGiving Style Quiz™. I found out that my primary style is building movements with secondary style Direct services. Here is the excerpt:

Your dominant WiserGiving Style is Building Movements, which emphasizes building critical mass to the point that a significant number of people are deeply committed to an issue(s) and mobilize for change. You have a secondary Style, Direct Services, which focuses on the individual as the agent of social change. These are diverse but complementary strategies.

The tool then goes on to analyze each style individually and provides the insights for your charitable gifts and how they align with your style.

Here is an excerpt:

Think about your top charitable gifts last year. How well do they match your WiserGiving Style?
 Extremely well    Very well    Moderately well    Slightly well    Not at all
Experience shows that if your charitable giving does not match your core values, then over time, you will lose interest. There will be a growing sense that your giving is not meeting your expectations — you will feel that your giving is not having the greatest impact, but you won't know why. Now you do know why — because it doesn't match with your deepest belief about what really works and matters.

Ideally, what percent of your charitable giving would you like to align with your WiserGiving Style?
 0-20%    21-40%    41-60%    61-80%    81-100%
There are lots of valid reasons why people give their time and money to various initiatives — even when they aren't the same as our WiserGiving Style. Often times there are urgent needs that require an immediate response. Sometimes key issues or geographic communities that we deeply believe in need assistance in ways different from our WiserGiving Style. And there are times when our allegiance to people or organizations causes us to respond to their requests even if they are not consistent with our own WiserGiving Style. This is all fine — as long as we are making a conscious choice about it.

I find this tool extremely useful and judging by my giving experience it is extremely accurate on it insights.

Go on take the quiz today:

http://www.wisergiving.org/index.php