Sit down, boot up, log in and blog out.
The United Way-Thomas Jefferson Area is tossing a marathon blog event — a blog-a-thon — on its Web site, inviting nonprofit agencies, givers and receivers to blog a little byte on behalf of those who tutor and mentor.
“We’re starting today and everything leads up to our March 30 event at the Omni Hotel, where we’ll have representatives of different programs ready to meet possible volunteers,” said Kim Connolly, of the local United Way. “The object is to generate as much interest every way possible for the nonprofit agencies that have those programs and to convince people to volunteer.”
Not necessarily known for being techies, United Way folks nevertheless tweet on Twitter and upload to YouTube. They also put down hints, advice and information at the charity’s blog, livingunited. typepad.com.
Leadership visit
For the blog-a-thon, there’s a certain madness behind the method. It arose out of a Leadership Charlottesville visit to the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail and a discussion with city Police Chief Timothy J. Longo.
“We asked the chief at what age we needed to reach kids to help them avoid joining gangs and ending up in trouble, and he said there are kids as young as 10 who are making decisions between school and gangs,” Ms. Connolly said. “We realized that we have a lot of agencies that are helping that age group and, if we could increase the number of volunteers helping these kids, they could have different role models, positive role models.”
There are many different ways to get involved.
“You can do the classic Big Brothers/Big Sisters, you could read at a school or maybe play basketball with kids once a week,” Ms. Connolly said. “We want people to find something that fits them, that interests them.”
The first idea was to hold an event with the organizations that use mentors and tutors for the younger generation. To help bring out the public, the charity went to the blogosphere.
Mentors, tutors
“We figured we start on Monday and have a blog entry or two every day leading up to the event,” she said. “Hopefully, people will see how much mentors and tutors enjoy it and hear from some of the people who were mentored and tutored.”
Each group is providing a blog entry or two or three. The public is also invited to contribute. Consider it a social event on social media with the hope of providing enough different stories to touch as many people as possible.
“We try to have a presence and invite people to participate with us,” Ms. Connolly said. “We hope people will read the blog entries and be interested enough to show up on March 30 to meet with the organizations in person. If they do, they may find a good match.”
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