Media Mentions

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TakingITGlobal profiled on RedCanary.ca

Scott Valentine, RedCanary.ca - February 4, 2008
PROFILE: TakingITGlobal
By Scott Valentine on February 04, 2008

Sought after by Fortune 500 companies and recognized for their international contributions, the 20-something Canadian founders of TakingITGlobal talk about bringing youth, technology, and social awareness together.

As teenagers, they built an organization that fused young people, social networking and humanitarian action on both a global and community level.

At 20, the likes of Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and TIME magazine had identified them as visionaries and world-changers.

Today, Jennifer Corriero and Michael Furdyk have grown TakingITGlobal.org to more than 182,000 members across 261 countries, supported by 700 educational institutions and a stable of commercial partners.

The Toronto-born co-founders sat down with Red Canary to talk about the power of technology and youth to drive global change.


What's the idea behind TakingITGlobal?

Corriero: "As teenagers we discovered that kids everywhere had a voice. Our expectation was to create a platform [that helped] kids cross borders and take their ideas global. At the time we didn't have many words to describe what we were doing, we just saw that there was a need for a space that was youth-led and about growth. It's important to start cultivating that global mindset at a young age and to develop those skills for using technology."

"So the question was: how can we complement what is taking place in formal learning institutions with an informal learning environment?"

Furdyk: "From [a] technology perspective, it was important to get up and running. No one [talked about] 'social networking' back then, to have any hope of getting funding we needed to develop a prototype community at a basic level so we could show people what we were talking about.

I learned some of the technical stuff and built the first web site in early 2000 so we could show [a] compelling, socially bound community to get people interested."


Compare what you thought would happen in 2000 to what's happening with TakingITGlobal today.

Corriero: "It's amazing to see the relevance of some of those basic philosophies that we were discussing in 2000 come to life with the emergence of social networking and the way that kids are communicating online and learning, and how that's driving social change."

"I'd say there is common thread around how young people become engaged with technology based on having a sense of voice and a sense of choice. There's [an] expectation of participation now, and I think that crosses different sectors."


How else did you see technology coming into play?

Furdyk: "One of the opportunities we originally saw was in growing the number of schools and educational systems [that invest] in technology - there was and still is a gap between what people thought technology was useful for and what its actual potential is.

"We wanted to help train teachers and provide them with tools to actually use technology to its capacity. We developed a mini community platform [where] teachers could develop a site and incorporate tools like blogging and podcasting into the classroom."

Corriero: "We've run different pilots showing how learning and engaging with interactive technology can help students learn both subject matter as well as those abstract concepts of interaction and empowerment, so learning is real-world. Sometimes when we talk about the virtual world we can lose that perspective of real people around the world who are affected."


What makes for good social networking?

Furdyk: "There's a couple different things you could look at. For us - because we're trying to develop the quality of the network vs. the quantity of it - we [try] to foster really insightful, productive and interesting dialogue. We have a diverse group of community volunteers and moderators involved in facilitating that and ensuring that discussions are on topic and productive, so that people can learn and gain insight."

Corriero: "And obviously it's important to take the pulse of what's happening. We have metrics around interest and growth and some aspect of why people are coming back. Also, people need to be able to be comfortable participating in different ranges.

"Highly-involved members post and comment [frequently], but it's important to lower barriers-to-entry: reviews, rating(s), tagging - these are all ways to create and digest content. But everybody sees themselves as contributing to the experience that they're having. That's really what an online community or social network is about horizontal participation - small cells within a broader network leverage the network to highlight an issue.

"For example, on World AIDS Day we had a live chat that combined a top-down approach (setting the broader issue) with a bottom-up approach (fostering organic interaction). So its not just a social networking site but leveraging the power of social networking for creating positive change in the world."


Is that ability to contribute what drives youth to social networking, and what's the role of technology in addressing that?

Corriero: "I don't think this generation is any more disengaged than previous generations. I do think that there's an outlet this generation has that didn't exist before. That ability and expectation to contribute will carry across generations; it won't just be a youth thing, it will be an expectation that changes systems over time.

"As young people transition from being dependent to being independent, they develop identity and an understanding of their course in the world. Those courses may or may not affect the types of careers they choose. Regardless, there's a lot of pressure at that stage and being able to find others that are similar to you, or even being exposed to people different from you, can be very comforting and empowering.

"TakingITGlobal plays an important role in that. It is very intentionally a space that is about promoting empowerment and that ability to contribute. It's not just about having the ability to post something . . . the feedback of positive reenforcement and building bridges in the real world - by getting validation from another member or a teacher, or an employer or a parent - is also incredibly important."


TakingITGlobal is in a position to gather a lot of very unique data about how young people interact with technology and how they apply it to social causes. What are you learning from that?

Furdyk: "One of the key insights we've gained is the fact that that the number of new users getting online day-after-day no longer speak English as a primary language - it's now Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Spanish and others.

We completely redesigned our technology back in '05/'06 so that it would support an infinite number of front end languages. We're now launched in 12 different languages and that's entirely supported by student volunteers around the world. TakingITGlobal is the only social networking site that is so multi-lingually accessible.

"We also have a real focus on creating actual content . . . we facilitate a community behind that, but the real opportunity is the information and resources for young people.

We also want it to be easier for any person to say that they're committed to an issue that they've decided to care about. We [added] a section that lets people make smaller commitments. So, instead of starting out with a whole club or project cleaning up all the parks in their city, they can just personally commit to using fewer plastic bags or recycling or something like that. That appears on their profile as a badge of commitment so they can talk about that with their friends. Very shortly, we'll be launching that as an application on Facebook, too."


Talk about the challenges of reaching youth around the globe from here in Canada.

Furdyk: "It's not that we employ out-of-the-ordinary tactics for reaching people. What we did is take the 100 or 200 people that originally signed-up on the site back in 2000 and really treated them like leaders. The way we saw it, those people were the ones in their community that had connections or were more influential because they found out about us really fast.

"We sent those people promotional materials and packages with a T-shirt and all kinds of information. What ended up happening was they kind of became champions for us and helped to develop and promote a hugely viral growth. An interesting fact to illustrate that is that we currently have just as many members in Nigeria as we do here in Canada."

Corriero: "As we've grown and cultivated a community, we've learned that when you frame issues it needs to be done in a way that provides relevant points of reference and make sure that there's a lot of regional diversity . . . if someone is on the site making a comment in an AIDS discussion group and they are from the United States, that context would be very different than if they are from Zimbabwe.

"One of the techniques we use is highlighting feature members from all around the world to showcase and frame issues. It's also important to allow and respond to feedback that's made in different ways - in some places maybe a video works, in others maybe it's a text message. The question is: how to incorporate that feedback and amplify voices that may come across as small at the start, but still want and deserve to be catered to."


How can for-profit entities place themselves at the intersection of technology and humanitarian causes?

Furdyk: "It's funny, a lot of people complain that their kids spend all day in World of Warcraft or Facebook, but if you don't support and nurture positive places for people to be with each other and interact online, how can you complain? Give youth something to look up to and aspire to.

That's what an investment in TakingITGlobal is for a lot of the people we work with: trying to support positive places for young people to hang out online and give them inspiration, and provide them with information.

That leads young people to get more involved with the world around them."