Does a HH Dalai Lama 2008 youth Americas event peek your interest?**

A bunch of us are meeting up in SF the weekend of April 28-30 and attending his teachings that weekend. Tickets for the event are $100-$250 and go on sale Sat at 10:00 am through Ticket Master.

For more information in the meet-up or to stay connected with those of us interested in planning a 2008 event email me at friends@elkopeacepark.org

Tickets will be available through Ticketmaster at www.ticketmaster.com on Saturday, March 3rd at 10:00 AM. There are three prices of tickets: $250, $150, and $100. One ticket gets you admission to the morning and afternoon events on both Friday and Saturday.

These tickets do not include the Public Talk on Sunday, April 29th. For information on the Public Talk, please contact the American Himalayan Foundation at http://www.himalayan-foundation. org.

We also have sponsor tickets available through the event web site at http://www.dalailamabay.com. The sponsor tickets include premium seating and other benefits. For more information on sponsorship tickets and other sponsorship activities, please see the web site.

We offer accessible seating. When ordering tickets online, click on the "Request Accessible Tickets" icon on the purchase page. You will then be prompted to indicate the type of seat you are requesting and a Ticketmaster Customer Service Rep will contact you by email or phone to confirm your request.

Thank you for your interest in the Teachings of His Holiness. We look forward to seeing you in April

Please Contact:

Dalai Lama Bay 2007 Event Office

2530 Berryessa Road #345

San Jose, CA 95132-2903

510-683-0955 (Office)

info@dalailamabay2007.com

This was cool - The US government doing a story on TEN. They tell us a longer one is in the works.

http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchive s/display.html?p=washfile-englis h&y=2007&m=February& x=20070223152603AKllennoCcM0.762 2644

John Berger said:

This was cool - The US government doing a story on TEN. They tell us a longer one is in the works.

http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchive s/display.html?p=washfile-englis h&y=2007&m=February& x=20070223152603AKllennoCcM0.762 2644

Personally, I'm finding out how much I appreciate some of my government partners! Good job. And, a great article.

I was catching up on some blogs last night and saw a post on the Kiva blog that made me worry about social investing. Ill link to the full post below. It talks about their legal structure and how difficult it has been for them to raise money.

That got me really worried - if Kiva, an amazing group that has received incredible press, has a hard time with funding - what does that mean for the other startup social enterprises?

http://kivachronicles.blogspot.c om/2007/01/tax-status-revisited. html

In case ya'll haven't seen this.

It's a 'report on 'hybrid' organizational structures for social enterprise. Suggestively, entity structure of social enterprise venture may be key to resolving financing issues.

John, I've got a copy of the most recent San Diego magazine (luxury lifestyle stuff). There's an article about the sex trade in San Diego, but it's the cover that's most eye-catching, in a thoroughly ironic way.

Picture this: top title "Human Trafficking: Slave Labor, Sex & Big Money". And then contrast that with the cover photo: teenage-looking pouty model, bedecked in jewels, looking like she's trying to seduce the photographer. Hmm. Makes you wonder where the problem originates. Anyway, if I don't get around to scanning the cover, I'll at least put it in the mail to you (along with some edits/recommendations I made on your Inv. Circle application).

I'm finding the reports on the Uganda conference absolutely inspiring -- read them one and all if you haven't yet.

Question for Christina. It looks like you've got an abundance of products (not to mention product-makers). What specifically do you have in inventory right now, and what are your wholesale prices?

It would be great to see Food Chain members focus on LiA for a while -- not brainstorming kind of projects, the kind we tend to like, but actual work that would get rid of her excess inventory and bring in some well-deserved, much-needed funds.

(Or, maybe you can answer this question, Mark?)

I'll take on pass at that answer...

The best thing to sell from my POV is the single string recycled paper beaded bracelets, and I'm working on some kind of packaging ideas to share soon too.

$12 USD retail

$6 ea wholesale for a collection of 100, various colors

All first time orders pre-paid please, check or PayPal

I can drop ship directly from Portland and ship free to destinations in the US.

Can you post a photo of the bracelets, Mark?

I'm going to be putting together a bracelet video that will include photos and video of the bracelets being made as well.

Rewriting my journal notes was one thing, breaking photos into three photo montages and adding music was yet another thing altogether. King of the hill will be trying to break up 3.5+ hours of video footage into something interesting to watch and smaller chunks.

Problems right now uploading files to o/net...will get you a pic soon.

here's a quick pic

Not quite exactly food chain, but helpful for some of us....many years of discussion come to fruition!

Very interesting, Evonne -- I've started a thread on it in the ODF Group: USPTO Pilot :: Peer to Patent

:) nmw

My 2 cents,

Chancer or a dancer

Aloha,

Dominique

O Points after a whole week.

We must be doing something wright!

Thanks for the reminder Dominique - shirking my responsibility for no apparent reason.

John, nice tidy article. I hadn't realized the connection of TEN to music through Susan. When I was in India with high school students, we couldn't believe what a vibrant place music and dance played in the lives of the young people we met. I'll see if I can dig up a video or two I made.

But just thought that was a wonderful connection to be able to make with the women that you work with, speaking through music as it were. It was the image of the girl playing the guitar that made me think of it and helped snap the traveling musicians of a month back into perspective.

Anyway, congrats on the piece.

First time I've seen a moving thingy (the icon in front of the web address), and thought others might be interested.

Look here...

http://www.inkjetart.com/Epson_3 800_Pro/

cj

Its called a favicon (favico.ico) and its basically an animated transparent gif. here is another example: http://www.townhall.com/

Just came across this website and thougt some may be interested...

http://lisc.org

cj

Thanks Lars, just couldn't remember what it was called.

[Edited by author: Craig Steel on 08 Mar 2007 10:16 PST: edit]

Here is an article on animated favicons http://www.mikestestsite.net/DOF /www/index.html

The folks at NetSquared passed this along - I'll put Peace Tiles in, and hope its a place where others can showcase their tech efforts:

NetSquared Project Nomination feature is up at http://www.netsquared.org/projects/nominate

Please share info about your project, and encourage others to comment on it and to vote on it in April so that it may be featured at the NetSquared Conference. More details are available on the site at http://www.netsquared.org/projects

Also, the folks at NTen, the nonprofit technology network have a video contest up about how NPOs are using tech to advance movements, etc: http://nten.org/ntc-video

Cheers,

lars

[Edited by author: Lars Hasselblad Torres on 08 Mar 2007 16:43 PST: whoops - there it is.]

[Edited by author: Lars Hasselblad Torres on 08 Mar 2007 16:48 PST: accuracy or whatever]

Finally getting over here to say hello to you folks this month. The Uganda conference is finally over - seems like it lingered as a primary focus of my time for a long while. Still some loose bits here and there to post, but it's nice to feel able to slowly start moving away from all that. That said, it was a truly magical time in many respects and I am sorry those of you who were not here had to miss it. Mark, Linda and I brainstormed briefly about how to replicate the concept with other groups. I think it could be doable. If any of you would like to float the idea of an immersion experience aka extreme conferencing experience with a group you know, let's chat.

Had a great foodchain moment today when John Berger pm'd me about a site he'd found called http://c4-world.com - some Danes coming to Uganda to do a fact-finding mission on how they can use Danish pension fund investments to create new microfinance instruments for Africa. I posted something on their blog and got a call within 1 hour! They are coming to visit LiA tomorrow. I told them that a hole I see on the ground currently is microfinance for group projects - like the soap project that's currently under discussion as a result of an idea proposed in Gulu. Who knows what may come, but anyway thanks John for the pointer!

What needs to be trimmed this month? How funny you should ask, Dominique. Unfortunately we've spent far too much money buying products from our members. A huge imbalance I see is that our human resources have been 95% usurped by managing payments to all the LiA members involved in this and a number of other income-related activities, and only about 5% in market development. Part of that has to do with connectivity, which continues to be a rough challenge. Part of it has to do with member expectations that some of the LiA staff have really been working hard on trying to correct. Not being able to continue to buy our members' products to the same degree as we did during the holiday season feels like a reduction in benefits to many members. I was really heartened when all of the LiA staff volunteered to take reductions in their own salaries so that more paid (focused) positions could be created that they saw as urgent.

Meanwhile - connectivity allowing - we are giving another go at trying to share more information through the tools available here at Onet. There is a monthly operational discussion trying to happen over here: http://www.omidyar.net/group/lia /news/79/ - though at the moment I am talking into empty LiA-space due to persisting connectivity/power issues at both WE Centers <sigh>. There are some draft job descriptions over there that I could really use some input on if anyone is game - I'd like to standardize them to a certain degree. Maybe someone has ideas on a kind of framework that every job description should follow?

Luke, you are really sweet. Revamping the price list is on my agenda. At the moment Mark indeed has a huge stock of the paper bead bracelets in portland and we have even more of those in stock here. We've been talking with mark about setting up a sales page at ned.com that we can market at LiA and Kiva. A huge additional problem we are facing right now is that we no longer have a functioning paypal account (long story re: EU regulations on me living in Uganda but having an account linked to Belgium). Still need to explore with mark the vibility of running all LiA payments through ned.com - we have people wanting to contribute to the breakfast club who now don't have a way to get money to us, and a couple of other donations/payments are pending until we get an online payments solution sorted out.

Also RE; the bracelets, it was suggested in Gulu that we continue to brand each product with a portion of sales revenue reserved for social project that the LiA community is implementing. Right now we can most definitely use some general funds to recover from the recent overspending, however, so I'm on the fence as to what we should do with the bracelets now. What do others think? Whatever we decide, the breakfast club is definitely something we can't postpone fundraising on for much longer. Trimming the income we are able to provide to adult members is painful enough - disruptions to the kids' breakfast, though, is simply unacceptable. The Onet Q4 money is helping, but it's not enough for the rest of the year and I would really love to use it on program funding for the kids since individuals have been so willing to help pay for a day's food. One thing about that I'd love some feedback on is the daily amount. With recent general price increases in Gulu and the increase in the number of kids, it's currently costing us about $35 per day to feed 250 kids - not exactly the easy $15 it once was. Should this change how we raise money for breakfast?

one of the things hanging over my head is an in the works application for a Fair Trade certification. If I understand the info I received correctly, an existing company with fair trade status in Uganda also needs to visit us. We've also got an in the works application to the International Humanities Center, but not sure if that's still appropriate to follow through on at this point.

Phew - that was a lot to get out but I am sure I've left many things out that I'd thought about sharing with you all. Glad to be back in the foodchain, anyway.

.piece

C

p.s. - yes there was one more thing to share... pretty excited about this joint project with Norbert actually (who is across the street at the WE Center working on the new computer installation as I write. Opok Farms: sustainable living for child-headed households in Northern Uganda

[Edited by author: Christina Jordan on 12 Mar 2007 13:26 PST: changed buying products for our members to buying products from our members ]

[Edited by author: Christina Jordan on 12 Mar 2007 13:41 PST: added Kiva to the marketing mix and the Opok Farms link as an afterthought]

Advanced tickets to the Dreams of Freedom event in NY are now available online at www.wanttickets.com/dreams.

For details see http://www.dreamsfreedom.com/

A (true) friend's eye is a good mirror .

Irish Proverb

Leon from Mexico

Mirreila from Barcelona

Bob from Canada