7 comments

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  ade

  1 year ago

  the whole discussion about online youth work has thrown up issues i never thought about - young people in the main are not that it literate - there are real access issues for some young people - i am still surprised by the fact that there is a significant minority of young people that do youth act that don't have an email add and another small no that only access the internet at school as they don't have internet access at home...
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  mas

  1 year ago

  I think theres a bit of a myth that all young people are somehow technical wizz kids and certainly many seem to lack relatively basic skills both in using computers and the web - quite likely hindered by the short sighted approach to computer access in schools and local authorities.
  
  Having said that I don't think access issues are particularly important in this context if we consider that we're looking forward and it seems to me a reasonable assumption that access will rapidly improve and increase as time goes on - not least through mobile internet on mobile phones.
  
  For those young people that don't currently have emails I'd double check that - we heard the same from several apprentices when we first started doing most of our stuff online - turned out some of them didn't realise that hotmail is email!?! and all of them had a school email address. Most of them also were very inventive in being able to circumnavigate various restrictions placed on accessing certain sites by their schools.
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  Rizwan

  1 year ago

  A friend just forwarded me this post. Thought you might like to know that I'm working on a version of just this. Using next generation web technologies, social networks and online social behaviour to enable virtual volunteering; primarily to support the development of inner city youth. More info on my blog at www.urbansurvivalproject.org
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  mas

  1 year ago

  Hi Rizwan - I had a good look through your blog, looks like you've been giving the idea a lot of consideration.
  
  I'm interested in the facebook/social network approach and whether its possible to actually get people to take action beyond interacting within that network. People seem happy to sign up to groups, play around with applications and occasionally comment, but will they actually do anything offline? My own experience so far is that facebook can work well for groups that already exist and use it for organising/communicating (like us), or as in the example of Simon Berry http://tinyurl.com/6qxszq it can help demonstrate wide support for an individuals/small groups action or campaign....... but can social networks actually inspire people to take action when previously they wouldn't?
  
  I'd like to think they can - but its going to take a different approach. Currently its accepted that the vast majority of people who read blogs and forums don't and never will contribute. This isn't the case in real life projects and programmes (not if they work anyway!) - so the challenge I think is to be able to design an online service thats able to inspire action for the majority of users, not an already active minority - or is this too ambitious?
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  Rizwan

  1 year ago

  Hi Mas. Good points. My thoughts on this are that none of the existing social networks like Facebook or MySpace are designed to inspire action. However they can be used as conduits. In terms of audience, considering that Facebook has just gone over 120 odd million hits a month, and with over 80 million members most of which are in the Gen Y and Gen X demographics, it is a huge active majority that can be mobilised. The challenge is understanding and leveraging their motivations, and making it effortless. I'm reasonably confident around how we can do this by tapping into existing networks but not using their infrastructure or the standard models of interaction like wikis, blogs, comments, etc that most people never contribute to. My feeling is that our first challenge is to remove the real and perceptual barriers to helping others, by developing information, experience sharing and creativity based virtual volunteering that is quick, easy and satisfying. Then once we've built a decent community, slowly begin to leverage it for offline volunteering. But we must come at it from the perspective of the individual volunteer and enabling the value they want out of it, and not the traditional perspective of plugging organisations that need help. Bit difficult to convey the scope of what I'm thinking via these comments. If you'd like to talk it through and share some ideas I'd be happy to meet and discuss. Just drop me an email.
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  mas

  1 year ago

  Hi Rizwan - I definitely will be in touch in the nearish future. I'm tied up at the mo updating our main site + moving house but I'm hoping from August to be able to dedicate more time to this.
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  Rizwan

  1 year ago

  Great. Look forward to it. Good luck with the moving etc.
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