We have been talking about how Blogchatter is going to make a difference and be the change we wish to see in our society. The founder and CEO of Red Dot Foundation that crowdsources sexual violence incidents in public spaces to end violence, Elsamarie D’silva joined us this Friday for a very important discussion on taking up the social causes of education, peace and poverty. It was a great start to our first live on #CauseAChatter, one of our campaigns this year.

  • Where to begin?

To champion any cause, a strong foundation is what we need. Elsa, with her experience told us that research beforehand is important before taking up any cause. She quoted the line we have often heard “Do no harm.” But with little knowledge we can end up doing more harm than good. Reading, talking to people from organizations that deal with the said cause, volunteering with them, can help you decide if that is the issue that speaks to your heart, if you are passionate about it and can be consistent with it.

  • Consistency is key

She went onto explain why consistency is key. When we work towards a cause it involves a lot of people who live in hope: hope for a better life in the near future perhaps and by working for a cause, we are taking responsibility of that glimmer of hope. Inconsistency from our end can shatter it to bits.

  • Starting small – influence friends and family before reaching out to other people

There are innumerable issues that our society faces and even more issues that are hardly explored. It can be challenging to educate people on this and spread awareness. But the internet is quite a good source. Even there, we need to use our critical thinking to differentiate between the fake and real data and only use trusted sources such as TedX, Coursera, the UN website, to get our knowledge in place and check if we know our civic systems well enough before we try to educate someone else. It always helps to begin with impacting the people around us such as friends, family and community before expanding our reach.

  • What can you as a blogger do?

As bloggers our best way to make some noise around the three goals education, peace and poverty is to encourage people to write more, and to collaborate with credible organizations. Most people aren’t even aware of the sustainable development goals and what kind of a world we should be working towards building by 2030. Initiatives such as ours can help fine tune our critical thinking. Volunteerism is all about learning while doing.

In a world that is so technologically driven and advancing, we can no longer claim ignorance. With all the resources we have, we can no longer claim to be unaware.

Elsa was instrumental in explaining what and how we can do our part.
Are you ready to take the initiative?