I’ll be the first to admit that if you haven’t seen one before a “tag cloud” can be a bit confusing, but the concept is actually pretty cool: statistically analyze all the words in a book, on a Web site, or similar, then pick the dozen most common important words (e.g., skip “the” and “and”) and display them, with the words that appear more frequently larger than those that are more uncommon.  You’ve probably seen them as you’ve surfed the Web, perhaps without really thinking about how quickly and efficiently they can convey a lot of information about that given site.

When we wanted to come up with a way to convey our set of values with both the South Africa Project and Ubuntu Now, a tag cloud seemed a natural, and they’ve come out really well. Here’s the one for the South Africa Project:

South Africa Project Tag Cloud

Immediately and without any complications it shows that while we’re still engaged and interested in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, rape prevention is a much more core goal of our project, and that empowerment and gender equality are critical parts of what we are trying to accomplish.  Nice, isn’t it?

What’s better is that we’ve made it easy for you to support our project by buying some gear with this tag cloud featured by going to our South Africa Project Store. Just click and check it out, I know you’ll like it.

And our overarching organization, Ubuntu Now?  We created a different tag cloud for that:

Ubuntu Now Tag Cloud

Since we’re big fans of this one too, which offers up the values that helped guide the creation of Ubuntu Now and South Africa Project, we’ve also made these available with its own online store: Ubuntu Now Online Store.

I invite you to browse both stores and I’ll remind you that it’s one of the easiest ways to help us raise money to support these worthy goals for South Africa and our troubled world.

Posted under 2010 World Cup, Gender equality

Desmond Tutu was in Denver last night as part of the Insight Speaker Series. Thanks to the organizer Elizabeth Weiland I was able to score a front row seat and access to the reception after the event.
Mr. Tutu appeared still very dynamic and energetic at the age of 76. Stil a force to reckon with. Mayor Hickenlooper introduced him as one of the most inspirational speakers of the 20th century. Read More…

Posted under Everything Else

We would like to introduce you to Sarah Boden-Dawans. Sarah is the founder of Represent.co.za, a very resourceful lifestyle “blogazine” covering the arts, culture and technology scene in South Africa and abroad. Never heard of a blogazine before? Represent was coined a ‘blogazine’ as it is a hybrid between a blog and a magazine. 
In 2008 Sarah started Jova.co.za, an online community with a focus on creativity, culture, innovation, and social intelligence (often within an experiential marketing context)  in the digital and global era, that bridges South Africa with Europe and the world.

With so much understanding of the arts and cultural scene in South Africa we were of course very interested in having Sarah answer a few questions for us.

Beware: This is a long but real worthwhile read.

What led to the creation of Represent?
I had been back living in Johannesburg post a short stint in Europe, and during this time I was extremely motivated by the rapid societal, developmental and cultural changes I saw around me, particularly in my city of birth, Jozi (this is what we affectionately call Johannesburg). I have always been a kind of ‘conduit’ between different cultures and I found myself happily taking friends, family and visitors around to atypical places, promoting a multi-cultural and open-minded approach to living and loving in the transforming city. Read More…

Posted under Meeting South Africa

Using the 2010 Soccer World Cup to support cause marketing

The 2010 World Cup will be the biggest sports event Africa has ever hosted. South Africa will be in the spotlight of the world.

You might think it is a long time until then – over 640 days – but the qualification games for the event are starting in Europe this weekend and are already on its way in other parts of the world.

There are a number of facts that provide mixed emotions about celebrating the Soccer World Cup: 5 million HIV infected, 1.2 million orphans as a result of AIDS casualties and some of the highest rates of capital crimes and rapes in the world.

These numbers can’t be ignored. Any party taking place today would be overshadowed by these shocking statistics. South Africa Project will focus on rape prevention and support the rape victims and orphans in South Africa in their efforts to heal their wounds. Read More…

Posted under 2010 World Cup, Everything Else