Sunday, May 18, 2014

Little Table, Set Yourself!

Most people who write blogs write what is essentially an online diary or journal. Because some stimulating environmental events and some synchronicities have popped up in my life lately, I’m going to do the same today.
A stint on the nominating committee of the American Women’s
Club of Zurich, chaired by the woman who is also responsible for the philanthropic activities of the Club, led to my suggestion to her that the organization Tischlein Deck Dich would make a good choice for the Club’s charity this year. TDD, as we began to call it, is a huge Swiss-wide organization that distributes leftover food from grocery stores, food importers, bakeries etc. to those struggling to make ends meet. The name comes from the Grimm fairy tale of the same name. It seems that a tailor sent his three sons out into the world to become apprentices. At the end of their apprenticeships, each son received a present; the eldest got a small, plain table. This table had a magic property, however. When one said to it “Tischlein Deck Dich!” (little table, set yourself!), it was covered in the finest linens and china and the most delicious food.
TDD has indeed become the Club’s charity for the year. An organization that is both food-and-environmentally involved is right up my alley, of course, as is the fact that the Club will sponsor fund-raising events this year with items raffled or auctioned off. Enter another interest of mine – knitting! I’m on the way to finishing a second item for the raffle.
In the meantime, I read an article about worldwide food waste that said that 40% of the world’s food is wasted – never reaches our stomachs. 40%! Can’t be, surely a decimal point has been omitted. But no, almost half of the world’s food is wasted in one form or another. Appalled by this figure for several reasons, I did further research and one day mentioned it to the chairlady of the Global Concerns Group in the Zurich International Women’s Association. “Karen! Someone else in the group is interested in this topic and wants to give a talk on it.” And so it came about that this woman and I will give a talk on food waste in October. We are each interested in entirely different aspects of the problem, so our talk divides itself nicely between us.
Further discussions with the chairman of the Global Concerns
group led to the idea of showing the film Taste the Waste before or after our talk. Fast forward to finishing up nominating committee work and my telling the committee chairman about this film showing. Bingo -  we are now going to have a joint program with the American Women’s Club and show the film twice.
Heady with the fascinating info coming from our knee-deep involvement in research for our talk, we were delighted to get a flyer about an exhibition in Zurich in the near future called “We Eat the World”. The special events that are part of this exhibition include a cooking evening using leftovers, and I can hardly wait. Food and environment and imagination!
I’ve always found synchronicities amazing, and here I am in the midst of several. Of course food waste is the topic of choice in any number of organizations, but to have this theme playing a big part in my life right now is just marvelous. My own little table is practically setting itself!

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Are you a clicktivist?

Or perhaps a slacktivist?
If you are like me, you open your e-mail and get all excited to see that there are a dozen new messages, then discover that 11 of them are requests for your signature on a petition and the suggestion that you pass the message on in Facebook or Twitter. I know about political and environmental petitions; I’m sure there are others.
This use of social media to promote a cause is defined in the
Oxford English Dictionary as Clicktivism, and is the subject of hot debate these days. The two opposing camps are quite volatile, with the clicktivists pointing to the enormous audience reachable through e-mail, Facebook or Twitter. The anti group accuses the clicktivists of being “slacktivists”, feeling good about themselves because they signed a petition, but who did nothing beyond that. The clicktivists are accused of identifying with marketing ploys, in which counting the number of clicks becomes a measure of the success of social change
It is important to distinguish between clicktivism and digital activism. The latter was what fueled the Arab spring. Volatile unrest already present in Egypt was sparked by a Facebook page, created by an anonymous activist, which featured the murder by Egyptian police of Khaled Said. He had apparently uncovered a case of police corruption and was murdered by policemen. Cellphone photos from the morgue and YouTube videos helped to get 130,000 people to join the Facebook page. Another page was soon created and the two pages together announced demonstrations. Faced with a country-wide protest
movement, pro-Mubarak got into the discussion but failed to deter the activists. Facebook and YouTube made it possible for ordinary people to join human rights advocates in organizing and mobilizing protest. They served as information sources in a country that practices news blackouts otherwise. Social media are instant and flexible. And – it is important to note – in this case they led to real concrete action.
This is a far cry from the armchair activism of those of us who click and then forget about the cause, who don’t even have to go to the trouble of calling our Congressmen. But once our click joins thousands of others, doesn’t the aggregate sum have an effect? Opinion is mixed. Sometimes the number of clicks is staggering, but apparently only individual messages – the modern equivalent of writing to your Congressman – really have an effect. Clicks that apparently lead to corporate contributions to a particular
cause are another example of action follow-ons. greatergood.com is one example, and you can click once a day for the rainforest, breast cancer, hunger, animals and a host of other  causes. The site sponsors will then contribute money to that cause. Another site is freerice.com, on which you play a game of identifying the correct meaning of words, with every correct answer 10 grains of rice are donated through the U.N. World Food Programme. You can choose categories of words and it’s a fun way to build vocabulary.
So how about it, are you a clicktivist? A slacktivist? Or perhaps you belong to the sheeple, people who agree to do something without thinking it through or doing any research on it. if you are into programming, you can be a hacktivist. If you donate money through the Internet, you may be part of crowdfunding. Just keep in mind that to click is not enough; either you or someone else has to follow through with real, honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned action.