What’s involved?
1) www.goodsearch.com
GoodSearch is an internet search engine (powered by Yahoo) which donates its advertising revenue to the charity of your choice. While it has mostly American charities for now, you can nominate organisations such as World Vision or Oxfam.
2) www.thehungersite.com
Visit this site daily to donate free food to the hungry in impoverished countries (funded by the advertising of the site's sponsors).
You can also visit The Hunger Site's partner websites, which work towards improved child healthcare, rainforest protection and animal welfare.
3) www.ripple.org
With both a search engine and a daily click function, your contributions can quickly add up to support their nominated four charities.
4) www.freerice.com
An addictive vocabulary game, aiming to improve your literacy while donating food to hungry nations for each correct answer (paid for by advertising on the site).
5) www.kiva.org
Kiva lets you connect with and loan money (as little as $25) to small businesses in the developing world. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you've sponsored. Unlike providing a donation, as loans are repaid, you get your loan money back! (More fun than keeping it in the bank!)
If you have Facebook, add the Giving Tree application http://apps.facebook.com/freeloans/ to feature Kiva businesses on your profile. As soon as a certain number of Facebook users add a particular business to their profile, the application developers will make a $25 loan on their users' behalf.
6) www.worldcommunitygrid.org
World Community Grid allows you to "donate" the time that your computer is switched on, but idle, to help conduct scientific research.
You are provided with free secure software that computes information and feeds back results to the World Community Grid, on projects such as curing cancer and fighting AIDS. Once you install the software, you will be participating in World Community Grid. No other action must be taken; it's that simple!
In 2003, with grid computing, in less than three months scientists identified 44 potential treatments to fight the deadly smallpox disease. Without the grid, the work would have taken more than one year to complete.
* MW: I am a World Community Grid member and the software provided does not slow my computer down and runs unnoticeably while I use my computer as normal. While I don't always understand the science behind the research being done, it feels great to know I'm contributing to tackling projects that benefit humanity (and watch the "points" awarded for my participation grow!).
Why should people do this?
This work is licenced under an Attribution-ShareAlike licence.
© 2008. First published on actnow.com.au
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