Relieve Hunger: On-line giving for free

Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 10:34:37 -0500 (EST)

Dear All,

Many of you know about The Hunger Site,a Web site that allows you to make free donations to the UN's World Food Program (WFP). You click on the site (specifically, a button/icon on the site), and at no cost to you corporate (or other) sponsors will make a small donation to the WFP.
I would like to draw your attention to a powerful site of the same genre. RelieveHunger -- http://www.relievehunger.com/daily.shtml -- links to 5 other sites (including The Hunger Site) that allow you to donate for free. At present, the other sites raise funds for food and medicine for children, for international humanitarian volunteer work, for the American Cancer Society, and for the American Red Cross. The Relieve Hunger site also links to other sites at which you can "give for free"; for example, by buying something on-line and having some of the proceeds go to charity.
I would also like to remind you/let you know about a site I mentioned in an earlier e-mail, http://wwww.causeanaffect.org/. Donations to this site are to help victims of a catastrophic cyclone that devastated the Indian state of Orissa last October. The site had been down for several days (though gave the appearance of being down for much longer than that), but is functioning again.
When I first learned of these sort of sites, I was rather skeptical -- generally, you have to pay for donations. "Donate for free" seemed something of an oxymoron. But creativity can bring sense even to oxymorons. In exchange for donating, the sponsors of these sites get the advertising and good will that comes with being a sponsor. They get by giving. It is a good deal for all involved. The Relieve Hunger site and the sites it connects to have a very strong aura of legitimacy.
Of course, let people know about these sites. Each person who uses these sites can make a difference, a big difference. According to the founder of the Relieve Hunger site, "When you learn that 2 cents is enough to buy one cup of staple food, that 6 cents is all that is needed to buy a vaccine to protect a child from tuberculosis and that 12 cents can buy enough oral re-hydration salts to treat and restore to health an infant up to 18 months old suffering from diarrhea and dehydration, you understand that a simple click can make a difference."
(http://freebies.about.com/shopping/freebies/library/weekly/aa011700b.htm)

Yours,

Eric


"I have only dreams: to build a better world, a world of harmony and understanding, a world in which it is a joy to live. This is not asking for too much." -- Yitzhak Rabin

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