I found The Democracy Center's Blog From Bolivia on Blogdex yesterday. Given what's going on in the country, I can understand how it made the list - who wouldn't like to read how street protests caused the president to resign from someone living in the country. Blog for Bolivia provides more thorough coverage of what's going on now in the country than I've seen in mainstream...I found The Democracy Center's Blog From Bolivia on Blogdex yesterday. Given what's going on in the country, I can understand how it made the list - who wouldn't like to read how street protests caused the president to resign from someone living in the country.

Blog for Bolivia provides more thorough coverage of what's going on now in the country than I've seen in mainstream US news sources, and it offers an analysis of why it's happening - which is great for people outside of Bolivia who aren't as familiar with its history. The comments Jim Shultz is getting on his posts are impressive too - most of what I saw were different analyses of the cause of the protesting and separation in the country, and opinions on the nationalization of natural gas.

It's a neat idea to create a website about a country for people not living in that country. The blog is only in English and is a great educational resource for anyone interested in Bolivia or current social movements.

What's neat is that the The Democracy Center is also trying to do more with the blog. It classifies the blog on their website as a publication meant to "educate and empower citizen action." Looking through their archives I found one example of how they empower their readers - they asked readers to copy and paste text and email Abengoa, a corporation involved in a World Bank suit against Bolivia. I wonder how effective this campaign was (well, it says they got a response from the companying saying they "disagree entirely with the content" of the email). But they got a response. Given that the company is from Spain, having non-Bolivians email their concerns might have made more impact than organizing the Bolivians to do so.  With more and more organizations are taking this approach,  I wonder if anyone is studying the responses.  I would like to know how successful these campaigns are, and how much they are treated like spam.  Especially when the people emailing you may live on a different hemisphere.