Tech Networks has created a new program to help Dr. Galdikas protect orangutans and their rain forest habitat.   The program is called Hutan, which means “forest” in Indonesian.  The word Orangutan in Indonesian literally means, “people of the forest.”  Our goal is to raise $50,000 for Dr. Galdikas’ non-profit, Orangutan Foundation International,  by the end of 2009.  20 percent of the gross receipts of the Hutan program will go directly to Orangutan Foundation International.

Although this form of social entrepreneurship is a new concept for IT services, it has worked in other industries, such as Dancing Deer Baking Company’s Sweet Home program. We are looking for companies and non-profit organizations who would like to cut costs, increase the quality of their IT service, and green their IT infrastructure to participate in this program.

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1.  Stop killing people

2.  Stop destroying the planet

3.  Make sure that everyone has enough to eat.

That’s all.  Let’s not make it more complicated than it is.

Here’s how I’m doing my part:

I don’t support war.

I only eat plant-based foods

I have a small carbon footprint and it’s getting smaller all the time

and, new for 2009, I plan to give away half of my income.

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• Feeding one million children a day
• Help women and children survivors of war rebuild
• 6,000 girls scholarships in the developing world
• End human trafficking: Sustainable livelihood

Of the twenty-five projects, only one does not target the disenfranchised (I’m including the environmental causes here, because plants and animals have no voice.)   This project is Early Detection of Alzheimer’s Disease, with the goal of allowing those who had previously been undiagnosed the time to make financial arrangements and to “cherish special moments.”

Now, I’m not saying that this is not a laudable goal.  But when you compare it to feeding a million children, or ending human trafficking, I’m sorry, it doesn’t stack up for me.  Especially when you consider that the sponsor of this project is the Alzheimer’s Association, which has an annual budget of $100 million (of which $15 million is spent on fund-raising.) It’s not like this cause is going unnoticed by major funders.  In 2005, the Federal government spent $647 million to fight this disease, which has NO cure and is not likely to have one anytime soon.  The best that anyone is hoping for right now is to delay the onset of symptoms.

Back to the American Express contest.  Here’s the part that amazes me:  Guess which project has almost twice as many votes as the next most popular project?

The Alzheimer’s Foundation!

Why is this the most popular project?  Originally, I assumed that it was because many people’s lives had been touched by Alzheimer’s and they were reacting out of what Kathleen D. McCarthy, Director of the Center of Philanthropy at CUNY, calls “personalism.”  Put simply, Americans naturally tend to give to charities in which they are personally involved.

And some of the 74 comments left by people who voted for the project reflect this sentiment:

• My husband and I learned about a month ago that he has the early stages of Alzheimer’s…
• My exboyfriend’s mother suffers from this disease.
• My grandmother suffers from Alzheimer’s.

I can understand their feelings.  My father was diagnosed with mucosal melanoma in 2000 and died of the disease in 2004.  At that time, I was glad that organizations like the Melanoma Research Foundation existed, to give me information on the disease and to connect me with others who were searching for clinical trials that might lead to a cure.

But I wasn’t prepared for comments like these:

• I’m also happy that this project focuses on the United States, because this is where I live…Money I send to Africa or Cambodia, however, doesn’t affect anyone but them…
• I chose a project that benefited the USA.
• We need to address the issues here at home in the good old USA including the children of OUR country not in Africa or Cambodia…right here in the US
• I am glad to see some projects that will impact those living in the United States. We do much for developing countries. It is time that we start focusing more on those living a little closer to home.

I don’t understand why it is more important to spend billions of dollars battling incurable diseases here in the US when people are dying overseas from lack of clean drinking water, immunization, and malaria nets!

Last year, Americans gave $102 billion to religious causes, $43 billion to education, $29 billion to human services and $23 billion to health charities in the United States.  They spent only $13 billion on International charities, which is 4.3%.

As citizens of the United States of America, we have an enormous impact on what goes on in the rest of the world.  As just one example, the world needs American grain to feed itself.  World grain production has fallen short of consumption in seven of the last eight years, dropping world grain stocks to their lowest level in 34 years.  Corn prices nearly doubled and wheat prices nearly tripled between late 2005 and late 2007.  Part of this shortage is attributable to American actions such as global warming (from greenhouse gases of which we are a principal emitter), excess consumption of animal products, food wastage, and bio-fuels production.

From our creation of petro-dictatorships to ensure our supply of foreign oil, to the Global Gag rule, which freezes funds to the U.N. for family planning assistance, the US has left a huge footprint on the rest of the world.

We need to stop shouting “America First!” so loudly that we can’t hear anything else.  The good news is that young people are starting to realize this.  Gifts to environmental organizations are increasing at three times the rate of gifts to health organizations (7.7% versus 2.4%.)  International charities report the largest increase in donations–up 12.9%

So, let’s keep it up.  And next time you are asked to contribute to the United Way, or the American Cancer Society, or the American Heart Foundation, consider spending that money on organizations like Kiva.org, or the UNICEF, or Heifer International

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So, why does public radio stay on the air?  It’s because some people–regular, everyday people–contribute year after year.  It’s those same people who vote in every election, pickup litter on the sidewalk, and adopt animals from shelters.  What makes these people different?  It’s because they ask themselves:  What would the world be like if everyone behaved like me?”

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Staff Meeting Vote to Determine the Beneficiary of the Year’s Largest Charitable Donation

On December 3rd, representatives of more than 180 nations gathered on the Indonesian island of Bali to kick off a United Nations conference on global climate change. The goal for the meeting seemed fairly straightforward. A new agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions must be created. The old one, the Kyoto Protocol, is due to expire in 2012. Of course, the United States, unlike every other developed country, hasn’t even agreed to Kyoto protocol. So you can imagine how difficult the conference proceedings were. The US kept insisting that we would not consider setting targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions unless poor countries did. The US also refused to back proposals for richer countries to provide financial and technical assistance to poorer countries to help lower carbon emissions.

The two week conference was a stormy one, with the United States acting like the elephant in the room. At one point, a delegate from Papua New Guinea said: ‘If you’re not willing to lead, get out of the way.’ And then, on the night before the last day of the conference, ex-vice president Al Gore, author of the movie “an Inconvenient Truth” and the recent winner of the Nobel Peace prize, showed up to address the conference. He was not even part of the conference. But the words he said broke the log jam. The delegates went forward to create a document that all parties could agree with, even the United States. And I think that this speech is meant to inspire us, just as it inspired the delegates of that conference. So, with you permission, I’m going to read you an excerpt from his speech.

Al Gore’s Address to the UN Conference on Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia

This is not the time for business as usual. Somehow we have to summon and each of you must summon a sense of urgency here in Bali. These are not political problems. They are moral imperatives. But our capacity to strip away the disguise and see them for what they really are and then find the basis to act together to successfully address them is what is missing.

The greatest opportunity inherent in this climate crisis is not only to quickly deploy the latest technologies that will facilitate sustainable development and create the new jobs and to lift standards of living. The greatest opportunity is that in rising to meet the climate crisis, we in our generation will find the moral authority and capacity for long-term vision to get our act together in this world and take on these other crises–not political problems–and solve them. We are one people on one planet. We have one future and one destiny. We must pursue it together. And we can.

The great spanish poet from Sevilla, Antonio Muchado wrote: Path walker: There is no path. You must make the path as you walk. There is no path from Bali to Copenhagen unless you make it. It’s impossible, given the positions of the powerful countries, including my own, and the instructions from which they are not going to depart. But you can make a new path. You can make a path that goes around that blank spot. And you can go forward.

There are two paths you can choose. They lead to two different futures. Not too long from now when our children assess what you did here in Bali, what we in our generation did here in this world. As they look backward at 2007, they will ask one of these two questions. I don’t know which one they will ask. I know which one I prefer they ask. But, trust me, they will ask one of these two questions. They’ll look back, and either they will ask: “What were you thinking?” Didn’t you hear the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change four times unanimously warning the world to act? Didn’t you see the glaciers melting? Didn’t you see the North polar ice cap disappearing? Didn’t you see the deserts growing and the droughts deepening and the crops drying up? Didn’t you see the sea level rising? Didn’t you see the floods? Didn’t you pay attention to what was going on? Didn’t you care? What were you thinking?

Or, they will ask a second question, one that I much prefer them to ask. I want them to look back on this time and ask: “How did you find the moral courage to successfully address the crisis that so many said was impossible? How were you able to start the process that unleashed the moral imagination of humankind to see ourselves as a single global civilization? And when they ask that question, I want you to tell them that you saw it as a privilege to be alive at a moment when a relatively small group of people could control the destiny of all generations to come. Instead of shaking our heads at the difficulty of this task and saying “Woe is us. This is impossible. How can we do this? We’re so mad at the ones that are making it harder” We ought to feel a sense of joy that we have work that is worth doing that is so important to the future of all humankind. We ought to feel a sense of exhilaration that we are the people alive at a moment in history when we can make all the difference.

That’s who you are. You have everything you need. We have everything we need, save, perhaps, political will. But political will is a renewable resource.

We, at Tech Networks have everything we need–save, perhaps, the will to work together to make a difference. But teamwork — just like political will — is also a renewable resource. I hope that this year is the year that we can show the world that Tech Networks is not only the best IT services company in Boston, but that we CARE. We care about our clients, we care about each other, and we care about the impact we have on the world.

And, right now, we are going to take a step -TOGETHER – to show the world how much we do care.

We are going to donate as much money as we can to an organization that is working to stop global warming.
We’ve already donated $13,000 this year to various good causes, but I think that we afford to donate $25,000 more.

This money is our money. We have all worked hard for it. So I think that we should all get to participate in the choosing where the money goes.

I have picked five charities, each of which is working on global warming in some way.

Conservation International
Natural Resource Defense Fund
Sustainable Harvest International
Union of Concerned Scientists
World Wildlife Fund

We have plenty of time, so please discuss it with others and make your choice on the ballot.

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