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| One of the faces of Salisbury, Md. US |
When we first considered the program there were a coupe of things we needed to do. The first was to create, not an anonymous account but rather a group one. Several students use the same account at the same time. The idea is to give the students a level of protection and also allow the Foundation to retain some control over what they're posting.
The other thing we needed to do was to reach out to Estonia, which, as it turned out, was easier than one might think. We got in touch with +Jaan Übi, an Estonian from the Tartu region who is a visiting professor at Salisbury University. He was able to coordinate with some students in Tartu and help them set up their own Instagram accounts. He also came up with the hashtag #Maarjamaa (which is "Maryland" in Estonian) so the project photos would be easily searchable.
From there, we selected a kick-off date of Oct. 17 (which was the monthly 3rd Friday arts event in Downtown Salisbury. Then we just cut some of the kids loose with instructions to take photos of all the festivities.
As it turns out, Instagram photos aren't easy to import here. Instead, I used photos my daughter took with my phone. If you're interested in following the +Sister Cities International digital pen pal program we've initiated, follow @SalisburyMiM and @TartuSalisbury on instagram. Please consider liking and sharing the kids' photos. If you take a photo of Salisbury's downtown and want to share it with our Estonian friends, please tag us and use the #Maarjamaa hashtag to help promote a better connection between the youth of our Sister City.We also use #GetMiMvolved for many of our social interactions, if you want to search that hashtag for our other projects, we'd love to stay in touch.
