sylleptic - mark hopwood’s blog

This article was written by Innocent, who is the Chief of Gorilla Monitoring for ICCN in Congo. It’s an account of why and how he became a ranger, and his career so far. He wrote it because his team can’t go out to work, because of the civil war there.

I wanted to post a link myself because it’s an amazing personal account, about something important, and also because it shows the power of online when it’s done with authenticity and honesty. There are a bunch of very brave people in a remote part of the Congo, who are keeping the rest of us in touch with what’s going on in their efforts to save the mountain gorilla (only 700 remain in the wild) and I can’t think of a better way to do that than with a blog. The BBC, CNN, AP, Al Jazeera have all picked up this blog and are reporting. Some have sent camera crews to spend time with the rangers.

You can sign up for their RSS feed here, if you want to stay in touch.

http://www.wildlifedirect.org/blogAdmin/gorilla

This blog has up to date information from the field about the Wildlife Direct charity’s work to protect gorillas and other wildlife in Africa. It’s a brilliant use of blogging to support fund-raising, and to help people see what their money is buying. There’s video too.

Whenever I’m talking to businesses about blogging, it always has to be authentic, factual and based on something real to the organisation, and all of that’s true here.