The Genocide Intervention Network seeks to create a new website, modeled on our successful Darfur congressional scorecard, DarfurScores.org, tentatively named GenocideScores.org. This grows directly out of our mission, to empower individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide.
Our current site tracks each legislator's record on bills relating to Darfur. Hillary Clinton's scorecard, for instance, tracks the senator's record of co-sponsoring and voting for most important bills on Darfur. Sam Brownback similarly scores high for his outspoken record on the issue.
The process of a bill moving through Congress, however, is somewhat obscure. Action alerts are posted when a bill is coming up for a vote, and e-mails are sent to members in important states and districts. Yet most visitors won't know at a glance where a particular bill is, or which states or districts are most important to passing the bill.
Moreover, two additional campaigns have achieved significant momentum: the Sudan Divestment Task Force and the Teach Against Genocide campaign. These measure success on the state level — "Which states have divested?" or "Which state legislatures have approved genocide education?" While visitors to these sites can view information for their particular state, the particular status and action needed in a given state is not always immediately apparent.
Don't other sites track legislation? Why create a new cause-specific site? It's true that other websites track bills as the move through Congress. The difference with GenocideScores.org would be two-fold: First, it would incorporate state-based campaigns as noted above. Second, and perhaps most importantly, it would be curated by our advocacy staff to ensure anti-genocide activists are provided with the most effective information and tools. General legislation-tracking sites will never — and are not designed to — support advocacy on a particular cause, but our staff will ensure that the alerts people get on a particular bill or campaign tell them exactly how they can have the most impact.
Our existing project is already helping many thousands of people to build a strong vocabulary (including many on donated licenses). We are a 501(c)3 nonprofit located in Sebastopol/Sonoma, and match online memberships with free licenses for disadvantaged students. This year, we will give free licenses to all 3rd graders in the Bay Area.
At eSpindle everything is about customizing learning to one's needs, and nothing is out-of-the-box. People can add words that are important for them, and do then receive customized tutoring, where each word is matched with audio, definition, sample sentences from our 100,000 word database.
We want to create a public, free-for-all platform where users (and other smart and generous people) can share word lists, so others can use them to have an easier time academically, or with their personal goals.
This will be a huge help for English language learners, students, and people entering a new field. Such a platform would empower them to increase their verbal skills without assorting to labor intensive flash cards/word lists/manually manage their progress.
Research has shown that users need to be exposed to a new word eight times, if it is encountered randomly in a text, before they actually store it in long-term memory. One sighting is normally enough to anchor the word in memory, if the word has been properly introduced beforehand.
This mash-up could build a repository of lists that can help people find, for example:
... words one should know when going to law school
... terminology related to global warming
... terms important to genetics
... words you'll need to read Ulysses... and survive
... Shakespearean terms to get more enjoyment out of his writings, etc.
... glossaries correlating with common text books (in all academic fields)
... lists assorted by subjects, to help English language learners build their vocabulary (body parts... herbs... cooking terms... internet lingo...)
If some of you have learned English as a second language, you know that it is a hard language to learn. Some say that 13% of all English words are illogical, meaning the spelling or pronunciation do not make sense.
eSpindle was designed to make the process more efficient and pain-free, and a word list mashup will help people manage their progress, accelerating their success.
This is a simple mashup using Network for Good’s donation API, with a particular focus on enhancing the donor experience with a virtualization of recent donations.
The NFG API mashed-up with a Google map would show all donations made to specific causes (by location) for a given time period over a US or World map.
This could be used on the homepage of Network for Good - to inspire others based on the action currently taking place.
Thousands of communities will be able to access data and map resources in their neighborhoods quickly, easily and at no cost to them. Advocates and service providers will be able to use a high-quality, well-designed, reliable platform for uploading data of their choosing and mapping that data against a wide range of demographic data, area resources, and other variables. This project will also allow nonprofit and community advocates across the U.S. to share and learn from each other how they can better use the power of mapping to advocate for and inform change. Not least, communities will be spared countless hours of effort and scarce dollars trying to build such tools from scratch, enabling them to focus more on the important work of finding the right data locally and interacting with people and organizations in their communities. The goal of our project is to make the public functionality of HealthyCity.org, the mapping tool we developed to serve Los Angeles, available throughout the U.S., free of charge, to nonprofit and community organizations. We believe this can be done in a fairly cost-effective and sustainable way, and we are looking for good thinking on how best to do it.
Examples of how Healthy City has worked in Los Angeles include:
- Mapping of overcrowded, multi-track calendar schools, to support a proposal of $25 billion in school construction bonds approved by California voters
- Analysis of areas of highest need for preschool facilities in Los Angeles, leading to over $100 million commitment of funds to develop preschool space
- Mapping of violent crimes and analysis of prevalence of gang crime, to identify priority areas for the City of Los Angeles
- Mapping the mismatch between concentrations of homeless people and availability of shelter space
- Grants analysis for foundations, including determining the location of grantees, the dimensions of their service areas (with information gathered by survey), and the magnitude of grant dollars relative to target population in grantees’ service areas
A global wealth mashup would help students and people from various countries understand and visualize the disparity in wealth among countries and cities around the world. Often, people recite statistics about the US being in the top X percent in terms of per capita wealth globally- (generally a figure around 1%) with most other countries lagging far behind. Hearing this statistic is compelling, but seeing it would be compelling in a very different way, and would allow for easier comparisons. For educational purposes, I'd love to see a mashup that takes per capita income by country and city (info available from many sources) and 'color codes' that on a Google map or Google earth map. A country view would show the average per capita income by country for comparison globally- (shades of green from darkest green as wealthiest to white for the poorest countries) and then users could zoom in to a country to see how wealth changes across a countries regions and by city. Users could also input 2 country or city pairs to compare two places to each other, adjusted in a specific currency. Why? I think seeing regions with vast swatches of white, and only pinpoints of green, would help people understand the disparity of wealth across regions better than a list of countries and numbers, which are often just listed alphabetically.
Under the Youth Leadership program, Technology for Youth aims to close the gap in terms of education and opportunities. In areas where 50% of families do not own a personal computer in their homes, we hope that by establishing a computer center for youths in our community and utilizing educational software this would enhance learning and youth interest in technology.
The Nonprofits of the SF Bay and Silicon Valley become better networked and informed of like-minded people and groups they might not have been aware of, right in their area. Promote local organizations that really make a difference and how you can help.
WOlf Gardens Wildlife Center is loacted in the East Centtral mountains of Alabama. Over half of Clay County is located in the Talladega National Forest.
We are home to a number of endangered adn protected wildlife species.
The completion of Wolf Gardens Wildlife Center which is a Wildlife Rescue, Rehab adn Education Center, animals that have been left to live or die in their own will be able to have help.
Our education program will teach not only about the badly needed conservation needs but will also work to create protected boundaries in National Forest ares for wild release of rehabilitated animals.
Our education orogram will also focus on the ills of breedin gwild animals for pets.
On the up said we will also develop interpretive trails and educational programs on environmental conservation,wildlife conservation and the need for volunteers and interaction through general public interest.
Nature based and wildlife based tourism will be developed in order to make Wolf Gardens Sel Supportive inclding campgrounds and RV parks in order to improved economic community development for our local communities.
By using Wolf Gardens Wildlife Center we will be able to teach other very rural communities how do develop good, strong economies for theri areas without destroying their environments.
Wolf Gardens wants to set te standards for Wildlife Centers not simply follow the standards.
Wolf Gardens Wildlife Center is the community development prooject of the First Nations Outreach Project a 501 (c) 3 Native American Religious Non Prooooofit Organization.
Under the Youth empowerment program of Christian Fellowship and Care Foundation, Computers for Youths aims to close the gap in terms of education and opportunities. In areas where 75% of families do not own a personal computer in their homes, we hope that by establishing a computer center for youths in our community and utilizing educational software this would enhance learning and youth interest in computer age.
Givvy is a comprehensive online giving management system launching in early June. This is a real project with a dedicated team working without funding at this point.
Charitiable giving is personally and emotionally rewarding. By providing a framework and set of tools to improve the way we support our causes, Givvy users will feel more satisfied and successful with their giving.
Givvy is a system to enable donors to accomplish the following:
At Givvy we believe that better tools for giving can result in a better world.
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