EcoPaparazzi Allows Creator to Continue Following her Bliss

Jeanette McDermott has learned one thing in her life: the most important thing to do is to find your calling, do it, and follow your bliss. For McDermott, a lifelong journalist, her bliss is using her media skills to spread the word about biodiversity hotspots and conservation efforts.

Most recently, McDermott started EcoPaparazzi, a social network that challenges its users to take action and create change for the environment through photography. The Web site encourages users to post their environmental photographs to showcase what is being done in urban and rural areas and households and with pets, food, and politics to save the world. Members can post pictures and videos, write blog posts, and join groups such as "I Speak for Canadian Rivers", "Rant", and "Moved to Action".

Its members come from all areas of the world, from New York City to Miami to Sweden, and from all walks of life. They come for all reasons, whether to champion their cause, find kayaking buddies, or just to learn more about what they can do to help.

"I joined to help raise awareness about the lives of the children in Nicaragua. Some of the poorer families in La Chureca are forced to live in municipal dumps among the trash," said Alejandro Torres, who currently lives in Miami. Nicaragua is the poorest country in South and Central America. Torres hopes to raise funding in order to provide better homes, food, health care, and education for the children. McDermott has joined in on the cause, and in January, will start a media project in January providing the local children with flip cameras so that they can document their lives for a viral video in order to raise funds and awareness. Torres also enjoys EcoPaparazzi because it exposes him to others interests and viewpoints.

Another member, Nicholas Buccalo, is a New York City architect who hopes to learn more and share tips about sustainable architecture. "I do think it's important to share ideas that help shape our lives," he said when asked about the benefits of the network.

Christina Trevino, from Scarborough, Canada, said that "The idea to take pictures to heal the Earth is a wonderful concept. Many of us need to visually see things in order to feel and then take action. I am sure those who are actively working for the environment and our planet will find EcoPaparazzi to be an informative, enlightening, and empowering network that we can all be part of."

Audie Michael Litrada, who lives on Negros Island in the Philipines, is most concerned with human-caused climate change. In an e-mail interview, he called EcoPaparazzi a great way "inform the world by posting our captured images, showing them what is happening, and come up the best solution to heal our mother Earth."

McDermott was inspired to start EcoPaparazzi while on a trip documenting the negative aspects of development in Costa Rica this fall. McDermott had known since she was eight that her calling was to be a photojournalist and foreign news correspondent. She has worked as a reporter, photojournalist, managing editor, and public relations consultant in the United States and Ireland. She has also always been involved in volunteering with environmental organizations.

In 2004, she realized that she wasn't happy with where her life was going, so she sold all of her worldly belongings and moved to a friends farm in eastern Kentucky. During her time there, she heard that famed ecologist and entomologist E.O. Wilson was giving a talk at a nearby university. McDermott was transfixed by his talk on biodiversity hotspots, the 34 regions of the world that possess the greatest diversity of organisms but were also some of the highest at risk for wildlife extinction, deforestation, and other threats. She also noticed that many of his slides were boring. There were pictures of monkeys in trees so far away that you could barely see the monkey. There weren't any videos. There was very little to catch the eye.

McDermott stayed after the lecture to talk to Dr. Wilson and asked him about his visuals. He explained that as a scientist, he had barely enough resources to do research, much less create fancy and eye catching visuals. At that moment, McDermott finally knew what her calling was. She wanted to use her media and journalism skills to raise awareness about the hotspots.

McDermott now lives off the grid, meaning without any power or plumbing, at Campanario, located on the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica. Campanario, one of the biodiversity hotspots, is especially crucial because it is the last remaining contiguous lowland rainforest on the pacific slope in South and Central America. She and the executive director of Campanario were on a road trip documenting the negative aspects of development in Costa Rica when the chairman jokingly called McDermott a member of the paparazzi, only instead of stalking celebrities, McDermott photographs every move of the people destroying the earth. They then decided to take the idea further and in October, they created a web site for other people to document ways in which the environment is being destroyed as well as what people are doing to fix it.

Tish Grier, a self-proclaimed problogger and current Chief Community Expert of Placeblogger, a Web site where users can search for blogs near where they live, work, and travel, said by e-mail that communities such as EcoPaparazzi can help build community around an issue. "When a social network is set up for a specific reason, like EcoPaparazzi.ning.com, they become places where people with like minds, no matter where they are geographically, can share information and support one another. From that basis of like-minded support, individuals can venture out to start their own grassroots efforts, and check back with the group on their progress or ask for help. The social network becomes, in a sense, like a face-to-face social club. But if the message of the social network is going to spread, as in get more members, the personalities involved are going to have to make that happen. A social network can get good press, but good word-of-mouth from members and other participants is what makes them grow and flourish."

And that is exactly what McDermott plans to do to help EcoPaparazzi grow. The social network currently has 185 members and counting, but McDermott is more pleased with the quality and diverse causes and interests of her members over the quantity. She hopes that in the future, different groups will be able to join together in order to create social change for the world. She sees media evolving into a more democratic media through new media functions such as blogging, pictures, and especially video. The true value of new media, she says, is "about hearing opinions, ideologies, ideas, and stories about globalization and acting locally. When we pull these energies together, that's where the real power can come from. We need the strength of the voice."