Wednesday, March 26, 2008

News

Defrosting Apathy and the Global Poverty Blog are growing at an amazing rate. There are several extremely fantastic things happening that I hope you'll be involved in.


Inspired by Millennium Development Goal #8, "develop global partnerships for development," Defrosting Apathy has forged new partnerships with the student leaders of Silliman University in Dumeguete and the Knowledge for Development Centers (KDCs). KDCs are partnerships between the World Bank and leading private and state universities in the Philippines. As students, we have the power to affect global change. Together, we can create an even bigger impact than we could alone. My hope is to create an international team of students with diverse skills and perspectives. We will discuss one thing we'd like to change, and then design and implement a plan to create that change.


I hope you'll join us! Share your ideas for a better world at defrostapathy.proboards89.com.

I'm really excited about this project. I think once we get rolling, we're really going to be able to do something powerful. I'm sure it will be difficult at first, and we'll have a lot of disagreements - I hope we have a lot of disagreements, but I think we'll all be able to learn important skills and lessons.


That brings me to the Philipinnes. The report from my trip will be available online very soon. I'm waiting for final comments from one last person before it becomes a public document. This has inspired and required an update to the site, but I think its better if you're surprised.

We will also be welcoming two new friends to Defrosting Apathy. Matt Peng, an econ student at San Jose State University, will be translating economics for us. His first article might be about "why economic development?" but Matt has complete creative freedom so maybe he'll change his mind. Joseph Johnen, also a student in San Jose (sorry, I forgot what school), is great at computer stuff. He'll be helping me photoshop all of my awesome Philippines pictures - like with cropping at sharpening and whatever else he thinks should happen.

If you would like to work on Defrosting Apathy, please email me - if you have your own idea that would be cool, or you could do something on my list of things to get around to, which would also be nice, as I am living a double life.

(Edited March 27, 2008 for crazy formatting issues. Mac and Google hate each other now, and its so inconvenient.)