Guest blogger Kate Irwin works for SCOPE [1], a Sarasota, Fla.-based nonprofit with the aim of building civic engagement. And as project coordinator for the Summit for Environmental Action [2], she was a Top 20 finalist in the Case Foundation’s Make It Your Own Awards [3]. She recently met with her fellow grantees to discuss lessons learned and to learn some new ones. Here she reflects on the role of technology in advancing causes.
I’ll start out by making a confession: I don’t add Facebook applications to my page. Even “Causes [4]” applications. Don’t get me wrong, I use Facebook and love it. Still, I have remained opposed to Mob Wars, (Lil) Green Patches, Causes, and all of the other ones. Sometimes I feel like the lone Facebook user to be this way.
Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I’ll share that I think I’m a Millennial. Honestly, though, it’s not a label I identify with, maybe because I just barely fit. What are the qualifications for being a Millennial? Is it not remembering a world with no Internet? (I do, but fuzzily.) Is it being under 18 on January 1st, 2000? (I was, barely.) Is it texting? (I do, sparingly -- it costs me money!). If its members can’t define the generation, what is the marker of a Millennial and what does it mean to be one anyway?
One more revelation: I was a finalist in the Case Foundation’s Make It Your Own Awards, and I got the chance to go to Baltimore this week to be a part of the inaugural grantee gathering and mini-conference. I was chosen as a finalist because of my work with the Summit for Environmental Action, a project aimed at setting and achieving positive environmental change in my community through dialogue, goal setting, and group action. I have to thank the Case Foundation for letting all of the program finalists come together this week, because I learned so much and made so many great connections.
So, how do these three things I’ve shared come together?
One of the things that define Millennials as a generation is the use of technology (especially computers) to effect change. Do I think this is fundamentally different from previous generations? Possibly so. But also possibly not. I believe that we need to be careful about using technology to enhance real-world changes instead of pat ourselves on the back while we “contribute” from our living rooms. This is the reason for my Facebook apps ban.
But, after my experience this week in Baltimore, I don’t want to lose the wisdom of and connection to the other Make It Your Own Awards finalists. On top of that, I want to get connected to some of their projects, even though I don’t live in the same place and can’t directly help them out. And I know most of them use Facebook.
The really interesting thing about me feeling this way is that I had “met” the other program finalists before. We’ve been on numerous conference calls and e-mails throughout the entire process. But this was the first time we were able to be in the same room, and that personal, visual, tangible connection was different than the virtual one we already had. I came back to Florida feeling like I have a connection to a community of people who are thinking about and working through the same things I am.
So, my revelation from the Make It Your Own Awards gathering is really pretty simple: computer-based technology is a tool for change. It’s only one in a toolbox that should involve face-to-face meetings and phone calls and chance conversations and networking sessions and a hundred other resources. My Facebook application ban existed because I saw applications as a superficial way to do the work of social change. For many people, I think they are. But if we can show people that our toolbox is larger than pointing and clicking, and that accepting a cause invitation is only the first step…
If we can do that, and I think it will be up to us to do it, we have the power to change the conversation in our communities and in our nation.
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