Red Cross Blogs

To Blog Or Not To Blog

By Anna Carter
July 29, 2009 at 9:51 am

That was indeed the question when my line manager suggested that I might try my hand at this blogging lark. Initially I believed that this was a non-too-subtle hint for me to get over my sometimes aversion to the Twenty First Century. Not that I am unappreciative of the wonders of running water and electricity; having spent time living in places where this was not available I am thankful for the fact that technology in this country means not needing to walk three miles for a jerry can of dirty water.

Despite this, technology and I have always shared an uneasy relationship. I am not completely hopeless; I can navigate a website, mail merge, manage an excel file and skype with the best of them. I have even joined the rank and file of the facebook phenomena. A good thing too; as I could not do my job at the Red Cross without any of this technology; yes, even facebook. In my role I need to communicate with the eighty plus peer educators that we have in my area and I have discovered that emails and texts are a step in the right direction, but nothing is as effective as a facebook message at opening a line of communication with the ‘youth’. Just don’t ask me to fix the technology when the message won’t send, it starts to beep, or thick curls of black smoke can be seen coming out of the back of the appliance.

I was also a little unsure about the content of the blog. What should I say? Would it be interesting and would I run out of things to talk about? For reassurance over this I must thank the wonderful people that I work with, who assured me that on this last point I should not worry too much as when it comes to HIV, young refugees, working with young people and the citizenship curriculum (the core areas of my work) I can usually be relied upon to talk for some time!

Unlike Hamlet, my procrastination was short lived (and no shady uncle/step father figures were harmed during the decision making process) and I prepare to take my next steps into the age of technology. I pick up my pen (unable to totally abandon my luddite ways I needed to write the first draft long-hand!) to blog…

---

Comments (2) »

---

Tags: blogging, Health and social care, HIV, young refugees

The Red Cross values comments both complimentary and critical. However, we will not tolerate the following: aggressive or personal criticism of the blogger, breach of copyright, obscene, defamatory, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or likewise objectionable comments.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 9:51 am and is filed under Health and social care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

---