Abstract
With advancement of technology a lot of issues have been invented. Different social media has been developed such as Face-book, twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube. With this advancement, reaching out to different people in different part of the world has been made easy. In evident those huge groups of young youths spend most of their time in social media, accounting for about seven and half hours a day. Based on this, in this paper my proposal is to create a site “Inspiration Initiative.” Through the social Medias and the sites fan page different youths can inspire each other on social, political and economic issues that will enable them change their minds or attitudes towards various issues. Additionally, different works of different authors tackling Social Media for Social Change is also discussed to support my idea. Towards the end a simple budget required to accomplish this goals is created and a conclusion made.
Introduction
As time as passed by, there has been a dramatic increase and mass embracement of Social Media for social change. What motivates me in life is education and bringing change. I believe that education is the key to success (Delaney, John, 4). Based on this assumption I am motivated towards creating a group to be known as Inspiration Initiative. The major aim of this group will be to generate conscious conversation among peers by use of social media. It important to note that social networking has little to do with creating interconnection among people but more on an attempt to encourage social promotion. Nobody understood about social media whose aim was to bring people closer to each other or even ruin the relation among people. Despite the addiction of the internet among people, there is more that people can communicate using the social media.
Current youths have the capability to alter generation’s technology into a steering tool to discover and explore problems, successes and passion. In my opinion each and every individual has in his own hands a given percentage of technology that has the capability to manipulate, inform and engage the public groups. Within the social media, the information to be shared involves social issues that are of significance to day to day life activities. In schools it is always emphasized that learning is a chore and more so boring. Based on the attitude concerning social media among different individuals, education can dramatically change. Through the social media young youths can learn that which is of their interest using the social media such as YouTube, Facebook, LinkdIn, twitter among other social Medias (Delaney, John, 25). Through such social media as YouTube, the youths can be very innovative. This will enable such individuals to create wonderful pictures and videos on environment, political and social justice matters. Such video can be very motivating among the youths such that they can inspire and promote the youths to generate interest on earth creation and also develop passion and actions within their lives and communities at large. Based on this, my aim and vision is to make use of social media such as YouTube to create fun and informative video that can change the society into a better place.
One of the philanthropic organizations is the Philanthropies’ Youth Global Leadership Program. This is a group planned and driven program meant to stress on community services, entrepreneurship and leadership through various activities. Through the use of social media the Youth Global Leadership program creates a balance on chances linked to a steer to a valuable influence in the world. Its major aim is to ensure that the youths are agents of alterations. Major attempt is to create leaders both locally and internationally (Delaney, John, 45). There ensure that the philanthropic aims are achieved, members of this group often meet to build capacity via workshops, professional networking and services-learning activities. Through the development of information technology, the group has completely embraced it. Social media has taken over meetings that held often since different ideas are exchanged through the internet. Through the use of social media, this group offers an opportunity for its members to offer in a significant way to the society that he or she has given him a lot and more so links its members to different individuals who each one believes has played a role as a mentor. This has enabled its members to be well conversant about the world as a whole.
Being a member of this program, each and every person motivated to find out, design and implement individual passion-Core projects. So as to build my Core Project, I was involved in a school retreat referred to as “360 Leaders”. This program was created in high school so as to create awareness among the students. The major aim of this was to create mentors among the selected individuals. Training was done for 100 leaders out of the 350 selected individuals. After being involved as one of the few selected individuals, I was able to attend the training retreat. One of the experiences in the retreat was answering continuous personal questions. Among the question was the social issue that one was interested to be engaged in (Harmon, Charles, &Michael, 68) Based on this question, I realized that I was motivated towards creating and increasing awareness among my peers on social issues by use of social media.
It is true that social media is controversial and is often used for bad than it is used for good in the day to day activities by the youths. Despite it being bad or good, it is very powerful. Youths spend most of their times, approximately seven and half hours in the social media such as twitter, Face-book, and YouTube. For instance Face-book and YouTube have more than one billion people or users (Delaney, John, 57). This is a very huge population to interact to bring change into our community. This creates a good basis o venture into this deal. If our youth and other members of the community spend all this time in the social media, we can also use the same to share vital and meaningful information.
It is quite motivating to find out that the major difference between the Millennials and the last generation is the adoption of the digital technology. They have the capability to develop profiles on current social networks very efficiently. Despite the bad things these individuals do using the internet, there are things that they can be credited for. For instance they are among the pioneers to come up with ways to give back to the society and sharing different social issues.
In an attempt to promote and expand no- profit organizations, such organizations as IGNITEgood has joined hands with The Huffington Post to offer about $100,000 to 10 different organization games that steer humanity forward (Evans, Liana, 126). This was referred to as “Millennial Impact Challenge”. Other amounts are also offered to organizations that get the highest number of likes in Face-book during a voting face.
It is also very interesting how the young generations interact with philanthropic organizations. After an investigation with nonprofit organization, it was evident that they prefer learning of the existence of a given program through websites or social media. A lot of its population are in possession of smartphones and therefore have access of what organization does, how it is engaged in its activities and other sharable information. From the research it was evident that about 70% have integrated and exchanged information with nonprofit organizations through Face-book. About 87% follow such organization on twitter. 60% give admiring comment and re-tweet information from the nonprofit organization.
Taking into consideration the level of involvement, 81% of the interviewed individuals desire to learn about various nonprofit volunteering opportunities through their peers. This brings out the need for the nonprofit organizations or charitable organizations leaders to create more content that people can share and support it by use of a given mechanism. This will enable its supporters to spread such information. Also leaders should display emails and websites that the organization displays their voluntary work information (Delaney, John, 108). Often youths who volunteer usually make donations. Therefore, this is a my motivating factor that after I have build inspirational organization I will be in a position to effectively interact with my audience through online and offline techniques.
In is also evident that these youths give their donation through online transactions. This is supported by 70% of the respondent who claimed that they had contributed o such organization via the web. Therefore, as an organization there is need to create some features to create some incite for financial support from the visitors. To promote reliable donations, the organizations should be clear and precise about the impacts of the donations to the society and the power it will add to the organization. What should be avoided involve giving specific amount expected from donors or even dispatching long mail letters for assistance.
Proposed Budget
In conclusion it is evident that current youths have the capability to alter generation’s technology into a steering tool to discover and explore problems, successes and passion. In my opinion each and every individual has in his own hands a given percentage of technology that has the capability to manipulate, inform and engage the public groups. Within the social media, the information to be shared involves social issues that are of significance to day to day life activities. Therefore, if I can get funds and necessary resources I am completely convinced that I will creating and increase awareness among my peers on social issues by use of social media.
Work Cited
http://www.blogworld.com/2012/11/02/millennials-using-social-media-for-social-good/
http://theinspirateinitiative.wordpress.com/2014/10/28/using-social-media-for-social-good/
Delaney, John F. Social Media 2012: Addressing Corporate Risks. New York, NY: Practising Law Institute, 2012. Print.
Evans, Liana. Social Media Marketing: Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media. Indianapolis, Ind: Que, 2010. Print.
Harmon, Charles, and Michael Messina. Using Social Media in Libraries: Best Practices. , 2013. Print.
