The Better World Project: Week 12 Actions
11/28/05: I recently joined the Sudoku puzzle craze, and had been picking up the free daily newspaper Express mostly for the Sudoku puzzle on the back page. I decided to instead buy a book of the puzzles to avoid generating all of this excess newspaper waste. I bought the book at Borders specifically to support their promotional campaign in which you can donate money to First Book (the nonprofit organization where I work) at the register. All donations stay in the community where they were donated to support literacy organizations that serve children from low-income families. I believe that donating to such campaigns helps to show corporations that they can benefit greatly from partnerships with the nonprofit sector while still performing a great service for their community.
11/29/05: A co-worker told me about Hope House, a program that helps to strengthen the ties between D.C. inmates and their families. The organization took on a critical role in 2001 when a local prison closed and thousands of inmates were transferred to federal prisons around the country, making those ties much more difficult to maintain. Hope House will be holding a Christmas party for D.C. kids whose fathers are in prison and relies on donations to provide gifts for the kids, so I gathered some appropriate items from my house to donate to the organization.
11/30/05: The ONE Campaign is an effort to rally Americans to take action and "fight the emergency of global AIDS and extreme poverty." It was founded by a network of international nonprofit organizations, and advocates for the federal government to allocate an additional one percent of its budget to fund basic needs (clean water, food, education) in the poorest countries around the world. I signed the ONE Big Noise letter asking President Bush to fight extreme poverty by pressing the World Trade Organization to make trade fair.
>> Learn more about the ONE Campaign
>> Read Oxfam International's brief summary of the free trade vs. fair trade debate
Contribution by Erika B.: "Dec. 1 is World AIDS Day, and I just urged my Members of Congress to reauthorize the Ryan White CARE Act. You should too!"
>> I followed Erika's lead and took action on 12/1.
12/1/05: In honor of World AIDS Day, I wrote to my congressmen to urge them to reauthorize the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act. The CARE Act provides crucial services to those living with HIV and AIDS, which I strongly support. I contacted my representatives through the website of the Human Rights Campaign, a large GLBT civil rights organization.
>> Learn more about the Human Rights Campaign
12/2/05: Following up on my action from 11/30, I bought a pack of White Bands in support of the ONE Campaign. I bought them as gifts for my office, so that any of my co-workers who wants to can support the campaign by wearing a band. I also signed the ONE Declaration, which indicates my support for the organization and their campaign to fight global AIDS and poverty.
Contribution by Erika B.: Erika suggested that I might be interested in the "A Tradition of Kindness" project, and so I signed up for their e-mail list on 12/3.
12/3/05: I supported the "A Tradition of Kindness" project by signing up for their e-mail list. This project (as well as its sister project, "Partners in Kindness") seeks to inspire readers to perform acts of kindness by reporting such acts in its "Daily Dose of Kindness" e-mails and encouraging readers to take their own actions.
>> Subscribe to the Daily Dose of Kindness e-mail (Jewish-related) or the Kind Words weekly e-mail (non-sectarian)
12/4/05: I decided that I was wasting resources by washing a lot of clothing way too often, and so I made a commitment to reuse my clothes more extensively before adding them to the laundry pile.
Contribution by Mike M.: "Getting ready to start my Christmas shopping, I began researching companies that are environmentally and socially responsible. I believe that companies are now so entrenched in the political system of the U.S. that the power of the choices that we make as consumers now outweighs the power of our votes in elections. Therefore I think it is important to become aware of what the companies that we are supporting with our dollars are doing to their workers and the environment. I will have more to come out of this research, but for now I found a clothing company called American Apparel that provides full benefits, fair pay and many other perks for all of its employees, from sewers to administrators. This is in sharp contrast to companies such as The Gap or stores such as Wal-Mart, which sell clothing produced in sweatshops."
>> Read more about Wal-Mart in my 11/13 entry.