Don’t take my word for it

Add your voice by signing a petition calling on world leaders at the G8 Summit to take strong action to end global poverty and fight climate change. Oxfam’s goal is to present a petition with the signatures of one million concerned citizens.

Candidates united

Give a gift of hope

Start a new holiday tradition this year by honoring your family and friends with a gift that spreads hope and provides long-term opportunity to families living in poverty. Heifer International has over 20 gifts to choose from, including heifers, sheep, llamas, goats, chicks, geese, honeybees, trees, and more. You can make a real difference in the life of a struggling family, helping them obtain a sustainable source of food and income and lighting the way along the road to self-reliance.

Heifer’s mission is to work with communities around the world to end hunger and poverty and care for the earth. “Passing on the Gift” - a cornerstone of Heifer’s approach - creates a living cycle of sustainability that develops community and enhances self-esteem. As people share the offspring of their animals, along with their knowledge, resources, and skills, an expanding network of hope, dignity, and self-reliance is created that reaches around the globe.

Take a moment to learn more about Heifer International, and browse the gift catalog.

Citizen philanthropy funds classrooms

from the site:
“DonorsChoose.org is a simple way to provide students in need with resources that our public schools often lack. At this not-for-profit web site, teachers submit project proposals for materials or experiences their students need to learn. These ideas become classroom reality when concerned individuals, whom we call Citizen Philanthropists, choose projects to fund.”

A DonorsChoose.org gift certificate would make a wonderful holiday “gift that gives back” for someone special. Your recipient will be able to use the gift certificate to fund their choice of project(s). Alternately, you can fund a project in someone’s honor. Donations are tax-deductible, of course.

In 2007, donors from all walks of life have funded $4,215,709 worth of resources for students in need.

Debt cancellation works

clipped from www.one.org For the world’s most impoverished countries, the cost of debt overshadows their ability to provide access to clean water, education and basic healthcare. Some countries spent as much as 25-30% of their annual budgets servicing their debt, more than was spent on education and healthcare combined. Debt cancellation would help ensure funds were used for poverty reduction, ultimately decreasing poor countries dependence on foreign aid. While the debt crisis is far from over, the U.S. and other industrialized countries have taken action to relieve debt burdens in many of the most impoverished countries and these commitments have proven effective. Mozambique used its debt service savings to vaccinate children against tetanus, whooping cough and diphtheria, as well as build and electrify schools. Nigeria is using the $750 million in debt service savings from 2006 to train and recruit new teachers.

Ask your Member of Congress to cosponsor the Jubilee Act (HR 2634) which will extend debt cancellation without imposing harmful economic conditions on all impoverished countries that are required to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

What’s the worst that could happen?

This video is worth watching, whatever your stance on climate change.

Crisis in Burma

clipped from www.thehungersite.com Burma (Myanmar), a small country south of China on the Indian Ocean, is experiencing increasingly brutal violence by the ruling military junta toward its people. Rampant poverty, denial of basic human rights, and a rash of violence against peaceful protestors have led to global concern about the atrocities occurring in the region. In 1990, democratic elections led to a landslide victory by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi, who never made it into office. She remains under house arrest today by the military junta still in power. Peaceful protests for democracy by Buddhist monks and the Burmese people have been met with arrests, disappearances, and violence in untold numbers. You can make a difference. Learn more about events in Burma, and take action!

Free Burma!

Green guilt trip

clipped from Patt Morrison’s opionion column at: www.latimes.com

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A Dickian dystopia is bearing down on us. The government and the greenies are afraid of making you feel guilty. Not me.

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Plastic: You’re not throwing away plastic bags, genius — you’re throwing away oil. In energy alone, recycling a ton of plastic bags saves 11 barrels of oil.

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And those darling little plastic water bottles you tossed — 18 million barrels of oil to make them.

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Paper: The lungs you ruin may be your own. A mature tree eats 13 pounds of carbon dioxide every year, so every time you don’t recycle a huge stack of envelopes and junk mail and wrapping paper and newspapers, you’re murdering a tree that could have saved you. You could heat your house for six months on the energy saved from recycling a ton of paper.

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Aluminum cans: Too lazy to shuffle to the recycling bin? The energy you waste by throwing away a single soda can would run your TV for three hours. Throwing away an empty six-pack is like throwing away nearly a $3.50 gallon of gasoline.

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Bashir lies, Darfur dies

Our country

“Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.”

-Carl Schurz

Organic standards weakened

Visit the source to speak out on this issue by submitting comments to the USDA.

clipped from www.democracyinaction.org ALERT: ANOTHER SNEAK ATTACK ON ORGANIC STANDARDS: USDA TO ALLOW MORE CONVENTIONAL INGREDIENTS IN ORGANICS Despite receiving more than ten thousand comments from consumers and family farmers opposing various aspects of a late May 2007 proposal, the USDA has approved an interim rule that will allow 38 new non-organic ingredients to be allowed in products bearing the “USDA Organic” seal. -Anheuser Busch will be allowed to sell its “Organic Wild Hops Beer” without using any organic hops at all. -Sausages, brats, and breakfast links labeled as “USDA Organic” are now allowed to contain intestines from factory farmed animals raised on chemically grown feed, synthetic hormones, and antibiotics. -Products labeled as “USDA Organic” and containing fish oil may contain toxins such as PCBs and mercury (note: nonorganic fishoil products have this same risk, but despite the USDA ruling, it is against the National Organic Standards to allow such toxins in organic foods).

Polar Bear SOS

The message below urges concerned Americans to come to the rescue of the polar bear, which faces extinction as a result of global warming. You can send a copy of this letter to your friends by visiting www.polarbearsos.org.

Dear Friend,

By speaking out today, you could help save polar bears from extinction.

The Bush Administration has proposed listing the polar bear as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act because its Arctic sea ice habitat is rapidly melting from global warming. This proposed protection comes after successful legal action by NRDC and its partners to protect the imperiled bear.

However, this proposal won’t become reality without a huge outpouring of public support.

Please send a message to the Bush Administration today by going to: www.polarbearsos.org/takeaction0607

Polar bears live only in the Arctic and are completely dependent on sea ice for survival. But 80 percent of their summer ice could be gone in 20 years and all of it by 2040. They are already suffering the effects: birth rates are falling, fewer cubs are surviving, and more bears are drowning.

Time is running out. Without protection, polar bears could become the first mammal to lose 100 percent of its habitat to global warming.

Please speak out now.

Thank you for speaking out at this critical time.

Sincerely,
Frances Beinecke
President, Natural Resources Defense Council

Change the world

ONE voice.
ONE vote.
ONE chance every four years.
Change the world.
ONE.org

“…end the kind of stupid poverty that means a child dies of hunger
in a world of plenty.”

-Bono

Each of us has a voice

Grace at The 13 Graces has posted about an extraordinary man and his cross-country ‘walk to end the wars’. I hope you’ll take a moment to visit her site and read about Bill McDannell and his journey.