We Can Do First Anniversary!
It has now been one year since the very first We Can Do post went up a little after 9 p.m. (EST) on July 24, 2007. What has happened with this blog in that time?
In that time, thousands of individual people have browsed the pages at this blog, for a grand total of 100,000 page views. More than 200 of you subscribe to We Can Do so you know when to check the blog for the newest blog posts.
The geographical representation among the readers have fluctuated somewhat over time, but currently a little more than a quarter of you are from the United States; a little more than 10% are from India, and a little more than a quarter from East and South Asia as a whole; about 19% are from Africa; and 14% are from Europe. In other words, you come from around the globe. China and Latin America, however, are very much under-represented. I’d love to have more readers from these regions–suggestions for how to reach them are welcome!
The Most Popular We Can Do Pages
A few of the most popular blog posts and individual pages at We Can Do include the following:
- Conferences, Events, Call for Papers, Training Opportunities has been viewed by more than 5,000 visitors since I started maintaining it in December. This is where you can find the links to We Can Do blog posts announcing upcoming events, calls for papers, training opportunities, and current job announcements, and volunteer opportunities, organized in one page.
- More than 3,000 people wanted to know where they can find funding to attend conferences. If you look at this page, you will see that only three funding sources seem to offer a limited amount of funding; two of those three are applicable only to Latin America. People from other regions will want to focus on the Ford Foundation.
- More than 1700 readers are looking for short training courses in human rights.
- More than 1400 readers wanted to read a case study on an early intervention program for blind children
- More than 1200 people were curious to learn more About the We Can Do blog.
Under-Rated Blog Posts
Some blog posts, at least in my humble opinion, might have been under-rated.
- Only a few dozen people have looked at the blog post describing a resource that disability advocates can use to help schools in their country be more inclusive of students with disabilities–a publication entitled Making Schools Inclusive: How Change Can Happen. Follow the link to learn how to download the publication.
- The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has a new web resource that may be helpful for actively people involved in advocating for human rights for people with disabilities. The post entitled UN Human Rights Disability Section describes, and links to, this resource.
- One of my personal favorites is a blog post that has been read by fewer than 100 people: an essay I wrote a couple of months ago entitled “The Farmer, the Spoon, and the Plow,” an allegorical tale about why the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is worth celebrating–and why the work of disability advocates around the world.
- I also hope that some of you will consider using the page on Resources, Toolkits, and Funding to help you find useful materials (and a few funding sources) that you can use to improve the lives of people with disabilities in your country, or in the countries where you work. Or look for Research, reports, papers, and statistics. Some of the items that I posted months ago may still be relevant and helpful today.
What Do YOU Think?
I hope some of you will take a few minutes to add a few thoughts of your own in the comments area below this blog post. What blog posts or links at We Can Do have been the most helpful for you? What resources did you discover through this blog? How have you been using those resources to improve the lives of people with disabilities? What resources would you particularly recommend for other We Can Do readers? What kind of content do you hope I will share at this blog during its second year of existence? Do you have suggestions for how I could make We Can Do more useful for you and other disability advocates in developing countries, or for mainstream international development professionals learning how to make their programs more inclusive?
Please let me hear your thoughts!
THANK YOU
I owe a big thank you to all the people who have given me feedback on this blog in the past year, or who have subscribed to this blog, or who simply come back to this site again and again to see the latest materials. We Can Do is entirely a volunteer effort that I work on in my free time outside of work, schooling, and volunteer activities. Your feedback helps motivate me to keep going.
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