Time to put things in perspective. I’m not doing so well in my personal life right now, so I don’t really want to talk about myself. And ya know, that’s a good thing, because there’s a lot more important things to talk about right now, things that make my problems look that much more petty and insignificant.
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, The Yarn Harlot (a favorite blogger and author of mine), threw up the Knit-Signal (like the “Bat-signal”, ya know?) yesterday:
As I’m sure most of you know by now, yesterday, while we knit, ate, drank and slept – a massive earthquake struck Haiti, largely effecting the city of Port au Prince. Haiti itself is a very poor country with other problems – and that means two things. (Well. It means a lot of things actually, but lets only dwell on two of them at the moment.) First, it means that they entirely lack the ability to respond to this emergency without a lot of help, and secondly, it means that when the quake struck, Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières was already there.
[Read the rest of her blog post.]
I’m sure many people have also seen on Twitter or Facebook that you can donate $10 to the Red Cross by text messaging “Haiti” to 90999.
As of their last press release, the American Red Cross said that “several hundred thousand people have chosen to make a mobile donation” and the latest numbers (not sure if these are accurate) that I’ve been seeing floating around the interwebs are that these mobile donations have hit $3 million.
Do you know how incredible that is? The geek in me is jumping up and down and cheering having observed how technology and social networking can work to do so much good. And the hippie-idealist in me is emotionally overwhelmed by the idea of how many kind hearts that $3 million amounts to.
A friend of mine on Facebook made the comment, “wondering why no one is texting or tweeting to donate money to help, say, the homeless in America.” He has a point, but I think that what’s key here is that this “text message to donate”-success story opens the door to other charities and relief efforts. And THAT, my friends, is exciting. Make it easy for people to do, and they will DO it. Leverage social networks to get the word out, and to make donating the “cool” thing to be participating in. One could argue that it’s manipulative, but I disagree. Companies and individuals marketing comparatively unimportant products do it every day — why not do it for something important, something good? I think you’ll see a lot more of this in the year to come. And ya know… I like that.
