Below is a transcript of a podcast interview conducted this summer with Peggy Duvette, the Director of WiserEarth. WiserEarth was one of the 21 Featured Projects at the 2nd NetSquared Conference. You can hear the audio recording of the interview on the NetSquared Podcast and hear WiserEarth's 5-minute pitch at the Conference here.

Peggy Duvette: Hello! My name is Peggy Duvette and I've been the Director of the WiserEarth Project for the last two years. We are based in Sausalito, California. I'm thrilled to be here today with you, Britt, and the whole NetSquared community.

WiserEarth is a website that helps people and organizations working towards sustainability and social justice to locate each other, share resources and build alliances. And just like Wikipedia, it's a community-based platform where all the content related to environmental and social justice is traded and updated by the community.

You can quickly and easily see who is working on what and where. So for example, if you are a funder, and you're trying to identify organizations working on specific issue areas, like human rights, and you want to learn about that work, you would do your research on WiserEarth and then you could connect with them directly. WiserEarth is really trying to allow people to connect and collaborate, especially when they're doing similar work.

Another thing to note is that whether you're a small organization or a large one, on WiserEarth, we are all on a level playing field. Everyone has the same visibility and a place to share their work and request what they need.

Britt Bravo: Where did the idea for WiserEarth come from?

PD: The project really began out of community. We simply wanted to find out who was behind the important work that was being done on the planet. We realized that we did not even know that our neighbors were doing similar work as us in Sausalito itself, and it's a very small town.

So we began to count organizations worldwide, specifically looking at nonprofit organizations and coalitions working towards social justice and environmental restoration. We pulled together a global team of volunteers, researchers, and experts and began building a database of the nonprofit organizations, the coalitions, the student groups, the foundations, any entities that were working towards social justice, environmental restoration, indigenous issues and sustainability.

Big or small, we knew that there were really no small causes and no small acts. And yet, while we were doing this, we still did not know how many organizations there were in the world. What we do know is that we have found over 106,000 organizations so far on WiserEarth.

Paul Hawken, our Executive Director, estimates that there are 1-2 million more. He was so moved by the extent of the movement and how different it is from other social movements that he wrote his most recent book, Blessed Unrest.

Today, WiserEarth is essentially the mechanism that maps and links this global movement. It puts a mirror to the movement and allows us to see ourselves and become better connected.

BB: Can you give an example of how WiserEarth has or will create positive change?

PD: One of the stories that we like to share is a collaboration with the Culture of Peace Initiative. They contacted us at the early stage, when WiserEarth was still an infant, in some ways. We were trying to understand what it would do and to learn from the community and their needs.

WiserEarth really helped this global movement, it's a global network of peace organizations, to streamline their communication and to really organize themselves for a big event that they sponsor, which is the International Peace Day.

And now any organization planning aPeace Day event can post their events on WiserEarth and connect with or learn from other groups planning similar events in their part of the world. It's a worldwide event and you can imagine that it's a big thing for them.

Britt: What's the next step for WiserEarth? What are some of its goals and challenges?

PG: That's a very good question. As you can imagine, WiserEarth is evolving. Currently, we are actively engaging in communication outreach.

We have teams of leaders working across the globe with the objective of sharing WiserEarth with key communities. We have volunteers in Africa, Asia, the South Pacific, Latin American and Europe. Which means that we're translating a lot of the outreach material into key languages.

Also, one of the next steps is to develop key collaborations and partnerships with leaders, activists and umbrella NGO information. For example, we've been collaborating with the Green Century Institute to create a group on WiserEarth. One of the features that has been requested was the ability for communities of similar interest to collaborate more efficiently around an issue.

We are also presenting WiserEarth at key environmental and social justice forums, so that organizers can utilize the site as a networking tool, and demonstrating the site to event attendees. We'll be participating at the Green Festival, at Bioneers and recently, we joined a panel at the Craigslist Nonprofit Boot Camp on Saturday.

And another big piece is to reach to the student associations, libraries and charity centers at universities. WiserEarth is a research tool, and can be an opportunity to engage students.

BB: What was the positive impact for WiserEarth of going to the NetSquared Conference?

PD: The feedback we got from the panel and the participants at the NetSquared Conference was of tremendous help. It was such a good reinforcement for us to hear how it helped the community. For example, numerous people found that WiserEarth really created that level playing field, and that was very compelling for them. They liked the fact that a small organization was represented the same way as a large one.

But what I would say was even more useful were the suggestions on how we could improve the site, and how it could really enhance collaboration among people. For example, several suggested that we build a place on WiserEarth where communities could form according to their area of focus in order to organize. From this and other feedback, we're currently in the process of meeting these needs through the WiserEarth group.

In terms of connection, we met some very incredible people. Everybody was so empowering. A good example were the NABUUR guys who have done interesting work with matching needs with resources, and creating a forum for sharing best practices. We knew we wanted to collaborate from the moment we met. Right now, we're having discussions to see what it would look like.

We also connected with the Global Women's Leadership Network. They're currently considering organizing their work on WiserEarth, either within a portal or within the WiserEarth group. So a lot of positive collaboration. It was an amazing way to connect.

BB: How can listeners help to move your work forward?

PD: As you can imagine, there are many ways listeners can help us. We're looking for expertise at the technical level to help us enhance the platform. One challenge is to make sure that this platform goes open source, so that different communities can re-purpose it and tailor it to their own needs.

An area where we would love to get help is communication outreach; basically making sure that the word is out there. As you can imagine, one could have the greatest tool, but if people are not aware of it, it's not useful. So it's really important that communities in need of it know about it. And also, it's really important for us to find out if the need is meet.

So again, listeners, we would love your help. If you have any expertise or you are interested in communication outreach, we would love to hear from you.

BB: Is there anything else that you would want people to know about WiserEarth?

PD: I want to use this opportunity to thank you and the NetSquared community for allowing us to be part of the Conference.

WiserEarth is about connecting with people. And while WiserEarth is allowing you to do that online, we don't have a physical place. NetSquared allowed us to connect with people that were actually on WiserEarth, and so we want to thank the NetSquared Conference for that.