We hope you all had (or are still having) a good holiday. It's almost the new year now, so of course it's time to start thinking about ways to help out your community and make the world a little better.

Beth Kanter of NetSquared.org recently posted about the Young Caucasus Women Project, a mentoring project organized by Golbal Voices. If you want to participate, you can mentor a young woman blogger from the Caucasus region of Western Asia. The women are ex-pats from the countries of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia, and they are able to write in English. All you need is a blog and some time to offer guidance support.

The program's director, Katy Pearce, outlines the objectives of the project:

The students participating in this project are high school aged foreign exchange students currently in the US. The hope is that they will continue blogging once they return home in the summer of 2006.

The immediate aims of the project are:

To highlight the similarities and learn about the differences between young women in these neighboring countries.

To promote citizen journalism in developing countries as an alternative to mainstream media.

To promote weblogs as a method of democratic expression.

To expose young women to journalism and technology.

If you are interested in participating, follow this link to NetSquared.org where you can find contact information and read more about the program.

[link via have fun * do good]