a pArtY welcome to new voices in the blogosphere

It's Blog Action Day today - bloggers around the world are asked to post about poverty. I tend to write about poverty quite a bit anyway, so instead of trying to synthesize all of my thoughts on the subject into one post, I've been working on something a bit different today.... I've pulled some new voices from my world into the dialogue.

I'd like you to meet the ourwwworld team - a small global group of new bloggers in your sphere, who are learning together how to blog sustainably and hopefully raise funds for Life in Africa. After a month of practice blogging about the google trends, they've now each got a new look (me too, did you notice?!), and have started posting some great new and original content to their blogs.

I encouraged the ourwwworld team to post for Blog Action Day, and here's what they had to say:

Awakening

Awakening, by Grace Ayaa (East Africa)
"...When I look at Africa, most of its land is fertile and very good for any kind of agriculture , but there are the people who are going hungry and have to live on handouts. It puzzles me a lot. So I feel that the agricultural sector should be the most looked at area. lots and lots of food should be grown by a family to feed themselves and then the surplus sold ." full post

Darkness2Light

Darkness2Light, by Norbert Okec (East Africa)
"If a child in a poor nation gets infected with some disease but the parents, friends and neighbours are all convinced that the child is sick because he/she climbed a mango tree belonging to the local traditional healer/spirit medium.... and the poor child dies do we say that the child died because of the disease or because of lack of correct information?..." full post

In Search of Mindfulness

In Search of Mindfulness, by Linda Nowakowski (S.E. Asia)
"...There is enough food in the world to feed every person. That is a distribution problem. If you look at the wealth in the world, I suspect that there is enough wealth in the world to eliminate poverty as well. It's a distribution problem." full post

Kireka Concerns

Kireka Concerns, by Peter Ndelo (East Africa)
Remember I mentioned we're all learning to blog? Well, Peter posted his thoughts at the Blog Action Day website instead of on his blog :-) "poverty is lack of knowledge, ability, cooperation and spirit of helping each other to come out from this problem. No body wants to be poor but how can one come out of this?" You can see the full comment here, and as soon as Peter gets it moved to his blog I'll edit this bit and put a link here.

shawnstudio
Shawnstudio, by Shawn Kelly (North America)
"...bottom-up strategies seem to me the only way to create real change, as it has now been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that top-down economics leads only to disaster. The battle is exponentially more difficult in Africa, where government corruption is the norm and enriching oneself at the expense of the citizens has been the prevailing leadership strategy for decades." full post

Please join me in welcoming the ourwwworld team officially to the blogosphere! The revamping of their practice blogs has been a joint effort - the team wrote the words, and I got to enjoy the diversity of perspectives and personalities while I did some decorating. Be sure to visit their blogs to see what they are planning to write about after Blog Action Day is over. These 5 people are among the top 10 people I'm closest to on the planet these days - I think they're all very interesting individuals with worthwhile things to share, and I think you will too.