developing region - project ideas v1

My project ideas are around a center idea of helping public to gain more understandings about the underprivileged people. These people are usually not the focus of media attention. Their social circles and lifestyles are very different from the general public. Therefore, most people have little understandings about these underprivileged communities, and this lack of information could be a major barrier for people to offer their help - they don't know who to help and how to help. On the other hand, we do have many people in shortage in our country, and many online resources regarding these developing regions. So how can I make these information more accessible to general public?

I usually draw things when I think....so I draw my three ideas down.

In U.S., we have both wealthy people and poor people in the same country. Wealthy families have lots of things they don't really need (or even want to get rid of), but poor families are in short of even daily supply. My first idea, comes from the thought of helping distribute the goods more evenly and effectively, is (at the upper left corner) to build a website to let people in shortage can post their needs on, and through proper visualization, to let people who have the ability to help can easily find their targets. (I have to say half of this idea comes from the thought of visualizing craigslist. Posts on craigslist are sometimes totally unreadable...) It could be a map with dots on it representing people who need help. A search bar is provided for donators can search for locations, types of goods they want to donate, or types of people/organization they want to donate to (for example, schools, single parent families, Asian...). Receivers, could be families, schools or charity organizations, can not only post on their needs, but also who they are and what they do, to let the donators know more about them. Thus, this website not only is a search platform but also a social platform, to allow interaction between donators and receivers, and hopefully can help them build up a long term helping relationship. 

My second idea (at the lower right corner) is to visualize online articles/papers about developing regions. It could be like a spider-look visualization, connect different articles together to show their relation using distance or color, to help readers get a better idea of the database and also help them find out what they want to read next more easily.

My third idea (at the lower left corner) is actually a reverse of the center idea - how can I help people in the developing regions know more about the world? So I'm thinking using pictures to represent news and send out through cell phones, considering the fact that people in developing regions might not have access to tv or computers, and may lack of literacy. I talked to Jodi about it and she gave a wonderful website called Frontline SMS: http://www.frontlinesms.com/ , that allows you to text a large group of people. I'm thinking about the possibility of using text to represent images, like ascii art. 

Hola Mundo!

Two new spanish words I just learned today, thought that will be a good title for my very first blog post. It's been two weeks since I got here, and I'm still trying to figure this place out. Things in here are so very different from where I come from. I still remember when I got off the plane at 2am and saw that funny giant dinosaur standing in the airport lobby. The same feeling keeps coming as I run into new things everyday. Hello Pittsburgh!

I hope to use this blog not only as a research journal but also a life journal sometimes, just to record things in here and also practice my writing. Hopefully the fun stuffs won't soon exceed the research stuffs though :P

Today's progress: finish reading paper x2 (developing region, Ho's and Kam's), Turabian Sec. 1.1, 2.1, 2.2.