Tag Archives: charity water

Donate to Clean Water, Get a Free Book

Clean Water for EliroseClean Water for Elirose is a great little children’s book explaining the problem of dirty water around the world. I plugged the book before when it was a Kickstarter project and now the author, Twin Citizen Ariah Fine, is working hard to fund a clean water well. He’s trying to raise $5,000 through charity: water, a task I know well, and he’s offering to give a copy of Clean Water for Elirose for donating any amount to his charity: water project.

That’s a great deal: Give clean water, get a free book.

If you already have a copy (like me!) or don’t need one, Ariah will give your free copy to a classroom.

You can check out the book and read the entire thing online.

Consider making a donation. charity: water does amazing work and it’s always worthwhile supporting them. Plus: good book. Book projects like this definitely need to be supported and generous souls like Ariah who put so much sweat and tears into a project and then give it all away deserve your support.

Here’s a great video of Ariah’s kids getting ready to give away some books:

Support the Mudula Mamas

Mudula MamasThree moms of children born in Mudula, Ethiopia (also in Southern Ethiopia where Milo was born), are competing in a triathlon in Dallas on Sunday, Oct. 2 to raise money for Mudula Water, a clean water project. They’re also part of the Janus Charity Challenge where the top fundraisers earn extra cash for their charity (up to $8,000!).

You can read more about it and donate here.

These inspiring moms are racing for water and racing for life (one of the moms was profiled here). This area of Ethiopia is experiencing a drought and feeling the impacts of the current famine. It’s hard to ignore and this is an easy way to help.

That’s the basics of what’s happening, but there are also several efforts going to help these Mudula Mamas raise more money and score that extra $8,000 for clean water.

I’m getting personally involved as well. I helped edit the copy on the donate page, I’m advising on the social media aspects of the campaign, we’re pitching in (a tiny bit) on the matching fund below and I’m donating my book profits. Will you join me? Here are three simple ways you can help:

1. All You Have to Do is Click
The first effort is the easy one. All you have to do is click. A number of people have offered to donate $1 to the Mudula Mamas efforts for every ‘like’ on various Facebook pages:

All you have to do is visit the pages above and click ‘like’ at the top. Simple.

These are all small, grassroots groups that care about Ethiopia and fighting poverty. I’m sure there’s a practical limit to how much each challenge is willing to donate (I know for one of them it’s over $1,000!), but let’s make them sweat. ;-)

2. Meskel Match
Sept. 27 is the celebration of Meskel in Ethiopia, so we’re celebrating with the Meskel Match. If we can get $1,500 in donations on Tuesday, we’ll match it. Donate on Tuesday, Sept. 27 and help us bring in an extra $1,500 for clean water in Mudula.

Update: We raised well over $1,500 on Tuesday and scored the matching grant. Thank you! That’s a huge shot in the arm towards getting the extra $8,000 from Janus.

3. Buy My Book
Addition by Adoption: Kids, Causes & 140 CharactersMany of you have heard me talk about clean water before. It’s an important issue and it was the center of my book, Addition by Adoption. For the rest of this week I’ll donate all the profits from my book to the Mudula Mamas. I make $3.84 per copy sold on Amazon and usually donate $2 of that to charity: water, but for this week we’ll send it all to Mudula Water (I think Scott Harrison will understand). There are two ways to buy:

The Regular Approach:
Buy it from Amazon – Cost: $9.99 – $3.84 goes to Mudula.

The Save More, Give More Approach:
Buy it from CreateSpace – Cost: $8.99 (with coupon code “TARZGB88” for $1 off) – $4.84 goes to Mudula.
(CreateSpace is run by Amazon, so it’s legit, you just don’t get the benefit of using your Amazon gift card, shipping deals, etc.)

Note: My book came out more than a year ago and sales have really fallen off. So don’t think this is some super generous effort on my part. I expect we’ll sell maybe one or two copies. Go ahead and prove me wrong.

Help the Mudula Mamas
Will you join me in helping these inspiring moms bring clean water to Mudula, Ethiopia? Donate now.

Looking Back at 2010

It’s New Year’s Eve and nobody’s really working today, so it’s time for a little 2010 recap. Thankfully my wife did a full recap in photos, so I can skimp a little.

2010 has been insane.

Bigger Family
The biggest moment, of course, was welcoming a preteen into our family, along with all the Hannah Montana and Justin Bieber and sparkly pink that comes with a pre-teen. It’s been quite a ride with Yeshumnesh and we’ve got a ways to go. I’ve never felt so old—and at the same time so young. I did manage to welcome Yeshumnesh into our family with a new haircut. First time in three years I paid for one. The mohawk made our Christmas card.

Writing Wins
I also published three books:

Addition by Adoption, is my book of tweets about raising kids and bringing Milo home from Ethiopia. A portion of the proceeds go to clean water in Ethiopia, and in September we hit the $5,000 mark and raised enough to build a well in Ethiopia. The book is also just barely turning a profit, which is exciting.

Then there’s Open Our Eyes, the book that supports homeless advocate Mark Horvath. If you want to know more about what Mark does, read Ka’e k’e‘s story. It’s been a big year for Mark. We also helped him win $50,000. The book has all kinds of big names contributors, like New York Times best-selling author Chris Brogan. All profits from the book go to support Mark’s work with InvisiblePeople.tv. The profits aren’t much—I send Mark his first payment yesterday ($226.56), but he won’t be retiring any time soon. Knowing Mark he’ll be spending it on someone else.

I also published a post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel. More for fun than anything and to give self publishing a try (works nicely, crappy cover and all). The post-apocalyptic fun continued all year as I kept diving into more post-apocalyptic literature (hmm… maybe I should have reversed that order).

For all the writing success, I also had a big failure. My fourth attempt at National Novel Writing Month fell flat. I gave up after two weeks when the story wasn’t coming together and I realized my life was too busy.

Giving Back
With building a well in Ethiopia and publishing a book to fight homelessness I’ve done a lot of giving back this year. But it started even earlier when we responded to an earthquake by coloring. Lexi’s pictures ended up raising $675 for Haiti. Other folks got in on the action about the time the idea fizzled out. I’d love to do more with it, but I think I have enough charity cases on my hand.

A Class Reunion of Sorts

I had a weird dream last night. I was visiting my high school (Yes, I have reoccurring dreams about school—you’d think at 31 these dreams would go away, but no. A few weeks back I dreamed about having to go to school with Yeshumnesh!) and while stopping by the room of a former teacher (who suddenly had a ginormous office complete with fire place) half of my graduating class showed up. It was some kind of bizarro reunion, but I was seeing all these people I hadn’t seen since high school (and I couldn’t remember half their names). Unlike most of my high school dreams this one wasn’t traumatizing—it was hopeful and uplifting.

Which is all very fitting because that’s pretty much what happened yesterday (not the bizarro reunion part, let me explain).

Julia Music is an old friend from middle school and high school. We were really just classmates back then, but today I consider her a friend as we’ve bonded over adoption and long waits. She’s been a big supporter of my book, Addition by Adoption, and even got an unnamed mention on page 50. She heard about the slow but steady pace of my effort to build a clean water well in Ethiopia through charity: water. A portion of the proceeds from my book go to the well and a lot of folks have donated above and beyond that. Since April we had raised $2,046 of the needed $5,000, which is pretty remarkable.

Well, Julia stepped in and decided to help me get to halfway in one day. That meant raising $454 in one day. She started bugging people on Facebook and didn’t stop. She posted well over 150 times on people’s Facebook walls, asking them to donate to my cause. Some people call that annoying. I call it life-changing. Because the money started coming in.

It was $10 and $20 at a time (and sometimes a little more) and it started adding up. Since launching the book and this campaign in April I’ve had 10 people make donations directly to my charity: water campaign. Yesterday 21 people donated. Many of them were people I went to high school with.

By midnight a total of $475 came in, putting the campaign at $2,521—just over halfway.

We’ve been so busy lately—busy with our second Ethiopian adoption—that I’ve hardly had time to think about promoting my book or continuing to beat the drum for clean water in Ethiopia. $5,000 was beginning to feel like it would take forever. And then someone else comes in and carries the load for a little while.

As Mark Horvath of InvisiblePeople.tv would say, I’m just wrecked. I’m humbled that my former classmates would rally like this. I’m full of gratitude and overwhelming thanks. “Thank you” hardly begins to cover it.

A class reunion indeed.

Only $2,479 to go until we can build a clean water well in Ethiopia.

Keeping Book Sales in Perspective

So my book, Addition by Adoption, officially released on Amazon last week. And so I began my fixation with Amazon’s sales rank, something I imagine most authors go through (whether or not they admit it).

Before the May 11 release date the book’s Amazon sales rank was in the 500,000 range. Not too shabby, considering the millions of books that are published, right? Then on Tuesday the popularity surge began. It zoomed into the top 100,000, eventually settling as high as 55,721. It did end up at #35 in the adoption category.

Whoa. I know, right?

I assumed my book must be selling like hotcakes. Wow. All my hard work trying to spread the word about this thing (i.e., being annoying) must be paying off.

Not quite. Turns out the Amazon sales rank doesn’t mean as much as you might think. Depending on what you read and who you believe, cracking the top 100,000 might mean you’ve sold a single copy lately. Cracking the top 10,000 might mean you’ve sold a dozen copies. The top 1,000 might mean 50 copies.

It’s all relative. It’s all fluctuating. It’s all meaningless.

Just as quickly as my book surged, it also flopped. Today we’re sitting at 483,172. Total monthly sales to date? Seven. I don’t know what ‘selling like hotcakes’ actually means, but I’m pretty sure it’s more than seven.

Continue reading Keeping Book Sales in Perspective

Pre-Order is Now Over

The limited time pre-order for Addition by Adoption is now over. In one week we managed to sell 64 pre-order copies. That’s pretty cool for a self-published book with little support. Thank you.

I kept saying that more money from the pre-order copies would go to charity: water, and it has. This morning I donated $256 to our campaign to build a well in Ethiopia, which amounts to $4 per copy (double the normal donation amount). That’s a good start towards the $5,000 we’ll need to build a well. But we have a long way to go ($4,744 to go).

From now on $2 of each copy sold will go to charity: water, so we need to sell 2,372 copies. That sounds insane, doesn’t it? It does, but a year ago I would have told you that raising $2,605 was insane. It wasn’t.

You can help by spreading the word, buying a copy when it officially launches (May 11!) or making a donation directly to our campaign.

The book officially launches on May 11 and you’ll be able to get it on Amazon.com.

Thanks again to everyone who bought a copy and helped spread the word. I’m continually amazed and humbled at how people are responding to the book. Thanks.

Why My Book Supports Water, Not Adoption

We’re in the midst of pre-order week for my book Addition by Adoption: Kids Causes & 140 Characters (in case you somehow missed it). A portion of the proceeds from the book will go to build a well in Ethiopia with charity: water. It’s kind of a big, crazy goal—we need to raise $5,000 to build a well. Roughly $2 of each book sold with go to charity: water, so that’s a lot of books (though $4 of every pre-order copy will go to charity: water, so you know, pre-order now!).

Water is a huge deal. I’ve talked about the numbers before and they’re pretty staggering. But for me the personal connection is more important. People all over Ethiopia lack clean water—and it kills them. The jerry cans people use to gather water could be seen everywhere in Ethiopia, from the urban capital city to the rural countryside.

So my book about adoption supports water. A little weird, right?

Adoption is not a best case scenario. Ideally, adoption wouldn’t be necessary. There are many reasons that children need to be adopted, from poverty to abuse to social stigmas. Some of those can be prevented.

It’d be better if Ethiopia’s children didn’t become orphans and didn’t need to be adopted. I talk about this in the first chapter of the book. It’s part of why Ethiopia is near and dear to our hearts. We want the children of Ethiopia—Milo’s brothers and sisters—to be able to stay with their moms and dads. Providing clean water is one way to help make that happen. Another is development and education projects, like the ones our agency runs and supports in Ethiopia.

Adoption is one solution to a problem. And while I think it’s an incredible solution, it’s not the only one and it’s not necessarily the best one longterm. So my book focuses on another way to tackle that problem, addressing the underlying poverty and trying to improve the lives of all Ethiopians.

It’s not an easy or a quick solution, but hopefully it will make a difference.

And if you’d like to help beyond just buying a book, you can make an additional donation to charity: water to help us a build a well.

We Like Easy Causes

At Cultivate earlier this week Clint Runge of Archrival marketing made a statement about the ease of causes. He was talking about generational marketing and the differences between Generation X and Generation Y. While general principles and trends may be true, I hate when marketers try to split people into clearly defined groups based on when we were born. Babies aren’t born into neat categories like that.

But that’s besides the point.

He said that the most important cause for today’s generation is the environment. Easily the number one cause they rally behind. Why? He said because it’s easy. Few will argue about the importance of protecting our planet. It requires little research and little knowledge. You can do simple things to be more eco-friendly and you’ve done your part. Compare that to health care. There’s a cause that’s not simple. It requires loads of research, you’ll face lots of opposition and argument, and you’ll be hard pressed to find a simple way to get involved like recycling paper or turning off a light.

“Social cause used to mean marching and burning bras,” Runge said. “Today it means wearing a bracelet or a T-shirt. Putting a sticker on your laptop. It’s too easy.”

Continue reading We Like Easy Causes

Bald Birthday Benefit 2009

So here’s the deal: I’m turning 30 in 30 days and I need your help to celebrate. There are more than a billion people in this world who don’t have easy access to clean, safe drinking water. To celebrate my big 3-0, I want to give 30 people clean water.

It’s not much, a drop in the bucket so to speak. But to those 30 people it would mean life.

The nonprofit charity: water can give one person clean water for 20 years for about $20. So giving clean water to 30 people will cost $600. That’s a pretty big chunk of change, but with your help, I think we can do it.

So help me celebrate my 30th birthday by raising $600 in 30 days and giving clean water to 30 people.

Oh, and if we can do it, I’ll shave my head. Welcome to the Bald Birthday Benefit 2009.