Register here for the Microbicides and HIV/AIDS conferece

November 7th, 2007. Featuring speaker panels and breakout discussions about Microbicides and new strategies in the fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

For more information, click the “Conference on Microbicides and HIV/AIDS” tab above.

Each week (and often more than once a week) we’ll update this site to have news about CGE programming and opportunities.

This week, we’re working on two programs that will be open to NU students. The first is a RESEARCH INTERNSHIP program which will give students at all grade levels the chance to work with CGE staff on projects such as Chicago and global change organization asset mapping, resource mapping, planning and presentations, etc. We expect to make a full announcement about the opportunities in the next few weeks.

Secondly, we’re working on a FRESHMAN GLOBAL PROBLEM SOLVING PROGRAM designed to help NU freshman learn how to leverage their Northwestern career to create a difference in the world. Look for more next week.

On Friday of this week, we’ll also have a short feature about the Youth Leadership in Connective Philanthropy Program which took place a couple weeks ago.

Check out this article from a recent Wall Street Journal. It will give you an overview of how philanthropic trends are changing. What questions do you have, either about the organizations and topics discussed in the article about related issues? Look out for the mention of our friends at Change.org

A New Generation
Reinvents Philanthropy

Blogs, Social-Networking Sites
Give 20-Somethings a Means
To Push, Fund Favorite Causes

By RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN
August 21, 2007; Page D1

Joe Alamo didn’t set out to become a do-gooder. But late last year, when the Geneva, N.Y., Web designer was surfing on MySpace, he chanced onto the profile of Kiva.org, a nonprofit that allows people to make zero-interest “microfinance” loans over the Internet to needy entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Soon after, Mr. Alamo not only became a lender through Kiva, but he also started a new Web site, Kivafriends.org, devoted to Kiva enthusiasts. He also now volunteers to run Kiva’s MySpace page. “This is the first time I’ve ever gotten so involved with a charity,” says Mr. Alamo, now 30 years old.

• Plus: The 27-year-old founder of Change.org explains how he got started and how he earns a living. Read the interview.

Young donors and volunteers, snubbing traditional appeals such as direct mail and phone calls, are satisfying their philanthropic urges on the Internet. They’re increasingly turning to blogs and social-networking Web sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, to spread the word about — and raise funds for — their favorite nonprofits and causes. They’re sending Web-based fund-raising pitches to their friends and families, encouraging them, in turn, to forward the appeals to their own contacts.

At the same time, a growing number of charities — ranging from start-ups to established names such as the Salvation Army — are launching profiles on popular social-networking sites, hoping that young people will link up to the pages. Some are also encouraging bloggers to mention the causes on their sites, raising thousands of dollars in small donations from readers.

Many of the nonprofits that have embraced social networking are themselves run by people in their 20s and 30s, who already spend a good portion of their lives online. Some of them also appeal to donors by offering them tangible results of their gifts by directly linking contributors with recipients.

Social-networking sites, for their part, are offering new tools to help attract nonprofits and contributors. In May, a social-action start-up called Project Agape launched a new program on Facebook called “Causes,” in which users can create online communities to advocate for various issues, charities and political candidates. Since then, the program has attracted more than 2.5 million Facebook users, raising some $300,000 for nonprofits and politicians, says Joe Green, 24, the project’s co-founder.

That move comes after MySpace — which already hosts thousands of nonprofits’ profiles — launched its “Impact” awards late last year, honoring individuals and nonprofit groups that have successfully used the site to make a difference. MySpace members vote on the winners, who get $10,000.

Visitors to another social-networking site, Change.org, which also launched in May, can join “virtual foundations” of peers dedicated to specific causes, such as fighting AIDS in Africa, and raise money for the charities or political candidates that support those issues. So far, its 30,000 members have raised nearly $50,000, says founder Ben Rattray, 27. Before launching the site, Mr. Rattray had never made a charitable donation, finding charities’ traditional pitches to be “unengaging.”

Some young philanthropists are turning to “viral fund raising” — sending appeals to their network of contacts that are forwarded on to others — to maximize the power of small donations. Users of SixDegrees.org, a program launched by nonprofit site Network for Good, can create a “charity badge” listing their favorite cause and send it out to their acquaintances. The badge keeps a running tally of how much has been raised and how many donors have contributed. Since the program was launched in January, users have created some 6,000 charity badges, raising some $740,000.

“When you’re young and starting out, it’s very difficult to take this meager paycheck you have and donate part of it to something else,” says Samantha Millman, 26, of Los Angeles, who works for a real-estate investment firm.

Several months ago, Ms. Millman created a badge on behalf of Bet Tzedek — the House of Justice, a legal-aid program in Los Angeles. “I basically blasted everyone I knew,” says Ms. Millman, raising more than $15,000 from 406 donors. “I was not only surprised by the dollar amount, but to have 400 people somehow hearing about this through word of mouth was phenomenal,” she says, adding that many of the donations were for just $10.

Bloggers are also pounding the drums for their favorite causes. Sarah D. Bunting, 34, who writes Tomato Nation, a culture and humor blog, offered to shave her head if her readers donated $30,000 to DonorsChoose.org, a charity that allows contributors to directly purchase school supplies for needy classrooms. The funds were raised within days. (For a video of Ms. Bunting’s head being shorn last year, go to www.tinyurl.com/32svqs.) DonorsChoose.org now features a “Blogger Challenge” on its site where bloggers compete to raise money among their readers.

Established charities, to be sure, have long had programs targeted to young donors, and many of them, especially health-related causes, have used peer-to-peer fund raising to help raise money, often in connection with races and other sporting events. But many of these charities either tend to target wealthier donors or are focused on occasional events, rather than on ongoing operations.

Some of the newer Web-based nonprofits, such as DonorsChoose and Kiva, are attractive because contributors say they allow them to connect directly with their recipients. Donors or lenders can hand over money directly to, respectively, teachers and students in urban public schools or individual entrepreneurs in developing countries, rather than sending a check that ends up with an abstract recipient.

“You can donate money to a charity, but it seems like it just goes into a pile and you never know what really goes on there,” says Mr. Alamo, the Kiva lender. “With Kiva, you just pick someone out and lend to them directly and watch what they do and how they succeed. That was the main appeal.”

Kiva, which started in the fall of 2005, has already drawn more than 89,600 lenders who have lent $10 million. Mr. Alamo’s Kivafriends.org Web site has attracted about 600 members since it was launched in March.

Some older charities are grappling with how to best take advantage of social-networking sites. The Salvation Army, for instance, has had a MySpace profile for “Red Kettle,” its online persona, since last year. But the site has only roughly 80 online “friends,” or people who have linked to it. (By contrast, Kiva has some 7,000 online friends on MySpace.)

Melissa Temme, 28 years old, a Salvation Army spokeswoman who came up with the MySpace page, says that in order to be successful on social-networking sites, charities need to spend a lot of time updating content and communicating with members, which can be difficult for a stretched nonprofit staff. “There has to be a certain level of interaction with other people and their pages,” she says.

In order to keep its online postings up-to-date, DoSomething.org, which seeks to get young people involved in social action, enlisted an Ohio University college student. “We’re trying to use social networking as much as possible,” says Aria Finger, 24, DoSomething’s business development director. “We want to reach young people where they already are.” The charity boasts roughly 5,500 MySpace friends and more than 2,200 on Facebook.

Write to Rachel Emma Silverman at rachel.silverman@wsj.com

See the original article here: A New Generation Reinvents Philanthropy

Check out this sketch of human rights activist John Prendergast from this Internationalist Magazine interview:

Does he happen to be the love-child of independent film director Vincent Gallo:

And The State, Stella, and Wet Hot American Summer funny-man Michael Showalter?

You be the judge…

-Alex

On my first day of classes, I was put in a room full of staring ninth graders. Even after reading books preparing me to teach, taking Spanish lessons and lugging a purple suitcase full of chess supplies all the way to Quetzaltenango, it was a terrifying moment to begin teaching a class in a foreign language. I had prepared to teach 5th graders, and we were supposed to make paper crowns on the first day of class; but this strategy would not work for the older kids, who had already matured to the age where girls no longer had “cooties”. How could I win the attention of my students? Within an hour, how could I leave behind my identity as a tourist and a stranger to achieve the title of professor?

I started with names and the students introduced themselves: Diana, Michelle, Rosio, Adele, Norma, Luciana, Winston, Raul, Melvin, Wilder, Francisco, and José Luis. As they said their names I focused all my energy on remembering them; and after everyone had taken the opportunity to introduce themselves, I went through all of the names. In my head they were Princess Diana, Michelle “My Belle” (like the Beatles song), A Rosio is a Rosio is a Rose, Adelante, Norma Norma Bo Borma (banna fanna…), Luciana Light (luz is light in Spanish), Winston Churchill, Raul Casablanca (a famous chess player), Herman Melville, Van Wilder, Francisco Borrero (the name of my high-school Spanish teacher), and José Mona Luis(a). In that way, I was able to recount the names of each student in a single try; and with each student I called, their eyes lit up. Since I had remembered all of their names, it showed that I cared about teaching them and that I didn’t want to be a stranger or simply their professor, but also a friend.

This bit of advice is not a “tactic” toward cultural assimilation, but simply human kindness. Through my teaching here at the Colegio, I am learning how to deal with cultural differences by using language people understand. When I first started teaching, the language barrier and Guatemalan lifestyle was something to become accustomed to, naturally. But in all honesty, I have found more similarities than difference, and most difficulties labeled as cultural difficulties have simply been differences between individuals, not cultural at all.

Here are some tips if you are working in Guatemala as a Chess teacher:

1.) Don’t come dressed for a safari with a camera around your neck; I have seen volunteers with binoculars around their necks and they don’t make friends easily.

2.) Play soccer, everyone is doing it. Or if you can’t play soccer, watch soccer with the kids who aren’t on the field. Whatever you do, stay active. Whether it is offering to help you host mom cook, listening to your student’s Walkman blast music you don’t understand, or kicking a ball at recess. This bit of advice has already been given in phrases like, “When in Rome…” and cheesy lyrics like, “Walk like an Egyptian.” In a way, you have to change yourself; you have to learn a different lifestyle, before you can teach your students.

3.) Use global language: hugging your host mom, giving your teammate a high-five, laughing, dancing, smiling back at people who are smiling at you, helping someone onto a bus or across a street. These are actions that supersede words and have been very useful.

Jory Pomeranz is a sophomore at Northwestern. For the summer, he is teaching chess at the Colegio Miguel Angel Asturias.