The Hunger Site and associated sites...

Another great site, which I often forget about is The Hunger Site. This is a great site, they have partners who donate money every time a person clicks a button on their home page. You can only click once a day and it REALLY only takes a few seconds to do. A great way to utilize this is to have it set as your homepage, then you can help the world every morning before you even check your email. For the hunger site the money goes to Mercy Corps, Feeding America, and Millennium Promise.

At the top of the website, there are tabs to show the other projects similar to the Hunger Site. There is The Breast Cancer Site, The Child Health Site, The Literacy Site, The Rainforest Site, and The Animal Rescue Site. These all function like the Hunger Site, in that their partners donate money for every click on the button on their home page. All you have to do, is take that two seconds to click a button, let it load the thank you page, with the ads.... and you have helped a great cause. In all it takes less than  twenty seconds to go through all six pages and make a positive impact on the world for the day.

Help charities while searching the web!!

Hey all,

Here is a blog post listing some great ways to do good while searching the internet. Which is really great, because I know I spend a lot of time online, so here is another painless way to help others in our daily lives. I want to talk about a few of the search engines from the blog post.

The first one I want to mention is MagicTaxi, it is a UK based engine which donates 50% of its daily advertising directly to various UK charities. I like this one cause it reminds me of my blog, except it functions differently. Here is a Metro article about the company for more info.

The next is Search Kindly which uses the money they raise to build mobile libraries for underserved schools, as an avid reader I really like the goal of this site. They way they function is to "take something that you'd be doing anyway, like surfing the Internet, and turn it into a meaningful action." Every time you visit their page, they get roughly 1/3 of a cent for the advertising costs, which they then use for the libraries. You can also set it for your homepage as an easy way to help or add it your search bar to use every time you search the web.

Art for a Better World.

A friend of mine, sent me a link for a website where you can buy artwork, in which a percentage of the proceeds are then donated to a charity chosen by the author. The Working Proof "seeks to promote art and social responsibility. Each print is paired with a charity of the artist's choice, to which we are donating 15% of the sale of each print - creating what we believe to be a product with not just aesthetic, but social value. Besides showcasing emerging artists and great artwork, the intent of the Working Proof is to promote a variety of charities and to expose them to new supporters through the appreciation of art and creativity."

V-Day supports Pakistan

I just logged in to check my old school email address, I don't get much email to that address anymore. However, there was an email from the V-Day organization talking about their involvement in Pakistan and asking for donations. V-Day is an organization dedicated to ending violence and abuse against women worldwide. They are most well known for their grassroots performances of The Vagina Monologues, which are always performed for local charities and global issues that affect women's safety. I have helped organize and been in the play multiple times and I found it very empowering, and loved my experiences and the friends I made from the performances. I appreciate the global outlook of their spotlight every year, from Katrina victims to the widespread violence women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo face they try to raise awareness of the problems women face globally and I think that is very important.

Angelina Jolie on the Pakistan flooding.

I was reading more about the Pakistan flooding and it just moved me so much. Its difficult to convey the true scope of the catastrophe or the urgent needs of the people affected. So I am going to let Angelina Jolie express her thoughts on it and hope they touch as they did me.



And here's another one, where she hopes people will start giving and helping and not give in to donor fatigue.  While not all of us can afford to give the $100,000 that she has, we can afford to give something. The numbers for Pakistan are very low considering the scope of the tragedy. "While 3 million people were affected in Haiti the number affected in Pakistan is 7 times as much and climbing. As the flood waters recede, human misery is escalating."I will be donating to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees as Angelina Jolie suggests, because they are working with the people directly affected and they are already there on the ground.



Please join me in helping those affected Pakistan flood, and if you know of any good organizations doing good work their, please do no hesitate to recommend them. Thanks and enjoy your weekend.

Pakistani Flood Relief

Yesterday, I was reading one of my favorite blogs Racailicious - which focuses on the intersection of race and pop culture. I always find it informative and helps me to look at issues from a different context. If you haven't read it, its a great blog to talk about how race interacts with our culture, I highly recommend it. From there I was directed to some information about the Pakistani Flood Relief effort and was underwhelmed by the US response. First I want to really reinforce the scope of the flooding; here is a link to a map (from the BBC) with a visual overlay of the flooding on top of the US, so you can see the size of the affected area. I think it helps to have that kind of a visual to really understand the extent of the disaster.

Racialicious had a link to an article from the Atlantic - 4 Reason Why American's Aren't Giving for Pakistani Flood Relief by Max Fisher. This article is discussing the dismal response for this natural emergency, in comparison to other's such as the Haiti earthquake. "The figures for the Haiti earthquake, tsunami, and Kashmir earthquake were $1087.33, $1249.80, and $388.33 respectively. For the Pakistan floods, the world has given only $16.36 per victim. These shortfalls have led many to ask a macabre question. Why did the world, particularly U.S. individual donors, give so much for Haiti but show so little concern for Pakistan?" Here's an article in WIRED discussing the difference in response from the US compared to the Haiti earthquake, and the differences are startling." According to the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, a month after the flooding started, the United States has provided an aggregated $200 million for Pakistan. That’s less than half of what it gave Haiti’s much, much smaller population."

How I Choose.

Hello,

A friend of mine asked me this week "how do you choose your charities?" Which is a great question, so I thought I would make a post explaining my process. Its a very detailed and exacting process...

Actually, I mostly go with my gut and then do some research. Currently the format is having themes for the week. While I often know of one or two good charities already, I rarely know more than that. So, I look for other charities. I will Google the theme looking for good charities or use Charity Navigator to search for related topics.