International Networking Week: Action without Borders

From Ami Dar, director of Idealist.org.

I am writing to invite you to imagine a better community and a better world, and to see how we can build it together, starting right now.


WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT?

Very briefly, we believe that:

1. All over the world there are many people who share similar values, dreams, and challenges.

2. With all the tools we have now, we can communicate like never before.

3. If all of us had more opportunities to connect and work together, online and face-to-face, in neighborhoods, villages, schools, and workplaces, the world would be a different place.

How different? We don't know, but together we can find out.


WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?

Because there is a good chance that right now, on different floors of an apartment building somewhere in your country, two people are looking out their windows and wishing there were a garden or a playground below instead of a dirty courtyard. But acting alone can be difficult, and in many neighborhoods, both rich and poor, there is no way for people to know that they are not alone - that down the street, or two floors above or below them, there may be others who would gladly work with them if they only knew where or how to find them.

This problem is part of a bigger challenge: to get involved in our community, most of us need a few things in place. We need some hope and some trust, a minimum of freedom, and access to others who may want to work with us. We may also need more information about the problem we want to solve, stories and ideas from people who have dealt with similar issues, and options for action that make sense to each of us.

Some people have access to all this, but many others do not. As a result, millions of opportunities for action and collaboration are missed every day. Think only of one neighborhood, one school, or one village you know, and of how much more could be done there with the available resources. If you then add up these unfulfilled possibilities all over the world, the picture that emerges can be both exhilarating and heartbreaking.

This sense of unrealized potential is one engine driving this project. The other is a conviction that for the first time in history we - all of us - have everything we need to build a strong global network of people who want to act locally, think globally, and share what they can with others.

To start, please:

1. Visit http://www.idealist.org/imagine to learn more about this project and to post your thoughts about it.
(This page is in ten languages, so you can also share it with people who don't read English.)

2. Attend or host a start-up meeting in your town during the week of February 5-11. During that week, people all over the world will meet in neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces to talk about how to create more opportunities for action and collaboration for everyone. To sign up for a meeting, or to post one in your town if no one has done this yet, please visit http://www.idealist.org/meetings

3. Help spread the word. Nothing on the internet is more powerful than your forward-> button, and we hope you can share this message with friends and colleagues, by email, in person, or through your blog, website, or social networking site. (See the bottom of this message, under my signature, for a bit more about this.)

Most importantly, keep in touch. We read every email we receive, and from now on we'll be updating the blog on the Idealist homepage every few hours with news, questions, and ideas as this project evolves.

Thanks for reading and for taking this leap of faith with us. We look forward to working with you and to seeing what we can all achieve together.

All the best,

Ami Dar
Executive Director
Action Without Borders
http://www.idealist.org


Action Without Borders is a nonprofit organization with offices in New York, Buenos Aires, and Portland, Oregon. Our mission is to connect people, ideas, and resources to help build a world where all people can live free and dignified lives. Our website, Idealist.org, is one of the most popular nonprofit resources on the web, with information posted by 65,000 organizations in 190 countries, and over 40,000 visitors every day.


A FEW TIPS FOR SHARING THIS MESSAGE

* Forward this email to anyone you know who might be interested in it, and post a message on any relevant mailing list or online forum.

* Tell people at work, at school, or in your place of worship to visit Idealist.

* If you have a website or a blog, tell people about this initiative, and send them to http://www.idealist.org You can also add a button or a banner to your site from http://www.idealist.org/en/about/site/logos.html

* If you are on MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, Friendster, or any other networking site, use any tools they give you to help spread the word. On MySpace we are at http://www.myspace.com/idealists (just getting started there), and on Facebook you can join the "I am an Idealist" group.

* Take a picture: pick a place you love in your area, shoot a photo or a video that expresses what this idea means to you, and post it on Flickr.com or on YouTube.com with the tag "Idealist"

* Lastly, if you use Del.icio.us, Technorati, Digg, or any other bookmarking or news aggregation site, add a link to http://www.idealist.org or straight to http://www.idealist.org/imagine

Thanks again!
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International Networking Week: Action without Borders