TODAY: Big hearts, not just big mouths

Blog­gers chan­nel their energy to char­ity – after trade­mark debate, of course

THERE is a group of blog­gers in Sin­ga­pore who call them­selves The Cow­boy Bar. They are well-known for their fre­quent meet-ups.

While blog­ger meet-ups in them­selves aren’t unusual, get­ting together for a cause is a less fre­quent affair, given the dis­parate nature of blog­gers’ “day” jobs.

This group runs an online forum which reg­u­larly breaks their Google host’s band­width lim­its because of the sheer vol­ume of text they exchange. This month, they’ve decided to har­ness their rest­less energy for a cause.

Read more at TODAY­on­line.

Tech­no­rati Tags: blog, char­ity, cow­boy­bar, Sin­ga­pore

Organ­is­ing a Hal­loween Party (www.virtualinsanity.liquidblade.com) to raise funds for Women Make a Dif­fer­ence (www.wmdfest.org), the group promises a rowdy and raunchy time at the forth­com­ing event.

The founder of the Cow­boy Bar, the noto­ri­ously anony­mous Cow­boy Caleb (cowboycaleb.liquidblade.com) — a 27-year-old male who works in an IT-related field — teas­ingly asked read­ers to attend the party just to spot him.

“I will def­i­nitely be there, so you can buy me a drink (if you spot me) and I’ll buy you one as well … ‚” he wrote.

Those who know the blo­gos­phere only from the occa­sional news report about a blog­ger being sued or jailed may be sur­prised that there are many blog­gers who dis­cuss char­i­ta­ble issues and talk about sup­port­ing good causes.

Local blog aggre­ga­tor, Tomorrow.sg, recently ran a poll for read­ers to decide which char­ity the meta blog should adopt as its ben­e­fi­ciary for funds received from its income-generating activities.

It posted a list of 20 char­i­ties that had details about their activ­i­ties as well as pub­licly acces­si­ble finan­cial infor­ma­tion — impor­tant tools in these trou­bled times for charities.

The list of char­i­ties were diverse, rang­ing from the Human­i­tar­ian Organ­i­sa­tion for Migra­tion Eco­nom­ics to the Soci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­elty to Animals.

Inter­est­ingly, the Cat Wel­fare Soci­ety did not have its finan­cial infor­ma­tion avail­able online at the time the list was posted.

After blog­gers heard about the poll, they not only actively took part in it, but also began lob­by­ing for votes by leav­ing com­ments in the poll post. Out of the 468 votes logged, 48 per cent of blog­gers ques­tioned the pref­er­ence of char­i­ta­ble inten­tions towards ani­mals rather than humans.

Some went as far as to analyse the result, explain­ing that it was a mat­ter of there being too many char­i­ties to choose from.

“Any aca­d­e­mic in polit­i­cal sci­ence will tell you, when you split the votes, the oppo­si­tion wins. Eight char­i­ties for humans ver­sus two char­i­ties for ani­mals … hav­ing said that, it looks like cat wel­fare has half the total votes. So, I guess there are lots of cat lovers who read blogs,” said one anony­mous comment.

Another writer named Imp called for an end to the “bick­er­ing” over the choice of char­i­ties, ask­ing read­ers not to “degen­er­ate into a petty squab­ble about whether ani­mal lives are more pre­cious than human lives”.

“A vote cast here is an exer­cise in the free­dom of choice. Let that free­dom be respected,” Imp argued.

Mr Miyagi aka Ben­jamin Lee has been enter­tain­ing read­ers at miyagi.sg for over a year and wouldn’t mind list­ing his blog host­ing fees as a char­i­ta­ble cause.

char­i­ty­blogs

Char­ity Governance

(www.charitygovernance.blogs.com)

A guide to arti­cles about char­ity gov­er­nance. Has a pub­li­ca­tion called Avoi-ding trou­ble while doing good: A guide for the non-profit direc­tor and officer.

Blog for Hope

(blogs.health.yahoo.com/blog-for-hope/)

A blog rais­ing aware­ness on the fight against can­cer, fea­tur­ing con­tri­bu­tions by lumi­nar­ies such as Hillary Clin­ton and Deepak Chopra.

Blo­gathon 2005

(www.blogathon.org)

An annual event where par­tic­i­pants blog every 15 min­utes for 24 hours to raise money for charity.