The Social Web Is Doing Social Good
Image via Wikipedia
Wanting to follow up on my last posting about helping those who need a hand-up this holiday season, I thought I’d share something I was reading about this morning that is encouraging for the future to me.
There is a web service called uBoost which is designed to help educators inspire better behaviors among students–from attendance to achievements–by rewarding them with an online points system which the students can later cash in for various prizes.
And according to this it seems that uBoost is not only turning the YouTube Generation into better students, but also into a Philanthropic Generation.
Students across the country are increasingly donating their reward points to charities rather than cashing them in for prizes.
In recent months students have sponsored a puppy, helped to fight poverty by sponsoring a child, donated hundreds of meals and planted thousands of seeds in third-world countries. They’ve also planted dozens of trees and saved thousands of feet of rainforest around the world.
These kids are giving me new hope in the future, they are the definition of awesomeness!
Using the Social Web for Social Good
Another web service I’ve been watching lately is SocialVibe.
This site pairs up charities and causes in need with donations from commercial entities, who in-turn are rewarded for their pledges by being promoted on site user’s Social network profiles at sites like MySpace.
Essentially, as a user you just pick a cause to support, choose a commercial sponsor and then place their promotional “badge” on your social profiles.
The more people (friends) who visit your profile pages and see the badge, the more points for donations you earn for your cause.
To me, this is a fantastic way to turn social networks that hundreds of millions of us are already using on a daily basis into platforms for doing good for the causes that we care most about.
If you wish you could do more to save the world/whales/rainforests or whatever but just don’t have the time or money to spare right now, SocialVibe provides an easy way for you to get companies like Sprint, Converse, Coca-Cola and many more to invest in those causes for you.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](/reblog_a.png)
Popular Writings
Categories:
0 Responses
!important}</style><![endif]-->
<script type=){kind=link}