Bloggers Unite For Refugees On Monday November 10th, the BlogCatalog community came together like never before. According to BlogPulse, blog posts about refugees nearly doubled. According to Google search, more than 12,000 bloggers wrote about Bloggers Unite For Refugees. More than 2,500 included our program partner Refugees United (refunite.org), which provides refugees with an anonymous forum to reconnect with missing family.
This was my first time participating with this group. They are now featured as a permanent widget on the right-hand column. Aira of the blog It'll be alright organized the majority of the posts under one thread and tied the whole affair together rather nicely in her own post.
It seems a small thing, I know. But the net itself is made of small pages, like mine and like the web pages of the over 10 thousand bloggers part of the Bloggers Unite. Ten thousand stories and thoughts for giving voice to 40 million refugees, for making known an association that help people for real. And to put in practice an expression I read on the Refugees United’s page and – with its simplicity – seemed to me such fundamental: spread the world.
I have signed up both with the current group and for an invitation to be part of the launching of Bloggers Unite as it's own social cause event site where bloggers and social cause organizers will be able to communicate and rally around causes. These efforts do have an impact.
With the average contributing blogger reaching 200 readers, the plight of refugees may have reached as many 2.5 million readers, many of whom took action on Monday by writing letters to government officials and making donations to several worthwhile nonprofit organizations. The volume of posts also attracted the attention from Ode Magazine in California to the blog of Raju Nrisettiof, who writes for the The Wall Street Journal in India. This excludes the ongoing coverage of refugees by traditional media, which has been covering the estimated 100,000 refugees currently trapped in the Congo.
