Do Some Good

Tuesday's Child recently mentioned GoodSearch as an easy way to raise money for a cause you believe in. I've found a few additional cool ways that you can use your regular web activities to raise money for charity. Most of these use the money from ad revenues to make donations, some use referral fees to get you to shop at their stores. Either way, these are easy ways to make an impact.

The Hunger Site (and related sites): click a link and sponsors donate money toward food for the hungry. Bonus: shopping at their online store generates even more donations.

The Bible Site: same idea, but it raises money to give Bibles to the poor.

iGive.com: Shop at one of their designated stores and get a percentage of your purchase price donated to a charity of your choice.

I'm: configure Microsoft Live Messenger to make a donation to one of ten charities every time you have an instant messaging conversation.

Darfur Awareness Week

The Save Darfur Coalition has declared this week "Global Days for Darfur," a week to raise awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. This post is my little way of participating. Despite international pressure, the government of Sudan has been performing and supporting ethnic and religious cleansing in the southern province of Darfur. Over 400,000 people have been killed in the last three years. We read so many statistics that it's easy to gloss over them, so I'll say it again: over 400,000 people have been murdered in the last three years! Millions more have lost their homes and are completely reliant on foreign humanitarian aid. Thousands of women have been raped. A peace agreement was reached last winter that was supposed to help. But the government of Sudan is not keeping up its end of the deal, and conditions are getting very dangerous for humanitarian groups.

There are a lot of things you can do. If you have a blog, you can post like me and help to raise awareness. You can join the Save Darfur Coalition and help with advocacy. This effort incorporates regular people from across the political and religious spectrum who just don't want to stand by any more. Their TV ad may have made you cry and their petitions have been getting the attention of Congress. You can support the humanitarian work of Mercy Corps for free via The Hunger Site. Or if you'd like to aid the persecuted Christian Church, you can support The Voice of the Martyrs. Last, but certainly not least, you can pray. It's going to take a God-sized solution to deal with such a huge, evil problem.