By Ken Satterfield
Word&Way
There are many ways of showing concern for others. Here’s how you can spend a typical day this season without going any further than your keyboard:
6:30 a.m. Rise, shine and share some devotional time at Following the Star. The Flash-driven experience from Passport, Inc. is designed to help you slow down and meditate, accompanied by peaceful music.
7:58 a.m. Fire up your office computer and visit The Hunger Site. In less than a minute at this and five other cause-related sites, your clicks provide food, healthcare, books, habitat protection and animal care. Last year, visitors contributed more than 49.6 million cups of food alone. Purchasing from the sponsors provides additional sponsor contributions.
10:05 a.m. Take a minute during your morning break to exercise your mind with vocabulary questions at AIDtoCHILDREN.com. Each correct response generates .25 cents to impoverished children through World Vision Canada. It only takes 25 cents to feed a child a single meal, so answer several questions. And HelpThirst.com is a new site with a memorization test donating the cost of a cup of water to World Vision.
11:22 a.m. Your frequent flier statement arrives and you have more miles than you plan to use. Go to the Award Donation Center, a non-profit that facilitates donating miles to charities and individual need requests. Another site, points.com, allows you to combine, donte or trade points.
12:12 p.m. Keep up-to-date with your friends on Facebook and use applications such as Causes to invite some them to support organizations you care about, such as Future Leadership Foundation and Soles4Souls.org.
1:25 p.m. After lunch, start your Internet research at GoodSearch.com, powered by Yahoo. Fifty percent of the search engine’s revenues goes to benefit more than 70,000 charities and schools.
3:18 p.m. Visit FreeRice.com during your afternoon break. It is best-known for a vocabulary game with correct answers donating 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program, with more than 51.5 billion grains given since it began in October 2007. Use the Subjects tab at the top to find more rice-donating quizzes in art identification, chemistry symbols, English grammar, geography, language learning and math. Other games are listed at snipurl.com/charitygames.
6:33 p.m. At home, you view the powerful video at AdventConspiracy.org that inspires you to budget for your church, missions and charities this Christmas. With the number of charitable organizations to choose from, it helps to have a Web tool like ServantMatch. It is sponsored by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), an accreditation agency for Christian ministries. Using categories, keywords or geographical locations, ServantMatch suggests particitating members.
8:19 p.m. Wanting to donate more than money, you return to the computer. There you find a two-part blog post at NEED: The Humanitarian Magazine, “Gifts That Give”. Options include malaria-treated nets (nothingbutnets.net), livestock for food sources (heifer.org), landmine-sniffing rats (herorat.org), worms and hygiene kits (Oxfamamerica.org) and microfinance loans (kiva.org). More ideas are at NaturalNews.com.
9:50 p.m. You stifle a yawn. Bedtime already! You power down your computer, knowing that you have only experienced part of many, many possibilities.
The computer is a great tool, but remember the needs around you requiring a human touch. Take time to phone someone, volunteer or just share a smile or listening ear to those that you meet.
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