Sync

By Shannon Sturgis Karama Neal is a local blogger answering the question, "So What Can I Do?" for people looking to change the world. + Enlarge

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas native Karama Neal will tell you that one person can make a difference in the world. What's more, she'll even offer a suggestion as to how.

Built on the above advice from Indian spiritual leader and statesman Mohatma Ghandi, famous for his non-violent fight for civil rights and freedom, for the past four years Neal has run a blog encouraging individual participation in social change called So What Can I Do? (www.sowhatcanido.blogspot.com).

"Initially it was just a place for me to write about this stuff," said Neal, a grant writer for Southern Bancorp who recently moved back to Little Rock with her husband and young daughter after a long academic career away from home. "I had no idea if anyone would ever even find it, but they did."

Born of conversations with friends about everything wrong with the world - conversations that usually ended in helpless frustration - Neal said she'd long been mulling a platform for advocating social involvement when she started reading the American Journal of Bioethics blog in late 2004, after completing her doctoral work in that field.

"I realized that was the way to do this. That was the format that would work," she said.

Within a month, she started So What Can I Do by touching on recycling, but since has grown to address all manner of causes and ways for people to participate in them. Among her posts are: ways to provide mosquito nets for developing countries plagued by malaria, information about microloans and how they fund business on the other side of the world, ways to turn your Web surfing into free donations for charities, and using antibiotics responsibly - to name just a few.

With posts coming around once a week, and in the past more frequently than that, Neal said she thought at one time she would quickly run out of material. In fact, the opposite has proven true, as she's added herself to more lists, read similar blogs and, of course, gotten feedback from a readership of around 200 hits a day.

"I get a lot of feedback," she said. "And oftentimes those turn into posts."

Life experience has also helped shaped her blog. When Neal got married, she took steps to make sure it was a socially responsible event by donating leftover food and using recycled material for everything from invitations to the wedding rings themselves. When she had a baby, she started blogging about using cloth diapers.

But the opposite is also true, that the blog has affected her life. After writing about it, she became a regular blood donor, and the same goes for having started a compost pile when she lived in Atlanta. And so on.

"There are very clear ways that writing this blog has affected my life," she said. "Because I really do believe in it - because these are important things to do - I do them myself."

Of course, not all the posts are relevant to her and she "certainly won't claim to have done everything, by any means." She drives a hybrid, so blogging about Hummer Owners Prepared for Emergencies, or HOPE, did not fit her situation. But offering up diversity, a little bit of something for everyone, is important she said, whether it means offering your time, your money, or just thinking differently about the way you do things.

"Of course it's important to make donations to things like Big Brothers Big Sisters, but it's also important to be a Big Brother or Big Sister," she said.

Neal said she spends about an hour or two putting posts together, and while she doesn't get to do it as often as she once did, she did say she never tires of it. The process has gotten, if anything, easier over the last four years as "I think of a lot of stuff as fodder for the blog."

The conversations with friends have changed in that time as well. They no longer dwell on all that's wrong with world, all the ways in humanity seems to fail itself. On the contrary, the tone these days is a lot more hopeful.

"I guess I've always been an optimist, but this blog has really made me more of one as I've realized all these ways we can make a difference in the world."

So What Can You Do?

A few excerpts from Neal's blog:

- Organize a community to help someone in need by using the website Lotsa Helping Hands - a free online service that helps organize meals, transportation and home visits; keeps friends and family updated on medical progress or other activities; and more.

- Donate $10 to Nothing But Nets, a mosquito nets campaign of the UN foundation, and send a net to a needy person in Africa. The insecticide treated nets can reduce transmission by as much as 90 percent.

- Make a small investment in microloans and help pull a family out of poverty. At MicroPlace, put $20 or more into an account, earn 5 percent interest and help someone with the capital they need to continue a business or buy groceries.