Tag Archives: Blog Catalog

Bloggers Unite For Hunger and Hope

Today is a Bloggers Unite Day.

Today’s Blogger’s Unite focus is Unite For Hunger And Hope. Bloggers Unite has partnered with Heifer International in order to spread the word about hunger across the world. Here is the Objective of today’s Bloggers Unite focus.

Objective:
BlogCatalog members and Heifer International are partnering to call for the end of world hunger and start of hope on April 29. All we ask is that you join thousands of other bloggers and write a post about world hunger on April 29. You can make a difference.

• Right now, more than 500 million people are living in “absolute poverty” and more than 15 million children die of hunger every year.

• World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the population is underfed and another third is starving.

• Even in the United States, 46 percent of African-American children and 49 percent of Latino children are considered chronically hungry.

Organizations like Heifer International are the solution. Every day in April, Heifer International is lifting people out of poverty by providing communities with livestock and agricultural training to improve lives and inspire hope.

What does Heifer International Do?

Heifer International does hundreds of projects across the world. I was looking on an interactive map to see what projects were happening in the world. Out of curiosity I wanted to see the projects in the US and I was shocked by how many there were. I was shocked because I didn’t realize how much hunger there was in this country. I am learning so much from the Heifer International site about what is happening not only in my country but countries across the globe. I think that programs like Bloggers Unite For Hunger and Hope are fantastic ways to motivate people to gain a better understanding of the issues that are facing the human race and how to help. This year for Bloggers Unite there are over 500 bloggers who are uniting to spread the word about Hunger in our world.

Why I am participating in Bloggers Unite.

This past Christmas Allison, Eva and I were invited by IZEA to participate in a special program that was sponsored by Sears. We were given a $100 gift card to spend at Sears and we could do anything we wanted with the money. We decided to buy toys for Christmas is for Kids. After that experience we also decided that we would personally save $10 a month for a year so we could go do that again on our own next Christmas.

After the great feeling of helping out some kids in the neighborhood we thought of other ways in which we could help. I remembered that a year or two ago I did some affiliate sales for a fireplace podcast, iYule Log, that you could download to your iPod. The money that went to that podcast was divided among three charities and one was Heifer International. Since it was Christmas time again and the podcast was still up I wrote up a post encouraging people to make contributions, by buying the podcast, to Heifer International to Help Stock Eva’s Farm.

Eva’s Farm is an idea I had to motivate people to donate to Heifer International either through sales of the iYule Log or direct donations to Heifer International. You can donate as low as $10.00. $10 works out to be 1/6 of a trio of rabbits, 1/12 of a pig and so on. The idea is that a little, when banded together can make a large impact. I would like to make a large impact as well. So if you are interested in helping to stock Eva’s Farm here is what you do. Go either to Heifer International make a donation, once you’ve made the donation you have the option to tell a friend. Send me an e-mail to benspark @ benspark dot com with your web address and I’ll compile a list of people who have made donations to help stock Eva’s Farm. I will then make a post about those who helped to stock the farm.

What are we doing to Help Stock Eva’s Farm?

In addition to saving $10 a month for Christmas is for Kids we are also saving $10 a month for Eva’s Farm. Last year we bought a share of a llama and a flock of chicks, this year with $120 to donate we are looking at donating a goat or maybe a flock of chicks, geese, ducks and a trio of rabbits. Each of these donations goes to a needy family that will raise the animals for income, food and help sustaining their lives and the lives of their villages, cities and towns.

I encourage you to sign up for Bloggers Unite at Blog Catalog and write about World Poverty and the work that Heifer International is doing. Come back by and drop me a link in the comments.

BlogCatalog, see it there on the right….

You may have asked yourself, Why does The Benspark have so many little boxes with people’s photos on them from places like MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog. While I like both of these Social Networking sites I tend to favor BlogCatalog more. I seem to get more hits from BlogCatalog than I do from MyBlogLog and I even pay for the higher quality service features from MyBlogLog. What BlogCatalog offers me however is actually better and for free.

Almost every day I get a message telling me that someone new has joined my community or added me as a friend to their BlogCatalog. I don’t often get a message like that from MyBlogLog.

I like the layout of the BlogCatalog page for my profile. The profile lists all of my blogs, my list of BlogCatalog friends and the communities I am part of on BlogCatalog.

You can explore further into each of my individual blogs. When you view an individual blog on BlogCatalog you can see many points of information from that blog, you see the neighborhood members, recent viewers, my latest posts, and there is an area at the bottom where a user can post a review of the blog. I have gotten one review so far and I think that maybe it is because the option to review is so far down the page. I hadn’t realized it was there until I got my first review.

You can also start discussions on BlogCatalog and through the discussion feature I was able to connect with Scott from Wallhogs. And through that connection Scott was inspired to feature BIG art each day on the Wallhogs blog and that includes some of my Photo-A-Day stuff.

I think that in addition to a cool widget for your blog you also get a very nice neighborhood social interaction feel from BlogCatalog and it is a site I use often to explore new blogs as well as promote my own blog.

You can see each of my BlogCatalog Neighborhoods by following the links below or you can go to my profile and start your journey there.

The BenSpark

BenSpark 2: Electric Boogaloo

The Wired Kayaker

Flatwater Tech

If you end up stopping by please drop me a message, add yourself to the neighborhood and write a review and rate my blogs.

Another couple good features are, the ability to change your top friends and top neighborhoods. I love that feature and use it to give more exposure to my friends as well as their blog neighborhoods.