The $5 philanthropist

Most everyone knows that I am a card-carrying Obamite. Many of my friends also know of my mild depression after HRC's wins in Ohio and Texas.

As an Obamite, I've signed up at BarackObama.com and receive regular email appeals signed by either David Plouffe or Barack Obama. Most of the emails are genuine communiques but inevitably include an appeal to "donate right now" typically asking for $25 dollars.

The success of Obama's online fundraising has been widely reported with particular emphasis Obama harnessing the "Power of Plenty" by receiving many small donations from a mass of individual donors.

After Ohio and Texas, I know I'm already fighting "Campaign Fatigue" but I wonder to what extent "Donor Fatigue" is starting to set-in.

A successful online fundraising campaign needs multiple appeals with different messaging which the Obama campaign has done well but I suspect that we'll see a dip (and perhaps a noticeable decline) in Obama's online fundraising due to a potent combination of Campaign and Donor Fatigue.

As a means by which to counteract both fatigues, I would advise the Obama campaign to send out several emails with links to their favorite YouTube clips, websites and articles with no mention of an appeal. Have some candid YouTube clips of Obama like the dinner-party clips from a while back. Adjust the momentum of their outbound emails and start rallying the troops before April 22nd.

Labels: barack obama, fundraising, online, politics, social media. web, strategy, US

Below are correspondences we have received from members at GiveMeaning who have posted fundraising projects at GiveMeaning benefiting communities in Kenya. We've asked each of our project founders to update us with what they are experiencing or their colleagues are experiencing on the ground to try and give you a perspective that might not otherwise be able to be obtained.

Because of the tribal violence, I have decided to remove any specific geographical references and any names of people mentioned in these reports. I hope to be updating this page with more reports in the coming days. These comments are infused with their own perspectives and not that of GiveMeaning or my own.


This update was received by a Kenyan-born Project Founder currently living in the US on January 3rd.

Dear Tom,
I come from Kenya, where i was born and raised. The reason i started to mobilize my friends to begin our organization [name withheld] is because i feel passionate about the plight of Kenya's children. What is happening in the Kenya is obviously unprecedented. The people of Kenya through history have been peace loving; always going about their businesses peacefully and trying to create a prosperous future through education and change. It is for this reason that they came out in large numbers to vote and exercise their democratic right, boy, they were cheated.

So many people have been displaced. Everyone i speak to in Kenya including my sisters and mother is scared. I have heard a frightened voice of my older sister, [Name withheld], an otherwise strong and courageous woman, quiver and afraid. For the first time she's of the realization that her marriage to a luo, a man she has married a number of years ago could have been a "mistake" and perhaps it might just bring death sentence to her and her entire family (something that was never a problem before). To think that her entire family could be a target is hard to fathom. Her family has lived in [location withheld] with several people of different tribal descent. Suddenly, she's become sceptical, afraid and dubious about her neighbors and what they would think of her.



In my home are of [location and details withheld] this problem has exacerbated the usual poverty and pauperism that has existed for generations. Speaking to my Mom, she said, "I have nothing to eat son; i have been sleeping without food for days." For an old woman, suffering from acute high blood pressure and arthritis, it is impossible to imagine my take about the situation. I have the money to send to her for food, but how? She cannot collect it because the service canters are closed. No food can be transported into the village; yet the village has been hit by a long spell of drought that has left the inhabitants of over 30,000 people with no much to eat.

Here in [location withheld] my friend in the small town where i live, just called me to tell me that his brother in-law and wife's uncle (both Kikuyus) have been hacked to death by an angry mob in western Kenya. My friend's wife would love to go home and attend the funeral, but how do you travel into a "war zone?" We are thinking of organizing a "Harambee" (pulling together) {fund-raising} to assist [Name withheld] with funeral arrangements. It was just the other day on New year's eve that i was at [name withheld] house where i had been invited to celebrate the start of year. [name withheld] and i had talked at great length about Kenya's after this disputed election. Never did i ever imagine that tragedy would hit this close.

War is destructive. If the leadership would realize that greed, power, pride and arrogance won't feed or bring hope to the hopeless, perhaps reason would prevail.


Sent January 2nd from the Province of Nyanza

"Thank you very much for your communication. Things do not look good here. The Opposition leader who was rigged out of the presidential election comes from my home Province-Nyanza. So the violence is intense here.The current president comes from a tribe called the Kikuyu and together with members of a tribe called Abagusi, they are the only people who voted for him. Now all the rest of the Kenyan tribes have risen against them, Rwanda style with pangas and arson (burning of houses). In my home area we live side by side with the Abagusi. Their houses were burnt and scores killed. It is amazing how people who have lived side by side for decades suddenly turn against one another.

A curfew has been imposed in several parts of the province and everything is grinding to a halt. There is no food, no public transport, no water because people fear venturing out to fetch it. People are just indoors fearing the chaotic blood letting. towards the event. Kisumu is a Ghost town as i write this and nobody can eneter or leave it."

Labels: africa, conflict, kenya, politics

I call myself a "CanadiAmerican:" I was born and raised in Canada up until 15 when I moved to the US where I grew-up in the US until about 22. I went to the US as many immigrants do, to take part in the pursuit of the "American Dream", the one where you arrive with a nickle in your pocket and several years later, you're a millionaire.

I arrived as a 9th grade drop-out working for Apple Computer and while I didn't leave a millionaire, I became a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, charging thousands of dollars a day for my uneducated advice and telling CEO's and executives of major companies how to run their companies better and they were listening. I started companies, helped manage a half a billion of venture capital for some of the World's richest people and had all the material trappings of wealth.

I always say that "success requires a persistent misreading of the odds" (a quote from Tom Peters) for the odds were not that I had a good chance of having the success I did when I left home for California. But I was full of hope.

One of my favorite quotes is "“Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope”

I have always been interested in politics and I've watched many political speeches both of living Politicians and of those who have passed. I have watched grainy videos of Martin Luther King Jr, JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Roosevelt, (not so grainy) Trudeau and many other Politicians of a different time wondering if ever there would be a speech given by someone in my lifetime as powerful as theirs by a person as galvanizing and enchanting as them.

Instead, I have had to content myself with remarking how well a spin was made, an accusation or barb thrown, a defense or criticism made, a policy articulated. The closest I got was Jeb Bartlett created by Aaron Sorkin and Hugh Grant as Prime Minister of the U.K. I, like many people, had lost hope that a Politician would come around and actually inspire me. Until last night.



This speech moved me to tears.

His opponents' criticisms (e.g. his inexperience and naivety on foreign affairs) now seem to me part of his appeal. Of course, it shouldn't surprise you that a 9th grade drop-out who became a consultant to CEO's feels that sometimes, inexperience is to be coveted.

I often tell people the story of how the Polaroid camera was invented. Edwin Land was a Harvard-educated Scientist who tried to share his scientific experience while on vacation with his three-year old daughter. She wanted to see the pictures they were taking right away and he was trying to explain the process by which pictures are developed. Not having any of the inertia that comes from experience, she wasn't convinced that his explanation was the ONLY answer. Edwin was prompted to think outside the box and soon after, the Polaroid camera was invented.

With experience comes inertia. An acceptance of the "norm" the "status quo." A cold, calculating look at the odds as a means by which to determine whether to try.

"Hope is the power that gives us the power to step out and try.”

Last night, a Politician gave me and millions of other people Hope. His name is Barack Hussein Obama and I believe that he is now destined to become the 45th President of the United States of America.

Pragmatically, one can question whether it would be better for Obama to be elected President later after someone else who is more hardened tries to clean up the massive mess that's been made. As an investor, I was taught to never throw "good money after bad" but this assumes you are content to write the investment off. We're talking about a Country here, a Country that Obama reminded us last night has the potential to be great.

I don't think anyone wants to write off the United States of America. It's time to throw good after bad.

I've decided that I'm going to head down to South Carolina on January 26th.

I'm making the trip because I've never been as inspired by a Politician living in my lifetime as I have been by Barack Obama.

Labels: barack obama, democrats, obama, politics, US

Just before going on vacation, I wrote this entry, wanting to talk about the issues facing "New Canadians" (a term I like more and more). I had intended to post while on vacation but wisely left the laptop at home. I'm now picking-up where I left off.

Let me start with a disclaimer: I am not an expert on anything I write about. I am writing to try and create a discussion around the issues facing New Canadians and a rationale as to why more of us ought to try to do something. I am hoping that people much smarter than I am will contribute comments and feedback that will set right my mistaken assumptions and inform us all. Disclaimer made.

In this post, I want to compare a donor dollar spent on Darfur emergency relief and a dollar spent on providing free after-school tutoring to Sudanese kids who have landed here in Vancouver as refugees. I hate these types of comparisons because - in an ideal world - we ought to fund both, but it's unlikely that the same donor will fund both programs.

The "on the ground" effort is urgent, extreme and well-reported in the media. The "here at home" situation is certainly not urgent nor extreme (in the same context) and thus not well-reported. Of course, if a family of Sudanese refugees have found their way to Canada, they are certainly much luckier/wealthier than their friends and family back home, right? Right. Well kinda.

I can't fault any refugee if they lose perspective eventually. (I know I would lose it quite quickly) Meaning that eventually, I stop comparing my current situation today, here in Canada, with my past situation back in Sudan. Eventually, I have to look at the fact that I am here now and I must survive and ultimately try to move up the economic ladder here in Canada.

So back to what to fund. The crisis is on and somehow this one refugee has landed in Toronto along with his two children. The children are placed in school in the grades corresponding with their age. Problem is that their education is at a much lower level than their ages. They've been in and out of school. Stop start for the past several years before coming to Canada. The school gives a bit of extra help, an hour a week but there's one tutor to 10 kids, all of whom are at various learning levels and english competency.

The two kids are falling behind in school and yet despite this, they are already more educated than their father. He can't help them. So eventually, they stop trying. They spend less time at school, hanging-out with other kids who have slipped through the cracks. Meanwhile, the father whose English is passable but by no means strong, finds himself unable to get work other than as a less than minimum wage laborer.

An entire post deserves to be written on the exploitation of New Canadians on farms, in nannying and other industries but let's keep talking about the father and his kids.

The kids drop out-of school and then walk down one of two paths: A life not unlike their father, working below the poverty line, their labor exploited or they find easier money selling drugs, find support and a sense of family in a gang, and then end-up incarcerated or dead.

Obviously the story I portray is one of extremes but the story I'm telling above is a composite of many people I've met here in Canada whose personal stories are far more sensational than this composite.

Now maybe your attitude is that they (the New Canadians) should be "lucky to be here" and "to each his own" and if they're unable to make it up the economic ladder, that's their problem. And at least on the last point, I might be willing to accommodate that view, if only it were a fair fight. But my Sudanese friend is "bringing a knife to a gunfight."

So then, if it's not a fair fight, and we're not investing in adequate resources to ensure that those that we purposefully annoint as one of us, as a Canadian, if they are not given the resources, then in a way, we are actually contributing to a new form of slavery.

Bear with me.

We know the basic requirements to move up the ladder. It starts with education and skills development. If these resources (which are inalienable rights of any Canadian) are not afforded to New Canadians, specifically recognizing that they can't just be "slotted" into society with a citizenship card and a rousing singing of O'Canada and God Save The Queen, that they need some form of "starter kit" that specifically addresses how to place them onto a level playing field, then we are in many cases signing-off on their enslavement.

Now if that isn't a compelling enough argument for us to do MORE, let me make a pure dollars and sense argument. I've seen some of the most generous giving for international development come from New Canadians who have managed to move-up the economic ladder, and who have contributed disproportionate amounts of their wealth (as a percentage of their income compared to "averages" of annual giving) back into the communities where they grew-up and in the surrounding communities. I've seen a lot of this giving done quietly and even without tax-relief and I'm proud to say that at GiveMeaning, we provide an infrastructure by which many of these grass-roots projects are being facilitated.

So here's a couple of solutions:

The biggest issue is not a lack of resources, but a lack of access to these resources. Back to my analogy of the starter-kit, if there was someone during the citizenship process who worked as a "case officer" for a New Canadian, who took the time to understand the specific needs of that family, and then accessed a central database of all service providers offering relevant and applicable services, this would make a MAJOR difference.

As I say often, there are 80,000 charities in Canada and more than 100,000 non-profit societies. In addition, there are countless grass-roots volunteer groups offering a myriad services but most of these organizations have zero budget for outreach or awareness.

Heck, someone should create a community portal aimed at New Canadians arriving from the same countries. Share resources, anonymously articulate problem employers, coordinate meet-ups, etc. Do it as a non-profit endeavor. I'm sure there would be lots of government grants and community grants available for such a site, and potentially even some corporate sponsorship.

So there's a start. Second, we need stricter laws protecting "migrant workers" and a review of temporary worker visas and the employers who bring in workers under this visa, and a better process by which workers can articulate grievances without fear of retribution.

So there it is. Not without hyperbole but not without merit.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

Labels: canada, newcanadians, politics, refugee

After just a night in Montreal, I'm back on the train now headed to Toronto. I'm listening to Lucinda Williams on my iPod and as I opened a new window to start this blog entry, the song started. Appropriately titled: Everything has changed.

The song (in Lucinda style) is horribly depressing but beautiful:

Now I don't know where my faith has gone
Faces look familiar but they dont have names
Towns I used to live in have been rearranged
Highways I once traveled on dont look the same
Everything has changed. Everything has changed

Reading the Globe & Mail this morning, this song was the perfect soundtrack for an article on the front page that reported that the Liberals raised $531,141 from 4,365 contributors versus the $5.1 million from 45,192 contributors that the Conservatives reported during the same period.

The fundraising landscape has changed and what worked before doesn't work as effectively today.

My advice (perhaps self-serving) is that the Liberals need to license the GiveMeaning platform to create personalized fundraising pages for each candidate. Here's how it would work: E

ach candidate creates a page (within their own website) where their supporters are encouraged to sign-up as "virtual campaigners."

They send an email to their own social networks with an introductory note about why they support the candidate and encouraging them to donate. The link brings them to a fundraising page not unlike this one except branded in the look and feel of the rest of that candidate's page.

People can leave messages of support, and the candidate's blog entries, photos, video entries whatever are automatically imported with a notification being sent out to each donor when updates are made (like Facebook).

In targeting small donations, the two big issues are conversion rate and cost of acquisition. There is no cheaper, more effective program than GiveMeaning's fundraising pages. What do you say candidates and campaign managers?

Labels: canada, fundraising, online, politics, web

This article was posted a few minutes ago at the GiveMeaning site.

It gives us the real deal on how to end the Genocide in Sudan: Restrict its oil exports, and bring the Sudanese government to its knees.

Is it any wonder that President al-Bashir continues to smugly defy diplomatic efforts and UN resolutions? As long as China pumps Sudan's oil, nothing significant can occur to stop the Genocide.

As a young boy, I stood outside Shell Oil stations with my mother with signs that read "Product of Apartheid." The economic pressure that came as a result of this kind of boycott was a significant contributor to the end of Apartheid.

Why not boycott China's products until they come around? I see all of these activist efforts to lobby our Governments but it's not our Governments who need convincing.

What say you?

Labels: activism, politics, sudan

The Tyee just posted an article entitled "Canada Sleeps Through War to 'Save the Internet."

The Tyee defines the issue of Net Neutrality as "Whether telecom companies can favor some Internet sites over others by charging different rates to different customers and making some sites much easier to access than others."

While the issue has made its way to the top of hot button issues in the US, even being hilariously profiled on the Jon Stewart show by the "PC Guy" (see below)




Anyone that expresses shock or outrage that the telco's dare to propose making more
money off the services they provide should give their head a shake. It's this mis-perception that the internet is free or a public utility that gives rise to the argument against Net Neutrality. The internet is NOT free. It's access is owned by an elite group of multi-billion companies whose business it is to make as much possible money of their assets and services. Whether in an Internet cafe in Kitgum, Uganda or at home in South Granville, I have always paid a provider for my internet (except when I find open wireless networks, but then still, someone is paying for that network access).

That these companies have gained these assets in part because of years of government granted monopoly is not sufficient argument against keeping them from charging for tiered access.

The companies that provide this access to both servers and browsers of content have made multi-billion investments in being able to efficiently deliver an exponentially increasingly amount of high-bandwidth content to the masses, expecting the highest return on their investment possible that that their customers are willing to pay for.

Is it a sad day that this new medium has matured into a platform that is now drawing big numbers of people away from their television sets, magazines and newspapers and as such is starting to act more like traditional media industries or is the portioning of the internet really nothing more than the logical evolution of a medium that has finally begun to truly mature? It's probably both.

The argument that valuable progressive media broadcasting will not be able to afford a two-tiered model, I reject. Supporters of those organizations will donate in membership drives (GiveMeaning has already funded some of those drives).

Yes, the fact that this might mean higher start-up costs for new organizations and that it would impose a "success fee" as organizations serve-up more content but the great majority of these content providers will find a way to cover those costs.

For the organizations that can't support themselves independently, they will form media co-ops that will pool resources, and a crop of new intermediaries will emerge to offer pooled resources for similarly oriented content providers.

So amongst all of the issues that need our Country's attention, I don't think Net Neutrality should factor to the top 5.

But you see that I have posted a blog badge to Neutrality.ca because I do believe that all of us but especially those of us in the IT business need to be more aware of the policies and issues governing our infrastructure providers and as consumers of internet services, we need better insight into what the major providers are doing especially in regards to free speech and fair competition.

That's why I post the blog badge and why I dugg the Tyee article. We need to be aware of the changing landscape as the medium we rely on matures as an industry. We need both extremes of the debate advocated passionately and keep informed about the policies that shape the industry.

Lastly, I'm waiting to see what IT company figures it out first and makes this issue a core aspect of their corporate social responsibility platform.

Labels: activism, business, canada, internet, IT, netneutrality, news, politics, savetheinternet, technology

Everyday on the drive to the office we pass a corner of Vancouver where men stand around all morning, waiting and hoping to be picked-up for construction work. They arrive early in the morning and stand around for hours in the freezing cold, hoping that a contractor picks them out from a field of scores of other men.

These are men who are trying to make a living, many of whom trying to support families.
I can't imagine the frustration of standing around all morning in the freezing cold, hoping to be picked, and then returning home facing a mountain of bills and a family to feed without the ability to do anything about it.

One of the most common complaints about funding programs for the homeless is the age old "they lack work ethic," "get a job," make an effort." While I know better, I nevertheless understand and can empathize with the emotion that drives that sentiment in many of us.

But here's this group of people who are genuinely trying and struggling to provide for themselves and their families.

But I suspect that this group of men (and groups like them) are almost totally over-looked by society. The people that are on the "fringes of poverty" need our care, compassion and assistance.

I'm thinking about a small group of friends and colleagues to deliver coffee and donuts to this group of guys on a particularly cold day this week. It's not a hand-out. It's just an act of saying "Hey, I recognize that it's freezing out, and I hope this makes waiting around a little more enjoyable."

The gap between the "obvious poor" and the "fringes of poverty" is narrow but while the former can be clearly seen, those living on the fringes are not obvious until they have already fallen. If forced to choose, what would you invest it? Preventing the fall or trying to pick-up the fallen?

Labels: community, economics, human rights, justice, politics, poverty, society

en·vi·ron·ment /ɛnˈvaɪrənmənt, -ˈvaɪərn-/ Pronunciation[en-vahy-ruhn-muhnt, -vahy-ern-] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun

1. the aggregate of surrounding things, conditions, or influences; surroundings; milieu.

It might come as a shock to some of my close friends when I say that I really haven't given much thought to the environment. It's true. For the kid who used to write letters to McDonald's asking them "to stop using stirofoame [sic]in their cups because it hurts the environment," it's been years since I have cared or engaged myself on environmental issues.

Before yesterday, the last time I got concerned about the environment was when I found out that Polar Bears have been declining in numbers because of the rate that ice is melting, causing massive disruptions in the feeding, hibernation and reproduction of the species. I remember the week where the news story was circulating and I did some searching but I couldn't find any organization to donate to, so I gave up.

I'm the kind of guy that last summer, as we enjoyed an especially warm summer, I glibly thanked global warming for the longer summer when making obligatory weather chit-chat in the elevator of my apartment building.

I never saw Inconvenient Truth, and despite attempts to get motivated to see it, just couldn't and still can't bring myself to do it.

This all seems like horrible admissions for a person in my job, and for a person who is known amongst his friends and colleagues as an incredibly passionate guy, a guy who quite literally aspires for nothing more than to change the world.

I suppose (if you'll indulge the metaphor) the clouds began to part for me round about Tuesday night when without warming and whilst still relatively warm out, snow began falling but then, within two hours had almost completely disappeared.

The next morning, we picked up Mr Brown as we do every morning. (We run a car-pool but it's economical not consciously environmental) He starts talking about this article, how 10 blocks of Austin's downtown core had been closed because of birds mysteriously dropping dead from the sky. This, I remember, is how that movie The Core started and then we found out that the earth had stopped spinning, dooming us all until Hillary Swank and that guy from Thank You For Smoking saved the world.

Apparently, birds dropping dead isn't limited to Austin. It's been reported in Australia as well.

I remember being in Toronto just before Christmas (it was warmer in Toronto than in Vancouver) and reading a great article in the Globe & Mail. I wish I could quote it exactly but it went something like "December - 23: In Ottawa where snowblowers are being sold at fire-sale prices and with flowers starting to bloom on Parliament Hill, it comes as no surprise that Prime Minister Harper is starting to take Global Warming seriously."

Throughout the day yesterday, various members of the upstairs team started emailing each other links to various environmental calamities, oddities or outright disasters.

By the end of the day yesterday, as snow began coming down again, we talked of little else other than just how f*cked we might be as a result of environmental damage.

And to be clear, this wasn't just end of the day kibitzing. This was neither dispassionate nor disconnected. This was genuinely a collective moment of several of us finally connecting our hearts and minds to the importance of the environment on our life here on earth. I mean, I don't know how many times I've heard pithy little statements like "we have only one earth" and variations on the theme but hey, we really have one f*cking planet and there is increasingly convincing proof connecting cause (our collective behavior and choices) to devastating effect.

I might be revealing too much of myself by referencing yet another schlocky near-apocolyptic Hollywood movie but in The Day After Tomorrow, Dennis Quaid plays a climate scientist who tries to warn the Vice-President of the US about a potential storm that would essentially create a new Ice Age. The Veep dismisses it, the World freezes over, the President dies, he ascends to the Presidency, and then at the end of the movie, from America's new base in Mexico, he addresses what remains of the World by saying something like "well, we've got to start taking care of the environment."

While back in the real world, there haven't been any Dennis Quaid types warning of an Ice Age coming in the next months or years, I reference this only as a reminder to myself of what might happen if we continue to push this off.



I found the above graph pretty compelling from an intellectual perspective. I found this in a report on Natural Disasters prepared by the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group. According to their report:

• The costs of disaster damage is now 15 times higher than they were in 1950s - According to the IMF, disaster damage caused $654 billion in material losses in 1990s.


• The number of disasters has grown: fewer than 100 in 1975 to more than 400 in 2005


• Approximately 2.6 billion people were affected by natural disasters over the past ten years, compared to 1.6 billion the previous decade

Despite all of this, I'm not compelled to act because of the Polar Bears or because I fear suddenly being frozen to death on my way into work. I look at this in surprisingly (for me) pragmatic terms: $$$Money$$$.

The need to do whatever we can to reverse and address the damage that's already been done, and to collectively do all we can to prevent more damage is best expressed in economic terms:

As the figures above address, not only are we vulnerable to more "big shocks" that devastate entire communities, regions or countries but everything from rising health costs, decreased agricultural outputs, wasted government and private donor disaster relief donations in the billions, there's no area of the economy that isn't touched by the environment. It's why it's called the environment.

I wonder if anyone has studied the environmental attitudes of Katrina victims? Do they correlate the devastation they experienced in any way to their own and their country's attitudes and actions towards the environment? Has even a significant minority of the affected population changed their daily actions to be more environmentally conscious?

Maybe it's already too late to reverse course and it's now all just an eventuality. But I ain't no quitter. Shouldn't we all be saying "But I'm gonna die trying?" Seriously, what on this earth, must happen for us to seriously give a damn?

The phone just rang. It was a good friend of mine. I told him I was in the middle of writing a blog about the environment. His reply? "Don't you have anything better to talk about than the weather?"

And this is the challenge.

Labels: activism, charity, climate, disaster, earth, environment, hurricanekatrina, katrina, politics, web, world

I am exhausted. I have been traveling since last Sunday and I'm quite sure I have slept only a total of about 25 hours in the past six days. But it's been a good week and I'm always happy to be spreading the word about GiveMeaning.

Toronto earlier in the week was particularly special for me because I got to meet with Karyn Kennedy, the Executive Director of The Toronto Child Abuse Center ("TCAC")

TCAC was introduced to me by Christie Blatchford of the Globe & Mail (a journalist for whom I have immense respect). It was Christie's courtroom coverage of the story of Randal Dooney, a young boy who was brutally tortured and ultimately murdered by his Father and Step-mother that inspired be to start GiveMeaning. I was so angered and saddened by the total break-down in the "safety net" that was supposed to protect children in Canada from this abuse, that I wanted to do something, anything.

Here I was having just read Christie's coverage and motivated to act, and I couldn't find anything at my fingertips that I could do to react positively to this story. I spent the next couple of weeks trying in vain to reach-out to local organizations that were tasked to provide counsellings to children who have been abused but I either couldn't find the organizations or couldn't get my email or phone call returned when I did find a number or an email address to ping.

The reason? Because most of the small organizations, the ones looking after kids like Randal and his brother Tego (who survived and is now living back in his native Jamaica), these organizations operate on such shoe-string budgets that they don't have enough staff to both provide their services and respond to interested donors like me.

GiveMeaning's service is designed for ALL charities but it's the small organizations, the ones whose names we don't know, the ones whose organizations are constantly struggling for funding which really sums up more than 80% of the 80,000 charities in this country, and a similar percentage of the more than 1,000,000 charities in the US, say nothing of the rest of the world.

I had a great meeting with Karyn and though she doesn't have any projects on the site yet, we discussed several exciting initiatives that we can work on together. I've long asserted that if we want to truly want to make change in our country, we have to focus on the root causes of the problems that manifest many years later as a result of those problems.

Child Abuse is irrefutably one of the most obvious root causes of homelessness, violent crime, and sex crimes. Anyone who wants to actually reduce the instances of any of these social problems who proposes anything other than tackling child abuse is bound to fail. Blunt, yes. Controversial, maybe. Room to debate my point? Only by massaging the words. My assertion isn't a difficult argument to agree with, is it? And yet, in provinces like Ontario where too many sensational cases of children like Randall Dooney and Jeffery Baldwin were failed by the Province, leading to their deaths but across the Country, we have provincially funded organizations that are stymied in their abilities to intervene.

Child Abuse is one of those "hard topics" in charity to sell. But increasingly, I want GiveMeaning to find a way to address these "hard topics" by marrying our innovative marketing ideas with the wonderful, hard-working, and life-changing organizations like Toronto Child Abuse Center.

If we can empower organizations like TCAC by providing them new ways to communicate their message, new ways to engage, the children in Canada who right now, as we celebrate our holidays, are suffering horrible, unspeakable, unthinkable acts of violence and depravity will be saved. Let us not wait until they are another of Christie's stories.

As it seems to be the case with each of these blog entries, I start by meaning to keep it light, talk about a million different things that happened this week, I found a topic I needed to talk about, if for no other reason than for me to commit my own thoughts to the page.

Two last things. I have started my own project at GiveMeaning. In the two years of running GiveMeaning, I have never started my own project. I will enter a separate blog entry over the holidays about it, but you can visit it at yves.givemeaning.com

I'm on my way to do my last interview of a week that has been - gratefully - full of interviews. I have never met the host of Get Connected, but judging his bio, it should make for a good, interactive interview.

Merry Christmas (it's a sentiment, not a religious assertion).

Stay Safe and Warm.

Labels: abuse, aid, canada, charity, childabuse, givemeaning, philanthropy, politics, web

From Pig-e-Banks to Abortion in Uganda. I just found this interesting article online and I thought it would be interesting to get readers comments on it.

If you're a "lurker" on this blog, I'd really like to hear from you.

While in Uganda, I read in New Vision (a local newspaper in Uganda and the source of the article I have linked to), that the Uganda parliament was debating whether to legalize abortion in Uganda.

One of the Millennium Development Goals is to "reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio" in the world. Given that most all agree that a significant contributor to Maternal mortality is complications that stem from crude abortions.

This New Vision article I read tonight quotes a consultant gynecologist at Mulago hospital who said that "775,000 Ugandan women aged between 15 and 49 have unintended pregnancies every year and 297,000 have induced abortions." That number could be much higher given the primitive means of self-administered or crude intervention abortions that lead to severe injury and death to the woman that never receive medical attention and thus might never be counted as part of that statistic.

The Ugandan government is divided on whether to legalize and in what scenarios legalization occurs. In the same article, the gynecologist is quoted as saying "abortion was morally bad but because of the many deaths involved, it had to be thought about seriously and interventions made."

Clearly, reducing maternal mortality is a worthy goal. And, it stands to reason that one of the contributing causes of maternal mortality is death from crude abortions.

Should Uganda legalize abortion? Would legalizing it actually make a difference to those who need it most, the poor, rural women who will otherwise try to abort using crude techniques?

Would a medical NGO (especially one with US ties) dare to carry out proper abortions as part of a plan to reduce maternal mortality?

Does the "right to life" argument hold as true if the life in question is doomed to absolute impoverishment?

I want to hear from you.

Labels: abortion, africa, international, politics, uganda, womensrights

Trite as it might be, I'm trying to make a point writing about World Aids Day the day after the day alloted for our interest and attention to be focused on HIV/AIDS. The point doesn't relate only to World Aids Day but all cause-allocated days of the calendar. My point isn't as "Debbie Downer" as "what about the other 364 days?"

My point is to pay attention to the announcements that our governments make and then take stock of whether the commitments made in these announcements have materialized by this time next year.

As I have said in other blog posts I wrote while in Africa, I think that the best thing we can do in Western countries is put pressure on our own governments to advocate for greater gender equality in the world. The Honourable Aileen Carroll, Canada's Minister for International Cooperation made the point that gender inequality is fueling the spread of HIV/AIDS. Quoting her speech "This World AIDS Day, we are asked by every woman and girl in the world, 'Have you heard me today?' I am here to say that we have heard you, and we are acting."

The best and most effective way to act on the issue of gender equality is ensure that the United Nations implements the recommendation made by a high-level panel on UN Reform to create a a new, independent, international agency for women .

Creating and funding such an agency is what's needed to act on the issues around gender inequality. Every day that I learn more, I'm convinced that creating this agency might actually be the single most powerful and transformative act presently available to the World.

My fellow Canadians, we should make sure that our government acts in the most responsible and powerful way it can. To my friends around the world, ask your government's UN representative where they stand on implementing the UN's own recommedation that this agency be created. Let us all ask our governments to create a single world-wide agency responsible for ensuring the irradication of gender inequality.

Labels: activism, africa, aids, hiv, politics, UN, unitednations