Male, 26 from Stockholm, Sweden
Joined TIG: October 25, 2005
My name is Jonas. I grew up in Avesta, Sweden, which is a small town of about 25000 people. Like in most small towns, you need to find your own amusement on evenings and weekends, so I first got involved in my local community through organizing concerts and film festivals with my friends when I was 14 or 15. Organizing these events helped me to I realized that youth can achieve a lot of things by working together, and I joined several youth councils in my local community.
Two or three years ago, I started really getting interested in international issues. In autumn of 2005, I worked for an NGO in Sweden called Globetree and helped to organize the World Championship in Cooperation (World CiC) in Stockholm. This event brought together children and youth, as well as decision makers from around the world to discuss why TV, and other media, focus so much on the bad in the world when there is also so much good. From working on this event, my interest in media and poverty reduction evolved into a passion for communicating about international development and raising awareness about the best practices of development work around the world. I wanted to show the “good news”, so to speak: that development is not only possible, it’s happening as we speak. Having had past experience working in the media as a journalist, I started asking myself: what can I do on this issue?
I have been working, as a result, for almost two years on developing an online magazine called “TellUs” to feature success stories of development from developing nations. This magazine is very inspired by the Panorama magazine in TakingITGlobal and will allow youth from all around the world to describe what they are doing to further development in their communities. I want to contradict the cynicism portrayed in mainstream media in Europe and North America: that everything is hopeless. Real development is happening worldwide, and I want to give a voice to the people who are making it a reality but who are ignored by the media. Currently, I’m in South Africa, and I will be going from Cape Town to Cairo to learn more about some of the good practices in Africa and to collect contacts for TellUs.
I first learned about TakingITGlobal while I was working for Globetree. One of my roles was to inform youth organizations about the World CiC event and to encourage them to attend. I remember Googling youth organizations in China, and the first hit was the Chinese country site of TakingITGlobal! I joined TIG and have been quite an active user since.
I started blogging extensively on TakingITGlobal just to raise awareness: I was writing about the issue of global development and that we could actually meet and achieve the MDGs. I also exchanged ideas on the discussion boards about the possibility of an online exhibition on this issue. TIG has also been especially useful for me to get contacts for the TellUs magazine. I’ve been meeting people in Sweden in person that I talked through TIG and I’m also going to meet up with TIG members during my current trip in Egypt, Kenya, and Uganda. It’s really inspiring to be a part of this global network with active members from over 200 countries. Just the other day, I was checking out the country page for Micronesia – and Micronesia has 11 TIG members! I can send a message to any member in the world, and the possibility of getting a reply is very high, because people on TIG want to help each other.
TakingITGlobal has helped to me acquire not only more international contacts, but also more international understanding. I’ve been reading all of the themes in the Understanding Issues section, as well as the organizations and projects databases, to get some new ideas and new inspirations. There are also 4 or 5 people that I connected with through TakingITGlobal with whom I talk almost every day, both on TIG and on MSN messenger. It’s a great way to get first hand insight as to what’s happening all over the world. Normally, we only have access to indirect reports: someone from a news agency like AP or Reuters writes the article, which gets sold to a news magazine, which then edits the article before it comes to our attention. Through TIG, I can learn directly about what’s happening all over the world and how people are living their lives.
It’s hard to pinpoint how much of an impact TakingITGlobal has had on me, but during the years that I’ve been a part of TIG, I live a completely different life. Before, I was focused primarily on local issues. Since then, I’ve been always been working always with a global perspective, and even when I’m tackling local issues, I see the links to the global society.
« return.