We Love Boston: Things We Can Do in the Face of Tragedy Far Away

Social media has made it easier for us to find out what's happening around the world virtually as soon as it happens, but it has also increased our feelings of helplessness when something tragic happens, as it did at the Boston Marathon on Monday. From my current home 3,000 miles away in the San Francisco Bay Area, I watched with a broken heart as the capital of my native state suffered the kind of horror no city should ever have to endure. But the sad truth is, acts like these happen all over the world all the time.

Almost as soon as we hear about an act of unimaginable violence, the stories start to pour in of brave, compassionate people running toward danger to help complete strangers, and somehow, our faith in humanity is almost restored. One of the things that's been shared over and over this week is a Facebook post that the comedian Patton Oswalt wrote soon after the event, which included this line: "You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out." Oswalt's point: good people will always outnumber the evil. I truly believe this.

Still, on the day of the tragedy, I watched on social media as so many of my friends out here on the West Coast who have connections to Bostonians expressed a sense of helpless compassion toward our East Coast families both literal and metaphorical. We couldn't be on the ground to help, true, but there are some things we can do besides simply post our sympathies on Facebook. I wanted to share some ways that those far away can help.

Here are a few:

1. Donate money to the Red Cross. Seriously. This is the best thing you can do from afar at a time like this. It might not seem like the most heroic way to help, but it really does help. This is from the Red Cross's response letter to the Boston Marathon tragedy: 

This tragedy shows that emergencies can happen in any community at any time. While the Red Cross has all it needs to respond to this event, we do need the public's support to respond to the nearly 70,000 other disasters we handle every year around the country and Boston. If you want to support our work responding to and preparing for future emergencies please make a donation to Red Cross Disaster Relief at redcross.org.

2. If you prefer not to give to the Red Cross, consider The Salvation Army. They are supporting victims and first responders in Boston with food and supplies.
3. Donate blood to your local Red Cross. This won't help Boston (the Red Cross has actually issued a statement saying they don't need any more blood in Boston right now), but it just might help someone in need in your own area in an emergency. When someone needs blood, they need blood now. Again, from the Red Cross:

The need for blood is constant. Eligible blood and platelet donors across the country are strongly encouraged to schedule an appointment to give in the days and weeks ahead by calling 1-800-RED CROSS or visiting redcrossblood.org.

4. Make sure you are signed up to be an organ donor. You can do this online no matter which state you live in. Right now. For free. 
5. Register for a First Aid class or a CPR certification so you are prepared in the event you are ever on the ground during an emergency and in a position to help. I recommend the American Heart Association'strainings and have taken their first aid training myself. 
6. Take a minute to read this article on Wired about how to get in touch with loved ones during a disaster. Again, this might not help anyone in Boston right now, but it could help your own friends, loved ones and family in the future. 
7. Memorize your friends' and family members' phone numbers and ask them to memorize yours!

Takepart.com put up a great site with some more tangible things you do to help out Boston and Bostonians right now, including information about some specific funds as well as links to track down anyone you are worried about. Check it out.

Moral support and solidarity is so important at times like this. But it's equally important to do something, even if that something is just getting prepared.

Give While You Live with the Help of Technology

As society and technology have evolved, it has become easier than ever for consumers to be charitable by integrating their regular spending activity with technology that helps them contribute to causes they believe in.

• There are many ways in which technology has been modified to capture charity donations during transactions that are already occuring:
• credit cards that donate a percentage of all purchases to causes of the cardholder's choice
• grocery store checkouts
• browser plugins
• ATM machines that donate every time you withdraw

Technology is being built to help people give while they live, and as the founder of one such organization, Charity ATM™, I have learned a lot about how technology can be altered to streamline giving. The continued evolution of charity technology could have even more social impact in the future, specifically when it comes to the class of supplemental inventions that enhance and add to breakthrough technology: the microprocessor, computers, the Internet and programming languages. 

Giving While Getting

Using a modification to existing ATM transaction software, and changing the consumer messaging around the withdrawal process, we at Charity ATM™, transformed the everyday transaction of taking out cash into the ability to easily donate to local school or food programs of the user's choice. When someone chooses to use a Charity ATM™ machine for a transaction they were already going to do (withdraw cash), the donation occurs automatically. Most consumers are used to a small transaction fee when withdrawing money from an ATM that is not their home bank's. Instead of this transaction fee profiting the bank that owns the ATM, in the case of Charity ATM™, the fee is donated straight to a local charity. The consumer's experience is the same as any other ATM transaction; the outcome is that a charity donation is made in lieu of a bank profit.

By structuring the technology this way, the consumer simply completes their transaction, and at the same time, does something good. The key is to pair technologies with business models that have very high margins. Because financial impact is perhaps the strongest determining driver on social impact, technologies that are able to increase the flow of cash into society can naturally be considered to be some of the most influential.

When I was first conspiring to launch Charity ATM™ in 2008, I looked at the ATM industry and saw that the average ATM fee was $1.78. (1) The national average is now up to $22--and can sometimes be as high as $3 to $4. Because the actual cost to the ATM processor is so low, there is significant room for a charitable donation. According to the US Treasury Department's Office of Thrift Supervision, the cost to a bank for an average ATM transaction is $0.27. That includes the amortization of the machine itself, the telecommunications cost, and the salaries of the people who oversee the system.

Doing a little bit of math, this means that for every $3 that is paid by the consumer, $2.73 is pure profit to the bank. There are over eighty billion ATM withdrawals in the US every year(3), and this number is growing. Not all transactions incur a surcharge fee--for instance when customers use their own bank's ATMs--however, for the sake of this example and to evaluate the impact this charitable technology could potentially have, even if only 20 percent of the total transactions resulted in surcharge fees, and those fees gave one dollar of profit from each transaction to charitable causes each year, it would raise 16 billion dollars. The social impact of that amount of money in a city like Boston or in a country like India would be astonishing. This large-scale vision of possible social impact is what the power of technology holds.

Giving While Spending

A similar technology is the innovation of credit cards to track and donate automatically during consumer use. Through software technology, and with consumer permission, a percentage of every transaction placed on a credit card can be calculated and paid to charitable causes. Working Assets is a great example of this technology-in-use. This progressive company has donated $67 million dollars to non-profit groups since 1985.(4) This extent of social impact has affected civil rights, economic and social justice, environmental change, peace and international freedom, and voting rights and civic participation. The invention of this specific technology allowed a consumer to help cure AIDS while buying a toothbrush.

Working Assets, which originally based their model on charges for long-distance phone service, eventually branched out to include mobile phone use with their Credo Mobile arm. Last year, Credo Mobile raised over two million dollars for charity.5 They have also applied this same model to gift cards--they found the already-occurring technological transaction and attached a component to it that allows for charitable giving. They have not made the consumer change their habits in any way other than to choose to use this service (versus a competitor's) in the first place.

Giving While Browsing.

Global Mojo (6), based in San Francisco, has developed a browser plugin technology that tracks user activity and, through a series of pre-negotiated contracts, allows users to raise money for charities of their choice as they conduct their transactions. This hands off, easy-to-install piece of code raises money with little to no interaction required from the donor once it's set up.

Global Mojo is small and has started out with just six-thousand users. While the company has stated that each user will generate between $10-15 per year (7), this could become significant if the almost seven billion people currently using the Internet (8) eventually adopt this service. If 25 percent of Internet users install and run Global Mojo, it could generate $26 billion per year. Similar to the ATM model mentioned above, this technology has huge potential to generate massive social impact if it continues to grow and permeate the enormous user base available to it.

The Power of the Internet to Make a Difference

The groundbreaking technology of the Internet has the ability to make a huge difference. More than any technology before it, the numbers of people it can reach, and the societies it can involve around the world, is massive. If adopted by the leading nations, these technologies could trickle down into global culture and result in an impact that would dwarf even the most aggressive estimates. As I write this, North America continues to hold the highest level of Internet permeation into society. It is countered on the other side of the world by Africa, with an average permeation rate of 30.2 percent.

The website www.freerice.com is doing something tangible with their technology: they host a fun trivia-type game on their site and donate ten grains of rice to the World Food Programme for every correct answer by a site visitor. To date, they have contributed 91 billion grains of rice. If there are an average of 29,000 grains of white rice in a pound (9), and one pound of rice feeds four people three meals a day, this website's fundraising should be sufficient to feed 12 million people three times a day, or something like that.

There are other click-to-play and click-to-donate websites popping up across the Internet every day that use this model of collecting advertising revenue from user interactions to purchase food and donate to causes. Aside from fundraising, websites are also allowing people to distribute software that helps to utilize the global user base of processing power to solve complex research problems and find solutions for disease. A software project at UC Berkeley, called Boinc(10), runs complex equations and effectively solves societal issues using the collective users' computers as processors.

The Retail Space

The ease of giving and helping social impact in a positive way has also been made in the retail consumer space. Many retailers have developed or adopted technology that enables them to collect charitable donations via keypads at checkout. If you've ever been asked by the person checking you out at Whole Foods if you'd like to make a flat donation to charity, this is why. Generally, a small amount is easy for a customer to handle, and the greater pool of donations slowly grows.

Opponents of this type of charitable transaction argue, however, that the disconnect of the non-profit from the donor actually leads to less money raised.(11) Often, the donor who is willing to give a thirty-nine cent roundup would be just as willing to give five dollars if an advocate from the charity was appealing to them directly. This calls for a technology which would enable charities themselves to know who donated and be able to contact them directly.

And while all of this technical innovation toward charitable donation is a positive thing, it also should be noted that the ease of using this kind of technology can encourage a hands-off, laissez-faire approach to charitable giving versus real, hands-on social impact. While small consumer electronic donations do add up, some consumers use their participation as an excuse not to do more. In addition to these passive methods that are available on the Internet, there are also active and involved ways in which a consumer can use the Internet and the technology built on top of it to make social impact.

Just the Beginning

All of these technological solutions to giving are just the beginning. As we continue to evolve and create new payment methods and gateways, we will continue to create new technology which will allow users to donate both passively and actively--and make a social impact while they go about their everyday lives.

I believe that as people become busier and busier, with the advent of instant technologies, the more this integrated form of social impact can be built in, the better. We will find that huge amounts of good can come from very little input by collective masses of individuals. If we can feed millions of people by playing a game online for rice, image what we could do if the right people and corporations got behind a true movement to give a small percentage of all profits in various technologies to charity.

It is easier than ever for consumers to give, and easier than ever for businesses to help make that a possibility.

References : 

• 1 http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4196835


• 2 http://www.playmeter.com/images/0209photos/Proof2.pdf


• 3 http://www.playmeter.com/images/0209photos/Proof2.pdf


• 4 http://www.workingassets.com/Recipients.aspx


• 5 http://www.credomobile.com/mission/Nonprofit-Donations-2010.aspx


• 6 http://www.globalmojo.org 


• 7 http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thebusinessofgiving/2010405080_help_a_non-profit_every_time_y.html


• 8 http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm


• 9 http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071212093852AAfUznC


• 10 http://boinc.berkeley.edu/


• 11 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112014803

Sseko Sandals: Fashion Design With Impact

Liz Forkin Bohannon was the winner of Blue Collar Service's Jumpstart contest, which awarded $100,000 to the emerging company that demonstrated the greatest need with the best pitch. Liz's Sseko Designs is a footwear company based in Portland, OR whose slogan is, "Every Sandal Has a Story," and that's why I decided to feature Liz's company in this Businesses With Impact post.

Sseko Designs is a sandal company whose products are produced in Uganda. Liz founded Sseko as a way to empower high-potential, talented, young Ugandan women to generate income so they could afford higher education. So far, Sseko has graduated three classes of women who are now pursuing college degrees. The Sseko project has been so successful because in Uganda, that the school system is designed with a nine-month gap between secondary school and university. These nine months allow future university students to work and save up for tuition. By focusing on hiring women for this nine-month period, Sseko has created a symbiotic relationship between the company and its temporary employees. The women hired by Sseko make sandals for nine months, and they can then go on to become "doctors, lawyers, politicians, writers and teachers," according to Sseko's mission statement.

I had the pleasure of a quick evening interview with Liz Forkin Bohannon (center, above) recently.

JS: What does it mean to have won this contest?

Liz: Until now, we have built Sseko Designs on grassroots word-of-mouth communications, trying to build momentum in our community first, which has been amazing and has given us a grounding. Now, with this prize money, I am very excited to have the resources to be more creative.

We are trying to get in front of people that are not necessarily having these conversations already, and providing them with the option to buy something that is super cute at a decent price -- without having to sacrifice product quality for the cause. We want to create top products that people will buy simply because they are awesome... but also tell their friends about, because of the mission. We don't ever want to rely solely on the story to give us an excuse to not be excellent in our design. We don't want the consumer to ever have to make a choice between good design and a good cause.

So far, our customers have been impressed at the quality of the brand. Our hope is that, 10 years from now, people associate East Africa with high-quality production. Right now, fashion customers don't think about getting high-quality pieces out of East Africa. We want to change that. And the women in Uganda are jazzed about the idea that they have the opportunity to make a great first impression on a person in California, for instance.

JS: Why were you driven to start this project?

Liz: I moved to Uganda for journalistic reasons. I had a communications degree, and I wanted to write about my experience there and tell stories about volunteering with youth organizations. Through that process, I met a group of women who were getting ready to graduate from secondary school. They were very bright and had huge visions for their futures. They had done really well in college prep. All of the women were living in extreme poverty. They were living in a patriarchal society that offered no support for women in education, and offered no job opportunities for women.

It stuck out to me that 25 of the brightest, most committed women in the country were at risk of not being able to continue their education. My first thought was that I would start a U.S./Uganda sponsorship program. But with the nine-month gap built into their pre-college time, I realized that they didn't need sponsorships; what they needed was job opportunities.

So I tried to start a chicken farm; that failed. Eventually, I settled on a sandal company and found a design that people loved -- and I realized that this was the perfect product. It was something we could train women on quickly, and the sandals are light enough to ship worldwide.

JS: What are your goals for the next five years, now that you've won this prize?

Liz: To increase demand for our products so we can grow our product capacity in Uganda. I would like to be one of the largest employees for women in Uganda, and provide benefits to economically empower women, and to set a standard for this type of industry in Uganda. Beyond that, I want to continue expanding our products and start branding outside of Uganda, to figure out how we can built what we have created in Sseko and use it all over the world to help solve problems worldwide, using fashion.

Photos used with permission from Sseko Designs

This piece is part of my Businesses With Impact series. I'm highlighting companies that fit within what I consider to be a scope of "significant social impact," meaning that they exhibit a high degree of operational awareness of corporate responsibility, social capital investments and philanthropy. While my research is not qualitative per se, I am confident about featuring companies doing inspiring things to change the world in real ways. If you have a suggestion for a company or individual to feature, pleasecontact me.

Ama Ghar Children's Home

Photo Credit: Ben Horton.

On my last day in Nepal, after spending almost two weeks with a Western medical team doing a story on the state of healthcare in that country, I was ready to head back to the U.S. and write my story. Thankfully, before I left, I was able to reach Bonnie Ellison, the Country Director of Ama Ghar Children's Home. I called her unexpectedly on her cell in the middle of her busy afternoon, and I was so thankful to be given the privilege and honor of visiting the magical Children's Home.

Photo Credit: Ben Horton.

Situated about thirty minutes by taxi outside of the bustling streets of Kathmandu, this modern building sits in the middle of plentiful green pasture space, complete with its own fields for growing crops. I was impressed with the sophistication of the structure and the open and clean elements of the architectural design. Ama Ghar Children's Home has been designed to merge traditional Nepali architecture with modern, environmentally-sustainable technology. Solar panels and cookers save precious electricity and innovative waste management systems recycle materials into fertilizers and cooking fuel. It is truly an impressive building, and a fine place to live for the children that are lucky enough to call it home.

Ama Ghar, which means "motherly home," houses 46 orphaned children ranging in age from four to 18, and accepts new children on a rolling basis. They are fortunate to be able to provide the children with the best education possible, and recently have received scholarships for twenty-four children to attend a local Montessori school.

Photo Credit: Ben Horton.

When I first arrived, the children were still at school. At first I was disappointed that the kids weren't there, but later was thankful for the contrast when they arrived home from school and the energy was suddenly infectious and full of positivity. Anyone who has spent time with children knows that their energy is special, and that they have the ability to lighten a day. For me, this was certainly true, and I wished that I could stay for a few days longer.

I was especially touched by a young woman of 17, Snjana, who introduced herself as a writer and painter. She went to grab a book she had created called The Vision of Life. As we flipped through it together, I felt like a child again, and was so inspired by its wisdom and clarity in its descriptions of the beauty of life. Snjana's book had such depth, and the paintings accompanying the words were touching. This girl was certainly gifted, and I wanted more than anything to help her however I could.

Photo Credit : Ben Horton.

Children like Snjana are my inspiration to help bring awareness to Ama Ghar and other nurturing spaces for the young people of Nepal. Snjana deserves every chance she can get, but the sad thing is that the odds are against her. I hope that she defies those odds and proves me wrong, and when she does, I will help her get a job as a writer in the USA.

While Ama Ghar believes that a solid education is vitally important, they also believe that it is not the only factor contributing to a child's success. A stable home and genuine love are also essential. The housemothers and fathers care for the children as if they were their own and uphold a routine that encourages individuality as well as a sense of community. I was touched to see how housefather Bhesh, who was an orphan himself as a child, played with the kids as they returned from school. It did not feel like an orphanage. In fact, it is intentionally not called that because it really is a home.

Photo Credit : Ben Horton.

The mission statement says it well: "The Ama Foundation was created to provide a home, a family environment and education for the most underprivileged children of Nepal by providing them with opportunities that will enhance their growth and development."

They strive to define sustainability in a two-fold manner -- both economically and culturally -- and invest in the future of Nepal by educating the parents, teachers, business leaders, social workers and professionals of the next generation. Education is the path to creating real social and economic improvement in the lives of the children of Nepal.

Photo Credit : Ben Horton.

Ama Ghar was founded by Shrawan Nepali, who spent part of his childhood at the Paropokar orphanage in Kathmandu. He was fortunate to have the support of his godmother, Ama Tika Basnett, who encouraged and helped him during the darkest times of his life. Assisted by Peace Corps volunteers, Shrawan was educated in the US but never forgot those less fortunate that he had left behind in Nepal. With co-founders Ama Tika Basnet and Shekhar Silwal, he formalized his vision and opened Ama Ghar in 2001; the first fourteen children arrived at Ama Ghar during that year.

Please consider making a donation to Ama Ghar, or contact them to learn more about how you can visit and volunteer. They are very open and welcome, with a guest apartment available for those who wish to visit. I encourage anyone traveling to Kathmandu to try and make this part of their trip, as it was certainly a highlight of mine.

My Friends Habitat For Humanity Experience

My friend and fellow Curry Without Worry board member Charlotte Makoff is about to embark on her fourth Habitat for Humanity build. This time she's going to Bungoma, Kenya, a town near the Ugandan border about an hour and forty-five minutes by car from the village where President Obama's father was born.

Charlotte is a 51-year-old attorney in San Francisco who had no previous construction experience before she joined up with Habitat for Humanity. She used to think that on-the-ground humanitarian jobs were for health care professionals, engineers and skilled bilingual social workers. But Habitat's Global Village volunteer program gives any able-bodied person the opportunity to go to small villages in various corners of the world and help build adequate, decent and affordable housing for locals in need.

Charlotte's Habitat trips so far have included Ethiopia, India, Zambia and Kenya. Global Village also goes to Mongolia, Central Asia, South America -- even Hawaii and Alaska. Each trip lasts approximately two weeks and costs about $2,000 for the participant. The $2,000 includes a donation to Habitat to cover part of the cost of building the homes. Habitat provides accommodations, ground transportation and meals for the duration of the trip. (Airfare is not included. Charlotte's airfare has averaged about $1,700.) Often, team members opt to stay on for a few days after the volunteer trip is over for additional sightseeing at their own expense. In India, for instance, the team members went to the Taj Mahal and Varanasi. In Africa, the team members stayed on to go on a safari.

So, volunteering for Habitat for Humanity is not cheap. And the work is physically challenging. The buildings are usually simple brick houses of about three rooms with a corrugated tin roof. In Ethiopia, the houses Charlotte built were made of an indigenous mud called Chika. In Zambia, Kenya and India, the homes were constructed with red kiln-fired bricks. At all four construction sites, Charlotte and the other Habitat volunteers dug trenches for the foundation, moved rocks, made bricks, did masonry work, painted and assisted with the placement of the corrugated sheets on the roofs. Habitat always hires a professional builder on each project to oversee the construction and instruct the group members on their daily tasks. Often, the homeowners-to-be build right alongside the volunteers. This team effort makes for a sense of camaraderie and accomplishment that make each volunteer's investment well worth it. Habitat provides copious amounts of bottled water, tools, work gloves, etc. The volunteers provide their energy and a generous spirit. The houses rise up from the dust and bring truth to the saying: "Many hands make light work."

Each trip, Charlotte brings more than just herself and her willingness to build. On her last trip to Zambia, she brought an extra suitcase with clothes for the children in the village. I also did this on my last trip to India, and will do this on my upcoming trip to Nepal next month. On this upcoming trip to Kenya, she's bringing hundreds of sanitary pads and new packages of girls' underwear. On previous trips she learned that girls in Africa often stay home from school -- missing 20 percent of their class time -- because they don't have access to sanitary pads when they need them.

In her expeditions with Global Village teams, she has met other volunteers from all over the world -- Germany, Poland, Hong Kong, Jamaica, New Zealand -- ranging in age from 18 to 75. Most teams are evenly split between men and women, but it is possible to join an all-women team too. This diversity builds more than houses; it builds tolerance, trust and an abiding sense that we really do live in a small world after all.

Charlotte says of her trips, "Habitat for Humanity is now a habit. The Global Village trips are addicting. I am always looking for opportunities to help. I think volunteering in Africa and India brings me as much or more happiness than anything else I have ever done."

For more information about signing up to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, visit their web site: http://www.habitat.org/gv/