In my continuing covering of sites, services and startups that do more good for humanity than they do for Sand Hill Road, I was informed today about Changents — a site/social network/community that is focused on bringing change by having “change agents” (changents), or rather, superstars who are actively making the world a better place in seperate areas by doing radicle things, and getting a “backers” or “followers” (ordinary people) to do it with them.
The site features a variety of change agents — ranging from environmental issues to poverty, human rights, and politics. Each changent has his or her own set of backers. A backer can be a fan, a buzz builder, a first responder, or an advocate (ranging from passive to active). They also have different ways to browse through the change agents, including by cause area and by location. Members can nominate themselves or others as a change agent.
The service, of course, shines on the interaction between with the change agent the backer. When a member has decided who to back and at what level, Changents asks for some kind of contact information, which the change agent can use to get in touch personally if needed (of course, it’s at the backer’s discretion to supply whatever they’re most comfortable with.) Also, change agents can put out real “action requests,” describing and requesting for whatever they need, and members can respond directly to it with whatever they can help with.
Today, the service announced a set of five change agents titled “Earthkeeper Heroes.” The new changents include a bunch of university students who are crossing the country this summer in a tricked-out Harvester school bus that runs on waste vegetable oil, to a recent college grad and his scrappy team “in a mad-dash sprint to build a global online/offline climate action movement.”
