Blogging Against Violence Against Women

The Women’s Fund of Birmingham, Alabama in partnership with NBC 13, organized a blogger event on October 7th to raise awareness of the terrible toll of domestic violence on women and communities. The event, called Voices Against Violence, was a gathering of local bloggers at the NBC offices to blog about the pervasive, awful issue of domestic violence.

Here is how Emily Jones Rushing, the blogger for the local community foundation, described the event: “Bettina Byrd-Giles, Virginia Jones, Sunny Slaughter, Cutressa Williams, Andre Natta, Daniel Walters and, yes, the Community Foundation’s chief blogger, Emily Jones Rushing, got to spend time with each other across the conference table as we interviewed police officers, judges, social workers, counselors and members of the Women’s Fund’s giving circle, Voices Against Violence.”

A great example of the blog posts that came out of the event was one by blogger Bettina Byrd-Giles who interviewed the author Tahiera Brown, about the event:

BB-G:  How will the Blogathon help?

TB:  I believe the Blogathon will help: 1) To educate the public.  With public awareness, more people will become involved.  2) To raise funds to help organizations such as the police department, the YWCA, therapists, and many others.

There’s so much to love about this event!

First, the importance of the partnership between broadcast media and social media was clearly highlighted here. Rather than being threatened by the bloggers, NBC and the Women’s Fund recognized the importance of building a strong relationship with them. The future won’t be social media or broadcast, it will be social media AND broadcast – in some combination that we are still developing.

Second, the group as a whole recognized the power of meeting on land not just online.  Bloggers don’t often meet one another in person. The idea of organizing a get together, to build relationships with one another, is so powerful and transcends the topic of the moment. Today, this group banded together to decry domestic violence, tomorrow it may be homelessness or job training or responding to a natural disaster. The topic doesn’t matter as much as the longer-term relationships do, and these was a terrific first step towards building a network of bloggers that serves Birmingham well.

Speaking of first steps, that’s the third important point about this event. It’s a great step, but still a first one. The bloggers, the Fund and NBC, and other partners like the Community Foundation, and local nonprofits, need to continue to build a strong ecosystem of organizations and individuals that can raise awareness of issues and mobilize for events and causes.

Brava to Birmingham, keep going!

About these ads