EveryOne Asia: Personal is Digital

Four days to go for the MDG summit and I’ve broken into a sweat.

I’ve got four days to get as many people interested in our EVERYONE campaign as possible because the more people who get behind it, the more power we will have to “thwack” policy makers on the head with a big number of supporters and say: “Wakey, wakey! People really do care about this issue. Please do something about it NOW!”

“Do something about what?” you might ask. Prevent babies from dying of easily preventable diseases, of course. We know how to do it. We have the resources. Now we want to ask policy makers: why aren’t we doing it, then? We want to ask them to keep their promises re: Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5.

We started the Everyone Asia site www.every1.asia just a few weeks ago. It’s getting off the ground, but now we need more people to show supprot for the cause before the day the MDG summit begins on 20  September. My head is constantly thinking numbers, numbers, numbers. How do I get more numbers?

I thought: let me go out to my own friends with this, and see what happens. They know me as their friend, and then they know me in varying degrees in relation to my profession. In this digital age, they just have to Google me and ‘poof!’ that personal-professional distinction disappears! So why not go to them and say hey: “this is who I am at work, and now I need your support?”

Will my mantra, “personal is digital “(to twist the well known phrase: personal is political) really work?

I have 287 friends on FaceBook, and I’ve been beseeching them to sign up practially every hour, on the hour! Fifty-one already have!  It’s really gratifying to see the numbers grow. And, to know that every click on the site is going to count. Having a deadline is kind of neat too – five days! four days! three.. It provides a sense of urgency. Plus I’ve got all my friends involved in a sort of “story” through my updates:  Why am I doing this? How long will they have to suffer my pleas? Is their name on the list when I welcome them to the campaign? Who is daft enough to join a freindly challenge on signing up more friends to this cause? All of this adds a bit of personal interest, and our very tagible, digital support, I hope, will keep growing.

It’s a movement that’s got to grow. It’s a pretty amazing movement, too. It brings people as far apart as Afghanistan and Japan together. How cool is that?

You can also push the UK government to lead talks to end poverty – press for change