The Give Blog

On the Ground: The Conservation Fund

Today we feature The Conservation Fund.  Here’s some information from its website.

Even if you’re just learning about The Conservation Fund, chances are you already know many places we’ve helped protect—national parks, Civil War battlefields, recreation destinations of all kinds. For more than 25 years, we’ve combined a passion for conservation with an entrepreneurial spirit to protect your favorite places before they become just a memory. To save land and sustain communities, our team supplies conservation strategy and tools. When local leaders wanted to expand a park in Pennsylvania, for instance, our real estate team managed the purchase of the land. When Nashville’s mayor needed a plan to protect the city’s best natural features, our land use planners designed it. And when 11 low-income Michigan counties needed a more reliable supply of fresh food, our community development team found the funds to help disadvantaged farmers succeed.  Read more from its website.

 

Our Conscious Living: Our 2005 Mac

We have a 2005 Apple laptop.  It has its struggles.  It can’t display things that require flash player.  At times you have to pamper it to get on the web.  But it has a better keyboard than the newer Apples although it is missing the left arrow button (but that’s not its fault—it has something to do with playing with our dog too close to the computer).   Most importantly it still works.

 

Widening Education Gap

New York Times—Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say By Sabrina Tavernise

Education was historically considered a great equalizer in American society, capable of lifting less advantaged children and improving their chances for success as adults. But a body of recently published scholarship suggests that the achievement gap between rich and poor children is widening, a development that threatens to dilute education’s leveling effects.  Read the entire article.

 

Fighting Childhood Poverty in the U.S. and Abroad

Huffington Post—Childhood Poverty: A View From Abroad  By Ross LaJeunesse

There are more than five million Americans living and working overseas as teachers, journalists, students or, like me, in business. Expatriates, or "expats" as we're more commonly called, have decided to live abroad for any number of reasons -- out of a sense of adventure, to learn more about the world, to seek fame or fortune, and sometimes expats have left the U.S. because they feel a deeper connection with another country's culture.  Read the entire article.

 

Keeping Her Home With Some Help

New York Times—A Mother Grateful to Have a Key to Her Own Place  By Mathew R. Warren

For months last year, Tiffany Tyler lay awake at night wondering if city marshals would come to her door the next day to evict her and her 10-year-old son. “I was scared,” Ms. Tyler, 30, said. “I couldn’t breathe.”  The last time marshals banged on the door, waking her up early one morning, it was in 2001, and her son, Shamair, was a month old. Ms. Tyler was 19 and living with her older sister in Harlem; she said she had no idea they had fallen behind on rent and was shocked to learn they were being evicted.  Read the entire article.

 

On the Ground: Wounded Warrior Project

Today we feature the Wounded Warrior Project.  Here is some information from its website.

Mission:

To honor and empower Wounded Warriors.

Purpose:

To raise awareness and enlist the public's aid for the needs of injured service members.

To help injured service members aid and assist each other.

To provide unique, direct programs and services to meet the needs of injured service members.  Read more from its website.

 

Our Conscious Living: Fixing My Old Bike

I have a thirteen year old bike.  We’ve been through a lot together.  I’ve been over the handle bars more times than I have fingers, and like me, as I age, it has a lot of problems.  As I contemplated a new bike, I thought about the memories with my bike and also the money it would cost for a new one.  I took the bike to a home-based shop in our neighborhood and my bike now feels like it’s new for at least $400 less than that new bike would have cost.  I’m sure glad I didn’t replace my old bike and also glad no one replaces me.

 

Staying Homeless But Sheltered

New York Times—Homeless Families, Cloaked in Normality  By Alan Feuer

ON the sixth day she was homeless, Tonya Lewis overslept. She woke in the dark, in Room 6E at the 93rd Avenue Family Residence, a privately run shelter in Jamaica, Queens. It was 4:45 a.m. She was already running late. Rousting her children — Unique, 15, and Jacaery, 2 — from their beds, Ms. Lewis got them dressed and started shoving DVDs and diapers into two bulging tote bags. When the boys were ready — sleepy, sullen, hoodied, backpacked, in hats and winter jackets — she pushed them out the door (“Come on, we gotta go!”) to begin their daily routine.  Read the entire article.

 

Gates and High Tech Solutions to Hunger

Washington Post—Gates defends focus on high-tech ag in fight against hunger, calls for more money for research  By Associated Press

Bill Gates has a terse response to criticism that the high-tech solutions he advocates for world hunger are too expensive or bad for the environment: Countries can embrace modern seed technology and genetic modification or their citizens will starve.  When he was in high school in the 1960s, people worried there wouldn’t be enough food to feed the world, Gates recalled in his fourth annual letter, which was published online Tuesday. But the “green revolution,” which transformed agriculture with high-yield crop varieties and other innovations, warded off famine.  Read the entire article.

 

Americans Gave More in 2011

US News: Report: Americans more generous in giving to charity in 2011  By msnbc.com staff

Americans gave a total of nearly $347 billion to charity in 2011, a 7.5 percent increase over 2010, according to a report released Tuesday by Atlas of Giving.  Read the article.

 

On the Ground: The Asia Foundation

Today we feature The Asia Foundation.  Here is some information from its website.

At The Asia Foundation, we believe in societies that give people the chance to succeed without regard to gender or circumstance and in governments that respond to all citizens. We believe in the unlimited capacity of knowledge to enlighten, and in the ability of empowered communities to overcome poverty and despair. The Asia Foundation is committed to creating enduring opportunity in the Asia-Pacific region, and to helping Asia's people reach their goals. This is our mission and our promise.  Read more from the website of The Asia Foundation.

 

Our Conscious Living: Heat

I’ve had some competitions with my neighbors back in Kentucky about heat. That is, who will be the first one to give and turn on the heat, or in the summer, the air conditioning.  This year, despite the fact that I have a disadvantage having moved to a colder climate, I think I won.  I have an unfair advantage however.  We’ve blogged about our house in the past.  It is super-insulated and has huge windows in the front through which we obtain solar gain from the sun.  So, it was last Friday night, January 20, when we first turned on our heat.  It was 58 degrees in the house, 12 outside, and we caved.  The good news is we don’t need to heat the house every day. The house did cost more than usual to build, but we are gaining back some of the cost through the lack of high heating bills.  Check out this website for more information on passive houses.

Teaching College Students to Give

Huffington Post—Philanthropy: College Students Get $100,000 To Give Away To Charity 

They may be accruing debt and saving money on their Ramen-noodle dinners, but some college students will have the chance to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity this year.  In an effort to teach university students about the complexities of giving, the Once Upon A Time Foundation gave eight universities between $50,000 and $100,000 to dole out to their philanthropy courses, Yale Daily News reports.  Read the entire article.

 

Providing free legal services after school at Chicago Public Schools

New York Times—A Free Legal Clinic That Opens When Class Is Over  By Paul Engleman

Soon after Dennis Kass started teaching history at a small high school in Little Village four years ago, he put his law degree to use, dispensing free legal advice to students and their families after school. That modest beginning has evolved into the Chicago Law and Education Foundation, a free clinic that has now expanded to eight additional city high schools.  Read the entire article.

 

Haiti Two Years Later

Wall Street Journal—Two Years After Quake, Haiti Remains in Distress  By Ingrid Arnesen

Two years after an earthquake killed an untold number of Haitians, half a million people still live in squalid tent cities and rubble remains where it fell in this ruined capital. That has left many here now blaming not the quake, but a different culprit for the country's woes: the Haitian government.  Read the entire article.