Check it out! My brother and I have launched, http://improvingyourworld.org.
You can support us and the causes by:
1. Re-posting this bulletin (Or starting a vote bulletin where everyone who votes signs their name and re-posts)
2. Adding our graphics on your page
3. Voting every day
4. Giving us feedback about what sucks and what’s cool.
THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT!!
Digg this!
Improving Your World is practically giving away advertising. It’s a start-up launch that is going to go viral. ALL ADVERTISING DOLLARS DIRECTLY BENEFIT things like Malaria and the eradication of the Guinea worm disease…In essence, the advertiser gets traffic while supporting good will. Go to our about page to learn more.
We are offering twenty-five (25) 140X60 ads for sale on our thank-you page.
The first 10 advertisers to e-mail us can advertise for the entire month for $1. The next 15, sorry, it’ll be $10.
Still not a bad deal!
The site has had variable traffic for the few weeks it has been in operation, the official launch is July 10th. It has already been featured on Killer Startups. We are predicting a large spike in traffic as this site promotes itself. A perfect opportunity for potential advertisers to Improve the World AND be seen.
Check out our advertising page to e-mail us and for other opportunities.
And, if you don’t mind, please digg this!
Thank you- Our records indicate you have already voted today. Your vote will be counted only once daily. Regardless of what charity you have voted for, you have made a difference. The ads below make Improving Your World possible. Please take a look at them!
Your Impact
Regardless of which cause you have voted for, you have made a difference. Thank you. Learn more about what you are helping
Current Results:
Current Results (updated in real time)
Vent at our forum here.
Challenge
Alright, we’ve made a decision and we need some help. We’ve got a big goal to reach and we cant possibly get there alone…
We need 100,000 votes by August 4th.
What should you do? Let’s simplify it for you: spread the word, vote, spread the word, vote. That’s it. Improve Your World one vote at a time.
Let’s put it into perspective. 100,000 votes is really only 3,333 people voting 30 times. Not so tough is it?
Now what? Visit our share page where you can e-mail friends, get graphics, and spread the word! Click below:
We count on our visitors to make our site what it is, but we count on the press to spread the word to our visitors! Do you have a blog, website, newsletter, or any other site that you could write an entry on?
For every story that is written IYW will feature your link on our press page and we will place a link to your story on the homepage for at least 24 hours.
However, understand that this isn’t an attempt to get biased coverage of our site. We want honest write ups and it’s the full discretion of IYW staff to determine which stories will be featured. Thank You! If you know of coverage that isn’t listed below or you have a story of your own that you have written please e-mail us below.
We need your help!
IYW depends on advertisers to improve the world. If you’ve been directed to this page from a link on our site, that is a link we need to fill with advertisers in order to give more money to the charities!
What can you do? If you know of anyone who would like to advertise or who might like to advertise…let them know about our site and direct them to this link http://improvingyourworld.org/advertising. If you don’t…that’s quite ok…just keep on voting and the advertisers will come!
If you would like to advertise:
Please understand that IYW is in the start-up phase. We are working on bringing numbers to the site on a consistent basis. This is an excellent advertising model for you because it can reach consumers who will appreciate your good will. This will not deem your company as strictly an advertiser, but as a social enterprise, a business that is willing to do some good. Please keep that in mind when making the decision to place your ad on our site. The money from your advertisement will go to the winning non profit at the end of the month.
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Pricing
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Home page banner (468×60). File can be gif, or jpg. $100/month.
Left sidebar square ads. (125×125) File can be gif or jpg. $75/month
Sponsored Links. $25/month
Thank-you page. 140×60. $10/month
Restrictions: Use good judgement here. We will not display anything we find offensive or innapropriate for the site. The sole discretion is up to us.
We are very open with pricing until our traffic picks up…please e-mail us with what you have in mind and we will certainly try to accommodate it. Thank you and continue improving
-IYW
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How it all works
Essentially, here at IYW we are using the broad scope of internet technology and mass collaboration to improve the world. We have set up a simple interface that allows visitors to learn about different organizations, share these organizations with others and then vote on which organization they would like to get the donation.
Our donations are coming from corporate sponsors who will be advertising on the post-vote page. We have chosen the non-profits that we are featuring based on a number of reasons. Read about the non-profits. Your role in the process of selecting which company gets the money can be as simple as voting once. However, we encourage you to spread the word and vote as much as possible (you can vote once daily). More votes mean more money from the sponsors and more money from the sponsors equals more money for the non-profit that wins! Vote now!
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Half the Sky offers the love and concern of family for thousands of orphaned children in China who have lost theirs. Their goal is to ensure that every one of China’s orphans has a caring adult in her life.
They provide individual nurture and stimulation for babies, innovative preschools that encourage an early love of learning, personalized learning opportunities for older children, and loving — and most important, permanent — foster homes for children whose special needs will keep them from being adopted.
Seva Foundation
Seva Foundation started as a small group with a big idea, and the idea was this: To be fully human, we must translate our compassion and concern into useful service.
That simple statement conveys something about the nature of compassion that is expressed in most spiritual traditions around the world — that compassion is not just about helping those less fortunate than ourselves, it’s about
the realization that we are all connected as one human family.
That sense of compassionate service motivates all of Seva’s work, as they build programs that support people around the world in their efforts to build healthy communities.
Seva’s programs, spanning many cultures and countries, share certain fundamental principles:
Serving the Underserved
Their programs serve people who have been economically, politically, or otherwise marginalized. They change their approach to relate to other cultures and circumstances, reaching out in very different ways, for example, to nomads in Tibet, women in Tanzania, or indigenous Mayans in Guatemala. Their aim is to build a bridge of compassion between our donors and the people they serve — people around the world who have the fewest resources.
Seva embraces an expanded concept of health, recognizing that spiritual and cultural renewal, economic self-sufficiency, and basic civil and human rights are as important to well-being as medical care.
Promoting Sustainability
Seva’s programs foster self-reliance and aim to reduce dependence on outside assistance. In the communities where they work, they share skills and technlogy appropriate for local conditions, assist local decision-making, and help launch projects that will become financially self-sufficient. This transfer of knowledge enables communities to care for their own, now and into the future.
Working Through Partnerships
Seva forms long-term partnerships with those they serve. By developing close relationships with local organizations and community leaders, they build trust, mutual respect and cultural understanding. They honor the ability of communities to define their own solutions to the challenges they face.
Playpumps International
| The Water Problem
All this can change A life-changing and life-saving invention – the PlayPump® water system — can provide easy access to clean drinking water, bring joy to children, and lead to improvements in health, education, gender equality, and economic development. The PlayPump systems are innovative, sustainable, patented water pumps powered by children at play. Installed near schools, the PlayPump system doubles as a water pump and a merry-go-round for children. |
Keep-a-Breast.org
The Keep A Breast Foundation is a unique non-profit organization creating plaster forms of the female torso, customized by fine artists and auctioned to raise funding for breast cancer. Our mission is to produce art events that increase breast cancer awareness among young people and benefit breast cancer education, prevention and treatment programs in communities around the world.
Combining sculpture, philanthropy, and symbolic artistry, The Keep A Breast Foundation is a nonprofit breast cancer awareness organization unlike any other. Keep A Breast creates one-of-a-kind plaster forms of the female torso that are customized by fine artists and auctioned to raise consciousness and funding for breast cancer research and treatment. The casts are physical representations of a simple truth— while breast cancer attacks all women without prejudice, it is the powerful individual present in all women that will conquer it. Keep A Breast’s goal is to bring a fresh perspective to this important cause in a way that is relevant and inspiring to today’s youth.
This original approach to fundraising for breast cancer was founded by Shaney Jo Darden and Mona Mukherjea-Gehrig in 2000. Keep A Breast has produced events across the globe raising thousands of dollars on behalf of local, national and international organizations such as the Young Survival Coalition, Susan G. Koman Foundation, The Breast Cancer Fund, Asha-Killgallen Fund, Kapi’olani Breast Center, and Europadonna, to name a few.
Thank you- Your vote has been counted!
The ads below make Improving Your World possible. Please take a look at them!
Your Impact
Regardless of which cause you have voted for, you have made a difference. Thank you. Learn more about what you are helping
Current Results:
How does the site work?
When you visit our homepage you will see our vote options. These options allow you to choose from 3 charitable organizations on which to vote. The organization with the most votes will receive the MOST sponsorship monies at month’s end (in proportion to their number of votes). If one non-profit recieve 90% of the votes, they will recieve 90% of donations. The remaining 10% will be distributed accordingly between the two remaining non-profits. After voting on the charitable organization of your choice you will be redirected to the Thank You Page. Here, you you will see small ads for our site sponsors. There is no charge to you. 100% of money from these sponsored advertisements will go to our charitable partners (see non-profits page).
Where do sponsorships come from and how does it all work?
Sponsorships come from companies that see the potential for worldly change through the internet medium. We have found sponsors who share our concern with helping those in need. These sponsors agree to pay for advertising space and we in turn give the money to chairty. However, the more people we get viewing the site, the more money we will be able to collect from advertisers. Different areas of the site may have different dollar values and this is all based on the type and structure of advertising agreement the site sponsors have with Improving Your World.
Essentially, this site involves positive re-enforcement of people helping people:
Therefore, the more sponsors the site has, the more funding is available for donation. Likewise more visitors means more advertising fees we can collect and thus, more improvements we can make together.
What social networks can the site be found on?
Currently improvingyourworld.org can be found on myspace and facebook. To add us: Click the following links:
How often can I vote for the non-profit of my choice?
Although you can click as many times as you wish, clicks will be counted only once per visitor per day (24 hour period). Improving Your World will monitor the clicks per non-profit to determine how to allocate funds. You may click as many times as you wish, yet it will not be recorded continually.
How can the voting system be moderated to ensure it is fair?
The voting system is setup on the basis that each person can vote once per day. While this does create some bias if an individual favors one organization over another, each organization does have an equal opportunity to get the most money. Voting for one organization does not necessarily mean that organization will recieve more money. Rather, it means that they will be more likely to get the highest amount of sponsorship-generated funds.
How much money has been generated?
Please see our Results page for a detailed breakdown of funding generated.
How many people have clicked?
Please look at the software on our thank-you page that displays in real time our voting results. Look here.
Is Improving Your World a nonprofit organization?
We are in fact, not a nonprofit organization. We work on the basis of committing as much funds as possible to any of the given charities per month. However, in order to keep the site going with scheduled maintence and upkeep, we do have ads on our homepage for non-charitable causes. We also have a shop where we sell items and donate a portion to charity.
PRIVACY STATEMENT:
Our Privacy Policy is simple: we will do our best to protect your personal information. We do not share our site’s visitors personal information with anyone. Only those involved in the construction and/or maintenance of the site will have access on a limited basis to personal information.
Our site options allow user interaction relative to our content: by deciding to vote, click, or post on the site you agree that this is at your own discretion and that we (IYW) are not responsible for your content nor the resulting response from other users.
If you do not want to receive email from us, or if you’d like to amend any information you’ve provided in various components of the site, please send an email in the About section of the site.
Links to Other Sites
If you choose to access a link provided on our site, you will be subject to the subsequent privacy policy of the new website.
Your Consent
By using our Web site you consent to the terms under this Privacy Policy. We reserve the right to change this policy at anytime without notice.
A Note About children.
Although children are permitted to use this site we ask that children under 14 submit no personal information to us. If you are a minor you can use this site with only the permission and direction of your parents or guardians.
Learn more about the causes before you vote.
With less than 10,000 cases left in the world it is possible to eradicate this disease. Read more.
Piglets’ tails are cut off and their teeth are pulled out without the use of painkillers. Read more.
Every 30 seconds someone dies from malaria. Read more.
Watch & Learn
Nothing But Nets
Watch the video and learn how Nothing But Nets is fighting malaria:
Did this video move you? Share it with others. Discuss it with others.
Nothing but Net’s campaign to prevent malaria
All material taken from http://nothingbutnets.net. All proceeds from clicks to fight Malaria will go to the task force at the NothingButNets to provide nets to fight this awful disease.
Malaria is a disease caused by the blood parasite Plasmodium, which is transmitted by mosquitoes. Malaria, from the Medieval Italian words mala aria or “bad air,” infects more than 500 million people a year and kills more than a million— one person dies about every 30 seconds.
Malaria is particularly devastating in Africa, where it is a leading killer of children. In addition to being home to the deadliest strain of malaria and the mosquito best equipped to transmit the disease, many areas in Africa lack the proper infrastructure and resources to fight back.
The disease is a self-perpetuating problem with large-scale impact on societies and economies. Malaria accounts for up to half of all hospital admissions and outpatient visits in Africa. In addition to the burden on the health system, malaria illness and death cost Africa approximately $12 billion a year in lost productivity. The effects permeate almost every sector. Malaria increases school absenteeism, decreases tourism, inhibits foreign investment, and even affects the type of crops that are grown.
Malaria is both a preventable and treatable disease. It can be prevented by giving families and individuals insecticide-treated bed nets to sleep under and taking steps to kill mosquitoes where they breed and when they enter houses to feed at night. At the same time, anti-malarial drugs such as artemisinin and other combination therapies that are widely available can treat malaria before it becomes deadly.
Malaria has been brought under control and even eliminated in many parts of Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Yet in Africa, with increasing drug resistance and struggling health systems, malaria infections have actually increased during the last three decades.
Despite the magnitude of the problem, there is a simple and cost-effective solution to prevent malaria deaths. For just $10, we can purchase a bed net, deliver it to a family, and explain its use. Bed nets work by creating a protective barrier against mosquitoes at night, when the vast majority of transmissions occur. A family of four can sleep under an insecticide-treated bed net, safe from malaria, for up to four years. The benefits of bed nets extend even further than the family. When enough nets are used, the insecticide used to deter mosquitoes makes entire communities safer—including even those individuals who do not have nets.
Although $10 for a bed net may not sound like much, the cost makes them out of reach for most people at risk of malaria, many of whom survive on less than $1 a day. Nets are a simple, life-saving solution, but we need your help to provide them to those in need.
Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are the most effective drugs currently available for treating malaria. Less expensive ACTs need to be developed and strategies to deliver them need to be implemented and evaluated so that the therapies can be accessed by the people who need them. Artemisinin-based combination therapies are also used to help pregnant women by administering at least two monthly treatment doses of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. More than 70 percent of pregnant women in Africa attend prenatal clinics at least once during their pregnancy. A regime of SP helps protect pregnant women from possible death and anemia and also prevents malaria-related low birth weight in infants, which causes about 100,000 infant deaths annually in Africa.
While bed nets are generally effective in Africa wherever they are consistently used, sometimes specialized teams are organized to spray an insecticide on the inside walls of houses (a process known as Indoor Residual Spraying or IRS). IRS kills female mosquitoes when they rest on sprayed surfaces after feeding on a person, reducing malaria transmission to others. Only female mosquitoes can transmit malaria. In special circumstances, teams are also organized to eliminate or treat mosquito breeding sites with another type of environmentally friendly insecticide. However, because the African malaria mosquitoes are so prolific and have such a broad range of breeding habits, this type of “larval control” may not be applicable in some areas.
*FACT CHECKED BY THE US CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL
AND PREVENTION (CDC)
PETA
Watch PETA’s portrayal of the factory farming system of modern agriculture and the effect it has on the lives’ of animals:
Did this video move you? Share it with others. Discuss it with others.
The fight for ethical treatment of animals
All material taken from http://goveg.com All proceeds from clicks to support equal rights for animals will go to the task force at PETA to fight this cruelty.
The green pastures and idyllic barnyard scenes of years past are now distant memories. On today’s factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy windowless sheds, wire cages, gestation crates, and other confinement systems. These animals will never raise their families, root in the soil, build nests, or do anything that is natural to them. They won’t even feel the sun on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughter.
Animals on today’s factory farms have no legal protection from cruelty that would be illegal if it were inflicted on dogs or cats: neglect, mutilation, genetic manipulation, and drug regimens that cause chronic pain and crippling, transport through all weather extremes, and gruesome and violent slaughter. Yet farmed animals are no less intelligent or capable of feeling pain than are the dogs and cats we cherish as companions.
The factory farming system of modern agriculture strives to maximize output while minimizing costs. Cows, calves, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and other animals are kept in small cages, in jam-packed sheds, or on filthy feedlots, often with so little space that they can’t even turn around or lie down comfortably. They are deprived of exercise so that all their bodies’ energy goes toward producing flesh, eggs, or milk for human consumption. The giant corporations that run most factory farms have found that they can make more money by cramming animals into tiny spaces, even though many of the animals get sick and some die. Industry journal National Hog Farmer explains, “Crowding Pigs Pays,” and egg-industry expert Bernard Rollins writes that “chickens are cheap; cages are expensive.”
They are fed drugs to fatten them faster and to keep them alive in conditions that would otherwise kill them, and they are genetically altered to grow faster or to produce much more milk or eggs than they would naturally. Many animals become crippled under their own weight and die within inches of water and food.
While the suffering of all animals on factory farms is similar, each type of farmed animal faces different types of cruelty.
When they have finally grown large enough, animals raised for food are crowded onto trucks and transported over many miles through all weather extremes to the slaughterhouse. Those who survive this nightmarish journey will have their throats slit, often while they are still fully conscious. Many are still conscious when they are plunged into the scalding water of the defeathering or hair-removal tanks or while their bodies are being skinned or hacked apart.
Carter Center and the Guinea Worm Eradication Program
Watch the video to learn more about this disease:
Did this video move you? Share it with others. Discuss it with others.
Guinea Worm Eradication Program
All material taken from http://www.cartercenter.org All proceeds from clicks to fight the eradication of Guinea worm will go to the task force at the Carter Center to fight this awful disease.
Often known as the “fiery serpent,” Guinea worm disease (dracunculiasis) has existed since ancient times, but an international coalition led by The Carter Center is now close to eradicating it. With its access to world leaders, the Center is mobilizing government officials and garnering support for the Guinea worm disease eradication effort, while working at the village level to empower and educate communities to take simple measures to prevent the disease from recurring.
How Guinea Worm is Contracted
Guinea worm disease is contracted when a person drinks stagnant water that is contaminated with microscopic water fleas carrying infective larvae. Inside a person’s body, the larvae grow for a year, becoming thin thread-like worms, up to 3-feet-long. These worms create agonizingly painful blisters in the skin, through which they slowly exit the body. People with emerging worms must not bathe or step in sources of drinking water, because a worm will release hundreds of thousands of eggs, or larvae, into the water. Water fleas then eat the larvae, and people who drink unfiltered water from the pond become infected — continuing the life cycle of the parasite.
Prevalence of Guinea Worm
When The Carter Center began leading the campaign to eradicate Guinea worm in 1986, there were 3.5 million cases of the disease in 20 countries in Africa and Asia. Today, there are fewer than 10,000 cases in five African countries—Sudan, Ghana, Nigeria, Niger, Mali.
Where Guinea Worm is Found (PDF)
Country-By-Country Count (PDF)
Number of Cases 1989-2007 (PDF)
Activities by Country
Impact on Communities
The presence of Guinea worm disease is an indicator of extreme poverty, including the absence of safe drinking water, in a community. Entire communities suffer, not just the individuals afflicted with Guinea worm disease. Victims are totally incapacitated as a worm emerges from their body. Children cannot attend school. Farmers cannot farm.
Communities suffer food shortages when their residents are unable to work. In southeastern Nigeria, rice farmers in a single county lost $20 million in just one year due to outbreaks of Guinea worm disease.
Treatment for Guinea Worm Disease
There is no vaccine or medicine to treat or prevent Guinea worm disease. Infected people won’t even realize they have it until a year after drinking contaminated water, when they will develop blisters as the worm begins to emerge. Once that happens, a local health worker or the patient will wrap the live worm around a piece of gauze, extracting it from the body little by little. The long, painful process often takes up to one month.
Preventive Measures
Health education and low-technology measures to promote behavioral change are used to prevent Guinea worm disease. The most effective way to prevent it is to filter the tiny water fleas out of drinking water. The Carter Center provides families with fine-mesh filter cloths that fit over clay pots used to hold water. Some people, especially nomadic groups, receive pipe filters, which are small straw-like personal filters that can be worn around the neck. These simple but revolutionary devices enable people to drink water safely no matter where they are.
Other important interventions include treating ponds with a safe chemical larvicide called ABATE©, donated by BASF, and constructing boreholes or deep wells.
Banishing a Disease Forever
Humans are a Guinea worm’s only host, so spread of the disease can be controlled by identifying all cases and modifying human behavior to prevent it from recurring. Once all human cases are eliminated, the disease will be eradicated. Today, cases of Guinea worm disease are down more than 99% since 1986, making it poised to be the next disease after smallpox to be eradicated.
It will be the first parasitic disease to be eradicated and the first disease to be eradicated without vaccines or medicines. The only other “active” eradication campaign is against polio. The Carter Center’s International Task Force for Disease Eradication has identified only six diseases as potentially eradicable.
Abortion
Abuse
Adolescent pregnancy
Crime
Discrimination
Embryonic stem cell research
Energy (Oil, Electricity)
Genetic engineering
Gay rights
Gun control
HIV/AIDS
Justice
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Peace
Population
Poverty
Racism
Social Discrimination
Social Equality
Social Work
War
Share & Improve
A few ways you can help spread the word.
1. E-mail. We’ve created a share this link which will allow you to instantly send an e-mail to your people.
2. Graphics. There are graphics for you to place on your social networking profiles, your blogs, your websites, etc.
3. Word of mouth. If you’ve been told you have a big mouth, USE IT!
1. E-mail.
Simply click the Sharethis button below to send a quick email!
2. Link back to us.
Copy and paste ALL of the code in the box next to the graphic you like. You can then place it on your myspace, facebook, or any other profiles, websites, blogs, etc. Looking for something bigger or a little different? Ask us…if we have the time we would be more then willing to create one specifically for you!
3. Press.
Have a website you could feature us on? Know of a website that we could trade links with? Have a blog you could write an article about us on? We want to hear from you! Go to our press page for details:
4. Vote.
If you haven’t voted already: Vote!
How it all works
Essentially, here at IYW we are using the broad scope of Internet technology and mass collaboration to improve the world. We have set up a simple interface that allows visitors to learn about different organizations, share these organizations with others and then vote on which cause they would like to get the donation.
Each non-profit receives a proportionate amount of donations in relation to votes they recieve. Meaning, if Cause X gets all of the votes, they get all of the money. Yet, if Cause X receives half the votes, they receive half the money. The remaining sponsorship donations are distributed in the same fashion for the remaining causes.
Our donations are coming from corporate sponsors who will be advertising on the post-vote page. We have chosen different causes in the world that need direct attention. Your role in the process of selecting which cause gets the money can be as simple as voting once. However, we encourage you to spread the word and vote as much as possible (you can vote once daily). More votes mean more money from the sponsors and more money from the sponsors equals more money to improve the world! Vote now!
About us
Improving your World’s (IYW) mission is just that; To improve the world. My brother and I started this site with the understanding that although initiative from one person can surely make a difference to the problems we are currently facing in the world, collaborating with others can truly expedite the process.
We owe gratitude to everyone who participates in the process as this is definitely not a one man show. Without the advertisers, the voters, the non-profits, and all the freeware we used to build this site it wouldn’t be possible.
We are open to any and all questions, comments, gripes, that you may have regarding the site. Just contact us below and depending on how busy we are we’ll get back to you ASAP!
-IYW
