NGO Awareness In Virtual Worlds

In a real twist on the virtual issue of poverty, Rik Riel posted about his friend Mensajero, the virtual panhandler - who I saw last night, but didn't get to chat with. He's on NBC 7 sim within SecondLife. He was the only avatar on the sim when I showed up, poor fellow. Rik's transcript is worth the read.

Mensajeros de la paz has been around since 1962, and presently have 296 foster homes and 2300 children within their network. They're tackling a very real problem in a very virtual way. Is it working? Well, Rik wrote about it - and so did I. And I'd never heard of them before Rik posted about them - so, it is working in a way. Awareness raising is a difficult task without extremely large budgets. And I'm betting such virtual awareness is more effective than the Lindens accrued so far - but maybe, just maybe, I'll be wrong and some people will move past the lit Christmas tree, hang a right and toss some Lindens at the virtual panhandler.

Awareness

Mensajeros de la paz are doing something interesting which the community will see - and has seen, though perhaps not to the degree hoped for. But where this differs from other NGO presence in SecondLife is that I am seeing them engage the community in a creative and contextual way.

Beth probably agrees, as she points to another one of Rik's posts. It is frustrating to know that the bureaucrats don't get it in the NGO world, but let's be frank: The bureaucrats just don't get it. I've personally seen too many initiatives destroyed by bureaucracy, including the Alert Retrieval Cache - and I have seen the same people who block and/or slow down initiatives achieve more influence over the years. So yes, I get it but I'm numb to it now. It's like being stuck in the movie Brazil.

There is hope in that virtual worlds do allow people to bypass some of the inherent bureaucracy, but formal NGOs have to sell the same people (no matter how enlightened they think they are) on many of the same ideas. In this way, there are problems.

The answer, of course, is that everyone wants results. The trick is getting people to allow you to get results.

I wonder - if I were to ask 100 avatars on the mainland what nonprofits were in SecondLife... I wonder if I would get any answers. Just the process of asking a question like that would raise awareness. Unfortunately, I don't have the time for that but - there are people on NGO payrolls who could. Leave the office behind, put a t-shirt on and go where people are. If the message isn't worth that, then how much is the message worth?