Category Archives: Society

Bald Birthday Benefit, Books, Society

Let’s Build a Well in Ethiopia

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A year ago today we were in the midst of the Bald Birthday Benefit. We’d already shattered the $600 goal and my baldness was imminent. You pushed on and raised $2,605 for charity: water, giving clean water to 130 people for my 30th birthday. I’m still in awe and incredibly grateful for that.

This year I’ve released my book, Addition by Adoption, and a portion of the proceeds go to charity: water to build a well in Ethiopia. That’s a goal of $5,000. It’s a big goal. So far almost $1,000 has come in, most of it from donations.

I thought about doing the Bald Birthday Benefit again this year, but I’m not sure shaving my head is such a big draw anymore. But I still love celebrating my birthday by giving back.

So here’s the deal: My birthday is in 10 days. Father’s Day is in 15 days. All I really want is a well in Ethiopia. Help me get there.

There a number of ways you can donate, from straight cash to buying a copy of my book. We’ve set up a few special options with the book where more money can go to charity: water, from an Awesome Edition to a 10-copy package. I’m also willing to give you a free digital copy of the book for making a donation. And yes, if somebody wants to see me shave my head again, I’m willing to do it (for a price).

More than buying a book or giving some cash, you’re giving life. 70-80% of Ethiopians don’t have access to clean water. It ends up killing 300,000 Ethiopian children every year. It’s the number one cause of infant mortality.

So help me celebrate my birthday, let’s celebrate Father’s Day—heck, we can celebrate Flag Day too!—by building a well in Ethiopia. Give water. Give life. Thank you.

Books, History, Society

When Marian Anderson Sang

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Marian Anderson in front of the Lincoln Memorial
Marian Anderson performing at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939.

I love that my wife is a kindergarten teacher. It means we have a vast collection of good children’s books—so many that I haven’t read a lot of them.

So today when Lexi pulled When Marian Sang off the shelf for her pre-naptime book, I was reading it for the first time. It’s beautifully illustrated and tells the story of black singer Marian Anderson and her struggles in the segregated, pre-civil rights America. I’d never heard of Marian Anderson before, but her tremendous voice was respected around the world.

In 1939 Howard University brought Marian to Washington, D.C., to perform. They tried to book Constitution Hall, but the Daughters of the American Revolution (D.A.R.), who ran the hall, refused to allow Marian to perform because she was black. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the D.A.R. over the incident.

Marian eventually performed on Easter Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial to a mixed-race crowd of 75,000 and a radio audience in the millions.

In 1943 the D.A.R. invited Marian to perform at Constitution Hall in support of the war effort. She agreed on the condition that the seating be mixed (as opposed to an all-white crowd or only allowing blacks to sit in the balcony). The D.A.R. agreed and it was the first time in the history of Constitution Hall that blacks and whites sat together.

I got choked up a few times reading the story and could barely keep it together. The injustice and cruelty of America’s history of racism is just stupid. I don’t have a better word for it.

At the point in the story when Marian isn’t allowed to apply to a music school—”We don’t take colored,” she’s told—there’s a picture of Marian’s mother comforting her. Lexi and I had this exchange:

“What’s wrong with her?” Lexi asked, pointing to the picture.

“She’s sad,” I said.

“Why is she sad?”

“They wouldn’t let her go to school because of the color of her skin.” My voice was already wavering, trying to hold it together.

“That’s not fair!” Like most kids, Lexi exclaims this over the most mundane things (no dessert, bed time, etc.), but she had real anger this time.

“No, it’s not fair,” I said, shaking my head and biting my lip to keep from sobbing.

Knowing her experience makes the words of the spirituals she sang all the more poignant: “Oh, nobody knows the trouble I see, nobody knows my sorrow…”

Society

Water in Ethiopia

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Women in Kenya walking to collect waterThe April issue of National Geographic has an in-depth story on water in Southern Ethiopia. This hits home for a number of reasons—including our continuing commitment to clean water (we’re trying to build a well, remember?) and the fact that Southern Ethiopia is Milo’s birthplace.

I’ll pull out some especially poignant moments, but I’d suggest you read the whole article (read the printer version to avoid pagination)

  • The article follows Aylito Binayo, a 25-year-old woman who lives in the village of Foro, in the Konso district of southwestern Ethiopia. Her life story can be told around watershe dropped out of school at 8, in part to help her mother haul water. Today she spends 8 hours a day hauling water for her family. And the water she brings home is dirty and unsafe.
  • Hauling water is women’s work. The only time a man hauls water is in the few weeks after a child is born.
  • Here’s an incredible picture (second picture in the flash slideshow—silly National Geographic, not giving direct links to pictures). Villagers digging a trench for pipes to bring water to their village. They sing while they work: “We can do anything!”
  • The author carries a jerry can of water (weighing 50 pounds) with Binayo, but can’t make it up the hill. The author switches with a child, who has half a can of water, but the child can’t make it up the steep part of the hill: “Binayo takes the heavy jerry can from the girl and puts it on her own back, on top of the one she is carrying. She shoots us both a look of disgust and continues up the mountain, now with nearly 12 gallons of water—a hundred pounds—on her back.” I carried 40 pounds of water last year—it sucked.
  • The average American uses 100 gallons of water a day in the home. Binayo uses two and a half.
  • She washes her hands with water “maybe once a day,” but not with soap, since her family can’t afford it. She bathes “only occasionally.” They don’t elaborate on what ‘occasionally’ means.
  • She washes clothes once a year: “We don’t even have enough water for drinking—how can we wash our clothes?”
  • Another incredible picture. A group of women in Northern Kenya walking across a desert to get water—they’re carrying the same yellow jerry can I did last year. Let me tell you—it sucks.

The article ends on a heart-breaking note:

“She has never dared think that someday life could change for the better.”

That’s a brutal reality we’ve left our fellow brothers and sisters in. That’s why a portion of the proceeds from my book are going to build a well in Ethiopia. I hope you’ll buy a copy. Or forget the book—make a donation directly to charity: water.

Society

Immigration Protest: “It’s Not About Us”

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I’ve confessed before that I’ve turned into a pretty sappy guy of late. Today while listening to a news story on immigration I felt those familiar heartstrings being pulled. The tears weren’t coming—not just yet anyway. But if the story went on it could have gotten ugly.

It was a story on The World about a group of immigrant students who held a sit-in protest in Senator John McCain’s office in Arizona. They spoke with one student, Yahaira Carrillo, who has lived in the United States since she was seven. Her parents were migrant farmer workers for a time and she was brought into the U.S. illegally by them, with no choice in the matter. She’s been in the United States her entire life and considers herself an American. However, she has no path to citizenship. She represents as many as 65,000 students who are in the U.S. illegally, brought here by their parents. Now they’re being punished for their parents’ mistakes.

These students’ only hope is a piece of proposed legislation, the Dream Act, that would give students like them a path to legal citizenship.

Carrillo sounded like your typical American college student. She didn’t have a hint of an accent and says she speaks and writes English much better than she does Spanish (though that shouldn’t matter). The only thing she’s ever known is America and if deported—something she could face after the protest—she has no idea where she would go. And that’s when I felt the heartstrings being pulled:

“We knew what we were facing by going into the Senator’s office, we knew that deportation in the long run is a possibility. But It’s not about us, it’s about something bigger. What matters is the Dream Act, what matters is all of these thousands of young people—like I said, it’s 65,000 a year who graduate who don’t have a path to follow their dreams.”

When Carrillo says she loves America, she’s not just full of it. She wanted to join the Marines and spent a year in an ROTC program before realizing that she’d never be able to join the Armed Forces as an illegal immigrant.

“I love this country,” she says, “I want nothing more than to contribute fully and as much as I can to it.”

Call my sappy, but that kind of initiative and sacrifice on the part of her fellow undocumented students is incredible. I’m no expert on the Dream Act after listening to a five minute radio story, but it seems to me that students like her who didn’t have a choice in breaking the law should have some option other than deportation.

Immigration is a pretty touchy topic these days. I certainly don’t know what the best solution is, but as I read a New York Times piece on the generational divide over immigration, I was reminded that only a hundred years ago my grandparents’ church still had services in German. We are a nation of immigrants. We should never forget that.

Internet, Society

Go Geeks: Mark Horvath Wins $50K

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So homeless advocate Mark Horvath won the SXSW Pepsi Challenge. I stayed up until midnight on Monday night sending out tweets, bugging people to tweet and watching the parade of #RefreshGary hashtags come in. We went to sleep pretty sure we’d done it, and Tuesday at noon Pepsi confirmed it and announced InvisiblePeople.tv the winner of the $50,000.

I’m so happy for Mark. I’m shocked at what the guy has been able to accomplish with such minimal support. Most of us need a paycheck to do good work, either being employed by a nonprofit or having a real job so we can do volunteer work on the side. But Mark doesn’t have either (OK, he has the case manager job, but it barely covers his rent). He’s got nothing in his fridge and yet he still champions the cause of the homeless. He’s an incredible inspiration.

That’s why I didn’t mind spamming my friends. Heck, I can hardly call it spamming them when I’m telling them why Mark is so deserving of this grant. I don’t like these spammy tell all your friends contests. I don’t like that they pit good ideas against each other. I don’t like that somebody wins and somebody loses. I hope folks learn from that and do something different next time. But it was Mark Horvath and he needed the help. He didn’t ask for it, but this was offered to him I’ll be damned if I was going to standby and watch him miss an easy opportunity for funding.

$50,000 is huge, but it’s also not. It’s not an unreasonable salary for a person of Mark’s position in a nonprofit (that position being everything from CEO to camera guy to janitor). He could give himself an actual salary and restock the fridge and he’d be just fine in my book. But knowing Mark, he’s not going to be sitting back with this money. That’s part of why my little InvisiblePeople.tv book project is so important to me. As huge as this grant is, Mark needs the on-going support.

Anyway, we won. Geeks doing good. Awesome. Thank you Pepsi. Thank you Gary Vaynerchuk. Thank you everybody who tweeted. And thank you, Mark. This was the least we could do.

The video announcement and Mark’s “acceptance speech”:

Other cool folks blogging about the victory:

Books, Society

The InvisiblePeople.tv Book

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Mark Horvath Ready for ActionI’ve been tweeting and blogging about the SXSW Pepsi Challenge all weekend (and will be until midnight tonight) trying to win a $50,000-grant for homeless advocate Mark Horvath and his InvisiblePeople.tv project. A few tweets could earn Mark the support he desperately needs. The guy has been on the verge of homelessness since 2008 when he started this project to help the homeless. That’s dedication.

I’ve been tweeting like mad because I believe in what Mark is doing. Unfortunately he’s losing to an idea supported by the tech site Mashable, a site with more than a million views a day. (An idea, by the way, that no one has yet invested in or proven—Mark has been doing his thing since 2008; OK, sorry. Shouldn’t rag on the competition, I’m just a little bitter about that.) I’m so passionate about this because a few tweets could give Mark some major support. It kills me that he doesn’t have the support he needs.

So I tweet like mad. But if all our frantic tweeting doesn’t get Mark the $50,000 he deserves, it’s not a total loss. At least we’ll have helped spread the word about what he’s doing.

But the reality is that I’ve been doing a lot more than tweeting.

I’ve got a secret: I’ve been working on a book about homelessness to support Mark’s work. In my wildest dreams I thought I could have had the book ready by this past weekend—conveniently in time for Mark’s appearance at SXSW.

Continue reading The InvisiblePeople.tv Book →

Society, Technology

Geeks Doing Good: Help Mark Horvath Win $50,000

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The SXSW Interactive Festival is going on this weekend in Austin, Texas. It’s a bigtime collection of web geeks (and yes, I so wish I could be there). The cool thing about web geeks is that they care about causes. There are a lot of online competitions happening this weekend to raise money for various causes, all in geeky fun.

There are probably others I’ve missed, but I’m most excited about Mark Horvath and the Pepsi Challenge. Here’s how it works: He’s competing against two others to see who can get the most votes by midnight on Monday. Winner gets a $50,000 grant from Pepsi. You vote by tweeting “#RefreshGary” and you can vote every two hours. All the details are on Pepsi’s Facebook page (vote on Twitter, details on Facebook?).

I’ve talked about Mark before. He’s a tireless advocate for the homeless. When he lost his job in the fall of 2008 he was only seven weeks away from being homeless. Again. He spent a year in the 1990s living on the streets of Hollywood. But instead of worrying about being homeless himself, he went out and started InvisiblePeople.tv to tell the story of other homeless people. He’s been doing that since, and the entire time he’s been on the verge of homelessness.

He lives in a cockroach apartment in Los Angeles. I interviewed him for an article a few months back and the contents of his fridge was a bottle of water, milk and a discount veggie tray. He was eating dinner at the homeless shelter, not because he wanted to, but because he had to.

If anybody could use $50,000 from Pepsi, it’s Mark.

Mark started InvisiblePeople.tv with next to nothing. Yet he’s shared the uncensored stories of over 100 homeless people, from Los Angeles to New York, Florida to Seattle, New Orleans to St. Paul. He’s done incredible things with no resources. Imagine what he could do with $50,000.

I get kind of tired of these social network voting things where we spam our friends and the most popular person wins. But I can hardly consider telling my friends about Mark Horvath to be spam. If you get tired of it, you can ignore me. If it makes you mad, stop following me. If I lose a bunch of followers because I tried to help my friend, so be it. If you don’t like it then you can give Mark $50,000 and I’ll be quiet. I just want to help my friend.

So I’m asking you to help Mark out. We only have until midnight tomorrow. So hop on your Twitter account and slap a “#RefreshGary” tag on your tweets every two hours. If you don’t have a Twitter account, set one up just for today. Why not?

Geeks doing good. What’s not to love?

Update: Here’s a story Mark shared from my own backyard. Pearl calls a shelter in St. Paul her home. She wants to know if you’re kind or cold-hearted? This why Mark deserves this grant from Pepsi, so he can continue to share these stories and make us realize the reality of homelessness in our own cities.

Pearl from InvisiblePeople.tv on Vimeo.

Society, World News

Haiti Update from Lauren Stanley

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Last night I went to hear Rev. Lauren Stanley speak about the relief efforts in Haiti (after catching the end of the Daytona 500, of course, which made me a little late). She is a missionary of the Episcopal Church appointed to serve the the diocese of Haiti and has been asked to remain in the United States, coordinating immediate relief efforts and long-term development through the Episcopal Church and Episcopal Relief and Development.

So basically her boss is the Bishop of Haiti, Jean Zache Duracin (last I heard he was living in a tent). The Episcopal Church of Haiti is running something like 20 refugee camps and caring for more than 20,000 people. Among those are the priests, parishioners, parents and students of the churches and schools with which my own church has had a 20-year partnership.

So Lauren Stanley was giving Twin Cities churches an update on what’s happening on the ground in Haiti. I went to hear what’s happening in Haiti and learn how the money Color4aCause has raised is helping (a tiny, tiny fraction of the money that’s been raised). Lauren had sobering updates, butt-kicking statements and in-depth stories and history to share. She’s a firecracker.

Continue reading Haiti Update from Lauren Stanley →

Society

Consistency is the Key to Generosity

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I meet with my tax guy today, which means I’ve been frantically pulling together forms and statements and crunching numbers. I hate accounting and I’m horribly disorganized when it comes to that stuff. Which is exactly why I hire a tax guy. It’s always wise to hire people who are really good at the things you’re really bad at.

Anyway, I had an revelation as I was looking at the numbers for our charitable giving. I felt like I’d been pretty generous this past year. My wife and I have talked a lot about generosity and giving and being more intentional about supporting good causes, not just with our words but with our wallets. We’ve tried to support causes as they come up and not be so cheap about it. Personally, I’ve tried to only plug the causes I’ve actually donated to. It seems disingenuous to spread the word about something but not chip in yourself.

So with all that focus on giving, I thought we’d do pretty well for 2009. Go us.

Turns out our giving is down compared to 2008. By quite a bit. Doh.

There can be all kinds of factors at work to explain this, including the fact that we made less money in 2009 or we were more tight-fisted because of the travel expenses to Ethiopia or whatever. But I think the real factor is consistency.

While we tried to actively donate to more causes in 2009, the result was a lot of tiny donations. $10 here, $20 there. That’s good money and it will go to good causes, but it doesn’t add up to much. It’s a drop in the bucket. What does add up is consistent giving. Weekly or monthly donations add up a lot more quickly. That sounds completely obvious and it is (I told you I hate accounting), but it doesn’t really sink in until you sit back and look at the numbers over a period of time.

Our donations were down in 2009 because we lowered one of our consistent donations. It seemed financially prudent at the time (and still is), but it means we gave a lot less and our impact is likewise reduced.

Like much of life, it comes down to consistency. If you really want to make a difference in anything, you have to work at it consistently. You can’t just do something once and expect change. It’s true with teaching your kids, it’s true with learning any skill, it’s true with work–and it’s true with money.

[Note: Money and giving can be a pretty touchy subject. I’m not trying to tell anyone how to do it, I’m just sharing a lesson I learned. I also don’t mean to minimize one-time donations. Those one-time donations add up when you bring them together (remember how they made me bald?).]

Health, Society

Don’t Give, Don’t Get: Israel’s Organ Donor Law

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I heard a very fascinating report on NPR last week about a new organ donor law in Israel. In response to an extreme shortage of organ donors, Israel decided to take drastic action and enacted a law that seeks to encourage organ donation by penalizing those who refuse to donate. It’s nicknamed ‘Don’t give, Don’t get.’ If an organ is available and two people of similar medical conditions are eligible for the donated organ, priority goes to the one who was a registered organ donor.

If you’re not willing to donate your own organs, you get lower priority when you need an organ.

It’s an interesting bit of medical ethics. While I think in general we should be willing to help people regardless of how much they’re willing to help others, this is a unique situation. A extreme situation calls for extreme action?

What’s funny about the story is that they talk with a rabbi who refuses to donate organs for religious reasons. Yet he’s willing to accept a donated organ if he needed one. They summarize his position so I’m not sure how accurate it is, but he basically reasons that in one instance it’s murder and in another instance they were dead anyway. I think it’s complete hypocritical garbage.

This is what happens when the shoe is on the other foot. If you’re not willing to be a part of the system, why should you benefit from the system? In other instances I’m not sure how well this logic works. What if we denied assistance benefits like unemployment or food stamps to people who refused to fund such assistance programs (not that anyone has such a choice)? What if we denied freedom to those who refused military service (interestingly enough, it’s Israel where serving in the armed forces is mandatory)? What if the Red Cross gave priority to disaster victims who had donated?

And at that point it becomes ridiculous. Admittedly I kind of like the idea of sticking it to people who won’t play along. But I think society has to be more benevolent than that. It’s not love if you only love those who love you back.