Say No to Racism

¡Vamos España!

Save Our Oceans: Meet the Plastiki

How much oil has to spill and how much of the ocean’s ecosystem do we have to kill before we can all agree that we must end our addiction to oil?

We shake our heads in disgust at the oil spilling into the Gulf but we're quick to jump into our gas powered cars, buy water in single use plastic bottles (plastic is made from oil), and use single use plastic bags every time we buy anything. We are responsible for the Gulf mess. Our continued dependency on oil is the reason why big oil companies can profit off of drilling in places too far out of reach to be plugged with something goes wrong.

We need to own up to our responsibility and dependency. This is not simply about finding a solution to the oil leak, but to start rethinking the way we live. We have been talking about conservation for a long time, but we have done very little about it. This crisis is an opportunity for our leaders to explain to the public why environmental action is needed now and for the public to understanding the benefits of being kind to Mother Earth.

Sign Oceana's petition to Stop Offshore Drilling and Demand a Clean Energy Future

Before the Gulf oil spill, David de Rothchild built an entire boat out of plastic bottles, The Plastiki, and set sail from San Francisco to Sydney in March 2010. The Plastiki expedition is not a fantasy adventure, its a statement meant to bring attention our urgent need to save our oceans NOW.

It’s about a better understanding of the lifecycle’s and materials used in our everyday lives. It’s about being curious and open, being prepared to let go of assumptions in order to undertake a new ‘Planet 2.0’ way of thinking and acting. It’s about acknowledging that we don’t have all the answers and that nobody is as smart as everybody. It’s about being collaborative and curious so to engage multiple perspectives, skills, opinions and organizations. It’s about constantly learning, unlearning and re-learning. It’s about re-integrating back into the web of life by recognizing and reducing our human fingerprints on the natural world. It’s about moving on from just articulating the problems and inspiring action of the solutions. It’s about encouraging the world to reduce, reuse, recycle and rethink more of the planets natural resources.

For updates on The Plastiki Expedition visit: www.plastiki.com.

This Is What Change Looks Like

Congress passes historic health care reform bill. This was the right thing to do.

Top 10 Immediate Benefits You’ll Get When Health Care Reform Passes

Summer Tour

PHISH SUMMER TOUR 2010 from Phish on Vimeo.

Air Travel with Global Impact

Learn More about the Millennium Foundation by clicking here.

Help Haiti

Zanmi Lasante (“Partners In Health” in Haitian Kreyol)

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/01/13/world/20100113-HAITIQUAKE_index.html

A massive and immediate international response is needed to provide food, water, shelter and medical supplies for tens of thousands of people effected by the devastating earthquake in Port-au-Prince.

Earthquakes are acts of nature but extreme vulnerability to a natural disaster is not. Haiti is one of the world’s poorest countries.

For two decades, Partners In Health (PIH)’s has successfully built a sustainable, community-based public health system for the people of Haiti. Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder of PIH has made it his mission to transform healthcare on a global scale, by focusing on the world’s poorest and sickest.

Partners In Health is a well established effective aid organization working in Haiti. PIH has hospitals and highly trained medical staff in place in Haiti, they’ve already mobilized resources and are preparing plans to bring additional medical assistance and supplies to areas that have been hardest hit.

I urge you to join me in contributing to relief efforts underway in Haiti. Right now the greatest need is financial support. Make a gift today to help the people of Haiti.

DONATE NOW TO PIH's EARTHQUAKE RELIEF FUND

To learn more about public health issues facing Haiti before the earthquake, Partners In Health and my hero Dr. Paul Farmer I highly recommend Tracy Kidder’s book Mountains Beyond Mountains.

Haiti Earthquake Updates

My 2009 In Review

Unemployment > Grad School > Obama Inauguration > Campaign Director United Way > Washington D.C. > New York > Dr. Mike > House 4 Sale > Peru > Phish Fenway > Great Woods > Moosehead Lake > Cape Cod > SPAC Weekend > Colorado friends visit Maine> Beth Trip Tunk Lake, ME > Yard Sale Party > Milwaukee > Move to Boulder, Colorado > Development Manager Corporate Relations > Mike Goes to Antarctica > Thanksgiving in Montana > SanClement’s X-Mass > mfa Boston > House Still 4 Sale/Rent

'Tis the Season

This year everyone on my Christmas list got a gift certificate to the micofinance organization Kiva. My reason for choosing Kiva is that Kiva personalized philanthropy for the small individual donor (meet Frida my latest Kiva loan recipient who has recently paid back the full amount of her loan). Those on my Christmas list received more than notification from an organization that my tax-deductible contribution was given in their name, they received an invitation to personally engage in the giving process.

Kiva has changed the face of philanthropy by its innovative ability to draw donors into an experience that stretches beyond their day to day life through online philanthropy. Kiva has also successfully figured out a giving model to make a $25 really fee like they matter. Too often donors feel that their gift is not large enough to create real positive change but giving through Kiva you can see how a small amount of money can create a huge amount of social impact in the life of another.

Kiva’s impact model to fight global poverty has proven to be meaningful, effective and fun. Donors can see the tangible positive effects of their dollars but more importantly its a donation that keeps on giving. As recipients pay back their loans, donors can choose to reinvest their dollars in another person in need of a micro loan to improve their life.

How Kiva works:

A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.

Wishing you a peaceful holiday season from Funlanthropy!

Sarah Silverman's Plan To End World Hunger

2009 Nobel Peace Prize: A Call To Action For Obama

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future" - The Noble Prize Committee

The Time Is Now

"What we face is above all a moral issue; that at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country." - Ted Kennedy

Look Who Didn't Make The Cut

When nytimes.com put out a request for reader’s dog photos last month, I enthusiastically found the very best photo of Hank. I submitted my photo and patiently waited to see a picture of Hank Spank SanClements published in the New York Time (online edition but still it’s the NYTimes). I couldn’t wait to show people that my dog was the best and his photo in NYTimes would prove it.

But, when the piece was finally published there was no picture of Hank. I couldn’t believe it. How could this happen? There must have been a mistake?

My dog did not make the cut.

Like Hank so many other dogs do not make the cut, but worse the adoption cut. There are approximately 74.8 million owned dogs in the United States and only 10% of these dogs were adopted from a shelter. Approximately 4 million adoptable dogs & cats are killed each year due mainly to overpopulation.

Shelter pets are the best pets and Hank is proof. When you adopt from a shelter you are not only saving a life; you are making a friend. North Shore Animal league launched a new education campaign to let the general public know that Mutt-i-grees (mixed-breed dogs) make great pets and are the right choice.

Adopting a mutt-i-gree or even a purebred from an overcrowded shelter makes the statement that it is unacceptable and wrong to buy a puppy from a pet store that’s supplied by the cruel purebred puppy mills. So if your thinking of adding a furry friend to your family, make the right choice and contact your local animal shelter. Adopt an animal that needs your help today. You too could have a mutt-i-gree like Hank.

http://www.adoptapet.com/

Happy Birthday B

May you always stay forever young.
-R. Penny

Girls Are Not The Problem But Rather The Solution

Today's global financial and economic crisis threatens to reverse gains made to reduce poverty in the developing world. Among those hardest hit are women and girls. Before the crisis women and girls represented the majority of the world’s poor. And now they are falling deeper into poverty and face increased health risk.

The number one killer of women and girls in the developing world is childbirth. Access to family planning and comprehensive reproductive health services helps women and girls avoid unwanted or early pregnancy. This means women and girls stay healthier, more productive, and have more opportunities for education and employment, which in turn, benefits families, communities, and countries.

The world is complex and interconnected just like these issues of global poverty and gender inequity in our world. In developing countries girls are more likely to be uneducated, a child bride and exposed to HIV/AIDS. And yet less then 1% of international aid dollars are directed to improving the lives of girls.

Something needs to change now. We need to advance the rights of women and girls, and empower them to be highly productive members of society capable of contributing to economic recovery and growth.

Evidence show that when we improve a girl’s life many more lives benefit: her brothers, sisters, parents and beyond. By investing more international aid dollars to improving the lives of girls we can break the cycle of poverty in the developing world.

• When girls have 7 or more years of education, she will marry 4 years later & have 2.2 fewer children.

• If 10% more girls attend secondary school, a country’s economy grows by 3%.

• When a girl earns an income she reinvests 90% in her family, compared to 35% for a boy.

To learn more about how different programs and organizations are fighting global poverty one girl at a time click on these links below.

International Center for Research on Women
Central Asia Institute
Nike Foundation
Population Council
UNFPA - United Nations Population Fund
NoVo Foundation
The World Bank - Adolescent Girls Initiative
Save the Children
Care

We can break this cycle of poverty. Girls can be a source of prosperity and hope. When girls support one another it becomes contagious and begins to spread throughout other communities and the world.
This is The Girl Effect.

It’s Ophicial: Phish Festival 8

The rumors were right. A three-day Phish festival which will take place on October 30th, 31st and November 1st at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California.

For more information visit the official Festival 8 website.

Have You Been Bitten By True Blood?

True Blood from enkil on Vimeo.

Watch True Blood Sundays 9pm on HBO.

Happy Birthday Colleen

Love,
R.Penny

You have so much to celebrate this year.
I wish I could be there to celebrate with you.

https://www.leukemia-lymphoma.org/all_donate?item_id=8072

Meet Frida And Loan Her The Tools To Achieve Economic Security

Frida Leonor Delgago Chirinosis is a 49 year old women who lives in Huarán, Peru with her 4 children. Frida is making great strides towards economic independence by working hard to improve her families’ quality of life.

Frida owns homestay business that provides good quality accommodations for tourists from all over the world visiting the Sacred Valley of the Incas. She is able to provide tourists a greater understanding and awareness of the Peruvian culture by opening her home to those who would like to experience the true Peruvian way of life.

Frida wishes to invest in her small business by adding more rooms and a bathroom to her cottage. A lone of $600 will allow Frida to remodel so she can accommodate more tourists, increase her business and better provide for her family. Frida has agreed to pay back her loan request starting September 2009 and plans to have it payed off by February 2010.

I have decided to personally loan Frida a portion of her request through the non-profit organization Kiva.

Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. Kiva is the first person-to-person micro-lending website. Micro-lending is the practice of lending very small loans to the very poor to promote entrepreneurship to generate income to build a better life. Remember, these are loans - not charity. Loans start as low as $25 and have a 98% repayment rate.

You can make a huge impact through a small loan simply visit http://www.kiva.org/and scroll the hundreds of opportunities to lend a small amount of money and make a tremendous amount of difference.