Another Chance for Christmas Giving
December 14, 2008 by Lillie
In case you missed my post on Christmas giving, here’s another chance to drop something into the bright red kettle to support the great work of the Salvation Army.
Christmas Giving
December 8, 2008 by Lillie
As a writer, I’d love for you to give my novel Dream or Destiny to everyone on your Christmas list who enjoys mystery or romance novels. For other genres, I recommend books by my clients and books by authors who have visted my blog.
You may also want to give a gift that will give the recipient the power to change lives. A gift certificate from Kiva.org provides the funds for the recipient to make a loan to an entrepreneur in the developing world. An entrepreneur in the developed world might need a loan of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to start or expand a business. An entrepreneur in a developing country may need less than a hundred dollars to start or grow a business that will lift them out of poverty. The recipient of your gift certificate can make a life-changing loan to the entrepreneur of their choice, and when that loan is repaid, use the funds to make another loan. The cycle can be repeated endlessly, making your gift of $25 or $100 priceless. I made my first Kiva loan as part of Blog Action Day: Poverty.
Another good idea: Charity Checks. You can order giving certificates that can be used to donate to any IRS-qualified charity in the US, and there are 800,000 qualified charities. You purchase the certificate and get the tax deduction. You give the certificate as a gift, and the recipient then determines what charity to donate to. Unlike donating to a specific charity in someone else’s name, with Charity Checks, you know the recipient will be happy with the charity that receives the gift.
Comment added after reading Karen Swim’s post Santa Cause or the Grinch who Stole your Present?: I would recommend a charitable donation as a gift only to people close to you who you know would be happy with this. We do this in my family, but I would never suggest a business do this for a client nor would I do it to someone with whom I hadn’t discussed the idea in advance. I wasn’t clear enough and hadn’t thought through the implications until Karen brought them to my attention. Now back to the original post …
This is the time of year to give beyond our immediate circle. The Salvation Army’s red kettles are a symbol of the spirit of Christmas giving as well as an important means of raising funds to help those in need. I don’t go out to the malls and stores to shop so I miss the chance to drop something into a bright red kettle manned by a smiling bellringer. This year, I decided to be an online bellringer.
Thanks to Jon Swanson at Levite Chronicles for the inspiration. I didn’t know that I could be a bellringer for my own Online Red Kettle. If you do your Christmas shopping online, you can drop something into an online kettle and help the Salvation Army brighten the lives of those who need help this year.
Christmas celebrates the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ who gave the ultimate gift of His life for our salvation. We can share a little of His love by our own giving to our loved ones and people we don’t know. May you enjoy a blessed season of peace on earth, goodwill toward men.
Labor Day
September 1, 2008 by Lillie
Labor Day, the first Monday is September, is set aside to honor American workers. Although it was started by the labor movement for union workers, I think all workers—blue collar, white collar, professional, union or non-union—deserve recognition … and a day of rest.
Enjoy your holiday, fellow workers.
Right Brain/Left Brain
August 9, 2008 by Lillie
I saw a link on Robin Lee Hatcher’s Write Thinking to this test to determine whether you use your left brain or your right brain most.
The right brain relates to creativity, the left brain to logic and organization. Writing requires right brain usage; editing requires left brain usage. I enjoyed taking the test and found the results interesting. You may want to check it out for yourself.
Here is the summary of my results:
Lillie, you are somewhat left-hemisphere dominant with a balanced preference for auditory and visual inputs. Because of your “centrist” tendencies, the distinctions between various types of brain usage are somewhat blurred.
Your tendency to be organized and logical and attend to details is reasonably well-established which should afford you success regardless of your chosen field of endeavor, unless it requires total spontaneity and ability to improvise, your weaker traits. However, you are far from rigid or overcontrolled. You possess a degree of individuality, perceptiveness, and trust in your intuition to function at much more sophisticated levels than most.
Having given sufficient attention to detail, you can readily perceive the larger aspects and implications of a situation or of learning. You are functional and practical, but can blend abstraction and theory into your framework readily.
The equivalence of your auditory and visual learning orientation gives you two equally effective sensory input systems, each with distinctive features. You can process both unidimensionally and multidimen- sionally with equal facility. When needed, you sequence material while at other times you “intake it all” and store it for processing later.
Your natural ability to use your senses is also synthesized in your way of learning. You can be reflective in your approach, absorbing material in a non-aggressive manner, and at other times voracious in seeking out stimulation and experience.
Overall you tend to be somewhat more critical of yourself than is necessary and avoid enjoying life too much because of a sense of duty. You feel somewhat constrained and tend to sometimes restrict your expressiveness. In any given situation, you will opt for the rational, and learning of almost any type should be easy for you. You might need certain ideas explained to you in order to fit them into your scheme of things, but you’re at least open to that!
This pretty well describes me. Let us know in comments if your results describe you well.
Eco-Libris and Book Mooch
January 18, 2008 by Lillie
I mentioned Eco-Libris in my post Blog Action Day: Publishing and the Environment.
Raz Godelnik of Eco-Libris recently e-mailed me about the new collaboration of Eco-Libris with BookMooch, a leading book-swapping site.
BookMooch is an international online community for exchanging used books, created by John Buckman. It has more than 500,000 members who exchange books for free, using a simple points system - every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get with it any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch.
Eco-Libris is a green business that works with book readers as well as with publishers, writers, bookstores and other organizations in the book publishing industry to balance out the paper used for printing books by planting trees. Within six months of operation, Eco-Libris already balanced out 10,000 books.
Eco-Libris and BookMooch are partnering now to offer the BookMooch community a special green option - BookMooch members can earn points by planting trees with Eco-Libris. For every 10 books they balance out, they receive a free BookMooch point they can then use to mooch a book for free. They also receive an Eco-Libris sticker made of recycled paper for every book they balance out, saying ‘One tree planted for this book’, which they can display on their books’ sleeves.
This collaboration lets eco-conscious BookMoochers who love reading, but also care about the environment, to go green and make their reading more sustainable.
Although we authors would love for everyone to buy our books, I appreciate the environmental benefit to sharing books. Balancing out books by planting trees is a good way to offset the environmental impact of publishing. Now these two concepts are combined in this new initiative.
[tags]Eco-Libris, BookMooch, environment[/tags]
Life of a Writer
November 27, 2007 by Lillie
I saw this on Diana Brandmeyer’s blog and had to share it.
[tags]life of a writer[/tags]
Books for Literacy
November 17, 2007 by Lillie
Imagine not being able to read. Reading brings me so much pleasure, it’s hard to imagine life without books and reading.
Yet, according to the National Right to Read Foundation, quoted on Education Portal:
- 42 million American adults can’t read at all; 50 million read at only fourth or fifth grade levels.
- The number of functionally illiterate adults increases by approximately 2.25 million each year.
- 20 percent of all graduating high school seniors are functionally illiterate.
My good friend, Beverly Hart, who has been involved in literacy in San Antonio, Texas, for more than twenty years, is soliciting donations of books for students in literacy programs.
The organization that I am with teaches adults to read. We have 17 classes in a number of churches all over town. Each class averages 22 people. The teachers (all volunteers) have decided to challenge our new readers to read books!
The challenge is for students to read one book each month. They must not only read the book, but also write a report on it! This is a tremendous step for so many. We want our learners to not only be able to read but also have the comprehension skills they need to advance in their jobs and their lives.
We are not asking the students to return the books. Many have never owned a book, and we would like for them to be able to keep them should they choose. I am sure that many will be returned for recycling to others; however, we still need lots of books!
I am writing today to ask for donations of books…any kind…for all ages…paperbacks, hard bound, whatever you have laying around that you have finished and would like to donate. This is going to be an ongoing book drive….so as you read and collect books you no longer want, please consider giving them to our learners. ALSO, please tell your family, friends and neighbors about this and maybe you can get books from them as well. It will be so much appreciated.
If you are anywhere near San Antonio and would like to donate some of the books overflowing your bookshelves, e-mail me so I can put you in contact with Beverly.
If it’s not feasible for you to donate to Beverly’s program, consider donating books to a literacy organization in your area.
Give the gift of reading by donating books for new readers.
[tags]literacy, books, reading[/tags]
One Laptop per Child: Give One. Get One.
November 13, 2007 by Lillie
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a nonprofit organization with the vision to
provide a means for learning, self-expression, and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education.
The means for learning, self-expression, and exploration for children in the developing world is a $200 laptop computer.
Most of the nearly two–billion children in the developing world are inadequately educated, or receive no education at all. One in three does not complete the fifth grade. …
OLPC is not, at heart, a technology program, nor is the XO a product in any conventional sense of the word. OLPC is a non-profit organization providing a means to an end—an end that sees children in even the most remote regions of the globe being given the opportunity to tap into their own potential, to be exposed to a whole world of ideas, and to contribute to a more productive and saner world community.
Between November 12 and November 26, you can (if you live in the US or Canada) give one and get one. For $399 ($200 of which is tax deductible as a charitable contribution), you will donate a laptop to a child in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti or Rwanda and receive a laptop to give to a child in your life. Donors in the US also receive one year of free Hot Spot access from TMobile for the laptop.
Other than this special offer, these laptops will not be available to the general public. The XO laptop is specially designed for children - a keyboard that fits small hands, durable construction to stand up to extreme conditions and rough handling, and special programs for childhood learning. Capabilities include still and video photography, game playing, voice recording, e-book reading, and Web browsing. The laptops are also equipped with wireless networking and the ability to detect and connect to neighboring XOs.
A $200 specially-designed laptop can help a child learn and improve her life. As these children grow into adults, they will be better equipped to help developing countries develop.
[tags]One Laptop per Child, OLPC[/tags]
Shift Happens
November 2, 2007 by Lillie
If you think the world is moving too fast, watch this …
Build Your Vocabulary and Feed the Hungry
October 27, 2007 by Lillie
Thanks to a recent post at One Step Forward, I’ve discovered Free Rice.
The site offers a vocabulary quiz, requiring you to click on one of four definitions for the word given. The degree of difficulty of the words you are asked is determined by your answers. If you miss an answer, you are given words at the next lower level of difficulty. If you get three right answers in a row, you move to the next level of difficulty. This is a fun and innovative way to increase your vocabulary.
But there’s an added benefit: for every right answer you give, Free Rice will donate 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program. Ten grains doesn’t sound like much, but if thousands of people participate, the amount of rice grows rapidly. Free Rice started October 7th and has already donated nearly 300 million grains of rice. The rice is paid for by advertisers on the site.
The Hunger Site has been online since 1999 and has raised more than 500 million cups of food. The donations go to Mercy Corps and America’s Second Harvest. All you have to do to donate a cup of food is to click on a link, and advertisers contribute the cost of the food. On the same site, you can click to donate for other causes: breast cancer, children’s health, literacy (a favorite of mine as a writer and reader), rainforest, and animal rescue.
Several years ago, I wrote an article about click-to-give Web sites. Many sites have come and gone through the years, but this advice from that article is still sound:
As with offline charities, you need to do a little research to determine which charitable sites to frequent. First, you want to be sure the money is going to a cause and an organization you support. The button may say “click to help children” or “click to fight cancer,” but you may have delve a little deeper to find exactly which organizations receive the funds. The best sites include detailed information about each organization that receives support, so take a few minutes the first time you visit to ensure that you agree with the group’s philosophy.
With Free Rice , you can help feed the hungry, have some fun, and increase your own vocabulary - surely worth a few minutes of your time.
[tags]Free Rice, charity Web sites, vocabulary[/tags]
