How Anyone Can Help Those in Need of Clean Water

Charity: Water
Image: charitywater.org

Pixhug.com is the online home of the Canada-based Pixhug team which has cleverly turned photo sharing into a potentially charitable act through its unique app. Among a variety of organizations that Pixhug Media supports in this way is Charity: Water.

This organization was started in 2006 as an effort to help everyone gain access to clean drinking water. The nonprofit’s operating costs are provided by private donors, so all funds raised publicly go directly to the communities in need.

Charity: Water makes it simple for virtually anyone to start his or her own campaign and raise money for this important cause. Tasks requiring as little effort as requesting donations instead of gifts at a wedding or birthday and as wild as riding a rickshaw across the subcontinent of India have served as vehicles for real people to raise money and fight clean water shortages throughout the world. Charity: Water provides an easy-to-use online site for each fundraising effort, and then participants can turn to social media and other outlets to let the people in their community know about it.

Once the campaign is complete, the organization directs 100 percent of funds to a community in need, and then tracks spending and provides updates about that community’s progress to the fundraising team. Those interested in helping to bring clean water to the world can learn more at charitywater.org/fundraising/.

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Plasticoceans.org Tackles the Problem of Disposable Plastics

 

Plasticoceans.org
Image: Plasticoceans.org

Social Media innovator Pixhug, parent of Pixhug.com, uses the power of a smartphone app to turn photo sharing into charitable giving. Pixhug recently partnered with plasticoceans.org in the effort to create awareness of the negative impact of plastics on the environment. Read on for a few facts about this crisis.

Plastic has played an important role in the world economy over the last 70 years. In fact, many life-saving technologies rely on it. However, around 40 percent of plastic production is devoted to single-use packaging applications. The simple plastic grocery bag, for instance, has an average “working life” of just 15 minutes. Out of that 40 percent devoted to one-time use applications, over half is made up of water bottles. Creating a single water bottle requires approximately six times the amount of water than is contained in the actual bottle. Each year, 8 million tons of plastic are dumped into the ocean, creating “dead zones” where the water has experienced nitrification and contains no life-giving oxygen. The problem extends to humans in a number of ways, including through toxic chemicals being released into the environment during production and as rubbish when plastic begins to break down.

For simple things anyone can do to help combat this huge problem, please visit plasticoceans.org/take-action/.

The White Feather Foundation Offers Diverse Range of Humanitarian Aid

 

White Feather Foundation
Image: whitefeatherfoundation.com

The Pixhug app, downloadable from the App Store, allows Facebook users to raise funds for select charities by posting funny, beautiful, or otherwise compelling photographs. Each “like” earned by photos posted through the app raises funds donated by partner corporations. Pixhug Media, Inc., has worked with many charitable organizations, including Charity:Water and the Elton John Foundation, but since its inception, one of Pixhug’s strongest advisors and partners has been the White Feather Foundation.

In 2007, founder Julian Lennon, son of The Beatles’ John Lennon, envisioned the White Feather Foundation as a means to draw attention to those in need without the resources to reach out for assistance. Committed as it is to improving quality of life, the foundation’s interests are very broad, but it primarily focus on raising funds for humanitarian and cultural support, environmental protection, and improved access to clean water resources.

The foundation particularly emphasizes the belief that, along with strong infrastructure and education, clean water is a basic human right in need of support. Approximately one-third of the world’s population are affected by water scarcity, one-eighth have limited access to clean water, and one-tenth consume foods contaminated by chemicals or diseases in irrigated water.

Previous campaigns by the White Feather Foundation have included cooperating with the Red Cross to bring clean drinking water and improved hygiene to two villages of Burkina Faso and constructing a dormitory for girls at the Uranga Secondary School in Kenya to limit their long and hazardous commutes. The foundation has also demonstrated its commitment to supporting the diversity of human culture by funding a school for Amazonian shamans to preserve their spiritual traditions and securing legal protection for a region of northern Colombia with sacred significance to its Kogi natives.

The Plastic Oceans Foundation Challenges Disposable Packaging

United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals
Image: un.org

 

Launched in August 2016, the Pixhug app, available for download from the App Store, provides a simple and convenient means for Facebook users to raise charitable funds. Through the “likes” attached to photos posted online through the app, corporate sponsors make donations to campaigns and charities partnered with Pixhug Media. The makers of Pixhug hope that their efforts can help both to spread awareness of and meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

In September of 2015, the United Nations established a new set of global target goals to be attained by 2030, building on the Millennium Development Goals previously agreed upon in 2001. The original eight MDGs were very specific, overlooking certain key issues, making no provisions to address root causes, and focusing more on the improvement of poorer nations than developed ones. By contrast, the new Sustainable Development Goals provide a wide range of targets for all countries to attain, determined by conducting the largest survey in the UN’s history and emphasizing the need to be accomplished in a manner that won’t hinder future generations.

Built around the three central elements of economic growth, environmental protection, and social inclusion are 17 target goals, which include the reduction of poverty and hunger, increase in responsible consumption and clean energy, and greater equality between genders and among alike. Seventeen might sound like an arbitrary number, and some member nations felt it should have been simplified further, but those working on the project contend that reducing the number to 17 in the first place was a considerable challenge, since each goal is vital to the growth of a healthy society.

So far, the greatest concern about the UN’s SDGs is finding the funding necessary to address these challenges. Eliminating poverty would require $66 billion annually, and bringing global infrastructure to acceptable levels would require $7 trillion, but any form of international taxation is unlikely to gain traction. The UN’s statements on the matter, however, insist that this money already exists and is accessible – investors only need to become motivated to direct their contributions to these causes.