May 8, 2011: International News From the Field

8 May: The Webby Awards are the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet.  They were established in 1996 by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.  While most of the sites recognized are for-profit businesses, there are categories specifically for nonprofit organizations. 

Winning “best nonprofit Web site” were the American Public Broadcasting Service (http://www.pbs.org/) and Historypin (http://www.historypin.com/), an initiative in London with global plans. Historypin – a mapping project that seeks to connect different generations through old photographs – was created by We Are What We Do (http://www.wearewhatwedo.org), a nonprofit effort to designed to make “it easier for people to do small, good things everyday” (read more about their work, which might be categorized as micro-volunteering).

In the category of “activism,” the winners were Redu (http://www.letsredu.com), which:

…stands for rethinking, reforming and rebuilding US education. Powered by people and technology, REDU is a movement designed to expand and encourage the national conversation around education reform by providing information and resources to learn, a community platform to connect, and tools and initiatives to act.

and  Avaaz.org (http://www.avaaz.org/en/), which focuses on issues such as poverty, corruption, and climate change.  Avaaz, whichmeans:

…"voice" in several European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages—launched in 2007 with a simple democratic mission: organize citizens of all nations to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want.

A full list of all the 2011 winners and runner-up nominees in all categories, go to http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=15.