Simple Sunday: Turn This Puppet from Hungry to Happy

I’m nothing if not a sucker for a cute image. Visit The Pajacyk (Wooden Puppet) Campaign, a Polish anti-hunger site, and you’ll be greeted by a sad-faced wooden puppet. But — click on the green circle on the puppet’s tummy and see him turn from sad to happy! You’ll also be helping to provide meals to hungry schoolchildren in more than 100 Polish schools. Sponsors agree to make a small donation for each visitor who clicks the puppet’s belly button, at no cost to you.

Today’s mitzvah: Click to give and put a smile on Pajacyk’s face and some food in a schoolchild’s tummy.

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Carbon Fast for Lent: Silent Sunday

The Fifth Sunday of Lent
“Have an embrace-the-silence Sunday. Turn off everything. No TV, no radio, no ring tones, no cars. It’ll be good for the soul.”

As we begin the last week of Lent and enter Holy Week, I’m rejoining Tearfund’s Carbon Fast (finally back in sequence after a few DIY days).

The Proper of the Day linked to very good NYT article about a writer taking a Sunday “technology sabbatical,” which also captured my own (high) level of tech addiction pretty well. I teach a couple online classes and my students have an assignment due, so I actually won’t be able to go no-tech today. And I think it would make me jumpy and odd any day — which is ample reason to try.

Today’s mitzvah: Can you embrace the silence and turn off technology for a day? A true Simple Sunday? If you succeed (or not!) let us know what it was like.

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Simple Sunday: A Final Flourish for Animal Week

Animal Week has been lots of fun — one more chance to show a picture of our friend Jazzy, and I’ve met a terrific new group of blog readers, reaching all the way to Australia. To close out the week, here’s a Simple Sunday mitzvah: visit Care2’s Pets in Need page. Sponsors will match each click on the green Click to Help button with a small donation to the Humane Society of the United States’ Rural Area Veterinary Service programs, including free and low-cost veterinary examinations and vaccinations for pets whose humans are in financial need. Everybody wins in this arrangement.

Today’s mitzvah: Click-to-give on Care2’s Pets in Need page to support the Human Society’s RVAS program, at no cost to you. Jazzy says thank you!

Simple Sunday: Polar Bear SOS

I am declaring this Animal Week in honor of our friend Jazzy, who we’ll meet later on. Stay tuned!

Last Sunday, I wrote about an opportunity to “chill the drills” to help save polar bear habitat in Alaska. Unfortunately the current administration has fast-tracked the approval for gas and oil drilling leases in Alaska, yet postponed the decision that was due January 9 on whether or not to place polar bears on the Endangered Species List. (If the bears are declared an endangered species, drilling in their habitat would be restricted.)

Simple Sunday mitzvah: Click here to send a message (via the Natural Resource Defense Council’s web site) urging Congress to pass the Markey bill (H.R. 5058), which will reverse the go-ahead for the oil and gas lease sales until the Bush Administration makes its final decision about protecting polar bears under the Endangered Species Act.

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Simple Sunday (in Brazil!)

OK, this is an imaginary trip to Brazil. (It’s still really cold here.) But if we were lucky enough to be in Rio de Janeiro today we would be celebrating Foundation Day. And having a delightful day at the beach, no doubt.

Today’s fast, easy, and simple Sunday mitzvah: Celerate Rio’s Foundation Day holiday with a free-to-you click donation to Pró Menor, a children’s charity that takes advantage of Brazil’s under-utilized military bases and their facilities, as well as volunteer military personnel, to provide homeless street children with meals, education, organized sporting activities, counseling, and vocational training. Just click on the left-hand link marked Doçao Grátis (you’ll know it worked when the resulting page returns an image of stacked coins). The site’s sponsors make a contribution to Pró Menor to for every click (up to one per person per day).

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Simple Sundays: Chill the Drills

Alaska’s polar bears are in danger due to global warming. The Sierra Club is concerned that their fate is made even more precarious by opening up the Chukchi Sea, the bears’ habitat, to drilling as early as next month. The Sierra Club has more information on their Polar Bear and Arctic Seas page.

Today’s mitzvah: Sign the Sierra Club’s petition to Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne asking him to “chill the drills” and take a time-out to find ways to protect the polar bears.

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Simple Sundays: Free Clicks Help to Sponsor Children

In a creative spin on “click to donate,” Care2 has pledged to sponsor 14 children through Children International. Each time you click on the web site button (up to once per day per person), advertisers make a small contribution, which Care2 then sends to Children International each month to sponsor Ana Gabriela, Jorge, and Adriana (Ecuador); David and Yeyni (Guatemala); Ariane, Bryan, and Arnold (Philippines); Saony, Jose, and Carlos David (Dominican Republic); and Sirleys, Yelize, and Carlos (Colombia). Sponsorship funds are customized for the individual child’s needs and may include medical and dental care, educational support, clothing, nutritional aid, and family assistance.

Today’s mitzvah: Take a few seconds to click Care2’s children site and help support the kids above, at no cost to you!

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Simple Sundays: Click for the Gift of Children’s Health

In the midst of gift buying and holiday hurrying, The Child Health Site offers a quick, easy, and free way to give the gift of health to children around the world. Every time you click on the site’s blue button (once per day per person), the site’s sponsors make a small donation to charity partners. Together these individual clicks add up to help children each day by:

• funding Vitamin A supplementation, to help prevent 400,000 cases of childhood blindness each year
• providing oral re-hydration formula to children with severe dehydration, a major cause of death for children under five worldwide
• making a prosthesis for child amputees, many of whom have have lost a foot or leg to landmines
• restoring lost eyesight through simple surgeries that reverse blindness caused by cataracts and trachoma
• testing pregnant mothers for HIV as a step toward preventing mother-to-child transmission of the AIDS virus

Today’ mitzvah: Click on The Child Health Site to give a gift of health to a child this holiday season

Simple Sundays: Got Chocolate?

I’m back from a business trip, I missed my first day of blog posting (where is a sad face emoticon when I need one?), I have a slew of grades to finish today, and the Christmas shopping isn’t anywhere close to complete. So who could be happier to learn today is “National Chocolate-Covered Anything Day.” It must be true — I read it on the web!

Today’s mitzvah: Be kind to yourself in this busy season and observe National Chocolate-Covered Anything Day!

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Simple Sundays: “Click to Donate” Ideas by Email

Many of us have a favorite “click to donate” site, like Free Rice, yet it often seems there are just too many of these sites to keep up with. A simply designed web site, Daily Free Donation, offers a streamlined solution: submit your email address and every two days you will receive a message featuring a random “click to donate” link. These web sites follow the familiar model: a sponsor or sponsors agree to make a contribution for every click, at no cost to you or me. A neat added feature: many of the Daily Free Donation sites are located in countries other than the U.S. — and might otherwise be unknown to English-only speakers — supporting local food, health, and education programs. (Not sure where to click on a page in an unfamiliar language? Look for the left sidebar with instructions and an arrow to direct you to the appropriate button.)

Today’s mitzvah: Consider signing up for an every-other-day email message — and “click to donate”!

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Simple Sundays: Click to Offset 1 Lb. of Carbon

The topic of carbon offsets is controversial — something I’ll be investigating over the next few weeks since I have a business trip coming up that involves four separate airplane flights. While the jury is still out, even skeptics have time to click a link. Visit Care2’s “Race to Stop Global Warming,” click on the leaf box, and their sponsors will make a donation equivalent to offsetting one pound of carbon — the carbon footprint from your (or my) shower today.

Today’s mitzvah: Click here to reduce your carbon footprint. (Heck, at least it plants a tree.)

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Simple Sundays: Click for Greenland

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, although at my house it’s more often a Day of Harried Catch-Up. Here’s a move in a more peaceful direction: “Simple Sundays” on the blog. These mitzvahs will be fast and easy. Here’s the innaugural entry: To raise awareness about problems associated with climate change in Greenland, Kiehl’s, the drugstore-turned-beauty line, will donate 25 cents/click to the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) for the first 500,000 people who click a link on their web site.

Today’s mitzvah: Click here to reverse climate change in Greenland (thank you, Kiehl’s!)

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