While you’re thinking about travelling abroad, remember communication! Here’s a handy infographic about “Avoiding A Large Phone Bill When Travelling.” You’re welcome.
by Andy
I want to go to there!
Thinking about going overseas to partake in a humanitarian project? Planning to do some research on the other side of the planet? These days it seems like everybody knows somebody who’s in a remote part of the world working to improve lives and build communities. While such an experience is often life changing and will profoundly affect the way you see the world, too often students will get on a plane underprepared and not knowing nearly enough about the place they’re going to live in for the next odd number of weeks/months. Sufficient preparation before the big trip will be a crucial factor in how much you can get out of your overseas experience, and also the kind of impact you can leave on the communities you visit.
Here are a few guidelines to help ready yourself for your overseas learning experience. I’ve divided them into 3 phases for people at different stages in the planning process: an interest phase, a preparation phase, and a last minute phase.
Interest Phase
So a friend of a friend of yours has just come back from Sierra Leone with Engineers Without Borders and is raving about what an incredible time she’s had for the past two months. The food, the people, the culture, the sun, everything about the place is simply magical and she feels like she’s found her mission in life. You’re thinking to yourself that this sounds like something you might want to try too. What do? Continue reading
We’re revamping the blog again! This time it’ll be more organized, streamlined, and hopefully easier on the eyes. Hope you like it!
– My Just Because Team
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"You've been invited to join the group Save Our Salmon" Hmm, I think I'll pass.
Slacktivism (sometimes slactivism or clicktivism) is a portmanteau formed out of the words slacker and activism. The word is usually considered a pejorative term that describes “feel-good” measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfaction. The acts tend to require minimal personal effort from the slacktivist.
– Wikipedia
We’ve all been a little guilty of indulging in feel-good causes that are really more about helping your ego rather than helping hungry children or what-have-you in other parts of the world. It’s all too common these days with the advent of web-based advocacy. Change your Facebook pic on XX International Day… voila, instant activist! Click on this button to sign a petition on an issue you’ve never heard about and with no other background information… ta-da, you’re on your way to making the world a better place. How effective is it really?
Evgeny Morozov wrote a great piece in Foreign Policy magazine questioning the use(full/less)ness of slacktivism, particularly if it will start to undermine and replace traditional activist measures like sit-ins, demonstrations, and other public antics. Which raises an interesting thought: if you get a hundred lazy teens who can’t be bothered to leave their rooms and join a protest, but they will join a Facebook group for a good “cause,” isn’t this better than not doing anything at all? Perhaps people are underestimating just how much influence social media has over the larger entities in society. A single provocative Tweet is enough to make it into the evening news; a Facebook group with a million members would certainly be able to catch some national media attention. It looks like the face of social mobilization is changing from just a handful of loud, picket-thrusting individuals to a sea of slow-moving yet unavoidable mouse-wielding netizens.
The idea behind the My Just Because campaign is that no reason is too small for getting involved, and that involvement can come in many forms whether it is learning about the history of a country, volunteering at a local community centre, or something bigger like traveling to another country and participating in grassroots activism (something that the winner of 13 Days That Changed My Life can potentially experience.) But where does the line between ‘small’ and ‘insignificant’ begin and end? Is joining a Facebook group or creating an account on Jumo or tweeting about global news a form of real involvement?
In my humble opinion, every click and webpage and link you see and make on the Internet starts a small process in your head, like a tiny voice saying, “I’m doing something good.” The more you do it, the stronger that voice becomes, and eventually you might move onto joining a club at school, and the voice will say, “I’m part of something good.” And who knows, some people take it a step further and start their own initiatives and they become the ones organizing Facebook events and Twitter rallies and so forth. I might be taking it a stretch too far, but not everyone is capable of being a full-on activist, so at the very least people are becoming aware, even just a little. And that’s worth something right?
by Andy
By Esther
Recently I was reading about a 6 year old on ABC News who was worried she was fat. Soon after, I was on a webpage comparing Megan Fox “before and after” her alleged plastic surgery. It wasn’t the article, but the comments that surprised me. Comments like
by Andy
If you’ve been keeping up with the news then you’ve probably heard about the so-called demise of Facebook (if not, you can catch up here: http://bit.ly/jVsp9f). I remember signing up for Facebook back when I was entering university, which was in 2006. In the span of five years it’s taken over so much of the Internet and the way people interact with each other. At the end of the night when you’ve met some really cool people and are parting ways, it’s no longer “Hey, let’s exchange phone numbers” but “Hey, find me on Facebook.” Can you say that you have as many phone numbers in your address book as you have friends on Facebook?
Facebook also performs well as a tool – event planning, announcements, marketing, commerce, and so forth. It’s hard to promote a brand or sell a new idea these days without simultaneously creating a Facebook page – it’s becoming almost as essential as coming up with the tagline itself. So of course when we were creating our marketing strategy for My Just Because, Facebook was one of the first few items to show up on the list.
I am one of those people who is weening off of Facebook and going back to the traditional “face to face” way of interaction. The same goes for my circle friends – all young 20-something individuals who are recent grads or new postgrads. Is Facebook here to stay or is it really reaching the end of its life cycle? How would everything change if Facebook were to suddenly collapse a few years from now? Continue reading
by Esther.
Quite frankly, it’s inevitable. In the wake of a massive earthquake, famine or major holiday, there will be chaos, aggressive fundraising, and … a celebrity-featured music track. It’s arguable how much these songs actually benefit the causes they’re advocating for, but I for one genuinely appreciate them for a number of other reasons (e.g. their entertainingly over-the-top delivery, assemblage of A-list celebrities and so on). Here they are, assembled* for your viewing pleasure, so enjoy.
(*not ranked – I’d like to avoid receiving death threats from die hard fans of any one of these songs. I know how personal celebrity activism can get…)
Continue reading
Posted in Just Because, Resources
Tagged humor, inspiration, international development, music
by Esther
It’s easy to assume that social activism only has one face. What comes to mind for you, when someone says the term “social activism”? An angry protestor, a hemp-covered treehugger, Angeline Jolie? Clearly social activism transcends the boundaries of cultural stereotypes, celebrities, and even our flawed conceptions of it. Continue reading
The term “bucket list” comes from the saying “to kick the bucket” which is a euphemism for “to pass away” (though you could also argue that that is just a euphemism for “to die.” Anyway.) Well actually it was popularized by the release of the 2007 film of the same name but that’s where they got that term from.
The idea of a bucket list is pretty neat, eh? These are all the things I want to do before I cease to exist. It’s like a To Do list but without any (determinable) deadline. On the other hand, the origination of bucket lists seems to have a much darker history. Check out this Wikipedia article explaining where it comes from.
I think it would be a nice exercise to think about what you want to put in your bucket list. From the comfortable and familiar (buy a house, own a car, adopt a pet) to the courageous and epic (wrestle a bear, explore the Aztec pyramids, order a cup of Kopi Luwak, walk on the moon), there are limitless things to do in this limited lifetime. What if the bucket had a theme? Say, social justice? How would that change your goals? Maybe instead of buying a car, you will buy an electric car. Or you could still explore the Aztec pyramids, but also research about the Indigenous groups of Mexico and raise social awareness through a documentary or blog.
This is the idea we have for a teaser campaign leading up to 13 Days That Changed My Life. Bucket lists are cool. Bucket lists are familiar. Who doesn’t want to have a bucket list?
Photo by Jim Barry Photography
My Just Because 