Voices blog

Please note that this opportunity is no longer available.

Do you care about global issues like poverty, war and disease? Do you want to gain experience of using social media? Then we want to hear from you!

Act Global is a joint project between the Citizenship Foundation and Relief International. Our online network is a place for young people from around the world to think, talk, solve and act on global issues they care about.

We are looking for passionate, articulate and enthusiastic young people (aged 16 -19) to become Act Global Online Youth Ambassadors. You will need an interest in and awareness of global issues, some experience of using social media and strong written skills.

What would I need to do?

• Write blogs to encourage discussion on global issues
• Encourage others to use the site by commenting on photos, videos, blog posts and polls
• Welcome new members to the site and help them to get started

What do I get in return?

• An excellent opportunity to add to your CV
• Experience working on an international project
• An induction at Citizenship Foundation Offices in Central London
• Travel expenses covered
• An invitation to our Celebration Event at City Hall in October
• An award after writing 10 blogs

If you want to get involved email: leila.nicholas@citizenshipfoundation.org.uk for an application form.

One of the issues surrounding poverty, cited in research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, is lack of media exposure; non-news broadcasts rarely mentions the subject, and when they do they tend to focus on extreme cases.

There’s an apparently easy response to that: the internet. The resources are there now to bypass - even influence - traditional media.

There are two obstacles though.

Firstly, how to harness the power of social media tools to make your voice heard above the clamour of millions (and counting) of others.

Secondly, the dilemma that the poorest in society, in a civic sense as well as an economic one, are likely to be the least able or motivated to access those tools in the first place.

The British government recently pledged £xm to put computers and broadband into the hands of the nation’s poorest. This sounds great, and yes the tools can’t be used if they’re not available, but one day they will need replacing (and besides, the government has also just pledged £xb to protect our finances).

What we tend to forget is that most people already have tools of some kind or other. I’m not currently in front of a PC, I’m writing and publishing this post from my mobile phone, on the train. Granted the tools are poorer than those of my office PC, but still perfectly adequate.

The question then is of how to help people use the tools available to them.

There is a lot of discussion at the moment about ‘digital mentoring’ (of which I am broadly in favour), and of how informal and mutual education can be used to help bridge the ‘digital divide’.

And those mentors who start from a deeper understanding of the technologies are themselves in a good position to publicise the stories of the people they engage with. While many of those would probably do that anyway, encouraging mentors to be advocates could provide more ammunition for the fight aganst poverty.