fusedlogic FoodBank Challenge

In North American culture, Christmas is a time of year when it seems that everyone is generous. Not just within their families, but generally with others, in the communities we live in and beyond. Once Christmas has passed, we move on to the New Year with resolutions for bettering ourselves and become so inward focused that we can lose sight of the generous spirit that so many of us were displaying few short weeks ago.

Just before Christmas this year one of the prominent members of the Social Media community in Edmonton, Walter Schwabe, started an ambitious year long project, the fusedlogic Food Bank Challenge. When I was first introduced to the idea through Twitter, there were two things that stood out to me:

1. The ambitious goal that had been set
2. The fact that this was not limited to being a short-term project

The Timeline

I really like that this project was not limited in scope to just the three or four weeks before Christmas. Giving is something that should take place year round and for those of us fortunate to have steady jobs, I feel that it is our responsibility to give back. It is often easy for us to overlook the needs in our own North American communities, but the reality is that there are hungry people here, just as there are in all other countries in the world. I am not trying to diminish the importance of providing aid to foreign nations who need it, I'm merely trying to point out that there is need right in our own back yards. That need is not limited to a particular season either, and that is where the timeline of this project shines.

Although the project started just before Christmas, the idea is to take a full year to achieve the goals (and it will probably take every minute of that year). The other benefit of a longer timeline is that, if you haven't participated yet, it's not too late.

So What's the Goal

It's ambitious, there's no question about it. So what do you need to do? It's quite simple:

• Make a donation to your local foodbank
• Take a picture of that donation (with you if you like)
• Upload the picture to the Flickr Group or the Facebook Group
  
• Pass the message along and get as many people as you can to do the same

By doing all of this, blogging about it, tweeting about it and doing the things that we all love to do, we can certainly achieve the goal of 1 million photos by the end of a year. More importantly, we can continue to raise the importance of social awareness in our communities and work together to create a better world.