AFTER Holly Schnaars, 37, was diagnosed with late stage colorectal cancer she picked up her video camera and decided to tell her story on the online video site Metacafe to raise awareness of the disease.

The mother of two from San Jose, California, is just one of thousands of Americans, as well as charities and non-profit organisations, who use online video to publicise their cause and raise funds as it becomes easier and cheaper to post videos than hope for television coverage or other forms of marketing.

The ground shift has prompted the biggest online video sites led by YouTube to reorganise their pages to make it easier for such users to find videos related to their favourite causes.

YouTube, which is owned by search giant Google Inc , is creating a special section for non profits to air their videos and link them to its Google Checkout online payment system to receive funds directly.

'Non profits understand that online video isn't just a way to broadcast public service announcements on a shrunken TV set,' said Steve Grove, head of news and politics at YouTube. 'It's a way to get people to do more than just absorb your message but to engage with their user generated content as well,' he said.

Power of video
It's not just the online video companies giving support to individual causes and charities. Pure Digital, maker of the Flip video camera, has said it plans to give away a million video cameras to non profit organisations around the world to capture images and moments in places traditional media outlets might not be able to reach.

'Video has power and media has power but the challenge is that the media is limited to telling stories that are controlled by a very small number of people,' said Jonathan Kaplan, chief executive of Pure Digital. 'This programme along with YouTube and other sites will expand the media universe for learning what?s really going on in the world,' he said.

One recent example of the power of video was the impact of clips of the Myanmar army's confrontations with local protesters which were posted on YouTube and other Web sites. Some of the clips made their way to mainstream news outlets.

Witness, an activist organization founded by veteran rock star Peter Gabriel in 1992, has focused on raising awareness of such previously unseen events through video. Sam Gregory, programme director at Witness said online distribution has made it easier to put videos in front of the right people such as decision makers and others with a personal connection to the cause.

'It's not necessarily about the size of the audience it's about placing targetted video and turning 'watching' into action,' he said.

Scott Schnaars, Holly's husband, said the eight-minute long video of his wife talking about her disease and then shaving her head to donate her hair to a charity that makes wigs has attracted more than 20,000 views on Metacafe and YouTube. But for the Schnaars the most important thing is that the video has helped educate people about the importance of recognising any cancer symptoms as early as possible.

'We've had amazing responses,' they said. 'The thing that's made us most happy is people sending us messages saying, 'I've had these symptoms too, I am going to get checked out.' -- REUTERS