catcomm

Please consider buying a raffle tickets for a free trip for 2 to Rio de Janeiro, in benefit of Catalytic Communities, an organization on whose board I sit and which I support down there working to guarantee communities have a voice in the lead-up to the Olympic Games. Please help me reach my goal by buying a ticket by Sunday August 1st. Each ticket is only $10, while the trip is valued at $2500 and includes flight for 2, bed & breakfast in Ipanema for a week, and community visits. Click here to donate and buy tickets.

$10 buys a chance at a trip for 2 to Rio de Janeiro (raffle ends August 1, 2010).

Catalytic Communities' Executive Director, Theresa Williamson, presents Rio Raffle 2010: your chance to win a trip for 2 to Rio de Janeiro (flights, bed & breakfast in Ipanema, 3 blocks from the beach, and favela visits included)! For only $10/ticket you'll be funding our unique social media trainings while winning a chance to visit. Our goal? To guarantee a direct communication channel with every favela in Rio (up to 1000) by the 2016 Olympic Games, thus ensuring their stories are told, and their fate is increasingly in their own hands.

Learn more about the raffle: http://bit.ly/dAZcTD
Buy your raffle ticket/s by August 1st: http://bit.ly/b7o7bw

(disclosure: I am on the board of Catalytic Communities).

Please take two minutes and vote for "Rio Olympics: Ensuring a Powerful Legacy for Rio's Favelas" on Ideablob. We're in the running for first place with our plan to ensure that community leaders in Rio have a say and a voice in the run-up to the 2016 Olympics.

Idea Description

The 2016 Olympics will be held in Rio de Janeiro and the construction of new facilities, transportation corridors, and hotels will begin as early as December 2009. It is estimated the Olympics will yield three times the revenue that is spent in its preparation. But how much of this will benefit the infamously dangerous favelas (squatter communities) in the city, now numbering 1020 separate neighborhoods?

Current efforts to ensure a social and environmental legacy from the Olympics are being headed by large well-funded NGOs. This is great, but we want to ensure that community leaders' voices are heard, too. We want to get them connected online and off, networking & sharing stories.

What will you do if you win $10,000 for this idea?

If we win the $10k, in 2010 Catalytic Communities (CatComm) will train 200 community organizers across Rio's favelas to use online networking tools including Twitter, Facebook and WiserEarth, to ensure their voices are heard by authorities and the global community in the years leading up to 2016.

An online community will be formed in each of these online spaces where the general public can "hear" what leaders from the favelas have to say, support them, and follow their work. Links will be made with the press and the mayor's office.

We will then develop an online training program and continue face-to-face capacity-building in 2011 and beyond.

Again, this only takes about 2 minutes:

• Click on this link to head to the idea page.
• Register an account on IdeaBlob.
• Check your email from the confirmation link.
• Vote for CatComm!

Thank you in advance for your support - I'll let you know how it goes!