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Social media can be a huge boon for non-profits, NGOs and causes. Many are finding ways to let folks help those in need with small actions and donations. Here are nine ways you can make a difference in people’s lives with just a few minutes of your time or a few dollars from your PayPal account.
Of course, if you want to spend more than five minutes or $25, you could do a lot more good for folks in need. But this is a great way to begin cultivating a personal attitude of philanthropy in your spare time and with your spare cash.
Play a simple game of multi-choice questions, and help the World Food Programme fight hunger — and perhaps improve your own knowledge in subjects such as art, vocabulary, history and math. Since October 2007, this initiative has generated more than 77 billion grains of rice (around 20 million servings) for hungry people around the world. The rice is paid for by advertisers, and the project is supported by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
What many women, youth and refugees need all around the world is a dignified way to earn money and support themselves. What Samasource lets you do is donate as little as $25 to help find work for and train folks to do Internet- and computer-based work. Donations can be made through PayPal, as well.
Here’s a TEDx talk from Samasource founder Leila Chirayath Janah explaining how marginalized people can break through the “culture of handouts” and find real opportunity.
Similar to Foursquare, this iPhone and Android location checkin app allows you to earn karma points, then donate those points to the charity of your choice, from climate change NGOs to hunger-fighting non-profits.
While you earn badges, rack up points and make donations, you can also choose to share your accomplishments with your other social networks. If you’re a location junkie who is passionate about stopping child abuse, supplying clean water or helping to fight cancer but short on time and funds, this might be the app for you. Funding is provided by Procter & Gamble, Citibank and Kraft Foods.
If you care about higher education, this microlending site might be right up your alley. Vittana lets you find students in the developing world who are struggling to pay their college tuition. You can search by gender, by major and by the amount of money needed. Loans can be made in increments as small as $25 and can be made through PayPal.
This site proves you don’t have to have a lot of time, energy or money to do something extraordinary for your community or the wider world. It allows users to take microactions — simple things they can do in seconds from a computer or mobile phone — to help be part of a larger solution. For example, after the earthquake in Haiti, users were able to match photos of missing persons with photos of those who had actually survived the quake.
Users can choose from a variety of “missions” to tag or match images, do research or map something. From finding job leads for unemployed folks to mapping safe places for kids to play, The Extraordinaires is a world of opportunity for those who want to do good with few resources. There’s also an iPhone app available.
By now, most of us are familiar with Kiva. This microlending organization lets users find an entrepreneur or group of entrepreneurs in a developing area and lend as little as $25 to support the growing business. Users can search for entrepreneurs by gender, type of business and geographic area.
Check out this PBS report on how Kiva’s brand of microfinance has impacted one community in Uganda:
Deki is similar to Kiva, but this UK-based site doesn’t collect any percentage of donations for its own operating costs, and its loan recipients are found in far fewer areas — right now, just the UK, Ghana and Nepal. Users choose a microloan recipient, the loan amount is forwarded to a field partner in the local currency (to mitigate the risk of financial loss due to currency fluctuation) and the loan is repaid over a 6- to 12-month period. The field partners are grassroots organizations already well-versed in mircofinance in their regions. Donations can be made in amounts as small as £10, or just over $15. Credits can be added to a Deki account via PayPal.
This iPhone app helps increase the working wage of African refugees. Users virtually “help” a refugee with microwork tasks, earning points and increasing the quality of work. The points system equates to real-world help for working refugees.
According to research from Crowdflower, one of the app’s sponsoring organizations along with Samasource, five points in the app equates to a refugee being able to buy a tomato, a large banana or a small bunch of greens. Ten points means the refugee can afford to send a single SMS message; with 50 points, he or she could buy 10 sweet potatoes. This video explains more about the app and the program:
This organization pairs brands with consumers and ad dollars with causes in a way that’s good for everyone involved. Brands create microaction-focused games and activities, and users complete them. Brands pay for this interaction by donating to a cause of the user’s choice, such as feeding the hungry or preventing suicide. Users get to spread the word, both about the charities and the brands. Everyone wins.
Coca-Cola is in the process of launching three fruit-based drinks this summer. The company is expected to launch two products under the Minute Maid brand, and a mango shake in the dairy segment under the Maaza brand by June this year.
“Coca-Cola India is currently test marketing Minute Maid Apple Juice and Minute Maid Mixed Fruit juice in Kolkata. Based on the response, we will take a call to roll it out in other parts of the country,” confirmed a Coca-Cola India spokesperson in response to an email. The spokesperson, however, declined to comment on the company’s entry in the dairy segment with a mango shake under the Maaza brand.
Coca-Cola is not present in the dairy segment elsewhere in the world. India would be its first test-ground for the segment when it launches the mango shake. Coke is the beverage sponsor of the upcoming Commonwealth Games. Analysts say it would leverage these launches during the Games to capture consumers’ mindshare.
“Getting into allied products (mango shake) is a well-thought move since it will require only re-constituting the existing product (the pulp left from Maaza formation can be re-processed into shake). There is more synergy into it,” said an analyst. The only challenge would be a better chilled supply chain to reduce spoilage, as dairy products are more temperature-sensitive than soft drinks and have shorter shelf life.
Cola companies, note analysts, are launching fruit-based drinks as people have become more health conscious. Even FMCG companies are entering the juice segment. In the past, Pepsi had launched Tropicana and Nimbooz. Dabur is bullish on its Real range. Parle Agro also launched LMN (lemon drink). Wipro Consumer recently launched few fruit variants of Glucovita (glucose concentrate) and it wouldn’t be surprising if Wipro moves from juice concentrate to ready-to-drink juice soon.
Anand Ramanathan, sector analyst from KPMG, reasons: “Margins are better in juice-based drinks than carbonated drinks, as juice is a premium segment while carbonated drinks is a mass segment. Juice will be the future growth driver for cola companies.”
Carbonated drinks is a Rs 14,720-crore market in India, while juice is a Rs 2,670-crore market. But the juice segment is growing faster than carbonated, according to analysts.
Coca-Cola, according to a source close to the development, is also considering a Guava variant and has a plan to expand Minute Maid into a full juice range in the coming two years.
If you’re looking to pitch in to the relief effort for Chile after this morning’s massive earthquake, we’ve gathered some of the web’s best channels for humanitarian aid and reconstruction efforts.
The Mobile Giving Foundation has launched a text messaging campaign for micro donations, and the four major U.S. mobile carriers, Verizon, At&T, Sprint, and T-mobile, have waived text messaging fees for donations.
To text your support:
1. Text the word “CHILE” to 25383 to donate $10 on behalf of the Habitat for Humanity
2. Text the word “CHILE” to 20222 to donate $10 on behalf of World Vision
3. Text the word “CHILE” to 52000 to donate $10 on behalf of the Salvation Army
4. Text the word “CHILE” to 90999 to donate $10 on behalf of the American Red Cross
If you want to donate a larger amount directly to a non-profit of choice, consider these organizations that have active relief efforts underway.
1. American Red Cross – the American Red Cross International Response Fund helps victims of crises such as the Chile and Haiti earthquakes. If you wish to designate your funds to a specific crisis, you’ll need to mail in your donation.
2. Americares – funds go exclusively to the Chilean earthquake (and tsunami relief, should further tragedies occur)
3. Google Crisis Response, with channels benefiting UNICEF and DirectRelief International
– use your Google Checkout account to donate instantly to these charities
4. World Vision Disaster Response Fund - your money goes towards relief efforts for global disasters worldwide (not Chile specifically)
5.ReliefWeb is another great resource with lots of ways to help disaster sticken countries.
Via:Mashable
For those without access to the relevant channels, video streaming site Ustream is currently live streaming coverage of both the Chile earthquake aftermath and tsunami warnings for Hawaii and Pacific regions.
Coverage comes courtesy of local news channels.
We’ve embedded the channels below, and welcome your tips for following the earthquake and tsunami news elsewhere on the web.
A major earthquake of magnitude-8.8 struck Chile early Saturday, causing extensive damage.
As a result, a tsunami warning has been issued for Hawaii, Polynesia and Tonga, with waves expected to reach Hawaii at 11:19 a.m. local time (4:19 p.m. EST). A tsunami advisory has been issued for California, while tsunami warnings have been issued for 53 countries in total, including Australia and New Zealand.
Currently tracking the coverage online with a combination of live streams from local TV stations, official information from the NOAA and updates from Twitter and real-time search.
1. Live streaming video (Ustream) – Ustream is helpfully providing TV coverage from local channels in Chile and Hawaii.
2. Twitter hashtag #tsunami – Twitter users are tagging updates with #tsunami, and Twitter search is proving extremely useful for news tracking. Remember that Twitter’s advanced search lets you find updates posted from specific places – Chile or Hawaii, for instance.
3. Google Real-time search “Tsunami warning” – Google’s real-time search combines news results with postings from Twitter, blogs and other real-time sources. “Tsunami warning” delivers relevant results, but obviously tweak your search terms if you’re looking for something more specific.
4. NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Center – The PTWC provides a collection of resources for those tracking the tsunami, including maps of those areas where tsunami warnings and advisories have been issued.
5. NOAA’s Tsunami.gov – Tsunami.gov is the NOAA’s official tsunami site, providing links to their local warning centers. However, we’re getting limited uptime today, presumably due to heavy traffic. Using the other sources above may keep this site available to those who most need it.
With their own building unsafe and the neighboring field where they slept the night of the earthquake getting more crowded, the children of Angel House spent five nights sleeping on the concrete under a tin roof at the nearby Quisqueya Christian School.
When the earthquake struck Haiti on Jan. 12, Abbey McArthur, 26, was half-way through her year-long commitment to teach kids at the Angel House orphanage in Port-au-Prince. "It felt like God had picked up the earth and was just shaking it back and forth," the Indiana native said. She was less than a mile away, exercising at another school when it happened. In the nightmarish aftermath of those destructive 15 seconds, as she headed back to look for her students, as she crawled over rubble and heard the locals mourning in the streets, the last thing she probably could have imagined was that NASCAR would have something to do with rescuing her and her wards.
But that was just what was about to happen in North Carolina where Rick Hendrick lives. Hendrick's NASCAR team has won the last four Sprint Cup titles and nine overall. So he's used to doing things fast. On the morning after the earthquake, Hendrick, the owner of one of the largest car dealerships in the country, decided to act quickly. He instructed team general manager Marshall Carlson and aviation director David Dudley to see what they could do to help. He had personal reasons for it all. "You see people in agony and pain and hurting in a disaster and it doesn't take me long to flash back to the night that my family was on the side of a mountain in Virginia and we couldn't get to them," he says, recalling the plane crash that took the lives of his son, his brother, two nieces and six others in 2004. "These people [in Haiti] needed help right now."
Searching online, they came across Missionary Flights International (MFI), a Ft. Pierce, Florida based organization which has been flying in support of missionary efforts in the Caribbean, predominantly to Haiti and the Dominican Republic since 1964. MFI's four plane fleet includes three refurbished DC-3s originally built 65 years ago and used mostly for cargo. Hendrick offered up aircraft of his own: two Saab 2000 turboprops, able to accommodate 45 passengers each. Ten pilots and crew volunteered to go. (He had thrown his planes into disaster relief before, including some 1,100 hours of support after Hurricane Katrina.)
Back in Haiti, the evening before, McArthur was clambering over the rubble of a large building that had collapsed into the street at the corner of 91 Delmas, where she had to turn to get to the orphanage. She wondered about the family that lived on the first floor and the vendors who were always there at that time of the day. What had happened to them? She recalled several discussions she had with different people over the previous months about how Haiti was due for a significant earthquake and how the infrastructure would crumple if that happened. But it was the 11 children she taught and 15 younger ones at the orphanage that were paramount in her thoughts.
And so she was relieved when she finally got to Angel House. The main building, where the children had been during the quake had survived. Francois Jean Louis, a translator for the orphanage told her the kids, who ranged six months to eight years old, were all safe and had been relocated to a neighbor's field. She was surprised at how calm they were and both thankful and amazed that none were injured despite being among many things that had fallen inside the building. But even though the main orphanage building had not fallen, it was no longer safe for them to remain in it. Like most of the city, MacArthur and the children would spend the night outside. The next day they would move to the protection of the nearby Quisqueya Christian School for five nights, sleeping on a concrete floor under a tin roof.
All the kids from Angel House were at one point or another of the long process of being adopted by parents in the U.S. and Canada. But paperwork and seemingly endless bureaucracy had kept them in Haiti. Among those waiting for to adopt were Cara Boone and her husband Kevin of Titusville, Florida. The couple were almost three years into the process of adopting two children from Angel House, Rebecca, 3, and Kervens, 4. Upon hearing about the quake, Cara and Shannon Hoffmann, a staff member of Three Angels Children's Relief, the parent organization which also operates a health clinic and an elementary school in Port-au-Prince, started working the phones to fasttrack the process. They called every politician or agency that they thought could help. Eventually, they were in contact with Whitney Reitz at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) which operates out of the Department of Homeland Security. "From the moment the disaster happened, this entire office was completely seized with putting in place a plan to try to get something done," says Reitz.
Meanwhile, Cara's husband Kevin, who is a pastor at the First Christian Church in Titusville, had been in touch with folks he knew at MFI — which had at its disposal the planes of Rick Hendrick. The first Hendrick Motorsports plane had landed in Ft. Pierce on Friday, January 16 and ferried a load of doctors and medical personnel to Port-au-Prince the next day. Among its passengers on that trip were Three Angels co-founder Gretchen Huijskens and Kevin Boone. Late Sunday night, about an hour after they had gone to sleep as Huijskens recalls, Hoffman called and told them to be at the U.S. embassy by 5 a.m. The paperwork was being processed, — not just for Rebecca and Kervens but for all 26 of the Angel House orphans. About 12 hours after they reached the embassy, they were on an official bus, headed for the airport, praying they could get there early enough because the plane's ability to take-off would be limited after dusk.
At 7:30 p.m., Monday Jan. 19, the plane with all on board, touched down in Florida. The 26 kids of Angel House represent the first orphanage in Haiti to get out in its entirety after the earthquake. "I am so joyful for the families that are reunited with their kids," says Reitz, who has two photos of the kids from Three Angels taped above the computer on her desk, one at the orphanage and one when they were arriving in Florida. But she cautions, "Everyone's still swimming in it and there are hundreds and hundreds more. This isn't going to go away any time soon. I just pray that the spirit of generosity won't go away as soon as the media attention is over."
Justin Timberlake, Coldplay, Alicia Keys, Bruce Springsteen, Wyclef Jean, Bono, The Edge and Jay-Z will lead the all-star lineup of performers for Friday night's "Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief" telethon. More than 100 stars have signed on to help raise funds for the MTV Networks-sponsored show, which will benefit the victims of last week's devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake on the impoverished island.
Several one-of-a-kind collaborations will highlight the event, including a hookup between U2's Bono and The Edge with Jay-Z and Rihanna in London and a jam featuring Kid Rock, Keith Urban and Sheryl Crow in Los Angeles; like all the night's performances, the collabos will be available for download on iTunes for 99 cents the next day.
Also appearing in New York with Wyclef and Springsteen will be Jennifer Hudson, Mary J. Blige, Shakira and Sting, while the Los Angeles show will feature performances from Keys, Christina Aguilera, Dave Matthews, John Legend, Timberlake, Stevie Wonder and Taylor Swift.
Jean, a native of Haiti, George Clooney and CNN's Anderson Cooper will appear on the show, which will be broadcast from New York, London, Los Angeles and Haiti and feature more than 100 of the biggest names in film, television and music providing testimonials and answering phones. The two-hour program will air commercial-free across ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN, BET, the CW, HBO, MTV, VH1 and CMT on Friday at 8 p.m. ET/PT. The special will also air on PBS, TNT, Showtime, Comedy Central, Bravo, E! Entertainment Network, National Geographic Channel, Oxygen, G4, Centric, Current TV, Fuse, MLB Network, Epix, Palladia, SoapNet, Style, Discovery Health and Planet Green, as well as Canada's CTV, CBC Television, Global Television and MuchMusic. It will also air internationally on BET International, CNN International, National Geographic and MTV Networks International, available in 640 million homes worldwide. "Hope for Haiti" will be the first U.S.-based telethon airing on MTV in China. Facebook and Twitter are the official social media partners who will help to drive donations and tune-in to the telethon.
All donations will directly benefit Oxfam America, Partners in Health, Red Cross, UNICEF and Wyclef's Yele Haiti Foundation. Facebook and MySpace have signed on as official social-media partners to help steer viewers to the telethon and drive donations.
Additionally, the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund and United Nations World Food Programme have joined the list of relief organizations that will benefit from the show, with proceeds to be split evenly among each organization's individual Haiti relief funds. "Hope For Haiti Now" will be the most widely distributed telethon in history, internationally and across media platforms, including live streaming globally on sites including YouTube, Hulu, MySpace, Fancast, AOL, MSN.com, Yahoo, Bing.com, BET.com, MTV.com, and Rhapsody and on mobile via Alltel, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and FloTV.
On the red carpet at Sunday night's Golden Globe Awards, George Clooney revealed how the global fundraiser came together. "You guys started it," the actor said. "The first call I made was to Judy [McGrath, MTV Networks' chief executive]. She said, 'Yes, everybody will do it, everybody's in' and that they were thinking of doing it too. They got the ball rolling and we got every single network after that. So congratulations to you!"
Before the telethon airs, Clooney wanted to remind young people that there are many ways to help the people of Haiti.
"I would say, 'Get involved, whatever you do,' " the Oscar-winner said. "This is about compassion. There are times in our lives when people are really without help and in real danger, and this is one of those times. So whatever they can do -- give money to one of the organizations that they like the best."
Many people have asked how they can make donations to charities involved in earthquake relief efforts. International charities are just beginning to ramp up their efforts in Haiti. If you're looking to give money to help these relief activities, I've compiled a list of some of the aid organizations responding to the disaster:
International Committee of the Red Cross
International Rescue Committee
•Music For Relief is offering a compilation of unreleased music, available for free download on MusicForRelief.org. The site encourages donations, which will be divided equally among the United Nations Foundation, Habitat For Humanity, and Dave Matthews Band's BAMA Works Haitian relief program.
•National Nurses United already has 10,000 nurses volunteering to go to Haiti, but they need to raise money to send them there. Every dollar donated to NNU will be spent directly on sending a professional nurse to Haiti.
•Artists For Peace and Justice is a relatively new organization with an advisory board of prominent celebrity activists, including Maria Bello, Madeleine Stowe, Charlize Theron, Oliver Stone and Josh Brolin. Founded by filmmaker Paul Haggis, the group originally sought to help build functional schools in impoverished regions in Haiti. Since the earthquake, they've directed all of their funds to recovery efforts, with a focus on helping to rebuild schools, hospitals and orphanages.
•The Baptist Haiti Mission is operating an 82-bed hospital that is "overflowing with injured." Donate online to BHM and 100% of your donation will go to the relief effort.
•Orphans International America reports that they have been able to make contact with their program director in the town of Jacmel, a city about 20 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince that houses OI's hospitals and schools. Orphans International America is attempting to gather food, clean water and emergency medical supplies to Jacmel. You can contribute to them through PayPal.
•United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) is the UN's humanitarian fund responding to emergencies like the earthquake in Haiti. Donate online.
•Friends of the Orphans will use donations to meet the needs of first responders such as first aid supplies, shipping of necessary materials to assist in efforts, and treating the injured. Those interested in helping the relief effort can visit www.friendsoftheorphans.org, or call 888-201-8880 to make a donation.
•World Concern's staff is almost entirely composed of Haitian nationals and will be tapping into private as well as U.S. government supplies to help in the relief effort it hopes will soon be supplemented by cargo ships. Donate to World Concern.
•Merlin USA is sending an emergency response team out to the region and have subsequently launched an emergency appeal to bring urgent medical aid and assistance to those affected. Donate to Merlin USA.
All of this money has been raised with the help of mGive simply by people using their cellphones to text HAITI to the number 90999. Doing so will automatically donate $10 to the Red Cross, which will be added on to your bill at the end of the month. But that’s not the only way to give over text message.
The following organizations are accepting SMS donations in the US and Canada:
Help map Haiti - Directly assist relief workers in saving lives.
The list is just a starting point for you and your own research. There are a number of online tools available for evaluating charities and making donations to a broader range of NGOs, including CharityNavigator.org and NetworkForGood.org.
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