'Blog Action Day' Calls for Discussion of Poverty

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 10/15/08

The second annual Blog Action Day takes place today, bringing together 8,000-plus blog, podcast, and videocast sites to post about the same issue on the same day. This year's topic is poverty. The purpose of the effort is, according to organizers, "to create a discussion. We ask bloggers to take a single day out of their schedule and focus it on an important issue. By doing so on the same day, the blogging community effectively changes the conversation on the web and focuses audiences around the globe on that issue. Out of this discussion naturally flow actions, advice, ideas, plans, and empowerment."

The organizing site includes a list of linked resources to assist participating bloggers.

Social network Classroom 2.0 contributor Anne Mirtschin wrote in a recent posting, "It would be great if all those who blog and whose students blog could post about this and bring attention [on] this global issue to their audiences."

Another participating blogger, La Bricoleuse, who is both a costumer and an educator, writes that she's decided to support Donors Choose, a site that matches donors with underprivileged and underfunded schools. "I'm adopting a few 'pet projects' that I'm going to try to get funded over the course of this academic year--projects that directly relate to what I do, cultivation of an [appreciation] for theatre and its production, particularly costuming," she wrote in a recent post.

Last year's theme for the non-profit event was the environment. It attracted the participation of 20,000 blogs.