Elfenworks Foundation Initiative - New Media

Can electrons and ephemera really lead to change? At The Elfenworks Foundation we believe that yes, in fact, words, websites, moving images, and the underlying ideas that drive us to make them can make a difference. Can you remember the general mindset before An Inconvenient Truth? Along with webdesign, our book Tracks of Hope, our films Faces of Poverty and The Concert for Hope, and the Elfenworks Social Justice Prizes at Campus MovieFest and MashupCamp we are raising awareness in the following ways:

Ficlets - Collaborative Web Fiction

Ficlets—little bits of fiction or 'fiction-lets'—allow a group of strangers to co-author a story together on the web. An author will start a story, and that story will be picked up by another. . . and if the concept takes off it can be positively viral, infecting people's consciousness with a new awareness about poverty issues. Our technology team became aware of ficlets at a presentation at Web2 Expo in San Francisco. We asked the system architect Keven Lawver (who wrote ficlets.com) if he might kindly help us spread awareness of poverty, and he generously agreed. Moreover, he got back to us—on international pixel-stained technopeasant day!—to see how we were doing and when we might submit our story starters. We submitted two that day, and his main ficlets blog entry about us spawned a number of additional ficlets tagged with 'poverty.' Join us at ficlets.com. Grab a feed, write a prequel or sequel to any poverty-tagged ficlet, or create your own.

Other Ways to Tell A Story...

We have created a poverty-related data grouping at Swivel.com, a website which beautifully represents data graphically, telling a story of sorts, with charts and graphs. Perhaps if visitors are better able to envision domestic poverty issues and trends, their enhanced understanding of the problem will lead to action. We have also created our WTF (Where's the Fire?) so that it includes links to some of the nonprofits that are working to alleviate poverty; you can find it at Technorati.com.

We invite your involvement - your involvement can make a difference ! No matter what your skill level, you won't find it too difficult to create a video on domestic poverty and upload it to a video host such as YouTube. You may not win the Elfenworks Social Justice prize at Campus Moviefest, but if by raising awareness you bring about change, you'll be a winner in our eyes.