My morning tea is always piping hot due to our splendid watercooler of local fresh spring water. I know I am blessed to have such a healthy work environment that is equally environment conscious of plastic and paper consumption and recycling. The figures are staggering when you realize how costly the individual bottles of name-brand spring water.
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Lucky me! According to the Global Rich List, I am in the TOP 0.66% of the richest people in the world! That fact alone was enough to make me rethink my gift giving this year. Instead of sending your friends a bottle of wine or a scented candle, why not make a donation in their name to their favorite cause. The following organizations have all received four star ratings from Charity Navigator, America’s premier independent charity evaluator:

Mentor and Inspire Children
Have a friend that loves kids? Make a real difference in children’s lives by supporting these programs that empower children with art, music, literature, and mentoring.

First Book
First Book is a national nonprofit organization with a single mission: to give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books. First Book works with existing community-based tutoring, mentoring, and family literacy programs nationwide, offering them the opportunity to select their own free books. Read the Charity Navigator Review

Big Brothers Big Sisters
Big Brothers Big Sisters mentors children, ages 6-18, in communities across the country. Their mission is to help children reach their potential through professionally supported, one-to-one relationships with mentors that have a measurable impact on youth. Read the Charity Navigator Review
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Websites like Monster and Craigslist handle a large share of recruitment for skilled workers. But most jobs that need to be filled require very little training at all. And finding good store clerks, housecleaners, dishwashers and other menial workers can be as hard as a finding a good lab technician or XML programmer, even in developing nations. That’s because those seeking work frequently have no means of connecting with those wanting to hire. It’s a problem Babajob, based in Bangalore, hopes to solve. The site helps the city’s legions of unskilled workers find work using an online social network.

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TIME Magazine recently dedicated 12 pages to exploring how service and volunteering can transform America. The Special Report, Time To Serve - The Case for National Service examines why service is important to America, highlights activists already making waves on the ground, and proposes a 10-point plan to create a “universal national service” in the U.S.

TIME Managing Editor Richard Stengel asks readers to imagine volunteerism as a public service. What, for example, would happen if devoting a year or more to national service, whether military or civilian, became “a countrywide rite of passage.” That is, what if there was a universal national-service in the U.S.?

In his article, Stengel proposes specific ideas on how Washington can help make this happen, including:

• Making National Service a cabinet-level department.
• Expanding existing national-service programs like AmeriCorps and Senior Corps.
• Creating separate corps focusing on education, health, the environment, and emergency response.
• Instituting a “Summer of Service.”
• Starting a national-service academy.
• And creating a national-service Baby Bond and a Baby Boomer Education Bond to encourage young adults and retirees to get involved.

Thought-provoking stuff, to be sure — and especially important in an election year, says Stengel: “The next President can harness the spirit of volunteerism that already exists and make it a permanent part of American culture.”

Content syndication, social bookmarking, and now the elimination of global poverty? Web 2.0 meets philanthropy on GlobalGiving.com where the Web “unleashes the potential of people around the world and make positive change happen.” GlobalGiving connects donors with social and economic development projects around the world and makes it easy to share the love with everyone in your online social network.

GlobalGiving is a unique collaboration between two entities, a US 501(c)3 registered non-profit and a social enterprise, ManyFutures, Inc. It was started in 1997 when World Bank executives Mari Kuraishi and Dennis Whittle created the Bank’s Development Marketplace, a first-of-its-kind event where people from around the world competed for World Bank funds. The event’s success unveiled the enormous potential of a global marketplace for philanthropy, and participants asked for a real marketplace that was open year round and operated virtually. Mari and Dennis saw the brilliance of this idea, left the World Bank and launched GlobalGiving.
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GrandCentral, the “one phone number for life” initiative that provides permanent phone numbers and unlimited voicemail service to San Francisco’s homeless was acquired by Google last month. A phone number might not be the first thing that comes to mind when helping the homeless, but GrandCentral founders Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet see it this way:

“For homeless people and others in need, not having a stable phone number can be crippling: you need one to follow up on medical appointments, keep in touch with friends and loved ones, and hear back from prospective employers.”

GrandCentral has been operating Project CARE (”Communications and Respect for Everybody”) since April 2006, and with the help of more than 20 community outreach partners has provided more than 5,000
phone numbers and served close to 100,000 voicemail messages to homeless and needy people in the Bay Area. Someone calling a number from Project CARE will have the same experience as someone calling a standard phone number, and voicemail messages can be stored as long as they’re needed.

Food, clothing, and shelter may be the fundamental human needs, but this increasingly wired world may require that a “technology” level be added to Maslow’s hierarchy. I hope that Google continues this kind of outreach to bridge the digital devide. It’s good for the community, great publicity for GrandCentral, and one more way Google can continue their effort to “not be evil.”

The first time I heard of the concept of micro-lending was last year when Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist, won the Nobel Peace prize for pioneering micro-credit. Yunus and his Grameen Bank granted small loans to those who had no collateral and who did not qualify for conventional bank loans. The program enabled millions to start and run their own businesses, and promoted independence, rather than dependence, among the poorest in Bangladesh. Micro-lending isn’t charity. It’s a way of encouraging entrepreneurship and business activity.

I’ve become aware of many similar micro-credit projects that have helped millions around the world lift themselves out of poverty. One that has leveraged the power of the Internet to connect the haves with the have-nots is Kiva.org, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that has helped put more than $6 million into the hands of small business owners in the last year and a half.
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Social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, & Friendster provide virtual communities where like-minded individuals can meet new friends with similar interests. Now, more and more charitable and non-profit organizations are tapping into the power of the Internet to provide caring and supportive networks for their members and constituents.

Like the big players in online social networking, these cause-centered communities allow users to create their own website, create a profile, upload photos, and collect friends within the network. They give users a place to meet others facing similar issues and provide various forms of interaction, such as chat, email, blogging, forums, and discussion groups. These communities bring people together at a difficult time and use technology to facilitate support for all involved, wherever they may be.
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Like many young college students planning their careers, I asked myself the obvious question: “Where’s the opportunity?” My first interaction with Mosaic quickly provided the answer. With all the ambition of a young girl who was always told “she could be anything she wanted to be” I dove into a career on the World Wide Web. I’ve had wonderful opportunities to participate in the growth of a new frontier – the virtual “empire of the mind” to which Churchill so presciently referred. I consider myself fortunate to have entered into the work force during this era of electronic colonialism.

Fifteen years and a dot com crash later, I’m now asking myself, “Where is the opportunity to make this world a better place?” Luckily, I’m discovering the same answer. Never before has it been so easy to establish strong communities of like minded individuals from disparate parts of the globe. Web 2.0 allows anyone to become a broadcaster or a publisher or an organizer and provides an unprecedented opportunity for people to become the change that they want to see in the world – on the World Wide Web.

Over the next year I plan to spotlight those who have harnessed the tools and technologies of the Web to advocate, educate, inspire, raise awareness, support, connect, and change lives. I’ll bring you examples of creative ways people are mobilizing awareness online. Some will be individuals, like Spoko, the blogger who brought the racism of a hate radio station in San Francisco to the attention of some of their biggest corporate sponsors; others will be non-profit organizations like U.S. based Kiva (http://www.kiva.org/) that allows anyone with internet access and a credit card to lend money directly to a farmer in Uganda who needs to buy livestock, or a refugee in Gaza hoping to set up a telephone repair shop.

These are individuals, companies, and organizations that have leveraged the power of the Web to engage hearts and minds and make a difference in this wired and interconnected world. So “let us go forward as with other matters and other measures similar in aim and effect - let us go forward in malice to none and good will to all.” Never before have individuals of deep conviction, common passion, and like minds been so poised to unleash their collective energies to effect positive change.

If you know of a site that is working to make this world a better place, I would love to hear about it! I look forward to learning more with all of you!