Social Impact Social Media

Sierra Leone Rising, formerly The Kposowa Foundation, is a 501c3 non-profit organization that was formed in 2005 by co-founders, Sarah Culberson and John Woehrle to  build and restore much needed educational facilities, provide safe clean drinking water, solar electricity and agricultural development in the village of  Bumpe Sierra Leone. While the nonprofit has plans for a much broader global impact over time Bumpe was selected because Sarah, adopted and raised by a white family in the U.S., traced her natural family and heritage there. Visiting Bumpe to trace her roots Sarah discovered human suffering and need that she could not turn her back on. The Bumpe high school, once a renowned boarding school with an enrollment of over 600 students from as far away as Nigeria, was destroyed by R.U.F. rebels during Sierra Leone's 11-year-long civil was from 1991-2002. The Civil war also caused serious and grotesque human rights violations to many people. Thousands of Le

According to Betsy K. Emerick, PhD; the life expectancy for Afghan women is 44 years.  The Afghan literacy rates are 31% for men and 15% for women The average Afghan  woman will bear 7.4 children and 57% of Afghan girls marry before the legal age of 16. This is why she needs our help to make a difference by using social media to spread the word to help her continue Afghan Girls Schools.  The schools are located in refugee camps in Pakistan that have been home to nearly 2 million Afghan refugees for over a decade.  The schools are currently educating 600 girls. It costs $85 to pay a teacher's salary for  one month,  a school uniform costs $5, a sewing machine costs $40 and you can give a girl a year's education for  just $55. For more information email: afghangirlsschools@yahoo.com IMAGE - theirworld.org

Sitting at "Five," the bar at Hotel Shattuck Plaza in Berkeley, CA I struck up a great conversation about social responsibility and giving back with Chris and Roy-- 2 independent contractors taking a break from their work.    Their passion and personal mission is to reach out and help  teens "aging out" of our social services system and kids with terminal illnesses whose parents -- as a result of drug addiction, finances or other circumstances -- really aren't there for these kids. Through our conversation I learned about  a national organization called  Independent Order of Odd Fellows (LOOF) and their charitable work including education- literally getting kids to college and striped bass fishing trips - giving many kids  their first experience outside of gang and violence riddled neighborhoods. They even have a summer camp program. What's more I mentioned to Chris and Roy, in passing, my own little effort with my kids of literally filling our living r

Founded in 1988 the charity whose volunteers once built hiking trails, worked in libraries, and did myriad other tasks, has overhauled its service program to focus on a single mission: improving graduation rates in struggling public schools. The transformation was tied to a Johns Hopkins research study worked on by Robert Balfanz,brother of City Year's President Jim Balfanz. According to the Johns Hopkins study the high-school dropout crisis is concentrated. Roughly 12 percent of the country’s high schools account for 50 percent of the students who don’t graduate. Says Robert Balfanz, “It all sort of clicked in my mind,” he says. “They can give us a team of 10 to 15 corps members who are trained and focused and are in the building 7 to 7.” If each volunteer works with 15 students who show warning signs that they might drop out, he says, “we can now reach 150 to 200 kids a day with that constant nagging and nurturing.”  The math and English tutoring and the volunteers’ work

sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com Carmel Judd is Rising International's Founder & Executive Director. In 2002 she gave up the successful business she owned and ran for 20 years to start Rising International, the first non-profit to use the home party business model to contribute to solving poverty.  Rising International sells crafts made by the world's poorest people - women. In addition, Rising trains under-employed women in the U.S. to run their own Rising Home Party businesses. Today Rising works with women in 27 countries, focusing on areas of the world where it's the hardest to be alive as woman.  To hear Carmel tell the story of Rising International use this TedX link (and share it with your social networks) http://www.tedxsantacruz.org/ Encourage your social connections to get involved--- send them to  www. risinginternational .org

In my  more than 2 years of blogging here  (my nonprofit social good blog) and at www.successsful-woment-blog.com,  my lifestyle and business resource blog,  this is the first I have found my subject matter appropriate for both. Social TV – Mashable was writing about it in 2011. Nielsen shared changes and visions of engaging viewers in content in 2013 as the engagement of consumers in content from one platform to another as a means of engaging consumers in ads. Cut to late 2013, early 2014--new visionaries are bringing to the table a new kind of Social TV and a new meaning for engaging with content. The visionaries I am talking about are philanthropist Jeff Skoll and CEO Jim Berk of Participant Media (and PivoTv and TAG Media), and Marc Erlbaum of Philadelphia-based startup Eflixir – delivering a streaming platform of socially meaningful and cause related films via Amazon. Erlbaum is also founder of Nationlight Productions producer of films  Café   with Jennifer Love Hewitt a

urbanharvester.org Founded by Linda Hess in 2009 South Pasadena-based Urban Harvester is a nonprofit solving multiple problems to the benefit of grocery stores, restaurants, food pantries providing services for the hungry and those in need of a healthy meal. According to the US Department of Agriculture 1 in 6 Americans go to be hungry every night. Data from The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicates that 40% of the food produced in the United States is discarded each year. Enter Urban Havester. In 2013 the organization recovered 30,000 fresh meals - that's 20 tons of fresh food rescued rather than wasted. To learn more or to donate to support their good work visit www.urbanharvester.org

Since 1987 the Appalachian Community Fund (ACF) has been making a difference – helping create social change in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. appalachiancommunityfund.org ACF funds and encourages grassroots social change in Central Appalachia. ACF works to build a sustainable base of resources to support community-led organizations seeking to overcome and address issues of race, economic status, gender, sexual identity, and disability. As a community-controlled fund, ACF offers leadership to expand and strengthen the movement for social change through its practices and policies. Their efforts range from mentoring teenagers and guiding them toward college, supporting women in emotional crisis to keeping the only public clinic serving the poor open. And ACF has forced changes in the Federal Black Lung Program for miners and those in mining areas and they have helped protect endangered forests in the Appalachian region. To find out more so you can help