Hear Me

PATCH (Personal Action To CHange)

This is a group I set up to try and promote all the things we can do as individuals to make the world a better place. I like to think it is more about practical actions that anyone can do, rather than talking or putting money in a pot.

Sometimes we can be fooled into thinking that what we do doesn't matter because we are so small and insignificant. I disagree, the majority of people are just going along with everyone else, if enough of us do what we feel is right then the others will follow us, we don't need to wait for governments, legislation or anything else, we can do it ourselves. We just need to stand up and be different and do what we think is right.

http://www.omidyar.net/group/pat ch/

non Americans

As a European I feel a bit of a fish out of water, this is a place for non Americans to congregate and perhaps a place for Americans to hang if they want to get an external view.

http://www.omidyar.net/group/non am/

Oxfam

The Oxfam group got started as part of the $25K experiment.

http://www.oxfam.org/

Oxfam is a great organisation, they show intelligent thought in the delivery of Aid and are a major player in the worst hit areas of the world.

I believe that we have enough organisations doing things, what we need is to focus on delivering help. Rather than re-inventing the wheel we should use the wheels we already have, the economies of scale show that large charities such as Oxfam can be very effective.

The Charity Issue.

Charity is about giving, it is about loving enough to give to others, it is not about investing, or seeing a return, Oxfam is not a profit making organisation ploughing money back into good work, it is a charity, plain simple boring and dull. BUT DOING A LOT OF GOOD.

Here is a link to the Oxfam Group

http://www.omidyar.net/group/oxf am/

UPLIFT: Well I think this is some new fangled word that people have come up with to replace the world charity, as if "charity" is a bad thing???

Load of twaddle to me, charity is a great thing. We give because we want to give, not because some marketing guru plays a guilt card on us. Indeed some of us steer away from people who ask in that way. Partly because we are exhausted by all the appeals and partly because they have a marketing angle a way to raise money and there are more deserving causes that we can find don't.

It is sad enough that charities can no longer rely on people giving and that they now pervert the true essence of charity by asking (aka begging) and as with beggars on the street, the good ones are the ones who get the money not the most needy or the most deserving.

Charity is born out of a desire to want to make the world a better place, if you are a charitable person, think hard about the charities you support and what they will do. A charity could be funding animal experiments, buying fast German cars for staff, or feeding starving children. It is your responsibility to know your charities and that the time, effort or money you give is well spent.

Guilt

The First world is Guilty, our wealth has come at the expense of others on our planet. Our consumerism is destroying the worlds resources and polluting it, we are using up all that is good and leaving a foul mess behind, we will have used it all up by the time the rest of the world has a chance to get to the table only to be in time to pay the bill for our greed.

For every 1$ of aid we give to Africa, we make 2$ profit from Africa.

We need to fix things, we need to stop using up our resources, we need to fighting, we need to provide a form of global social security. I don't believe that this is a role for charity, it is just to big, it is a role for the leaders of the world, indeed much of the first world social work done by charities in the early part of the last century is now done by government, this is an existing trend that we need to accelerate and disperse throughout the wider world.

REDUCING STRESS

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We all suffer from stress in our daily lives.

Stress can not be eliminated, indeed a small amount of it is beneficial, measuring and controlling the level of stress we experience is our goal.

Scientists have now come up with a very clever method of both evaluating our stress levels and reducing them at the same time with a simple picture.

The picture is of two dolphins leaping from the water, the dolphins have subtle differences, the more differences you can spot the more stressed you are.

To see the image click on the link below.

Show me the dolphins