Change the Web to Change the World

The KooDooZ Team is excited to be part of Social Actions’ Change the Web Challenge because we believe in the power of the web to change the world! During the next couple of weeks, we are participating in two Change the Web events and hope you can join us:

1. On Monday, March 16th, the Change the Web Challenge Los Angeles Event will be held at 8:30 pm PDT, following Bloblive LA, at SOUTH in Santa Monica. If you are in the Los Angeles area, please stop by to hear how to apply your entrepreneurial ideas to change the world by listening to case studies, learning about the challenge and sharing ideas about how we can change the web. You can RSVP via http://www.meetup.com/BlobliveLA/ or http://changethewebla.eventbrite.com/. For those of you not in the LA area, the event will be streamed live via www.ustream.tv/channel/KooDooZ. Thank you to our co-sponsors, Bloblive and Mixergy!

2. On Tuesday, March 24th, we will be moderating an online Change the Web chat entitled “Twitter for Good”. The featured guests are John Haydon, a blogger and social media consultant for nonprofits, Amanda Rose, global organizer of Twestival, which has already raised over $250,000 for charity: water, and Stacey Monk, of Epic Change and Tweetsgiving organizer. The guests will share their insights and suggestions with nonprofits, as well as volunteers, who want to mobilize people to take action in their communities. The chat will begin at 2 pm EDT/11 am PDT.

The purpose of the Change the Web challenge is to help people find and share opportunities to take action via websites, blogs and social networks. Joe Solomon, Director of the Change the Web Challenge, uses the example of someone reading a story about homelessness online and a pop-up window appearing with information about volunteer opportunities at a local shelter. Social Actions currently aggregates such opportunities from a variety of sources, including VolunteerMatch and Idealist.org, and is challenging people to develop applications to transform the web for change. For more information, please see www.socialactions.com/changetheweb.

Although the Social Actions’ Change the Web Challenge does not directly involve youth, the applications resulting from the challenge will help turn the good will and passions of kids into skills and strategies for creating change for years to come. Although it often feels like there is not much good news these days, we are encouraged by the stories we are reading about how youth are choosing to spend their spring breaks volunteering and applying in record numbers to organizations such as Teach for America. These are the most difficult times that the Millennial generation has experienced so far and they have demonstrated their desire to be part of the change to make the world a better place for themselves, as well as future generations.