Googling for awareness
If you spend any time playing with Google Earth (as, I will admit, I do), you may have noticed a small icon appearing in North Africa. The icon’s label reads “Crisis in Darfur.” And if you click on it, you can zoom in on more than satellite imagery—you’ll see in-depth information on damaged villages, destroyed schools, and displaced families in the region.
Working with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Google Earth is bringing the desperate situation in Darfur to the attention of its 200 million users. That’s powerful outreach—and I would think the interactivity of the Google Earth interface will have much more impact on users than just reading a news article about the situation in Sudan.
To see what Google Earth users will see when they zoom in on Darfur, you can check out this graphic from CNN.
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