Online networking for social good – A global approach
by Tracey Nichols|
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Jessie-Lee Langille, Master of Science (MSc) student in Health Promotion Studies at the School of Public Health |
Which online social networking website has nearly 200,000 members in over 200 countries and more than 40 million hits a month? Facebook? Friendster? MySpace? The answer is TakingITGlobal.org, an up-and-coming site focused on inspiring, informing, and involving youth for social good.
Enthusiastic about the possibilities that exist with TakingITGlobal, Jessie-Lee Langille, a Master of Science (MSc) student in Health Promotion Studies at the School of Public Health, is leveraging this technology and her education to gain real world experience in community development.
Canadians Jennifer Corriero and Michael Furdyk founded TakingITGlobal - while still teenagers – by considering the question, “What would we do if anything was possible?” This guided them to create an online resource for youth to strengthen the capacity of young people as leaders and citizens. They envisioned that the website would foster cross-cultural dialogue and understanding as well as increase awareness and involvement of youth in global issues.
Since starting in 2000, TakingITGlobal has had enormous success. The organization represents a large and diverse group of young people and the world has begun to take notice. “TakingITGlobal helps to close the gap between young people and international policy and the decision making process. Youth are encouraged to get involved with issues they are inspired by and connect with opportunities through organizations ranging from UN agencies to organizations within the non-profit sector,” said Langille.
When asked about her role as Alberta’s youth engagement coordinator for TakingITGlobal’s Creating Local Connections Canada project, Langille commented, “The organization has been making great strides in supporting youth internationally, but youth engagement in Canada struggles with the lack of mechanisms that foster collaboration and opportunities to share best practices.” The purpose of Creating Local Connections, she added, is to increase and support the engagement of Canadian youth in society through greater collaboration and communication among youth and youth initiatives and organizations.
Langille explained that members have a wide range of online communication tools available to them such as message boards, chat functions, and project pages. Each tool is designed to facilitate both local and global communications so that a health promotion coordinator could communicate with a local team in Canada and learn from a project coordinator in South America. When exploring the discussion boards, members can engage in conversations about growing up in a digital world, or keeping leaders accountable to the UN millennium goals, or whether corporations should be involved in community development.
“Working with TakingITglobal is a perfect fit for me. It is exciting to be able to directly apply the lessons I am learning in the classroom to the work I am doing. It has given me the opportunity to apply my health promotion tools in an interdisciplinary way while allowing me to explore the new uses of technology,” expressed Langille enthusiastically.
Langille’s offline work component also involves connecting people. She relates that so many non-profit agencies in the community are working at capacity, so extending their resources to include technology and networking doesn’t always seem possible. She is there to lend a hand.
“As youth engagement coordinator, my role is to raise awareness about TakingITGlobal and the tools available to youth. I am here to provide assistance to organizations that want to use technology to collaborate more effectively and I can help them increase their web visibility by linking their websites to the TakingITGlobal site.”
The University’s International Week, held in the last week of January, was a perfect opportunity for Langille to showcase her work. She organized a global gallery event and hosted TakingITGlobal’s first networking meeting in Edmonton. The event, an art exhibition, displayed artwork and photos that highlighted and celebrated the ongoing contributions from young people who are addressing global change. The networking meeting provided organizations the opportunity to meet with each other offline and discuss youth engagement best practices and opportunities to collaborate.
Langille is uncertain if her path will continue to be directed toward youth engagement issues, but she is confident that her experience with TakingITglobal and her education from the Centre for Health Promotion Studies in the School of Public Health are solid foundational pieces for future success. “The world is opening up for youth. They are connecting and moving forward on issues of importance to them. It is inspiring.”
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