Archive for Charity
Charities go mobile
On May 13th, 2009 Alicia Keys came to American Idol as the Global Ambassador for “Keep a Child Alive”. She put together a great show featuring the 15-year-old Rwandan rapper Noah, who is receiving care at the KCA-funded Icyuzuzo Clinic in Kigali, Rwanda. Noah hopes to change his personal life, and the future of others living with HIV through his music. On American Idol, Noah performed “The World’s Greatest”. Afterwards, Alicia Keys asked the audience to send the text message “ALIVE” to 90999 in order to contribute $5 to the cause. These one-time donations are added to the mobile phone bill or deducted from a prepaid balance. The results were astounding. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were collected within a short period of time.
The infrastructure that makes collecting donations through text messages possible, is the result of the Non-For-Profit organization “Mobile Giving Foundation“. The Foundation was created in order to combine the capabilities of the U.S. wireless industry with the need of charitable organizations to find a new class of donors and more intuitive methods of facilitating contributions. The Foundation is working with US wireless carriers to create a “Mobile Giving Channel”. This channel would allow wireless subscribers to instantaneously respond to charitable solicitations using text messaging via all US wireless carriers. The foundations forecasts that more than US $1 million per month will be raised through mobile giving campaigns in the U.S. market by the end of 2009. Over 220 well-known charities have joined the “Mobile Giving Foundation” utilizing its infrastructure as the new way of giving through people’s cell phone bill. At http://mobilegiving.org/Charities.aspx you can find active programs to support.
My friend Christian Zimmern works for the foundation as the VP of Partnerships and Programs. He explained that contributing by text messaging constitutes as a tremendous advancement over current means. Contributors don’t need to write a check, fill out forms, or call someone. They just text a reply, and the giving cycle is complete. The time lapse from notification to contribution can be seconds rather than days, weeks or months. By the way, I just sent Noah (90999) another text message “ALIVE”. I got my acknowledgement within seconds and replied with “YES”. If all readers of this blog do the same as they read this sentence, we will have raised another $50,000 in no time. Let’s do it!
The boy Gabriel
While shopping with my little son, I had one of those ground hog days. My little one says, ”Daddy, daddy, can I have this Pokemon game?” I reply “Well, I just bought you a new game last week. Are you already bored with that one?” He says, “No, no, it’s just I really like Pokemon..Pleeeeeeeeeaaase!” Have you been there? Well, I have been there .. a lot! I am father of a five-year old living in Northern Virginia where we spoil our little ones as if they were members of the royal family. I know I am guilty, and I know I am not alone. For example, there is my friend Rob. He has a six year old and the two boys are best buddies. Everytime the four of us go to an ice hockey game downtown, he has to endure psychological duress. As soon as we hit the Verizon Center, his boy is on his case: “I want an ice cream, a hot dog and a coke!” And that’s just the beginning. During the game of after he goes like this: “I want the little bear, I want a shirt, I want hockey stick..no I want the big one.” You see where I am getting at. My friend Rob happens to have a teenage daughter as well. She is sixteen and of course the topic of “cars” came up. She wanted one to get to school. So he asked her “Why do you need your own car? We have enough cars in the family that you can take if you really need one. And you can take the bus to get to school. Isn’t that what the other kids your age are doing?” She thought for a second about it and said; “Yes … the losers do!” Sometimes my heart goes out to Rob, but then on the flip side: Rob practices law here in VA…and who feels sorry for a lawyer? All kidding aside…What are we doing as parents? Are we are raising little “me me me’s” who are just thinking about the next thing to buy? Is that what we want? As I told you, I am guilty like the next one and certainly don’t have the all the answers, but I’d like to tell you a story about a boy named Gabriel and how he impacted our life!
Gabriel lives in a different part of the world. He lives across the ocean in a little village in Ghana, Africa. He is one of the lucky ones. He lives with his parents, three brothers and a sister. His parents are farmers and like many others they are struggling to provide. Gabriel is one of the kids we decided to sponsor (Please go to www.worldvision.org for more information). As part of the sponsorship process, we get regular updates how he is doing. Last year, after he received his birthday present he sent us a letter along with a picture that showed him with all the presents. There you see him with a big smile, his new school uniform, a mat and some other things. In his letter he talked about his day. How he wakes up in the morning, eats breakfast and then goes to school in the morning in his uniform. In the afternoon when he returns he helps his family. His job is to bring water from the community well to his house. He didn’t forget to mention that he likes to play soccer. While I was reading Gabriel’s letter out loud, my son kept looking at the picture. When I finished he started to ask questions.
“Does his daddy watch how he plays?” I reply, “Well, I believe so. I am sure, he is as proud as I am when I watch you.”
“And why does he need the mat?” I reply, “Well, this is the mat he sleeps on. They don’t have a bed in their house, so Gabriel sleeps on a matt.”
I could see that my little one was thinking about that. Then, all of the sudden he asked me if we could give one of our beds in the guestroom to Gabriel and his family. Now, to hear this from a 5 year old, a member of the “me me me” generation, this is simple but huge statement. I took the time to explain to him how we can help kids like Gabriel so that they can go to school and learn. So, that one day, they make money and are able to buy their own beds, build their own houses and provide for themselves and their families. Without knowing it, Gabriel planted a seed in my son. The seed of caring. Caring for others. And the seed of taking action. Taking actions for others in need and I hope that these seeds will continue to grow as my son becomes a man.
The Gabriels of the world don’t need much. All they is need is a little push in their lives. Similar to the push we give our kids when we teach them how to ride a bike. They can take the momentum forward and do it on their own. As this examples shows, the payback can be priceless. Gabriel triggered the kind of growth in my son that – I am sure – makes him a better person. Now. Gabriel’s tutor wrote me that he is good in school and in particular he is very strong in math. So, my hope is that Gabriel becomes an engineer who solves some of the problems of his country … for instance the power outages they have over there. When that happens I hope he writes his solution down and sends his finding to Dominian Virginia Power. Because – by god – we are the ones who need all the help we can get to solve our problems.
