I finally decided to dive into my practicum project. I am doing "social or political activists". Since I'm not very into the political scene I decided to do the social activism. Personally, I wasn't completely sure how to go about this. I was a little confused at what to do, so I decided to think of something that I am interested in. Cancer is a topic that is very important to me, so I decided to start with that as my general topic. I started off by going to the LIVESTRONG website and went from there. I became a member of the group and searched around the site. It had so much information! From survivor interviews to job openings, there was something for any type of person who was interested. (Ex someone who has cancer, someone who wants to volunteer, donate, etc.)From here I found a Facebook link, so I "liked" that and looked at that page. I was one of 986,616 people, so I got the impression that it was legit. It seemed professional, yet very personal. People would post pictures from events, or even pictures of tattoos they got! Their tagline was "Determined to make cancer a global priority, reduce stigma, improve support, increase access to care and make this disease HISTORY!" I got the chills reading this, it is so cool that people are so supportive of cancer.
The amount of information on this Facebook link and LIVESTRONG website was almost overwhelming. I spent a long time just reading stories and looking at all the events that were happening.
After looking at that for awhile, I decided to look for other websites similar to this. I searched childhood cancer in google, and found a website called www.candlelighters.org. This is a website is for the American Childhood Cancer Society. There was just as much information on that website as the LIVESTRONG website, so I dove in and searched around. The best part of that website was the tagline, "...because kids can't fight cancer alone!" I love that statement. I also found it very interesting that they even made September 13th National Childhood Cancer Awareness Day, as well as September being Childhood Cancer Awareness month. From here I "liked" the link on Facebook and did some searching on that as well. I also found an interesting page with a lot of facts that I found interesting.
http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Ways-to-Show-Your-Support.html?soid=1102946333954&aid=VqvhjYA4R9U
From here I joined this group. I guess I'm at the point right now where I'm a little confused with what I all have to do. I am thinking about coming in to talk about where I will go from here.
It sounds like you're right on track, Heidi. It's a fairly open assignment, and you've found a good group of activists with "cancer." From here, you want to start to get involved, observe, ask questions, discuss. See what kind of online and offline activities they engage in, if they do different work or think about their activism in particular ways. Basically, it's an ethnography (on a small scale!).
ReplyDeleteAnd, if you have more questions, of course come see me!