While at SXSW in Austin at the Social Media Clubhouse, I had the opportunity to chat with Katy Balsis, community manager for OurCompassion.org (@compassion on Twitter) - a cause-driven global social network which is powered by Awareness, Inc. (full disclosure…I work for Awareness).
According to OurCompassion (OC), the community, which was launched in June 2009, is “a place for all of us to come together and get organized on behalf of children living in poverty.”
This is an amazing organization that serves more than 800,000 supporters who are sponsoring more than one million children worldwide. The OC community serves as a place for supporters to share, organize and speak up on behalf of children living in poverty.
During our discussion, Katie shared how the OC community was instrumental during the Haiti Earthquakes as it played an important role in facilitating communication with supporters around the world. Through this tragedy, the community went from being a new, young endeavor into a key player in the grand scheme of Compassion’s social media strategy as it became an integral part of their disaster response approach. With the community, they were and continue to direct Compassion sponsors to the community for further support and information.
What they also found was that through this, the community naturally displayed new levels of “social maturity” (commonly looked for on social networking environments) as members showed deeper levels of friendship and honesty as they all worked through this tragedy together.
My video interview with Katy is below. Please take a moment to hear what she has to say about OurCompassion.org and please check out their community for more information on how you can get involved.
