Today marks the start of Twestival Local. Twitter users and their friends will use the next 4 days to hold fundraising events, raise awareness of local charities and do small community projects. If you’ve never gotten the point of Twitter, this is a great chance to see how it can be used as a force for good!

And you can participate even if you’re not a Twitter user! (people who post updates on their lives, or links of interest to others, but only 140 characters at a time)

Things you can do:

• See if there’s a Twestival event happening in your city and go support it. You don’t have to be on Twitter to attend!
• Make a donation to your city’s cause, or if there’s no event in your city, adopt one!
• Follow everyone’s Twitter reports and see what people are up to all over the world.
• If you have a Twitter account, you can retweet information to your followers. #twestival is the subject hashtag
• Offer a suggestion for or take part in one of the small-scale Twestival Projects (you can see what other people are up to by watching hashtag #twestivalgood

This is only the first year of the project, so I’m impressed at how much is happening this year, and can’t wait to see it grow as the years go on!

Volunteering is an amazing way to give back or pay it forward, giving of your time rather than money. But only about one in four North Americans volunteer. The rest don’t know what they’re missing out on, because volunteering improves your mental, physical and emotional health!

There are many people finding innovative ways to harness the power of Twitter, Facebook, etc to promote volunteering. For example, Britt over at Have Fun Do Good, has put together a list of 21 Twitter feeds about Volunteering.

But Brandon Mendelson is taking it much further. He’s a man with a mission: to raise awareness of and gratitude for volunteerism, while benefitting several non-profit organizations with technical equipment and knowledge, AND raising money for the Invisible People homeless voices video project. And he’s using social networking to help do it.

His project, A Million High Fives will use “crowdfunding” over the next several months to raise the money required for the adventure. Anyone interested in participating pays $1 for each business card to be displayed in a world-record event . The goal is 300,000 cards and there is extra exposure for buying 100, 200 or more.

You can also send in used laptops, cell phones, game systems, digital cameras, etc to be donated to Invisible People and various charities.

The project kicked off on September 1 and runs through September 2010. Get in on the ground floor! You can follow tweets about the project using the #AMHF hashtag. Good luck Brandon!