Many Kabissa members have been asking recently about twitter, how @kabissa uses it and how it relates to them. Learn more online through a free webinar led by Allen Gunn of @aspirationtech - spaces will be limited so click http://ow.ly/1giXZ to sign up now!  

Do you use gmail? If so, be aware that it exposes you to a potentially serious privacy flaw - if you work in human rights or otherwise don't want to share who you email with to the public, you need to read this post for an explanation.

Are you a young person who cares about what is happening in your community and Africa at large? Are you committed to working with others to overcome injustices? Do you want to learn from other young people working with their communities all around the world?

Happy New Year! Resolve to be more connected. Kabissa tweets at @kabissa - please follow us. We will follow you and add you to our Kabissa Members twitter list to help connect you with members in the Kabissa network who also use Twitter.

Kabissa has long been a proponent of Creative Commons, as readers of Dear Mimi might remember from her 2006 post that remains very much valid: How can I share my work but keep my rights? From now on, when you create a post on Kabissa, look for the user-friendly licensing options. The one you choose will appear next to your post to inform readers how they can share it.

I was pleased to learn about Ceasefire Liberia, a terrific example of the type of social media connections Kabissa seeks to promote.

From the website:

"Ceasefire Liberia is a multimedia project which aims to document the Liberian experience on both sides of the ocean. It includes a book, documentary film work, and now a blog. The goal of the blog is to connect the Liberian community in Liberia with the rest of the Diaspora in order to create a dialogue between those who fled during the war and those who remained."

The founder, Ruthie Ackerman, was recently interviewed on Media Bistro, which you can listen to online here. (via Rising Voices mailing list)

I was very moved by this essay when it appeared in Developments Magazine earlier this year, and now am really glad to see a visually pleasing YouTube video of it that challenges us all to think about how Africa is represented in western media. (Via @mjamme)

Twitter is a powerful tool for Kabissa and the people and organizations we are working with. I just had an exchange with Beth @Kanter about a new Twitter feature that exemplifies this: Twitter lists. She then challenged me to write a blog post and I am realizing that I've been putting off writing about Twitter generally for a while because I am excited about it and wanted to do it properly. 

So here goes. If you are not familiar with Twitter yet, now's a good time to learn about it and get started! If you do use Twitter already, read on and you may learn something, or have something to add.

When we get to the lists I have a suggestion to make so we can try out using Twitter to strengthen our ties.

This is the first blog entry for Vision Africa - Give a Child a Future and hopefully it's the first of many!!