1. Holy shit...this is awesome!

Posted at 3:39AM on Oct 2nd 2006 by Squeedoo S

2. It's not the "United Nations", i.e. as in the formal entity representing countries. It's a group that is a non-profit organization accredited to the UN; it has some prominent former ambassadors in it and the money from foundations to do this kind of inch-deep and mile-wide Internet campaign.

I'd love to know about the money changing hands over this around Second Life.

You do have to ask whether awareness/Internet/SL things like this are really the best use of scarce resources and the good UN name.

I can't imagine what clicking on a pixelated wristwatch in a video game like environment will actually do to alleviate real poverty of real people.

This is dangerous virtuality, in my view, like cocaine -- it makes people mistakenly believe they are really doing something, that their feeling good about having their awareness raised is something having effect in the RL. It isn't.

The Millenium Development Goals are important benchmarks, especially for countries that don't have the rule of law, and can cite them for the benefit of shaming their kleptocratic ministries, who are the real problem behind poverty in a good number of third-world countries. They MDGs lack some important components, however, like human rights language -- it's a compromise, negotiated document.

One of these little kiosks is on a sim where I own most of the land; it was purchased by Ice Brodie, one of those little 16m extortion squares that people buy in the middle of a sea of land owned by others when land barons unscrupulously chop it up and sell it for a fortune, or else they grab abandonded land and then put up a sign that no one needs or wants in other people's community.

Posted at 4:04AM on Oct 2nd 2006 by Prokofy Neva

3. Oh Prokofy. You *so* nearly had me agreeing with you.

Sorry,Aimee, I think this is a great idea in theory, but it has the drawback that it *is* just too easy to click, without knowing or understanding the issues, or doing anything real about them. The US government has continually failed to sign up to environmental
commitments, to comply with human rights legislation. Guantanamo Bay is an offence
against all claims to civilisation by both your country and mine.

While purporting to fight against terror, our governments have supported terrorist regimes, and those which oppress their own people, caused mayhem in many regions
of the world.

We CAN and SHOULD affect what they do in RL with our
actions, and should not be hypnotized into believing that they will
be influenced by insignificant actions in a virtual world. That way
lies total submission. People need to be made to think, not to
click. I was with you thus far.

But your final section of comment, Prokofy. Why should
you control what people put on their land, even if you *do* own most
of the land in the sim? If you don't own all of it, tough luck, you
don't get to decide what people put on it. And whatever you or I
think of the campaign, it will be widely clicked upon and widely
supported, and maybe that isn't a bad thing, it certainly can't make
things worse for the world to believe that people support the
millennium goals and... know what they are.

Posted at 4:07AM on Oct 2nd 2006 by Caliandris

4. I think activities like this that raise awareness do have a significant value. No, they don't directly address the underlying problem. I don't think anyone would be confused enough to believe that clicking an object in a virtual world "solves" anything, any more than standing in front of a building waving a placard "solves" anything.

However, reading the sign, participating at a particular time...these things should make at least a percentage of the participants spend a few moments thinking about the Millenium Development Goals. And like a commercial on the subject, all it is intended to do is reach an even smaller percentage- those who might be incented to actually *do* something about the goals.

For that reason, I think this is a worthy effort.

Posted at 11:27AM on Oct 2nd 2006 by Tomas Hausdorff

5. Tomas, exactly!

Before reading this post, how many people knew that our governments have *already agreed* to the aforementioned eight steps to combat extreme poverty? Did you Cali? If you heard about it here first (and many have) then this program is already a small success.

While there are programs where participants are directly involved with helping/feeding the poor, there are also programs that attack poverty at the political/governmental level.

The magic is not in clicking an pixellated wrist band. The magic is in the numbers of citizens of nations who will know what their governments promised they would do in 2015.

Posted at 12:37PM on Oct 2nd 2006 by Aimee Weber

6. Aimee, i agree that the end result that Tomas mentioned and with which you resounded is what this can realistically accomplish.

also, i'll try to remember to IM you in-world, but in case i don't.. i would like to host a kiosk on my land. :)

Posted at 1:46PM on Oct 2nd 2006 by Cybin Monde

7. I appreciate Prok's continuing to remind us that "political" actions in-world often don't count for much beyond modest efforts to raise awareness and interest in a particular cause.

I've been involved with promoting the Millennium Development Goals since they were first agreed. It has bothered me to no end that governments sign onto these declarations with no actual intention of doing anything about them because they know that the most people in the world won't even know that they exist.

Really the commitment should be to "stand up" to your own government and force them to implement the international agreements they've signed (i.e. the Geneva conventions.).

Posted at 1:58PM on Oct 2nd 2006 by Rik Riel

8. To quote from the article: "The purpose of the action is to raise awareness of the Millennium Development Goals and to publicly demonstrate to policymakers the growing global support for the eradication of poverty."

Finding something constructive in Pro-Kofi's comment is quite a challenge. The best fit would be the call for adding human rights language to the MDGs. Yeah that should speed things up.

If you find yourself lost in a desert dying of thirst, and you come to an arrow sign saying "Oasis This Way", pro-Kofi would like to be there to assure that there is, in fact, no oasis in that particular direction.

Posted at 8:01PM on Oct 2nd 2006 by Orlie Omegamu

9. Actually, I've spent a lot of RL job time on the MDG's, and this is one topic I know a bit about -- promoting them needs to be done by urging more refined language with doable targets, i.e. spending X amount on AIDS treatment and prevention -- huge swathes of economies are devastated by the literal loss of their working, productive citizens to AIDS in Africa especially. There's a thousand things that could be said about this, but I really do hate to argue about RL topics with the lot on here -- I see all the tired cliches, singling out things ilke Gitmo, which yeah, we all expose and fight all the time, as if there weren't also things *far worse* in *scale* and *without remedy*. The great thing about the U.S. is that you can still fight these evils, and prevail sometimes through Congressional action, court decisions, etc. It was a group of U.S. NGOs fighting very hard at the UN, for example, that helped get at least a UN ruling that Gitmo should be closed.

As for poverty, well, the U.S. gives a shocking low percentage of its GNP to foreign aid -- given its wealth. But it gives a huge amount nonetheless, and dwarfs other countries, some of which prefer to sell arms or extract oil and help impoverish these countries that you're all raising our awareness about.

Awareness-raising without some specific recipes for action really gets to feel like disaster porn to me.

As for the 16m2 issue, yeah, people who can't respect private property values around them, who deface entire sims by grabbing these extortionist plots, are not the people I'd go to for solutions about how to eradicate poverty.

Posted at 6:27AM on Oct 3rd 2006 by Prokofy Neva

10. This is completly missleading. As its written by the person who is running it (a bit taboo imho), it should actually have the facts correct. Instead of making people feel like they are actually fighting poverty by wearing a wristband. Not to mention that it reads like Aimee has a direct line to the actual UN.

Someone please tell me when was the last time the US government listened to the people?

Why not tell people if they actually want to make a difference to instead, or even along with this donate a percentage of IW sales to a specific organization actually working on fighting poverty. Lets face it, the governments really don't care, as proven by the past 6 years of cuts to programs and the stale state of the minium wage within the US.

Posted at 12:53AM on Oct 10th 2006 by Luth

11. Hi Luth. If you have a specific questions about anything that you consider misleading, I would be happy to clear those up.

Regarding my "direct line to the United Nations" I did indeed meet representatives of the United Nations ... over at the United Nations building on the east side of Manhattan for this project! (It was very exciting for me!) I'm not sure what exactly you feel is misleading but I would be happy to address it if you could be more specific.

I understand you do not believe participation in this project will actually ameliorate poverty. That's a fair opinion. It is my opinion, and the opinion of my contacts at the United Nations that participation will be helpful in terms of lobbying our governments and educating the general public of our nation's commitments from 2000.

While I can see a difference of opinion, I still don't see anything misleading.

Posted at 1:04AM on Oct 10th 2006 by Aimee Weber

12. Aimee Weber, I salute you! This is brilliant! In however or whatever way you managed to work this great event out - this is truly something that brings tears to my eyes. Kudos to you and your team! I will be there!

Posted at 6:59AM on Oct 18th 2006 by Maxine Montale (Second Life Resident)