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NRL News
Pro-Lifers Using the Internet To Reach Anyone over the age of 35 is painfully aware of how technologically savvy the younger generation tends to be. Those of you with children will surely identify. There is something truly humbling about begging a 12-year-old to help you set up your new e-mail account or download and install a program on your computer. Today’s young people live in a techno-world. They interact with friends via MySpace, Facebook, and through countless text messages. Forget the old Encyclopedia Britannica for school reports. Kids today have unlimited information available at their fingertips via numerous online search engines. This is sometimes difficult and even impossible for many pro-life veterans of a slightly “more mature” nature to understand or comprehend. But the lessons that follows from that aren’t. We need to meet kids—teens, tweens, and college students—where they live. Increasingly, they live online. Thus, if we want to continue winning in the battle for life, we must also be online. Fortunately, many online resources for the right-to-lifer already exist. Most, if not all, of NRLC’s state affiliates have web sites that provide information on abortion and euthanasia. Several, such as Oregon, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Minnesota even have specific information on their sites for teens and college students. Teen-targeted pro-life sites such as http://www.standupgirl.com/ offer facts and advice on the life issues in language teens understand, and offer positive, life-affirming alternatives to abortion. Texas Right to Life features YouTube clips of popular pro-life movies on its web site. This allows people to view trailers for pro-life movies such as Bella, Juno, and Horton Hears a Who—all films that affirm the value and dignity of every human life. Wisconsin Right to Life is holding a YouTube video contest for teens and college students that will challenge them to make their own videos with a right-to-life theme. Contestants will choose from several categories, each of which will feature basic facts about abortion, then make an original short video that promotes the cause of life. Videos will be judged on content, how effectively they support the chosen theme, originality, and technical quality. This contest will allow pro-life young people to make their voices heard on the most important issue of our time—in a format they understand and embrace. Wisconsin Right to Life will also be debuting MySpace and Facebook pages that provide information to teens and young adults on the issues of abortion and euthanasia via a medium they frequent. For more information on either of these projects, visit http://www.wrtl.org/. Opportunities to reach young people with the pro-life message via the Internet are almost as limitless as the Internet itself. NRLC chapters and state affiliates should keep this in mind and take every opportunity available to reach out via this important avenue. You don’t have to be technologically savvy yourself in order to accomplish this. You just need to know someone who is. We suggest contacting your local Teens for Life or college right to life group and asking for their best technology whiz. Aside from providing your chapter with important information for reaching young people, this will give you a prime opportunity to connect with local teens and college students and form a lasting relationship that will save lives for decades to come. How do we know this works? We speak from experience. Wisconsin Right to Life often relies on the technological genius of our former teen and current college volunteer, Kacie Dobson, without whom WRTL’s teen convention, teen camps, and teen video contest would be … well, pretty much impossible, at least from the perspective of technology. Kacie knows pretty much everything there is to know about computers and other complicated technology that is totally lost on this late 30-something WRTL staffer who still has trouble connecting the projector to her laptop. Chances are good that you have someone of similar talent, tech savvy, and commitment to the cause of life in your area. You just need to go looking for him or her! So take some time to brainstorm about how your group can effectively use the Internet to reach the hearts and minds of the next generation. And find your local Kacie while you’re at it. You will be very glad you did. A generation of children yet unborn will owe their lives to our willingness to embrace the future. Joleigh Little works full time for Wisconsin Right to Life where she coordinates their youth outreach program and tries really, really hard to learn how to use technology. When that fails, she calls Kacie. |