On a warm Spring morning in November of 2002 I started my first blog. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, but one that changed my life on many levels.

While at first blogging was nothing more than a hobby for the evenings, it’s since become my full-time business, and one that has opened many doors of opportunity for personal development including:

• new friends
• new skills
• new knowledge
• the opportunity to travel
• the chance to write a book
• the ability to pay off a mortgage by writing about topics I’d happily have written about for free.

Today, I blog full-time at a variety of blogs including Digital Photography School and ProBlogger (a blog about making a living from blogging).

Can Blogging Be Used to Make the World a Better Place?

Blogging has been very good to me, but as my audience has grown I’ve found myself wondering how I could use this tool to make the world a better place.

I try to do that each day as I teach others how to blog and improve their photography, but with the chance to speak with millions of people each month comes a responsibility to do more.

The Tanzanian Experiment

Next Friday, I’m jumping on a plane for Dar es Salaam in Tanzania as part of an experiment to see whether blogging can in fact be used for social good.

I’ll be in Tanzania for one week to spend time observing—and reporting back to my blog readers and social networks on—an amazing project called Comprehensive Community Based Rehabilitation in Tanzania (CCBRT), a project of CBM Australia, an international disability and development organization.

You can read more about the trip here on CBM Australia’s website, but the ultimate goal is to raise awareness of the issues faced every day by people with disabilities in developing countries.

The work they do is inspiring.

Last year over 10,500 surgeries were performed and, in total, the lives of over 120,000 people with disabilities and their carers were improved significantly.

They work with people with a variety of disabilities including vision impairment, club foot, cleft lip/palate, maternal health problems, and many more. The impact that they have is life-changing, and I’m excited to witness it first hand and share what I see with readers.

Throughout the week in Tanzania I’ll be sharing my experiences via blog posts, photography, videos, and Tweets—both on my own blogs and the blog of CBM Australia.

We’ll be focusing mainly upon some of CCBRT’s work with maternal health issues (mainly fistula) and tracking some of the stories of the people that we meet.

The week will be challenging on many fronts—obviously the people we meet and the stories we report on will be confronting, and there are many technological obstacles involved in reporting from Africa. But the opportunity is too great to ignore, and I can’t wait to see what impact we can make.

How Can You Join the Trip?

The bulk of the blogging that I’ll be doing while I’m away will be on CBM’s blog. To follow along, subscribe to their feed here. We’ll also be tweeting from the road on both CBM’s Twitter account @CBMAustralia, and my own: @ProBlogger.