# South African charity to target expats in the UK with blog

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2006/10/17/south-african-charity-target-expats-uk-blog/
- Published: 2006-10-17T23:00:00+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

Small South African charity Thusanani has started publishing a blog to communicate
and inform the world about the plight of HIV/Aids orphans in South Africa. One of
its main objectives is to target the large South African community settled in the
UK and recruit them as donors.

To date very few UK charities have embraced blogging as a way of establishing a 
dialogue with supporters and potential supporters, and the charity believes it is
the first South African charity to do so.

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The blog will encourage both readers and users of Thusanani to voice their opinions
and to allow others to learn from the charity’s experiences. “Thusanani” is an African
word that means “helping each other”.

Fiona, Thusanani’s South African-based volunteer blog writer, explains how the blog
can make a difference: “I am not an occupational therapist but I am a good writer
and keen to get their message across to others. So I felt that I could help Thusanani
as a volunteer and raise its profile through blogging.”

Hayden Hamlet, trustee, said: “We are hoping that the large South African community
in the UK will read the blog and give their support.”

Unlike the USA, many UK charities have not taken up the opportunity to blog and 
thereby communicate to their donors, supporters, volunteers and the wider audience.
Blogging allows Thusanani to converse openly, which involves being prepared to handle
criticism, answer questions, and receive positive feedback.

The world’s “Blogosphere” is now 60 times larger than it was 3 years ago, according
to Technorati.com, and there are around 1.2 million legitimate postings a day. The
blog-reading audience is about 20% of the size of the newspaper-reading population,
according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.