At Bright New Ideas, we have been talking about how to increase awareness of the problem and visibility of our organization. In other words, we think that it is very important for us to not only help those in Nicaragua, but also increase awareness of the problem of lacking a sustainable, healthy, and cheap lighting source. The problem that we face is this: how do we cut through the incredible amount of information on the internet? How can we make ourselves unique?

I don’t know how many of you grew up reading Choose Your Own Adventure novels as a kid, but we’ve been taking a lot of inspiration from them for our marketing strategy. We hope to utilize the interactivity of the internet and the explosion of user-created video content of sites like YouTube to make one of the first user-directed adventure sites to promote our cause. How will we do this? We will put polls on our website where users can vote on different possible activities (for example, exploring a community that lives without electricity) and we will document our findings and broadcast them online.

In the end, we hope to make another trip down to Nicaragua, only this time fully documenting our travels and giving you, the viewer, full access to help us plot our course and our tasks along the way. Expect the first poll to come within the next few weeks!

Also, while you’re waiting, make sure to look at Dan Buettner’s website, Blue Zones. Dan is someone else we’ve taken a lot of inspiration from. He’s been doing a lot of good work advocating for different causes around the world.

In case you don’t quite remember the concept of Choose Your Own Adventure novels, check out this website that is an internet-based version of the same idea.