The previously mentioned summer course on social media was only a brief warm up of the much grander gig comming up this fall: The new Global Change education with it’s two related and distinct course-lines called New Organizer and New Communicator. One of the most exciting features of this course that we’re working on right now is the mentor-network that we have put in place in cooperation with Global Voices Online. A network of 30 bloggers and media activists will be mentoring our 30 participants in the use of blogs as ‘tools for change’. The network is quite a list in itself – coming from over 25 countries with all continents represented – and with fascinating experiences in online activism and blogging each and every one of them!
As part of the project new endavours in blog-training and mentoring are already being developed by the network – and hopefully the pioner experience we all gain from this first project can help us strengthen the global online dialogue and organizing.
The initial idea came about when I asked Solana during her brief visit to Copenhagen last fall how we should go about training our students and activists in blogging and the use of social media. For sure, one key element of getting into blogging – which I not too succesfully have trained many teams of students in already – is to have readers and to establish a dialogue with them gradually… so we came up with the idea of having seasoned and skilled bloggers from Global Voices mentoring our students in the art of blogging, reading their blogs, commenting and building the dialogue blog-post by blog-post, while introducing them to their local corner of the global blogosphere…
As Dorte Toft one of the very few known bloggers in Denmark (who’s known for blogging – and not for her carrier in other domains) coined it after becoming known for covering a major finance-scandal: blogging in Denmark is kind of like “doing streaptease in the dark.” Taking the poor tradition for blogging in Denmark as a starting point, we hope to achieve a much stronger introduction to the media to our participants through the mentoring model – and hopefully, some of them will turn out to really enjoy and take advantage of the opportunities it offers – and use this tool to continue our joint struggle for social change.
The project will kick-off from September 7 when the course starts – I’ll make sure to keep you posted on this blog as well, of course.
