Social Media Ambassadors Needed for Everyday Diplomacy

Everyday Ambassadors Everywhere addressing Everyday Issues 

Article Republished from Google Ambassadors, by Sonia CeballosWhen the Globcal International Cooperative began promoting humanity related causes and filled the social media networks with the Google Ambassadors, the Facebook Ambassadors, Goodwill Ambassadors of the World and other idealistic projects on Twitter, XING, and LinkedIn, it was their desire to promote social network fair-play and foster best practices in communication in these open social platforms to develop minimum policy standards and protocols for social interaction and public engagement online. The programs they developed gave rise to terms like Facebook diplomacy, various online initiatives building their social capital, and an online training group from within the Facebook Platform which is still active today called the Facebook Diplomatic Corps.

The project in simple terms for the working members of the Globcal Co-op was to make international friends and to promote online social campaigns and cause related projects involving mutual cooperation among themselves online. Since 2008 many of the members have done just that or branched out representing their own personal ideals either independently and/or with the organization with some co-op support on Facebook. They pursued their posts as a personal hobbies or pastimes with genuine results in their local communities, acknowledgement on Facebook from friends, and in their personal representation when travelling abroad for the Globcal organization.

Ambassador Karen Cantrell visiting the United Nations FAO Food Program June 2010

A number of Globcal's members who created these self-styled citizen ambassadorships promoted successful careers as professional goodwill ambassadors and as United Nations Citizen Ambassadors including Karen Cantrell, Djordje Marinkovic, Somchai Quint, Sahro Koshin, May Bouquet-Brown, Mohammad Bakhrieba, Andrew Williams Jr., Luis Cruz Diaz, Babatunde Bello, Yana Korobko and several others; most of the 132 ambassadors however never followed through on the opportunity as it was presented beyond 2010 and were recently administratively removed. Some of the humble efforts of the few who did continue resulted in numerous television interviews, third party news blogs, new careers, and a number of newspaper articles around the world.

Social Ambassadors and Influencers Needed to Promote Good Morals Online

Now in 2013 the 60+ remaining members of Globcal are banding together with their founder, David J. Wright, to take themselves and reform their general effort to go a step further and turn it into a professional one. Beginning on April 1st the team began to fully engage their everyday citizen diplomacy and social influence concept with a practical business model where all the members of the cooperative get paid with fellowships, stipends, grants and also receive cooperative support.

The founder explained that, "by getting paid the ambassadors become accountable for their progressive actions of making friends, soliciting aid and promoting social causes on the behalf of the entire group. We are accomplishing this with the creation of a quota system, establishing a 24 hour office, directing personal follow-ups and providing an international hotline that give the good works practitioners technical, logistical and informational support; the cooperative payments merely address some of their personal and incidental expenses." It makes sense, even if they are paid with Facebook cards, Bitcoins or PayPal to cover small out of pocket expenses; the operation is much better off operated as a cooperative rather than paying a contracted administrative centers like many big charities do. -The token funding derived from their efforts creates integrity, social responsibility, and creates loyalty between the cooperative and its members. The new business model ensures the crowdfund donors, microfinance investors, public patrons, and organizational sponsors are dealt with on a more personal and human level.

Wright said, "its the personalized attention and dedication are what we are after with the new business method, each representative has their own solid project they helped to create or personally approved, then alternatively everyone together works on one large group project each quarter. Many of the social media ambassadors already have professional careers and are involved with the project  because they want to be, some have claimed that they do not need or even want to get paid saying they will just pledge their earnings or pass along their grants to the very same projects they are promoting or other charitable concerns they have a personal interest in within their own communities, either way they become accountable to the organization which lends a great degree of integrity to their functions."

The planet and its people certainly need them to get busy soon and become successful in reviving their goodwill agenda with the world's growing list of problems to tackle and long list of organizations with causes to assist.  The United Nations (UN) and many international non-government organizations (iNGO)s have begun promoting new urgent campaigns all over the world in the past few years relative to indigenous peoples, water, biodiversity, climate change, food shortages, social reform, fair-trade, and human rights programs.

Right now the UN is heavily engaged with several major international awareness campaigns developed to save the planet and everyone on it; in 2010 they began the Millennium Development Goals with 8 focus areas to fight poverty through 2015, last years climate change treaty in Rio, the International Year of Water Cooperation now in 2013, the UN Decade on Biodiversity until 2020, the Second UN Decade on the Eradication of Poverty through 2017, and the Third Decade on the Eradication of Colonialism until 2020.

Later this year the United Nations will initiate a whole new campaign called the International Year of Family Farming which will heavily involve their Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and over 30 celebrity goodwill ambassadors they have serving in an event developed to bring awareness to  solve food shortages and nutrition crises. This especially excites the Wright, because his first hobby interest is home gardening and as he explained the awareness campaign will probably result in the establishment of a new international day to raise awareness, preserve the ideal, and the promotion generates international notability and a new custom within society as with other international days have like Earth Day, Woman's Day and the many other international days that have been established.

Fortunately for the cooperative they have a lot of support, the Decade for Cooperatives or Co-op Decade just began with the International Cooperative Alliance, following the UN International Year of the Cooperative which was held last year.

Getting Paid to Promote Causes and Crowdfunding Projects

Someone really has to think, hmm? "Sharing goodwill and making friends with people that are dear to my own interests, funding worthy projects in my community, well it doesn't sound too bad to me." "Wait a second, so let me get this right; they are going to make me an honorary goodwill ambassador, pay me to make friends, advance my own career, follow my interests, and become a super hero that saves the world?" Yep that's the idea!

The networks and forums available to find groups of willing and capable protagonists and cause activists was limited at the time Globcal began because everyone was too busy learning about social networking to be focused on anything else, so they had to wait until the social networks could grow enough to accommodate a greater number of people with social networking abilities with a great number of interests other than just learning about social networking and tagging each other online with photos of roses and waterfalls.

Globcal International logo 2009

Like many things ideas often come before their time, as was the case for Globcal, but fortunately thanks to the determined patience of a few of the original organizers that stayed on the ball to continue their efforts in Facebook and Google, a few of their original projects they created survived the wait as great but impossible ideas, that is until now. Fortunately they were poised well enough to prepare and advance their opportunity now at the right moment to become involved in the crowdfunding craze.

It took nearly five years of people using social networks to gain enough experience to do things other than just focus in how to social network from 2006-2012 before enough people could learn and the network extended to smartphones. According to Wright, "the program will create over 1000 new jobs worldwide for adept and sharp young social media professionals who enjoy promoting positive human interaction, generating goodwill, and influencing their peers in the social network platforms in every country where people use the Internet. If they sharp and really know how to use the applications and features available in the different platforms like Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, FourSquare and a number of others, then they can develop a great number followers based on their expertise or popularity which translates to 'social capital' then the world can become theirs within their interest area."

Wright is counting on the gaining popularity of the new crowfunding platforms and the already popular microfinancing sites creating a special but definite niche and need for the types of programs he and his group at Globcal have been developing. The changes are giving Wright and the social network ambassadors broad new horizons.

Social Media Ambassadors to Promote Good Values Everyday

Wright and others like Kate Otto, who recently wrote the book "Everyday Ambassador," are changing the ideals and concepts of what it means to be and become a so-called ambassador and practice citizen based track II diplomacy, public diplomacy for your state, cultural diplomacy, or goodwill diplomacy in the 21st century. Becoming an ambassador for an organization or cause is becoming a popular, fashionable and sophisticated way to force positive change, create peace, feed the hungry and save the planet.

To follow and continue the trend, Globcal is prepared with changing ideas and is making adaptations modeled behind new functionality of platforms and learned (practiced) techniques (like the use of social tags and hashing) to penetrate social networks with new searchable interest based sub-networks, interest lists, and social circles that are being self-generated by unknowing users in the great cloud of cyberspace to find the right target audiences attracted to different projects and ideals based on their interests.

The organization is working hard with the United Nations Committee on the Promotion and Advancement of Cooperatives (COPAC) and redeveloping itself under the guidelines and auspices of the International Cooperative Alliance, founded in 1895 and the Inter-Parliamentary Unionwhich was founded in 1889. Once conformed and further internationalized legally within three member states, they indicate that they will apply for ESCOSOC status with the United Nations.

For further information you can find them on Facebook and on Google+ with the new programs they have under development and are signing up new ambassadors now with priority for all of those who originally participated as Google Ambassadors.

We found two popular active programs currently being operated by Globcal on Facebook and several on Google. Currently their most popular projects are Goodwill Ambassadors of the World and the Facebook Ambassadors.