Had it not been for social media, I might have been languishing in a Qatari jail right now serving a seven-year jail sentence for allegedly insulting Islam.
Social media also helped with the success of a fundraising campaign in May/June 2013, funds with which we were able to provide considerable help to Raithane School in Thangpalkot. (Our annual reports of 2013-14 and 2014-15 details how and where the funds were used.)
Social media also ensured the success of a number of other fundraising efforts:
- to send Iju to UWC in Holland in 2014
- to raise funds for 2015 UWC candidates who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to go
- to help Bishnu and her siblings continue with their education
- to help Prakriti to attend Nursing School in Kathmandu
- to provide scholarships for some Raithane school children
- to provide scholarships for two Taltuleshwori School children etc.
Had it not been for social media, COMMITTED and I wouldn’t have been as successful with some of the awareness campaigns we were involved in, notably,
- We’re COMMITTED, which spawned a fundraising drive in New York City and Sydney
- Run to Stop Child Trafficking
Social media (mostly Twitter) helped with the campaign to return Roshan home to his family within a month after being stuck in the “open jail” of Qatar for thirteen years!
I am sure social media also had a big hand promoting our work and contributed to the funds we raised as part of the Earthquake Relief Fund.
(In my efforts to raise awareness about the earthquake and the destruction it caused, to promote the work COMMITTED is doing, to establish long-term relationships with institutions and organisations in the US and to help raise as much funds as possible, I have also been speaking at different venues in the US since May last year.)
However, COMMITTED has not raised enough to rebuild the five schools in Thangpalkot. Following the earthquake, we have raised considerably more money than in previous years, but we have been involved in emergency relief as well details of which you can find in our 2014-15 Annual Report.
In the last blog post on this topic, I made a plea asking well wishers and supporters to share our story on social media. In this one, I would like to make a number of social media-related requests of you.
- Please ‘Like’ COMMITTED’s Facebook Page and keep abreast of our work AND share posts to help us reach a wider audience. We currently have a little over 1010 likes. It would be great if we can raise that number to 2000!
- Please join COMMITTED’s Facebook Group. Currently, we have 1200 members. It would again be great to increase the membership to 2000 as well.
- Please ‘Like’ Dorje’s Dooing Facebook Page. It has just a little over 900 likes now. Again, it would great to raise that number to 2000!
- And if you have already ‘liked’ those pages, invite your friends to also ‘like’ them as well (see image). In the case of the Group, add your Facebook friends to the group.
- Please follow COMMITED on Twitter (@COMMITTED_Nepal). We currently have just over 50 followers. It would be great to raise that number to 500!
- Please follow me on Twitter (@Dorje_sDooing). I currently have a little over 360 followers! It would be awesome if we are able to raise that to 1000!
Google+
- Please follow COMMITTED on Google+. We currently have only 56 followers.
- Please me on Google+. I currently have only 140 followers.
Blogs
- Please also follow COMMITED’s Blog.
- If you are so inclined, please subscribe to my blog to receive email notification of new blog post.
The subscription form appears on the left hand side bar on my home page.
Once you enter your email and hit subscribe, you’ll receive an email asking you to confirm the subscription.
You’ll be notified of new blog posts about COMMITTED’s work as well as post about education, social justice and equality among other topics.
And finally — most importantly — share and ‘Like’ or ‘+1’ or retweet our posts on Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. to promote us and our work and help us reach a wider audience and, possibly, donors.
Without more funding, we can do little for the children of Thangpalkot!
On Facebook, you may have noticed that the default setting for the News Feed you see from your friends is Top Stories, i.e. the posts that have received the most shares and/or ‘Likes.’ So, the more you ‘Like’ and share my and/our posts about our work, the more likely for those posts to reach a wider audience and get noticed by others who may also do the same, thereby increasing the chances of reaching others who might donate to our cause and/or help our cause in the same or other ways.
The same can probably be said with sharing on Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter and they probably produce the same results.
Thank you!
