Blogswana – Blog With A Purpose

While a lot of speculation about blogs is being discussed (via Lorelle On WordPress), here is a blog with a purpose.

Underlying is the the Blogswana Project which is a project to increase HIV/AIDS education in the African country of Botswana through blogging. It is being led by Curt Hopkins and Brian Schartz and operates under the Committee To Protect Bloggers.

The one-year pilot project will work with a group of about 20 college students from one of the major universities, and provide them with blogging and journalism expertise and guidance. They would commit to a year of “blogging for others.” Each student participant would start their own blog, as well as a blog for their “partner” (the person for whom they will blog). Each partner would be someone who has been effected in some way by the AIDS virus.

This project aims at achieving more than one goals – along with increasing AIDS awareness, it also aims at teaching the blogger students importance of communication tools and journalism.

Blogswana aims to take blogging beyond itself, beyond what can oftentimes seem like an indulgence. It also provides a platform to teach the student bloggers about communications technologies, about journalism, writing, photography, videography and radio. They would learn from us, we from them, and the bloggers from their partners and from each other.

Here is a project with a social, educative purpose that has chosen blogging as a tool of communication. I don’t think blogging is something that will fade away, it is something that achieves the purpose of World Wide Web.

Technorati tags: blogswana, blog, aids

Copyright Abhijit Nadgouda.