In our life we have many interesting days, from the day we are born to graduation day at university. What’s interesting is that whilst trying to remember my various birthday’s, with today being my 39th, I can hardly remember any of the early years ones.
Our parents spent all that time and effort, year on year to have birthday’s but do we really remember them all? I doubt it. In fact the only one’s I do remember are the significant ones where something memorable happened, good or bad!
This year I decided to forgo the old birthday tradition of partying all night and eating copious amounts of food and cake, and instead do a birthday charity cause.
I created a birthday campaign at Charity:Water, which in my mind is one of the most forward thinking and new charities to appear, which openly report 100% of their donations are used for the charity cause, and not for organisational needs.
That’s a difference. They fund the rest of their activities through corporate sponsors.
I love what they do, in fact they make things so transparent that they use technology to report on how their diggers are doing. For example most of the well digging machines have their own Twitter accounts and you can keep track where they are and what they are doing!
That’s genius. In a world of high accountability with social media pushing organisations to be more transparent and honest, this is one charity which is embracing that to it’s fullest.
It pains me to see that people in this world are still without clean water. Something we in the western world take for granted all the time, yet to some in the world they are still struggling to get it!
We think we are civilised, but in truth we are not if we can let this happen. The trouble is, deep down people are still generally selfish to their own needs, and someone might prioritise their organic food delivery over clean water for someone else, that might save their lives.
True enough, I’ve done this as well myself. We can’t help it, Richard Dawkins writes about it in his book The Selfish Gene, where he argues that the entire human species wouldn’t actually exist if we didn’t have a selfish gene in us. I’ve read the book and I’m afraid he makes a great case, and I tend to agree.
That being said, those of us who are in a position to help, should at least make an effort, so today I’m pledging my birthday to get clean water for others, and I hope that you can support me in doing so.
Please donate to my charity cause this birthday, and I’d like my age in dollars to go to clean water.
Visit here to donate: http://llm.im/bdaycharity
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