Day eight: blood:water mission

Today's blog is Stephen's, and he highlights Blood:Water Mission, an organization started by the members of Jars of Clay.

Blood:Water Mission exists to promote clean blood and clean water efforts in Africa, tangibly reducing the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic while addressing the underlying issues of poverty, injustice and oppression. Blood:Water Mission is building clean water wells, supporting medical facilities, and focusing on community and worldview transformation, both here in America and in Africa.

From Stephen's post:

In an interview Derek did recently with The Washington Times, while talking about what he is rebelling against and his involvement with Blood:Water Mision, he said “A mother and her children who have to walk 15 miles a day every day to get dirty water to put into their bodies with a broken immune system that will eventually kill them is the right thing to rebel against.”

Day seven: something must have happened

I am behind..... yesterday's blogger was Stephanie - and wow, what a post. Stephanie's cause was children and sexual abuse. Read her blog, please. It may very well save someone's life.

A few quotes:

"Three million children need us to pay attention, to ask uncomfortable questions and speak up when we think something is wrong. And 39 million adults need to talk."

"How easily I trust others, how naively I assume the best because I have never endured the worst of humanity. How often I have sensed that something was wrong, but chosen to believe otherwise."

Day six: from callousness to healing

Today's blogger is The Chaotic Hammer. He, too, is fasting and praying for and highlighting Compassion International, and specifically HIV/AIDS.

This is actually one of the causes I am considering for Saturday, and it is near to my heart - so this post impacted me greatly. Please take the time to read it. Here are some statistics he starts his post out with:

"1. Every 14 seconds a child is orphaned by AIDS.

2. More than 12 million African children and 15 million children worldwide have lost one or both parents to AIDS.

3. By 2010, it's projected that more than 25 million children worldwide will be orphaned by AIDS.

4. Nine out of 10 children living with AIDS are African.

5.Every minute a child under 15 dies of an AIDS-related illness.

6. Each month, more people die from AIDS than were killed in the Southeast Asia tsunami that shocked the world in late 2004."

Seriously. Read this post.

Day five: love is a ripple effect

Today's blogger: Kristin.

"Knowing is the first step, and the breaking of heart must come before change can begin."
"Real change takes time, and takes a lot of people."
"There are so many needs of this world, but there are also so many of us."

All quotes from today's blog..... read it!

Day four: going one step further

Today's blogger: Shaun Groves. An excellent post about Compassion International, and about going one (or two) step(s) further than sponsoring a child. Shawn, great post, and again, challenging - and I'm praying for you and for Compassion's work today.

And a quote from Kat's blog today:
"If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one."
-Mother Teresa

That is for everyone who says that our small efforts do not make a difference. They do.

Day three: this world is not a fair place

Today's blogger for the 40 day fast is Sam.

"That ours can be the hearts of love that change the world - "by God's grace & in God's strength." This world is not a fair place to live in - greed, glory & gold being our motto, as a whole. So, we, individually, have to be the ones to help change things."

Another perspective, another challenge - there is no way that this fast is NOT going to change things, because it already is changing us.

Also.... check out World Vision. Another excellent organization that gives practical ways all of us can be involved in making a difference.

The thin wall between mercy and darkness

Today Brant Hansen is taking his turn in the fast, and he, like Kat yesterday, highlights Compassion International.

Please visit Brant's blog today - it is a soul-searching post; at least it was for me.

I can't describe it any better (or come even close to) than Brant, so I'd like to close with a quote from his post:

"The wall is very, very thin. The wall divides a bloody temple from Mother Teresa's home for the sick and dying, and it's a very thin wall. For the children I've met in central America, Africa, Asia -- the wall between hope and hopelessness, between smiling young engineer and disfigured beggar, is a very thin wall.

And, borrowing from Solzhenitsyn, that wall runs through me, and my checkbook, separating life and death, mercy and darkness."

The beginning

Today, then, is the beginning of the 40 day fast. Kat started us off today - her cause: child hunger, her organization: Compassion International.

A few - hard-hitting - points:

Did You Know?
Almost 6.5 million children under five die every year from hunger-related diseases. In fact, hunger-related illnesses kill 12 children every minute of every day.

Did you know that the Western world has all the resources needed to defeat child hunger? Consider this:

The basic nutritional needs of the world’s poorest children could be met for $19 billion a year.

We spend $18 billion annually on makeup alone.
We spend $17 billion on pet food.
We spend $11 billion on ice cream.
We spend $35 billion on bottled water.

I already realize that this will be a humbling 40 days. My husband and I decided to adopt a Compassion child today.

The fast

The forty-day fast, where 40 bloggers each fast one day and highlight a need and an organization that tries to meet that need that day, starts tomorrow. I started working on listing links to my fellow-fasting-bloggers today, and researching organizations on the web, and looked at this post once again - the post and the picture that inspired the 40-day-fast.

And at that point, there really is not a lot more to say, except thank you to Kat, who took this fantastic initiative. I look forward to the coming 40 days, to being outward-focused, to being overwhelmed, and to seeing some of the amazing ways people are responding to needs that are bigger than at least I can comprehend.

IM and good causes

A tagline in a friend's email caught my attention today: "Make every IM count. Download Messenger and join the i’m Initiative now." After a little checking I found the following:

"i’m is a new initiative from Windows Live™ Messenger. Every time you start a conversation using i’m, Microsoft shares a portion of the program's advertising revenue with some of the world's most effective organizations dedicated to social causes." To check it out, click here. The downside? it currently does not work on a Mac - which I use.

The 40 Day Fast

I have discovered several blogs lately that I read daily (or at least whenever the writers blog). Two are written by the same person, Kat - she writes a music business blog and a personal blog. On her personal blog she just came up with a great initiative - the 40 day fast. The purpose behind it is to give people an opportunity to:
1. Experience a bit of need
2. Learn about the need in the world
3. Do something about it

She is trying to find 39 bloggers (I just signed up) who would be willing to fast for one day and blog about their experience. On their specified day, the fasting blogger also highlights an area of need in the world (either a cause or a country) and an organization that strives to meet that need. On the other 39 days (the days a blogger is not fasting) each blogger writes a short post with a link to the blogger who is fasting that day. The idea behind this is to introduce a lot of different people to many different causes or nations and reinforce the idea that there is need by putting it in front of our readers on a daily basis for 40 days.

Finally, the readers of all the blogs involved are encouraged to join us in fasting on the 40th day, July 31. So.... anyone here want to jump in with the 40 day fast? Either to take a day in the project (if you don't have a blog you can guest blog on Kat's on your day), or by joining us on July 31.

Vibefest 2007

The Positive Vibe Cafe is a Richmond restaurant that trains people with disabilities for work in the restaurant world. During the past three years, more than 150 people have been trained in this fantastic place. The food is amazing, the service is wonderful, and the atmosphere is intimate and festive at the same time. Our band plays there every second Sunday of the month - which we love - but last Sunday we had the privilege of opening up Vibefest 2007 - the Cafe's annual celebration/fundraiser with 14 bands playing, area chefs cooking and serving lots of great food, and hundreds of people enjoying both the music and the food in the parking lot outside of the Positive Vibe Cafe.

Besides opening the festival as a band we also helped with sound for one of the stages throughout the day, and it was a fantastic event with amazing music, but more than that, an amazing purpose. The Cafe is expanding later this year, and if you are in Richmond, you should check it out!

Spread the sharing

I came across a cool initiative today: Spread the sharing. The idea is this - you share a story about a time you shared with someone or someone shared with you. For every story you share, Country Crock will donate a meal to a family in need through America’s Second Harvest.

Yep.... of course it brings attention to Country Crock. But hey, according to the site, so far they have donated 113,958 meals. That's a lot of meals, and that's a lot of needs met. I submitted a story..... and I encourage you to as well.

Better

Heard in Starbucks today:
"Some things just make life better, and whipped cream is one of them"

Square pegs

This is so cool..... some of my absolute favorite writers.... all together - if this does not come close to the essence of music, I don't know what does. Check out the Square Peg Alliance.

From their own site: "The Square Peg Alliance is a group of singer/songwriters who really like each other. We have all been doing music on our own but have decided to join forces like the wonder twins - except there are 13 of us instead of 2. There is no guy in a suit putting all of us together. We really just believe in each other's art and want to support it.
We don't write music so we can be the next big thing (or if we do, it hasn't worked for us). We believe that there are folks out there who like music even if it isn't played every three minutes on the radio, even if it isn't on a big label, even if it isn't accompanied by a music video, even if the shows aren't flashy or even if the records don't go platinum (or gold, or silver, or aluminum foil, etc.).
That is why we are the Square Peg Alliance. Thirteen artists who might not fit perfectly into the traditional mold of the music business, but have found a home with each other."

Amen.