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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