 |
|
|
Register your chapter for another important year of SGAC
Download the Action Kit to get your year started
Universal Treatment Access
The Global Fund
HIV Prevention
Orphans and Vulnerable Children
Debt Cancellation
Other Materials
How to Start a Chapter
Fundraising
Online Organizing
Online Organizing
When SGAC was started, everyone involved could easily communicate with the whole group because they all knew each other and studied at the same school. As our campaign grew, however, members quickly found that the only way to stay in touch was through email lists, which was the main way everyone was communicating at the time. An initial website soon followed, and so our online presence began.
Five years later, a wealth of online tools are at our fingertips, ready to be used not only by the leaders of our campaign, but by just about everybody. Over 60% of college students check Facebook at least 3 times daily; millions of internet users watch videos on YouTube; and countless young people document their lives with blogs, livejournals, and podcasts. We're a generation specially able to communicate with each other in ways well-suited for grassroots decisionmaking and advocacy, since these technologies give us easy, ready access to our peers. In this AIDS crisis, which disproportionately affects our age group worldwide, we are responsible for using the technology around us to change the world.
The following are some easy ways to get your friends involved using freely available tools online.
SGAC Blog
SGAC's news section isn't just an announcement page. It's a two-way bulletin board for campaign news and ideas. Steering Committee members and other contributers post stories, but that's only the beginning. Just as important is participation from every SGAC member in the comments section. By writing your response to a piece posted on the blog, you both share your important feedback with other SGACers and show website visitors that this is an exciting, participatory campaign to join. Comments also provide readers with more content to check up on, driving up blog traffic. More traffic means a more informed and active campaign.
if you have your own blog or online journal, help spread the word by linking SGAC blog stories in your posts. It's a great way to introduce your friends to SGAC.
You can also get involved in the blog by posting content yourself. If you'd like to become a contributor, email Andrew [at] fightglobalaids.org.
The Facebook
Over 4 in 5 college students have facebook profiles, and the vast majority belong to one or more groups. This is another opportunity to organize your friends, since groups show up on your profile. Anyone can set up an SGAC facebook group for their campus - you should make sure that your chapter has one.
And did you know that SGAC has a global group that anyone on Facebook can join? We use it to share photos of actions, discuss the campaign, and make general announcements. If you post action photos to this group, we can use them on the campaign-wide blog, letting everyone know how cool your chapter is.
YouTube
Millions of people are checking YouTube for short, amature films. It's free to start an account and post a video, which you can then publish directly in almost any website, like this:
Most digital cameras sold today are equiped to take short video clips, and many computers come with video editing software. Even if you don't edit your clips, posting them to a video sharing site like YouTube can help spread the word about SGAC and the AIDS pandemic, and can provide content for the SGAC blog.
Flickr
While there are dozens of photo sharing websites out there, Flickr represents more than just a bucket to dump your pictures into. With a true community of amature and professional photographers viewing and commenting on photos, it presents an opportunity to get other involved in SGAC's work when we post our pictures there. It also offers one of the easiest ways to get pictures from your computer onto our blog, since flickr pictures can be linked easily. The free account allows you 20 MB of uploads monthly, which should be plenty for showing off your chapter's exploits in a few choice shots.
If you post a picture of an SGAC event, be sure to link to the SGAC website. If we use one of your pictures on the site, we'll link back to your photos to share the love.
 |
||
|
 
|
|
|
||