A Great Man

Thanks to Makeesha for pointing this out to me. This is the story of Norman Borlaug, a man you never knew of but absolutely should.

Click here for story.

When Jesus said love your neighbor, this guy took it seriously and now he has a lot of neighbors.

100 Equals Love

Every once in a while I run across an idea or a group of people who are doing something really great. My first response is to smile and my second response is to write about it, which I'm doing right now. I found this post through a random clicking process of blogs from people I know ending up on people I don't but I wish I did. And when it is a woman I smile and realize that our female counterparts do things way better than us men.

Katherine Siebert started Edeva, which means, "beautiful gift." She came up with this really great idea for a love project to get one hundred people together to buy the land for a trade arts "co-op" for a group of women in the Dominican Republic. Instead of asking a bunch of people to give her $100, she asked 100 women to give two dollars every week. Who can't do that. The idea is brilliant. You can read the story here.

Thanks Katherine for the inspiration. I hope you don't mind if I steal your idea. I promise to give you credit.

Kiva - Microloans Process

I was visiting a friends blog today and I came a cross a site that was listed at her page. The organization is called Kiva.org. Kiva provides a simple way of getting involved in the world around us. Participants, meaning us, provide microloans to someone on the website.

Microloans have been recognized as one of the best ways to help the poor get out of poverty. Because the money is small the lender takes less risk and the opportunity becomes much more available to the average person to help. In third world country's loans can be as small as $50 but they help build the dignity of the person behind the loans. Repayment in certain countries is extremely high because of the process.

Take a look.

ONE Action

From Virginia at ONE.org

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A straight continuing resolution would have left funding at 2006 levels through all of 2007 - but a few weeks ago, ONE launched a major effort to raise awareness and save as much of the planned increase as possible. In January alone, ONE members sent over 200,000 emails, faxes and letters to their members of Congress urging them to fully fund poverty programs in 2007.

Last night, a bill was filed asking for a $1.3 billion increase in AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis funding - a full $300 million more than the one billion dollar increase ONE members urged their representative to save.

Sound Off

(Nothing is a done deal though until the bill passes both houses. A House vote is scheduled for tomorrow and a Senate vote is set for February 5. We'll be posting updates on these votes times and outcomes on the ONE Blog.)

We have been told that this money, which easily could have vanished virtually unnoticed, was saved due to the pressure from the community. Without exaggeration, outreach on the 2007 CR may have just saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the world's poorest countries.

Please send me an email or call me if have questions. Every convesation blog post on these issues counts.

Ginny

Virginia Simmons
Online Organizing Coordinator
The ONE Campaign