As leaders gather this week at the United Nations to discuss the challenges and opportunities to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, Mashable, 92nd Street Y and the UN Foundation brought speakers together at the Social Good Summit on Monday to present new and innovative ideas that bring the MDGs, technology and humanity together.
Central questions in a digital age
“While social media is a fact of our modern-day lives, there are important questions about how we use it,” Aaron Sherinian, Executive Director of Communications and Public Affairs at the United Nations Foundation, wrote in a post preceding the Summit. He asked, “With the knowledge and experience we’ve collectively gained in recent years, how can we proactively employ social and digital media for the good of society? More importantly, how can we use these technologies to support development worldwide and solve some of the toughest challenges our world faces?”
To answer these important questions, speakers including Chairman of Turner Enterprises Ted Turner, CEO of (RED) Susan Smith Ellis, UN Special Envoy for Malaria Ray Chambers, award winning actor and founder of Crowdrise Edward Norton, and many more influential speakers discussed how they are using innovation that is grounded in humanity to achieve the MDGs by 2015.
K4Health: A living repository of relevant information
For our part, K4Health has used social and digital technology to support organizations and projects that work to achieve the MDGs by providing an on-line platform that allows them to manage their knowledge and experiences efficiently using our electronic toolkit application, as well as disseminate it throughout our network using traditional tactics and social media.
Our application to build eToolkits is based on a continuous publishing principle that ensures old and new information resources are collected and made accessible to those who need them the most. This allows eToolkits published on K4Health to evolve after they are released to capture additional resources and to identify and fill remaining information gaps. As products of collaborative efforts between K4Health and partner organizations around the world, the eToolkits are living repositories of quality, relevant, and useful information on various health-related topics; however, they also allow people who work in the field to suggest grey literature that is not widely distributed and foster a South-South and South-North exchange of information.
Listening and responding through new media
In order to enhance this two-way flow of information – and to ensure voices and needs from the field are heard – we are also looking beyond the usual suspects and leveraging social media to promote and disseminate health information to those who need it the most. Through new media, we have been able to engage communities and people who we believe will be interested in what we have to say and offer. After we identify relevant audiences, we begin participating in the conversations, listening, engaging and sharing our content in hopes to bring real value – a significant investment of time, but something that has allowed us to reach our target audiences at a micro scale and understand their needs and perspectives.
As the speakers during the Social Good Summit alluded, digital technology and social media have opened new and exciting doors for global health organizations to make real progress to achieve the MDGs by 2015. However, as Howard Buffet noted, we need to ensure that we do not get lost in the innovation and tools and remember to balance technology and humanity as we move forward to create an equitable world.
Throughout the week, Mashable, 92Y and the UN Foundation will host the UN Week Digital Media Lounge, which will bring issues related to the UN and the Summit on the MDGs to 92Y with in-person briefings from global leaders from governments, civil society, NGOs, the entertainment world, the private sector, and digital media and technology.
This was originally published by Chris Rottler in two blogs, Conversations for a Better World and K4Health Blog, on September 22, 2010.
