Mar 20 2008
Volunteers for WildlifeDirect
For those who have been visiting WildlifeDirect.org in recent months you will have noticed a tremendous growth in blogs - from 17 in August last year to 63 today, and from 2 countries to 17 countries in Africa and beyond. We have seen a massive rise in visitation from less than 20,000 per month last June to 70,000 per month today. We have raised $25,000 in February for 30 blogs. We are feeling mighty proud of this achievement and the truth is that this is all thanks to you, our supporters.
Many of our visitors ask how they can help. I hope that this post will be attractive to some of you.
1. We need experienced bloggers to help us in networking more effectively. We need to spread the word and promote the work of our bloggers to get more attention and interest. This can be done from anywhere in the world with good internet access.
2. We are appealing to anyone who is interested in training to help with the production of training materials in a variety of languages including English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Kiswahili for our bloggers. We are thinking of producing a blogging manual for WildlifeDirect bloggers. This can e done anywhere in the world.
3. As you know, all funds raised on blogs are earmarked entirely for those blogs. WildlifeDirect costs are raised separately. We need help in raising funds for the core team to support the bloggers in the field. Ideas for foundations, organizations, companies or other sources of funds would be much appreciated.
4. We are interested in expanding further through Africa, Asia and South America. If you know of any potential projects, connect us.. put us in touch.
5. We have heard that university students may be interested in participating in WildlifeDirect through conservation groups. We would be very interested in coordinating with anyone who is willing to raise awareness about WildlifeDirect and our blogs through universities or other institutions. Later this year (September) we will be holding some events in New York, Atlanta, and Washington DC and I could potentially meet with organized groups at these times.
I am in the United states until mid April and would be very interested in following up directly with those interested. Please write to paula@wildlifedirect.org or leave a comment on this blog.
I look forward to hearing from you! Paula Kahumbu, Consevation Partnerships Director
6 responses so far
Paula, these are all very exciting ideas and plans. The old saying sometimes you have to spend some money to make money comes to mind. Please accept my small donation towards this goal. Also, I would dearly love to see a blog for the Sumatran Tiger established. We will soon lose this majestic animal in the wild, and this simply can’t happen on our watch.
Hi I have a few ideas, one way is to go viral, readers can submit blog posts using social bookmarks like Digg, Delicious, Stumbleupon, yahoobuzz. Create a WLD Facebook, Myspace, Flikr or Youtube accounts. Use specific keywords as Tags and ping the news aggregators like Technorati. Include a trackback to find other bloggers who are linking and blogging about WLD and get networked by leaving comments with the WLD URL on other blogs and websites. Linking to other blogs and outside sources. Submit guest posts on other blogs. Readers of the WLD can put the WLD URL as your signature if you post on forums or in your email. Create WLD buttons and banners that people can add to their own websites or blogs to link back to WLD. Create a biweekly or monthly newsletter that maybe summarizes the news and what has been happening with the different blogs and upcoming events Maybe have a video blog of the newsletter where you talk about the past posts and the readers comments which can be submitted to Youtube
Thank you for this Theresa, and we will be looking across Asia for projects, Tigers of course are top of the agenda given how much trouble they are in. Francis, thank you for so many suggestions. I’m taking all of these on board.
May I also suggest clouded leopards, moon bears (Asiatic black bears), sloth bears, and red pandas?
s.
I love the new presentation of WildlifeDirect that the bloggers can work with to personalise their blogs. I see the Mara blog is a first to adopt this. Well done to the team.
Do you have any information about the Owen and Mzee website. Has it been shut down?