Stewardship Through the World Wide Web

By Leslie Louie | 0 Comments | Posted in in ZAAZ Life | Permalink

First there was the cyclone in Myanmar, which snuffed the lives of 78,000 people. Shortly after, an earthquake in China killed another 68,000. As new reports of rising death counts and interviews of wailing Chinese parents poured across the media, I watched and listened with a sinking and helpless heart, asking myself how can I help? I’m not trained in survival or first aid skills. “Search and rescue” to me means locating my car keys. Unless emoticons and text message shorthand are recognized as languages, I can only be considered fluent in American English.  In the face of these disasters, I’ve been trying to reconcile my wish to heal the world with the reality of my life; that is, I don’t work in nonprofit, but I still want to contribute to bettering the world, to be one of its caretakers and to tend it with mindful stewardship. How do I accomplish this sitting at my desk, in my role as a website optimization test designer at ZAAZ? As if to answer my inner query, Nobel Peace Prize winner Jerry White of Survivor Corps came to our office to share his story and how the website ZAAZ designed for his organization is creating a healing community for survivors. ZAAZ made a website that’s being used as a healing mechanism for people all over the world? Wait a minute. That’s where I work!

As cofounder of Survivor Corps , Jerry speaks from experience on what it takes and what it means to be a survivor. While studying abroad in Israel, he stepped on a landmine during a camping trip and had to have his leg amputated below the knee. He is a landmine victim survivor. Jerry White is a visceral champion of landmine victims, rallying nations and enlisting public figures - most notably the late Diana, Princess of Wales – to support the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. In doing this work, he realized the need to focus not just on preventing more people from becoming victims, but also to aid existing victims in making the transition from victim to survivor. Survivor Corps does this by creating an online community that feels safe, offering support and connectivity for survivors of war and violence. Social networking isn’t new, I know. But unlike MySpace and Facebook, Survivor Corps’ site isn’t just a vehicle to serve up behaviorally based ads nor is it meant to become a hobby. Instead its aim is to aid, to assist, to inspire. It’s a loving community – a world within the world wide web – that the survivors themselves steward. A website that empowers people to see themselves as a survivor rather than victim? A website that helps these same people to create their own supportive network and to change the world around them? Whoa.

This brings me back to my reality. I’m not prepared to relocate to Myanmar or any other emergent natural disaster site. But what I can do is help to create a website that will endure long after the news stops headlining death counts. Jerry White’s visit helped me redefine what I envision as a "contribution" and to see that through my professional work in the internet, I can affect the humanitarian efforts that speak to my heart. I’m not there, searching for people in the rubble, but I’m here for the ones that make it out and the organizations that champion their cause. When we embark on projects like this at ZAAZ, our usability experts, designers, copywriters, project managers – we all take on the task of representing these people. I don’t know what website metric can measure this, but I know there’s value in that.

It's invigorating to realize that I can tend the world from my desk, by creating websites that connect people, empower them. Not every website we take on at ZAAZ has this aim, I know. Still, I’m proud to be a part of a collective that sees the value in these sites and takes the challenge when it can to steward the world. And you can bet I’ll be the first to offer up my skills when the next project like this presents itself.