Do 5 days of good before celebrating the New Year!

As 2009 comes to an end, it's time to reflect upon what we have accomplished for the year. If you lament that you haven't done enough good deed to help others (which I do), here's your last chance. A gentleman Thomas Atcheson contacted me just a while ago and asked me to spread the words about Twixtmas. Twixtmas is a project that encourages people make a pledge to do at least a good deed a day for 5 days from Dec 27 to Dec 31, the days during Christmas and New Year. Instead of spending all your time indulging yourself in pleasure, try to think about the less fortunate for a moment. And if you think you didn't have much time during the regular work weeks to do something, here's your chance to do it.

Count me in on this as I have long planned to spend my holiday break, from Christmas to New Year day, at a religious community center volunteering. I have done this in the past and I felt more content and satisfied than just having a good time for myself. The Holiday Spirit is essentially about sharing and caring anyway.

So, while I am gone, I would like to wish you Happy Holidays and have a save and healthy break. I will see you again next year.

Have you tried Kiva.org?

Sorry for not blogging for a while. I meant to share this a while ago but other things got in the way. I have used a service called kiva.org for a while and started to see its impact. Kiva.org is a loan service where you can become the loaner to low-income entrepreneurs around the world. The kiva.org website says this:

Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.

Practically, this good deed is not "free" in the sense that you need to invest an initial amount of capital in order to start the loan service. However, you are not donating your money away; instead, you will get repayment for your loan (up to 98% repayment rate according to kiva) , which you get to loan to someone else after that. So, after the initial investment, you don't have put a penny more into your account and keep the good deeds going practically forever.

Start using the service and tell me what you think.

Update: DonateBot is now SuperDonate

A while ago, I post a blog entry promoting the site donatebot.com. Now it is renamed SuperDonate.com, even though the old address will direct you to the same new site.

To rehash, SuperDonate.com allows you to donate your idle or unused computer time through a distributed computing network that requires a lot of CPU processing power. All you have to do is to download a software from the site and install it and everything will take care itself after that. My computer has been running the software for about five months now and it rarely interrupt my normal computing use. Do it for a cause now!

You need 'cleanbreath'...no, it's not a typo

cleanbreath.org is a new site that offers multiple click-to-donates for various causes, including seniors and environmental protections. Visit the site everyday by clicking the banner above.

Blacken Your Website Campaign...Here we come

Can you see the banner above? It's Blackle, a site that I encountered last week. It is touted as the energy saving way to use Google search engine. I don't know how much energy you would save by visiting a site with a black versus a white background, but it wouldn't hurt to try. To echo this "Blacken Your Website" campaign, I also changed my blog's background color to black. Let's make this a movement and make our internet browsing experience greener.

You can always help...even you are at home

I received an email from Mike Bright and he wanted me to promote his website called "helpfromhome.org." I am very delighted to do so because his initiative is exactly what I have been intended to do for this blog: To promote ways to do good deeds in a small way (preferably) from home without costing us much time or money (if any)! Helpfromhome.org has a very comprehensive list of things that you can do at your home to help others. I applaud Mike for putting all the resources together because there are A LOT of things you can do to make this world and yourself better. I look forward to further explore and promote his site.

Good Stuff: The Story of Stuff

I have seen this series of videos a while ago and I thought you would enjoy it. The author did a good job in visualizing the things that I have been thinking for many years.

Twittering Your Good Deed: Better than Blogging?

My schedule is getting busier and I haven't been able to find something new to blog about. Recently I found that Twitter may be a way to go for recording one good deed a day. Twitter, of course, is the next big thing many people have been talking about. One upside (and arguably the downside) of twittering is that people just type in some random, mundane stuff online in a sentence or two for anyone who cares to read them. It may not mean much on a daily basis, but it is a good way to keep a record of what you have done daily. This could be a tool to influence others to do good deeds in their life by just 'reminding' them in your twitter message (provided that they do check your message regularly). By doing a search on Twitter you can see that some people are already doing so. Start twittering your good deeds and see whether it would lead to anything.

Food for Thought: Helping Others

(Courtesy of DailyThoughts.org)

It's Earth Day! So what?

We all know by now that declaring a day or a month to a specific population or a cause doesn't get really far anymore. Who are celebrating the Earth Day besides the kids in school? It is even sillier to call it Earth Day. We live on the earth EVERYDAY, don't we? Why celebrating the Mother Earth only one day out of 365 days a year? Anyway, there is no harm at all if you start doing something good for the environment on something you haven't done before. For example, do you know that by going vegetarian for even a day can significantly reduce your carbon footprint more than driving a hybrid or taking the public transportation? Make a switch and commit yourself a day to become a vegetarian in every week. It is a lot easier to do than you think.