Glenn Close sets back Disability Rights 50 Years

Glenn Close has won an Emmy, a Golden Globe, a Tony, and has been nominated for an Oscar, but she still can’t seem to get a simple PSA right. She and her sister Jessie, who has bi-polar disorder, have recently launched a new campaign to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness- but are they [...]

Can social marketing reduce stigma?

This was one of the questions I addressed in my masters thesis this past summer. Specifically, I wanted to explore how different cultural interpretations of disability would affect communication efforts to reduce stigma in developing countries. More on that later.
As I was doing research, I came across a very interesting campaign from Scotland. The tagline [...]

Got Water?

Its summertime in Washington, DC, and although it has been a comparatively mild summer, it is still hot and humid enough to make you want to jump in the pool, or have a tall glass of crisp, cold water.

How about the latest in boutique bottled water, B’eau Pal?
Unlike other high end aqua refreshment, [...]

Don’t let your work hide on a shelf!

Last semester I took a course on children in international development. It was an amazing overview of some of the particular development issues that hit children – child labor, trafficking, education in crisis, early marriage, HIV/AIDS to name a few.
The final project for the course was a case study and we were partnered up with [...]

Virtual Violence

Today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and there are lots of things you can do!
UNIFEM has organized a “Say No to Violence” campaign, and they are collecting signatures to deliver to UN Secretary General Ban Kim Moon. You can find out more, and sign the petition here.
I’m a little disappointed [...]

Rough draft of history

At a recent Internet Advocacy Roundtable, held monthly at the Center for American Progress, Professor David Perlmutter from University of Kansas, and author of Blog Wars, said of blogs, “They are becoming the rough draft of history.”
I don’t know if that is a phrase he came up with, or if its been kicked around for [...]

The Future of Emailing Congress

Have you emailed your congressional representative? Did you feel like it did any good?
Congressional offices are receiving hundreds of millions of emails every year, and the workload on staffers is enormous! As the number of emails has increased over the years, the staff size and technology budgets have not.
The Center for American Progress will be [...]

Getting Excited About Maps

There’s been a lot of buzz about using maps in advocacy, and its been something I’ve been meaning to explore further. I knew about the use of maps to see that damage done in Darfur (you can track as village go missing, and as communities are destroyed in Zimbabwe). And as neat as these were, [...]

Live Blog Coverage of the Internet Advocacy Roundtable

The Center for American Progress holds a monthly event called the Internet Advocacy Roundtable. Today’s roundtable is called “Party On…line with the Republican and the Democratic parties.
I’ll be attending this event and invite you to follow along! Please feel free to post any comments of questions.
If you are seeing this after the fact, you can [...]

Public access and grassroots video

I’m attending a lecture today given by DeeDee Halleck, an expert in public access television programing and the use of communications in grassroots development.
You can follow along here.