Millennium Promise: Extreme Poverty Ends Here

Today is World Malaria Day, a day to commemorate global efforts to control this devastating disease. More than a million people, most of them children, die each year from malaria. In Africa, a child dies every 30 seconds from this disease. Malaria also affects productivity - annual economic loss in Africa due to the disease is estimated to be $12 billion - trapping many communities in continuing poverty.

As part of Millennium Promise's commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - eight globally endorsed objectives that address the multi-dimensional nature of extreme poverty - we recognize the adverse impact malaria has on achieving the MDGs in Africa:

MDG 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Malaria strikes workers most severely during the rainy season, creating a devastating impact on agricultural productivity and income generation.

MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education
Malaria causes children and teachers to miss school and is the leading cause of absenteeism in areas where malaria is highly endemic.

MDG 4: Reduce child mortality
In Africa, malaria is the single leading cause of death for children under five.


MDG 5: Improve maternal health Pregnant women and their unborn children are particularly vulnerable to malaria, which, during pregnancy, is a major cause of mortality, low birth weight and maternal anemia.

MDG 6 : Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Defeating malaria is an achievable first step to this goal.

Millennium Promise's flagship initiative, the Millennium Villages project, works with rural communities in Africa to simultaneously implement critical interventions that tackle the major causes that lead to extreme poverty. Part of this initiative is providing mosquito bed nets to prevent malaria and medicines to treat it. Key achievements in this area include:

Through a donation of 336,000 bed nets from Sumitomo Chemical, health workers have distributed enough bed nets to cover 100% of the sleeping sites in the villages;

Through donations from Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis, village health facilities received more than 440,000 doses of malaria drugs to treat villagers;

Because of these interventions, malaria cases have declined by as much as 75% in some of the villages.

Millennium Promise is also proud to be a founding partner of Malaria No More, a grassroots movement whose mission is to end deaths due to malaria. As part of this year's Idol Gives Back charity special, American Idol fans have so far contributed more than $60 million, a portion of which will go to Malaria No More to distribute life-saving bed nets to people across Africa.

With your help, we can defeat this disease, bringing us one step closer to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and ending extreme poverty.

With deep thanks for your continued support,






Jeffrey S. Flug
Chief Executive Officer
Millennium Promise

To support Millennium Promise CLICK HERE

The Definition of Happy Birthday

Back in January on my big day, my Kabbalah teacher (Yehuda A.) let me in on a little secret about birthdays. He said that "Satan" (ego) tricks us into thinking this day is all about getting gifts and blowing your own horn. All attention and celebration is on "me". It's a trap. The real purpose of your birthday is to do/be just the opposite. It's a huge (albeit disguised) opportunity to become a being of sharing. That's where true happiness lies. So if you're ever a little stuck or feel you could use a little happiness in your life, then do an act of sharing. It's really just that simple.

I share this now because my friend and FundRaising Malawi partner Leah Reynolds forwarded this email to me from her friend Scott Harrison. I am inspired, impressed and, truth be told, a little spooked. He is me in some bizarre and simultaneous parallel universe. A real BIRTHDAY BOY! His birthday is September 7th. And he, like me, chooses to make the day of his birth mean something in the world.

Scott is asking for $33+ donations to get wells built in Africa -- specifically 333 in Ethiopia. I signed up my nephew, master Matthew Silka - who will be 8 on September 28th. I'll donate on his behalf and maybe he'd like to do a little fundraising himself.

If you are September-born or know someone who is, this opportunity is for you:

Here's Scott's letter:

I’m writing you from Northern Ethiopia, where we're currently shooting photos and video for the 2008 september campaign.


Last september, many of you supported my 32nd birthday campaign to give a health clinic in Kenya clean water. We wanted to prove the power of low-level donations, and asked you for $32 gifts. You responded immediately, and then the concept grew.

see what happened last year >

Almost 100 other people with september birthdays joined up and sacrificed gifts for clean water. A 5-year-old asked for $5. A 67-year-old for $67. Together, we raised $151,000 - almost 4 times our initial goal. We used the money to drill for clean water in three health clinics and one school. More than 5,000 people got access to clean and safe drinking water.

This year, we're thinking bigger. Much bigger.
More than 75 percent of the people here in Ethiopia don't have safe water to drink. You'll learn more about their situation in the coming months, and have opportunities to again partner with us to do something really incredible here.

I'm turning 33 in September. This year, we want to do 10 times more than last year. And we’ll need a ton of help. We want to give 333 villages across Ethiopia clean and safe drinking water. That's going to cost $1.5 million, and will radically change more than 150,000 lives. We'll need thousands of people to again use their september birthdays; we'll need thousands of people to give $33 or more. But if we're successful, we'll drill a well from Ethiopia LIVE on September 7th and show you your money at work.

Hosted by our local partner here in Ethiopia, A Glimmer of Hope, we've spent the last week visiting and documenting 33 of those remote villages. It’s been a challenge, some of the villages weren’t reachable by road, and required long walks over mountains and ravines. But we wanted to put a face to this big concept – to meet thousands of the people we hope to serve with this campaign.

We heard heartbreaking stories from women who walk over 5 hours a day to fetch muddy water. We've heard from women who fear hyena attacks on their way to the water hole.
We've heard horror stories from children about drinking water infested with leeches. The leeches stuck in their throats, and then sucked their blood. We are determined to help every single one of them.

In the coming months, we'll build the new september website that will tell the stories of these remarkable 33 villages. Each village will be marked with a GPS coordinate, each will have a short video piece and image gallery. We'll invite you to admire and learn from the incredible courage of the people we've met here.

I’ve posted and captioned 16 photos from the villages HERE for a first look. In the meantime, here's how you can help:

1. If you're born in September or know someone who is, please visit borninseptember.org and sign up. If you can pledge to give at least $33 this september, please visit and let us know we can count on your support.
2. If you missed the videos and photos of last year's story and drilling success in Kenya, please visit charitywater.org/september07


-Scott Harrison

special thanks:
- To Inmarsat & Evosat for their sponsorship of satellite connectivity here in Ethiopia.
- To the amazing Bertie @ BertieTravel for continuing to sponsor our flights to the field and getting us out of jams.

Counting Sesame Seeds (Yehuda Berg)

We can make a $2 donation to a charity, or pass out fliers for a grass roots organization, and think: "This is just a small donation. I am just one person. My contributions don't mean very much." Or we can focus on the big picture and realize how important every positive action of sharing is to the quantum collective consciousness.

As Rav Ashlag wrote:

"When a person is weighing sesame seeds, he continues adding one at a time until the weighing is completed. Every seed does its share in the weighing, for without it, the process would not be completed."


Today, remember that we all have the power to affect global change and to remove chaos from the world.

Give a goat. Pass an ass. Do something.

I really like Heifer for the work they're doing to end extreme poverty. Here's an email and short video from them:

The spirit of passing on the gift is the foundation of Heifer. With each animal and associated training, recipients of Heifer gifts agree to pass along an equal gift of animal and training to another family in need. It's a cycle that keeps giving until entire communities are changed. How will you pass on the gifts you've been given? April is passing on the gift month. Join Heifer as we commit to pass on gifts of hope and dignity.

W-O-R-L-D H-U-N-G-E-R. No thanks. I just ate.

The world hunger crisis is all over the news this week. In just three years, the price of staple foods like wheat, corn and rice has almost doubled. If we don't do something soon, hundreds of thousands of people face starvation and a hundred million more could fall into extreme poverty.

If you're at all like me, it's hard to get your head around this thought. I just had lunch. It doesn't FEEL like a CRISIS.

But it is.

I just took action with the ONE Campaign and you can too.

CLICK HERE!

Idol Gives Back - Tonight

For six or seven years now, American Idol Gives Back

Watch Tonight on FOX 7:30/6:30c

This year, Idol Gives Back proposes to raise awareness and funds to benefit the following six charities:

The Children's Defense Fund

Priorities for children are: Ensure Child Health Coverage, End Child Poverty, Cultivate Youth Leadership

Reese Witherspoon is a CDF Board Member, and will represent CDF on Idol Gives Back



Children's Health Fund


The Children’s Health Fund is committed to providing health care to the nation’s most medically underserved children and their families through the development and support of innovative primary care medical programs, response to public health crises, and the promotion of guaranteed access to appropriate health care for all children.

The Global Fund

The Global Fund was created to finance a dramatic turn-around in the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. These diseases kill over 6 million people each year, and the numbers are growing.





To date, the Global Fund has committed US$ 10.1 billion in 136 countries to support aggressive interventions against all three diseases.

Make It Right

In December 2006, Brad Pitt convened a group of experts in New Orleans to brainstorm about building green affordable housing on a large scale to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. Having spent time with community leaders and displaced residents determined to return home, Pitt realized that an opportunity existed to build houses that were not only stronger and healthier, but that had less impact on the environment.


Previously, Pitt sponsored an architecture competition organized by Global Green with the goal of generating ideas about how to rebuild sustainably. Several of those designs are currently under construction in the Lower 9th Ward and the project inspired him to expand his efforts.

After discussing the hurdles associated with rebuilding in a devastated area, the group determined that a large-scale redevelopment project focused on green affordable housing and incorporating innovative design was indeed possible.

The group settled on the goal of constructing 150 homes (one of the larger rebuilding projects in the city), with an emphasis on developing an affordable system that could be replicated.

To demonstrate replicability, Pitt determined to locate the project in the Lower 9th Ward, one of the most devastated areas of New Orleans, proving that safe homes could and should be rebuilt. Pitt hopes that this project would be a catalyst for recovery and redevelopment throughout the Lower 9th Ward and across the city of New Orleans.

Having listened to one former resident's plea to help "make this right," Pitt was inspired to name the project "Make It Right" (MIR).

Malaria No More

Malaria No More's mission is simple: to end deaths due to malaria. The world has known how to beat this disease for more than a century, yet it remains the number one killer of children under five in Africa, claiming more than 1 million lives a year. Malaria No More works to raise the profile of the disease among the public, policymakers, and businesses, while engaging the private sector to provide life-saving bed nets and other critical interventions to families in Africa.



Save the Children



Save the Children is the leading independent organization creating real and lasting change for children in need in the United States and around the world. It is a member of the International Save the Children Alliance, comprising 28 national Save the Children organizations working in more than 110 countries to ensure the well-being of children.

Raising Malawi was shortlisted. Like really shortlisted. I know exactly zero details other than I got a call from Raising Malawi last Thursday to see if I would be interested in taking part in a special volunteer portion of the show that Idol was going to tape on Sunday with Maria Shriver at the Kodak Theater, I believe. On Friday I was told it wasn't going to happen after all. But then Sunday morning, I got a call saying they did have a place for me, can I get there for the 1:00 taping. But my ringer was off. I missed the opportunity.

It turned out to be a HUGE lesson in consciousness for me. I didn't do the ol' "Fox and the Sour Grapes" routine, so that's good. I didn't go deep into my disappointment. Sure, I was disappointed not to be part of this adventure, but I took the focus off myself pretty quickly and refocused on this awesome effort to help truly deserving charities. Then I put the focus back on me for 5 more minutes, but got unstuck before those 5 became 10. In total, I stewed maybe 15 minutes in little starts and fits.

So my lesson? I am the clearing. If you ever read The Art of Possibility or books like The Secret or took Landmark or something like that, you know what I'm talking about. It was in my clearing that I even was thought of and considered for this opportunity in the first place (go me!). And, alas it was in my clearing that the opportunity went away. I closed off the possibility on Friday, when I was told it wasn't going to happen.

In truth, it was going to happen and had I been more intuitive, I would've known that. But instead, I said, "Ok. Easy come, easy go. Next year for sure!" When the opportunity came back on Sunday, it didn't know where to find me. It had nothing to do with my ringer being off. Spiritually speaking, I closed those doors on Friday.

I'm really proud of myself for seeing it, not just intellectually, but intuitively. I'm going to give it my all to hold the big picture in mind. I am the clearing. When I vibrate at a higher frequency, big opportunities come into view. They just do. When I shut down or lower my frequency, I can't tune in to them anymore.

As of this minute, this American is no longer idle. ;)

Watch tonight.

And please donate to one of these awesome charities AND/OR make a donation to Raising Malawi to help the orphans and vulnerable children who truly need your help.

If you donate to Raising Malawi, please let me know how much so I can count it against my total goal. Thank you!