THE DREAM IN ACTION

I’ve really stopped blogging here, go read ryangraves.org

By now we are all well-aware of the devastating effects of the earthquake that struck Haiti two weeks ago. You’re also likely aware of the uber successful campaign ran by Red Cross to text 9-0-9-9-9 with the word “Haiti” to auto donate $10 of your next cell phone bill. Genius. As terrible as the event [...]

Thursday night I had the pleasure of meeting Charles Adler, one of the founders of Kickstarter, the New York based group funding platform. Kickstarter serves as a way for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, and explorers (as they say on the site) to make their dreams come true, post a project, and collect the [...]

In a recent interview with Peter Kim of the Dachis Group, (one of hundred’s he’s done over the last 2 weeks) Gary Vaynerchuk summed up his hard work and much of his business philosophy by saying, “Talk and things happen.” I’ve been watching WineLibraryTV for probably about a year. Gary is nuts and I won’t [...]

Back in March of this year I made it out to New York City and I had the pleasure of meeting AJ Jacobs for a drink, well a coffee and we met at a vegetarian joint called Blossom. At the time I was planning to write a book (delayed, not canceled) and his advice was [...]

In an effort to support Blog Action Day‘s Climate Change initiative I’d like to introduce you to the SurfriderFoundation. The Surfrider Foundation is a non-profit environmental organization dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world’s oceans, waves and beaches, for all people, through conservation, activism, research and education. Being from San Diego I grew [...]

This is a guest post by social entrepreneur Bobby Srivastava. I’ve known Bobby since college and he’s been focused on the social services since then. Bobby was the founding COO of  a KIPP school, and heavily involved in CPY4Youth, College Summit, and the Taproot Foundation. His insights to what it takes to be a successful [...]

Fantastic week of fundraising!  Thank you for donating and helping us spread the word about the LibraryForLaos.org campaign! Unfortunately we did not hit our lofty goal of $5,000, but we were still able to raise a substantial $1,500 that will fund reading programs and book purchases in the rural villages of Laos!  With a village reading [...]

Let me first just say… ONLY ONE DAY LEFT. Make your donation now and JOIN HUNDREDS OF OTHER PEOPLE in fighting illiteracy in Laos. So, we’ve gone 4 strong days of fund raising and you guys are awesome. The total is at $1212 and we have about 24 hours to go. My expectation is that [...]

Allen is at Big Brother Mouse I just received this picture of Allen (co-founder of LibraryforLaos.org) at Big Brother Mouse HQ in northern Laos. Allen had the opportunity to go to a BBM book party and watch and even help out with handing out the books THAT YOU”RE GOING TO DONATE FOR to the kids. [...]

Repost from Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding blog author Scott Gilbertson Most of us have seen things in our travels that make us want to help the people and places we visit. Whether it be extreme poverty, oppressive governments or even slavery, the world is not always a pretty place. Traveler Allen Burt went a step further [...]

via claudio_ramirez LibraryForLaos.org is an ONLINE campaign to raise $5,000 in 5 days for children’s books in rural Laos? It only takes 5 minutes! Dates: Monday, April 27 – Friday, May 1!!! This sprint campaign will be very powerful and will only last a week so make sure to act now then go tell all [...]

Give A Poor Child the Gift of Reading – In Just 5 Minutes! LibraryForLaos.org is an ONLINE campaign to raise $5k in 5 days for children’s books in rural Laos? It only takes 5 minutes! Dates: Monday, April 27 – Friday, May 1!!! Donate here.

Friends, I’ve never written an email like this before. Mainly because the lack of personalization, and also because I usually don’t like receiving them, please forgive me. I’ve recently been inspired by two phenomena on opposite ends of the spectrum: Impoverished illiterate children in the country Laos & the leveraged power of the social web. [...]

A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan A few months ago I wrote about the micro-financing organization Kiva.org and my donation/investment to Kiva. I think it’s a phenomenal organization. I wrote about my investments in some third world entrepreneurs through Kiva.org a few months ago here. I also found out today that [...]