Category Archives: Society

Society

Mudula Mamas Raise $50K for Clean Water

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On Sunday the Mudula Mamas competed in a triathlon in Dallas and raised more than $50,000 for clean water in Mudula, Ethiopia. All three of the Mudula Mamas are mothers of children born in Mudula and the money will provide one-third of the total funding needed for the Mudula Water project.

I was pushing the project hard last week, including a special push for matching funds on the Ethiopian holiday of Meskel (which we easily secured).

You can see pictures and learn more about the Mudula Mamas on the Facebook page, which thanks to this effort went from something like a few dozen fans to more than 800 (it sure helps when some kind souls offer to donate $1 per ‘like’).

Thanks to everybody who donated and helped spread the word. I’ve been a little too busy to really get behind some charity efforts in the past year or so, and while I didn’t even do that much for this effort, it’s encouraging to see people give in support of clean water in Ethiopia.

When Milo gets older and starts asking questions about Ethiopia I want him to know that we still care about his homeland. That’s why I get involved in projects like this.

Society

Meskel Match

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MeskelToday is Meskel. What’s Meskel? It’s an Ethiopian religious festival celebrating the discovery of the “true cross” in the fourth century. They celebrate by dancing, feasting and lighting huge bonfires.

The legends associated with the true cross are kind of bizarre, but this is my favorite snippet:

According to the Ethiopian legend, when people get close to the piece of the True Cross it made them naked by its powerful light. Because of this, a decision was made to bury it at the mountain of Gishen Mariam monastery in Wollo region.

It’s a big event in Ethiopia and if you search Twitter for “Meskel” you’ll get a taste for how people celebrate. There are indeed massive bonfires, good food and not all the celebrations are in Ethiopia.

The Match
We’re celebrating with the Mudula Mamas—three moms of children born in Mudula, Ethiopia, who are running a triathlon this weekend—by raising money for clean water through Mudula Water. Today we’re doing a Meskel Match. If we can raise $1,500 today we’ll match it. Will you help us celebrate Meskel and donate?

Update: We’ve raised more than $1,800 today and scored the $1,500 match. That’s more than $3,000 for clean water in one day! And that puts us that much closer to scoring the extra $8,000 from Janus. Thanks for your support and continue to cheer the Mudula Mamas on. They race on Sunday and will keep raising support through Saturday at noon. Melkam Meskel!

Books, Society

Support the Mudula Mamas

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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.

Society

Fence & Famine

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Everything I did today feels like folly when I look through that fence at Bashir, a little boy on the outside looking in, waiting for famine to claim him.

Four-year-old Bashir Hassan hangs his head on his hands as he and other members of his family wait behind a fence in the hope of being allowed to board a bus that transports newly arrived refugees to a facility where they are officially registered which entitles them to receive food rations on a regular basis in Dadaab (from Al Jazeera by Roberto Schmidt/AFP)
Society

Famine in East Africa

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What are we to do in response to little Abdifatah?

Eleven-month-old Abdifatah Hassan, suffering from severe malnutrition, is cared for at a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders at a camp housing Somali refugees in Dadaab, Kenya. (from the L.A. Times by Roberto Schmidt / AFP/Getty Images / July 4, 2011)

Abdifatah is a victim of the famine in the Horn of Africa. They’re calling it the worst drought in 60 years.

My wife teaches in a school full of Somali children, many of them named Abdifatah (it’s a fairly common name, like John in the U.S.). Most, if not all, of her kids have family back in Somalia.

While famine has been officially declared in parts of Somalia, the crisis extends into Ethiopia and Kenya. Much of Southern Ethiopia, where my son Milo was born, is in a state of crisis or emergency. Families are starving.

I don’t know what to do in response to all this. You can donate money to any of several organizations on the ground (Save the Children, Doctors without Borders, Oxfam, UNICEF, World Vision, etc.).

But that feels so insignificant as I turn back to my own worries, which all seem insane after looking into Abdifatah’s vacant eyes.

Books, Society

Clean Water for Elirose

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Clean Water for EliroseI’ve talked about clean water a lot, so it should be no surprise that I’m loving Clean Water for Elirose. It’s a children’s book explaining to kids what it’s like to not have clean water that comes out of the tap. It’s written by a fellow Twin Citizen, Ariah Fine, and the book itself supports clean water.

Right now a Kickstarter campaign is wrapping up that has so far raised nearly $4,000 of a $3,500 goal to enable cheaper publishing of the book so it can help more folks. Ariah is not only raising money himself for clean water, but he’s enabling other people to raise money. If you want to support the project, $3 gets you a copy of the book. If that’s not a good enough deal, you can donate $100 and get 50 copies. Perfect for your own water-generating fundraiser.

It’s a great little project and you can even read the book online. Check it out and support it. They’ve already hit the goal, but more help is even better.

Society

Slavery Sucks

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Lately I’ve been doing writing for the blog of HalogenTV, a cable channel focused on social good. Tonight they’re doing a special slate of programming on human trafficking called Slavery Sucks. In the run up to tonight we’ve been doing a lot of human trafficking stories on the blog. Here’s a quick list:

It’s an overwhelming issue, but it’s one that demands justice. I’ve also been reading David Batstone’s Not For Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade—and How We Can Fight It, which is empowering as it is eye-opening.

Society

Writing Love On Your Arm

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TWLOHA Day: Love in English & AmharicThousands of people have been writing love on their arms yesterday and this weekend in support of To Write Love On Her Arms (TWLOHA). It’s an organization that gives hope to people who struggle with depression, suicide, self-injury and addiction.

What’s cool is that none of this was started by TWLOHA. I’m not sure how it all started, but someone launched a TWLOHA Day on Facebook, and pretty soon dozens of similar events were popping up, some with tens of thousands of people participating. I wrote about it for HalogenTV and then put together a photo gallery from some of the thousands of photos people have shared. It’s pretty cool to see people show their support in such a tangible way.

I asked Yeshumnesh how to write ‘love’ in Amharic and to my surprise she only laughed at me a little bit.

Books, Society

Go Buy Open Our Eyes

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Help the homeless: I wrote a chapter. You can buy a copy.Back in January I pulled the trigger on yet another book idea. I loved the work Mark Horvath was doing to help the homeless. I hated that Mark was nearly homeless himself (again), living in a cockroach apartment with nothing in his fridge but a discounted vegetable tray and a bottle of water. He was eating his meals at the homeless shelter.

It was stupid (and it still is). Somebody should be supporting Mark and making sure he can do this work without working himself to death. But nobody had stepped up. So I did. I couldn’t do much, but I figured I could put together a project that produces something people might be willing to buy, and we could give the money to Mark. So that’s what we did.

I got a whole bunch of Mark’s friends to contribute—people like Trust Agent author Chris Brogan, mom blogger Jessica Gottlieb and Ford’s social media guru Scott Monty (and 21 others). We wrote up stories of homeless people from Mark’s travels across the country, telling the stories of moms and their kids, people who had been homeless for days and 0thers for decades, people from Seattle and Florida. The result is a manual to motivate action. It drips with Mark’s attitude and passion, the way he used what little resources he had, plugged them into social media and turned this thing into a real movement.

I hope you’ll check it out. It would mean a lot to me and it would support Mark.

Today’s the day, folks. Open Our Eyes: Seeing the Invisible People of Homelessness launches today. Please go buy it:

Then tell your friends to buy it, review it on Amazon, like it on Facebook, whatever you can do. I need your help. Mark needs your help. The homeless out there need your help. Thanks.

Remember that all profits go to homeless advocate Mark Horvath and his nonprofit InvisiblePeople.tv.

Books, Society

InvisiblePeople.tv Book Launches November 9

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Open Our Eyes: Seeing the Invisible People of HomelessnessMy third book project of 2010, Open Our Eyes: Seeing the Invisible People of Homelessness, will officially launch on Nov. 9. The book will support homeless advocate Mark Horvath and his work with the nonprofit InvisiblePeople.tv.

The book gives voice to homeless people, retelling their stories from videos on InvisiblePeople.tv. It also features the contributions from some 25 tech, nonprofit and social media experts reflecting on homelessness and the power of technology that Mark has harnessed. The book also tackles misconceptions about homelessness and gives suggestions for how you can help.

It officially launches on Nov. 9 and will be available for $9.99 on Amazon (details on digital formats are forthcoming). All profits will go to InvisiblePeople.tv. That works out to $3.84 per copy from Amazon, 100% of the royalty. I’m not making any money on this project.

Since Mark first supported one of my initial efforts to help the homeless (while he was facing homelessness himself), I’ve been a huge fan of him and his work. I’ve always thought Mark should have more support than he does and I’ve been appalled when I hear how he’s barely making it. Someone with his heart doing the work he’s doing shouldn’t have to worry about health insurance or what he’s going to eat. That’s why I so strongly supported his efforts to win the $50,000 Pepsi Challenge grant at SXSW (which he did win, and he reinvested into WeAreVisible.com, among other efforts).

And so I’ve always wanted to do something big to support Mark. Sure I could send him a check, but that’s not going to go very far (especially a check from my bank account). I always thought someone needed to rally behind Mark and create something to raise money for him.

I had the idea of creating a book with all the proceeds going to Mark. He has such a good story and has inspired so many and there’s such a need for a more in-depth resource like that. It was a brilliant idea (if I do say so myself), but no one was doing it.

So I decided it was time to do it.

Last January the process started and I actually thought we could have the book out in March. Silly me. Ten months later we’re finally getting the book out with the support of so many people (check out all those names at the bottom of the page—those are the ones who made this happen).

And we’re going to need more help. This is a self-published project and that means it won’t go anywhere unless we get it there. And to be honest, I’ve put so much time into this project that I really can’t afford to give it the time it now needs. My only hope is that the many contributors, the many friends and supporters of Mark, and folks like you will pick up the torch and carry this project home.

So please check it out. Buy a copy. Tell your friends.

It’s time we opened our eyes and saw the invisible homeless people in our midst. They’re not just the stereotypical man on the corner with a cardboard sign. They’re families—just like mine. People—just like you—who were just one tragedy away from the street. Let’s open our eyes, open our hearts and help.