Children at a rural school in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh are running a photoblog about daily life in their village, Kalleda. The school gives children from poor families a free education.

The photo project of the RDF (Rural Development Foundation) school has helped school children learn English, connect them with the world and provided the world with a window into rural India.

Some of the sets are so delightful. Like this one titled People Carrying Things On Their Heads. And the one that is so insightful in its elegance and simplicity – titled Work.

Have an opinion on Corporate Social Responsibility? Necessary or not? Viable, irrelevant or pointless?

From Global Voices

On Thursday November 9th, at 6:30pm EST (23:30 GMT / 05:00am Friday in India), Reuters will be hosting a live conversation about corporate social responsibility at its New York headquarters. …

According to the special web page built for the event: “Corporate responsibility is increasingly important in today’s global landscape, with companies taking a greater role in developing communities, working to reduce poverty and addressing the health of our planet.”

But are companies – multinational as well as local – making nearly enough effort to be socially responsible? You, our dear readers and community members, likely have a few opinions on this subject.

We hope you will express your views on your own blog (please tag your posts with CSR for “corporate social responsibility” in Technorati) or let us know what you think in the comments section of this post. We will be feeding relevant blog posts into a special section of the event page. …

Your participation is especially important because if you click on the event web page, you will see that the panel of speakers is, well, not exactly the most geographically, economically, or ethnically diverse panel we’ve ever seen – to put it mildly. [Link to the Live Chat during the session where you can login and participate - and even pose questions.]

If you’d like, please help us spread the word and get more friends to participate by putting a badge for the event on your blog [Badge code available at GV page]

How to take part in the 24-hour online demo against censorship:

The Reporters Without Borders website will be given over to this protest from 11 a.m. on 7 November until 11 a.m. on 8 November.

Go to www.rsf.org during this 24-hour period, find the list of 13 countries that are Internet enemies and click on an inter-active map of the world to help make the Internet black holes disappear. Each click will help to change the map’s appearance. The aim is to re-establish the Internet in the countries where it is censored, to rebuild it before the 24 hours are over. Every vote will be counted. Every click will help Reporters Without Borders to speak with more force when it condemns the behaviour of those regimes that censor what should an arena for free expression.

Plus, you can give Yahoo! a piece of your mind:

By going to the special webpages, Internet users from all over the world will have the chance to record a message for Yahoo!’s founder from their personal computers. Reporters Without Borders will make sure the messages get to him. Why Yahoo? Because this was the first company to censor its own search engine to curry favour with the Chinese authorities. And because it has been collaborating for years with the Chinese police, which arrests and convicts dissident and freelance journalists. Shi Tao, for example, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on the basis of information supplied by Yahoo!, which hosted his e-mail account.

This parallel universe, an online service called Second Life that allows computer users to create a new and improved digital version of themselves, began in 1999 as a kind of online video game.

But now, the budding fake world is not only attracting a lot more people, it is taking on a real world twist: big business interests are intruding on digital utopia. The Second Life online service is fast becoming a three-dimensional test bed for corporate marketers, including Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Sun Microsystems, Nissan, Adidas/Reebok, Toyota and Starwood Hotels.

Am not a big fan of Second Life. Downloaded it, registered and tried running it. But the application hogs the system’s resources, and I cannot do anything else while running the application. I haven’t really found a stripped down version. Besides, unless there’s a specific event that I want to attend, I get bored rather easily. I struggled with the flying, moving backward and forward. I suppose once you warm up to it, it would get easier. But what’s the point. Unless Second Life becomes a very quick install and has a UI that would get you straight to a venue instead of making you jump, hop and landing on a water body because you have no idea how to “fly”, I see limited use. Perhaps if it became more like an IRC client – where you can join channels with relative ease, Global Voices could even consider a more robust presence there. (Is that already possible?) I know there are some ideas floating around. Reuters has a news desk for Second Life – which I think is rather interesting.

The Economist covered it just recently. (sub required) Perhaps all the excitement is justified and I am not able to enjoy it. But for people with limited RAM and system processors, Second Life is simply frustrating at the end of it.

And yes, I am on the panel. Be nice to me.

Among other things mentoring, media, husbands, people, weather, pompous organisations and food were discussed. And would you believe it – we discovered we had people in common. The kinds that are not in media. People I know from India in another lifetime. We had a lovely (yes, that’s how the Brits say it.) time. I think I was full as a helium balloon by the end of it. We strolled into the park and spotted this sign. I couldn’t resist a photograph. I googled a bit for it and apparently Cabbages and Frocks is a bit not my style. However, this almost Lewis Carroll sounding name is just too beautiful to be ignored, no?