It has been heartening to see a growing awareness and conversation about the role of blogs in non profit and non governmental work. Some high profile work after both the tsunami, hurricane Katrina and the Pakistan earthquake let the world see the practice in action. Recently a number of threads have cropped up about the specific application of blogging in relief work. The Christian Aid staff has been blogging while working in Tajikistan. The work is informative and gives a very human voice to what might otherwise be data...leaving out what is really happening to people. They are also starting to blog for internal team reporting:

"Most exciting of all we're also starting to use weblogs internally for team reporting, replacing more traditional after-the-event reports. Early days at the moment as we're still rolling out our SharePoint system but the signs are encouraging."

The ODI Blog from the good folks at the Overseas Development Institute in the UK have been blogging for a while and posted a review of their experience to date.

Today, we recognise it is, at least, a useful communication tool and enjoys significant support. At its best, blogs can filter information from previously inaccessible sources; can convene different groups around a single issue providing a menu of opinions and links to further resources that conventional media finds it difficult to deal with; may offer the basis of a tightly knitted community of practice or interest group; and constitutes a cost-effective platform for individuals and organisations to join the global development debate.

I particularly appreciate their observations about how blogs can combine with other online tools such as flickr, Dgroups, Wikicities, etc. In my experience, the blog is a great outward facing tool, but there usually is additional need for smaller group and often private work and "meaning making" spaces. I see this like my family. There are some conversations we have in public, some in private.

Paul Currion, a great NPO blogger himself, has posted both about the Christian Aid blog, but also more generally about transparency and how blogging might help relief organizations and the public more fully understand each other. Like Paul, I believe that many non profits and NGOs have presented an unrealistic picture of themselves thinking that will enhance fundraising, only to find when the gap between reality and image is revealed, a huge drop in trust. Agencies and the public have to work together and I believe transparency is a huge asset. That said, it may take a while to get comfortable with it. (See also this post from ODI and this from Currion regarding a UK story on this issue. An important read if you are an NGO/NPO or the media covering the sector.)

At a meta level, people are starting to look carefully at the practice of  humanitarian and relief blogging. Last week a group of high profile bloggers had an IRC chat (transcript) and started a wiki about it, hosted by Global Voices. (Looks like a great chat. Wish I had been paying better attention to my listserv messages!)

If you have other examples of NPO blogging, humanitarian relief or otherwise, please post a comment. It is time to start thinking about how this manifests as a network as well as individual efforts.

A few other relief/NPO blogs and posts, many culled from the above stories - thanks guys!:

http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=60
http://passionofthepresent.org/ (Sudan)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4720453.stm (Niger)
http://psdblog.worldbank.org/ (World Bank on private sector development)
http://peruexilio.civiblog.org/ (Peru, politics)
http://www.mobileactive.org/ (activism)
http://fundraising.blogspirit.com/ (fundraising and philanthropy, in Spanish)
http://www.culiuc.com/ (Moldovia)

Crossposted at Full Circle
Technorati Tags: nptech, humanitarian, relief_blogging, blogging, NPO, NGO