Diversity Event - Norman Borlaug Lecture with Guests David Beckmann and Jo Luck

I attended the Norman Borlaug Lecture on October 11, in which David Beckmann and Jo Luck were the guest lecturers.  David Beckmann and Jo Luck are co-recipients of the 2010 World Food Price, and discussed the role of organizations in combating hunger and poverty around the world.  Beckmann is president of Bread for the World, which is an organization that seeks to influence leaders in Washington to end hunger at home and abroad.  Luck is president of Heifer International, an organization that teaches the world’s resource-poor and hungry how to become self-sustaining.

Beckmann argued during his presentation that the US should provide more monetary aid to less fortunate countries, rather than provide food.  He also asserted that we shouldn’t only focus on countries that have unfortunate events such as enormous natural disasters with a surge of assistance following immediately afterwards, but always extending a helping hand whether they’ve had a sudden natural disaster or not.

Luck and her organization is more in support of teaching resource-poor countries and the hungry how to become self-sustaining.  She contended that giving these extremely poor families food and income-producing animals would lead towards better community development, and in return improved human nutrition and management of animal and natural resources with training in business development, leadership, gender equity, and environmental conservation practices. 

It was a mutual agreement and conclusion between the two that the US is in a great position to extend a helping hand to countries that are less fortunate, even if we are in a down economy.  They both encouraged giving whatever your lifestyle could afford, whether that is a monetary or time donation.  I found Luck to be more convincing than Beckmann, as I believe in private individuals supporting those in need, rather than having government just out right say they are going to spend “the People’s” money to support foreign countries.  Also, Luck was in support asset donations, while Beckmann was specific in monetary donations to those in need.  Although Beckmann had his reasons for strictly monetary donations, it’s wary as a donator to know that your full donation is going towards what you intended it to, while an individual can feel safer with the stance of Luck and her organization on the topic.

My Twitter Experience

What were my thoughts about Twitter before I had even started using it?  Well I had mixed thoughts about it to be quite honest.  I didn’t think it could be very hard to use, nor that bad of an online place to socialize since I knew Senator Chuck Grassley uses it.  However, at the same time, I wondered how many online profiles does a person really need?  Isn’t a everyday social network such as Facebook and a professional network such as LinkedIn enough?  I also wondered how much security could be offered from a site such as Twitter.  I knew with Facebook you could pretty much set how much security you wanted (anywhere from looking like you don’t have an account, to showing the whole world where you currently live and pictures of you on vacation).

After about the first five minutes of it, I could see how fun such an online place of socializing could be fun.  You could follow your most favorite groups as well as people that you’d like to know more about.  So of course knowing that Chuck Grassely was on Twitter, he was of course one of the first people I “followed” (sounds like a stalker! – well I guess you pretty much are with Twitter).  Then I had feeds come up from various Iowa State University related activities, and I thought this could be very useful!  However that’s where it all stopped.  Next thing I knew, I had a prostitute from Florida following my tweets!  Of all people that could and needed to follow me, I had a PROSTITUTE!  YUCK!  Needless to say, I started watch what I put on there from there on out.  I don’t see any reason why the whole world wide web needs to know you are going to Hickory Park in five minutes.  I’ve learned after this activity, that Facebook is a more secure (from the start) atmosphere and random people can’t see everything about you right from the get go.  Also, I like Facebook because I won’t crowd your News Feed with just the most recent status updates, but it will actually update it to the ones that more than likely fit your interests and the more popular threads amongst your friends.  I find this a lot nicer, that way my news feed isn’t filled by people that are constantly on Twitter every three minutes like they don’t have anything better to do than announce to the whole world what, when, where, and why they have done, currently doing, or will be doing.

Twitter is obviously made for a certain type of crowd, and I’m not in the crowd that wants to blast stuff in people’s faces.