Charity:Water Update

Firstly I want to start today's blog with a massive thank you to everyone who has contributed to my Charity:Water birthday appeal.  So far we've raised $1,470 which met my $1k goal.  Yay!  42 people will get clean water as a result of the work we've done to date.  As soon as I get them from Charity:Water, I'll be providing GPS coordinates and pictures of the people and communities we impacted.  Because this is such important work, I'm going to keep the project going through the month of October, and I'm very happy to report that the very generous Virginia Clay has agreed to keep matching donations dollar for dollar. 

Why does this project matter? Here are a few facts provided by water.org:

- More than 3.4 million people die each year from water, sanitation, and hygiene-related causes. Nearly all deaths, 99 percent, occur in the developing world.

- Every minute at least one child dies from a water-related illness.  

- [The water and sanitation] crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns

- An American taking a five-minute shower (not to mention the average Aussie teenager taking a 20 minute shower...you know who you are boys) uses more water than the average person in a developing country uses for an entire day


So thank you, thank you, thank you for helping!  This is really worthwhile work and you're integral to it.  Please drop by the site: https://my.charitywater.org/magdalenas-50th and join us if you haven't already.  No amount is too small - just click "Other" and you can enter any amount at all - the cost of a card, a cup of coffee or an international phone call, perhaps.  Every drop makes a difference, and the difference, as my dear muse Gertrude Stein once said, "is spreading."

Change a life: doing something impossible for literacy

Those of you who follow my blog will know that I've been inspired by my mate Joel Runyon's Impossible HQ to try and ramp things up a little and get involved in a little philanthropy. Why? It's not like I'm one of those wealthy ladies who lunch. I've got a busy life, work hard, and have plenty of home grown mouths to feed, but I've long felt like I need to incorporate some charity based work into what I do - to formally set out to change a few people's lives for the better.  One of the many reasons for wanting to do this is because I want to live in the kind of world where helping others and charitable giving is on the agenda for everyone, and because I know how powerful the ripple effect is for giving.

One of the top items on my Impossible List is "get involved on an ongoing basis at a high level with a literacy related charity".  Literacy/education is an area that is of utmost importance to me and I've long thought that this was the type of charity that I'd get involved in.  Once again, Joel has come to the rescue by putting out the call for his "Impossible League community" to raise $25,000 dollars to build a school in Guatemala in conjunction with Pencils of Promise.  PoP has built 50 schools over the past few years and over the next few months, they want to build 50 more. In their own words: "education is a living, breathing entity that with the right nurturing, evolves into something spectacular. We’ve learned that every piece of its growth is a challenge and that each pencil, each dollar, each volunteer is essential." Sounds like a worthy cause for me to begin my own philanthropic journey with. So here's the deal.

I've yet to be paid royalties on my latest novel Black Cow.  My publisher has promised payment to all authors in August (hey, it's August now!).  Since the opportunity has arisen, I'm going to publically pledge 50% of all the sales that I've made so far and am yet to make on sales of Black Cow to the PoP cause (a cause well aligned with the theme of the book).  I don't know how much that will amount to at this stage, but whatever it is - a lot or a little, PoP have got 50% of it.  If you'd like to support this great cause and help provide a school for these gorgeous young kids who want only to learn (and get a great read in too that some reviewers have called "life changing", go pick up a copy of BC now - maybe for a friend if you've already got it and join me.  Or you can go directly to PoP and contribute to our project here:  http://www.pencilsofpromise.org/fundraise/fundraiser?f=a0GU00000050QBQMA2&r=1
or you can help spread the word on your social networks by clicking on one of the little share buttons below.

Thanks for being part of something exciting! I'll update the figure here as soon as I know what it is.

Character Auction

  

Authors for Autistica are running a fantastic character auction on ebay, featuring over 20 best-selling authors.

People can bid to have their name in the upcoming novels of  Ken Follett,  Roopa Farooki,  Glenn Cooper, Hari Kunzru, Darren Shan, David Mitchell and more.  In a second auction, authors including  R J Ellory, James Sallis and L C Tyler will give unpublished writers feedback on their work.  

The link is:  http://members.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=autistica_charity and the auction ends this Sunday.

All funds raised will go to autism research.   It's a good cause and an interesting opportunity - some are even offering you the option to determine whether your character is good, bad, or neutral.