Plant A Billion Trees

Plant A Billion Trees

"One dollar. One tree. One planet."

Plant A Billion Trees is a campaign effort by the Nature Conservancy to plant 1 billion trees by 2015, thus restoring 2,500,000 acres, or 10,100 sq. km, of land in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. By doing so, the Nature Conservancy hopes to slow climate change by restoring the Atlantic Forest, which, according to the Plant A Billion Trees site, "helps regulate the atmosphere and stabilize global climate."

The Plant A Billion Trees campaign pledged to plant 25 million trees as a part of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)'s Billion Tree Campaign. The Plant A Billion Trees campaign also works with such partners as Disneynature, Planet Green, Penguin Books, Payless Shoesource, AT&T, Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund, and Visa, to maximize efficiency.

Supporters can donate as little as $1, and this will plant one tree; for every dollar donated, one tree is planted. At the time of writing this article, the Plant A Billion Trees campaign has planted almost 7.6 million trees as a result of donations to the program. By doing so, they are saving such species as the Green Lizard, the Prepona Butterfly, the Guapuruvu Tree, and the Scarlet Ibis (among others, found here.)

If you want to help save the environment, the animals, and the world, visit Plant A Billion Trees today.

Child's Play

Child's Play

"Gamers give back."

Child's Play is a charity that aids children's hospitals in acquiring gaming equipment for the children at the hospital. It is funded entirely on cash donations or purchases, and is tax deductible. The Child's Play charity is entirely non-profit, though they do spend 2-3% of the donations on such things as shipping, etc.

Direct donations of cash through PayPal are readily accepted, and quite appreciated; however, there is also the option to buy an item for the hospital. The hospitals write up a wishlist, and when it is finished, doners may buy the item on Amazonand have it sent to the hospital, through Child's Play.

The site was announced on November 24, 2003, by the creators of the popular Penny Arcade webcomic, with the intentions to aid the children in hospitals and to reverse the bad public image of videogaming. The original post by "Gabe" (aka Mike Krahulik) can be found here.

Within the first month of kick-off, the charity raised about $250,000; overall, Child's Play has earned $6.7 million for various children's hospitals around the world, in such locations as U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and England. If you want to contribute to this growing charity that supports not just one, but two causes, at once, check out Child's Play!

The Fuzz Academy

The Fuzz Academy

"Environmentally friendly"

The Fuzz Academy is a networking site that combines simple, fun games along with valuable lessons and intellectual stimulus to create a worthy site that also happens to aid environmental causes and charities. The Fuzz Academy, or "FA" as some of its users call it, donates to several strong charities focused on saving the environment.

Fuzz Academy allows users to create an account and a personal pet, or 'cadet'. The cadets can be dressed up with various items that are bought with hairballs (the site's currency). Hairballs are earned by playing games, or showing some love to other cadets. Special, more intricately designed items are available for premium members, who spend real currency on the game. However, most items are available to normal users as well.

The site functions largely like the popular Neopets, in which the user has a social network profile, dressed up pets, and plays games for currency. What separates Fuzz Academy from your everyday pet site is that it donates to causes such as, according to their About Us page, the Nature Conservancy's Adopt-An-Acre, Plant A Billion Trees, the ASPCA, and the World Wildlife Fund.

Interested in helping one of those environmental charities yourself? You can do so, just by playing some games over at The Fuzz Academy!

Smile Train - Changing the World One Smile at a Time.

Smile Train

"Changing the World One Smile at a Time."

Smile Train is a charity whose mission it is to provide free cleft surgery and to train doctors and medical professionals in cleft-related operations. The charity focuses solely on that goal, putting to use all available resources to reach it.

According to Wikipedia's article on Smile Train and the Smile Train site itself, approximately 1 in 700 children are born with cleft lip and palate. Though the number of children being born with cleft lip and palate is strikingly large, Smile Train claims that it is currently fixing more cleft lips and palates than the rate at which people are being born with it, thus hopefully nearing eradication of the problem.

A cleft lip and palate surgery (and treatment) costs around just $250. While that is a large sum for any one person to donate, Smile Train claims that a person can help by simply donating a small portion of that, paying for something as important as the medications. It accumulates all of the money, and then uses that to pay for the surgery and treatment.

Cleft lip and palate can be a severe hindrance to the lives of innocent children around the world, breeding social and personal issues. You can help with just a small donation to Smile Train.

FREE: Trick-or-Treat For UNICEF Kit

Posted originally by Rose, on the Tips for Saving blog:

"It is the 60th anniversary for the Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF program. You can help support this foundation by ordering a FREE trick or treat kit, and gathering donations on Halloween.

The United Nations Children's Fund - UNICEF - works for..." [Read More]

United Nations Volunteers - Inspiration in action.

United Nations Volunteers

"Inspiration in action."

The United Nations Volunteers (also well known as the UNV) program is an organization overseen by the United Nations. The UNV aims to promote and incorporate volunteerism in the worldwide community. Their mission statement reads:

"Volunteering brings benefits to both society at large and the individual volunteer. It makes important contributions, economically as well as socially. It contributes to a more cohesive society by building trust and reciprocity among citizens.

The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme is the UN organization that supports sustainable human development globally through the promotion of volunteerism, including the mobilization of volunteers. It serves the causes of peace and development by enhancing opportunities for participation by all peoples. It is universal, inclusive and embraces volunteer action in all its diversity. It values free will, commitment, engagement and solidarity, which are the foundations of volunteerism."

Sure, it's a mouthful, and they probably could have just said, "To promote volunteerism," but this looks much fancier. After all, why would an organization like the UN make anything simple on the rest of us? That's just not professional.

Of course, I'm just messin' with the UNV. They directly mobilize more than 7,500 volunteers each year across the globe, with more than 75% coming from developing countries; over 30% volunteer in their own country. What does this mean for you, then, if you can't offer in-person volunteer services (and to be honest, who can)? For that, there is the Online Volunteering service.

This service directly connects organizers with people who are willing to donate some of their time and skills to the particular organization's project. While you don't get to travel (and you don't get the benefits of being a UNV volunteer), you do get to help out in your own way, however you can.

If you want to join the UNV yourself, or just give them a look, check out the UNV site. If you'd like to sign up online, and be an online volunteer, go to UNV Online Volunteering.

Click to Give - Give to Charity for free!

Click to Give

"Give to Charity for free!"

Click to Give is, as its name gets across quite well, a click-to-give donation site. This means that users simply go on the site, click just a few buttons, and they've donated quite a bit. Rather than directly donating to one charity run by Click to Give, the site will actually redirect the money granted from advertisements on each page (which pay for the donations) directly to the charity you clicked for. You may click for all of the charities each day, but you can only click once per day per charity.

The site offers a lot of wonderful charities to donate to - and you can donate to them all, every day! The causes include animal care, hunger, child abuse, homelessness, breast cancer, and sponsoring children. Here's a brief overview of each one:

Animal Care: "The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) was the first humane society to be established in North America and is, today, one of the largest in the world. Our organization was founded by Henry Bergh in 1866 on the belief that animals are entitled to kind and respectful treatment at the hands of humans, and must be protected under the law."

Feed the Poor: "Feed The Children is a Christian, international, nonprofit relief organization with headquarters in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, that delivers food, medicine, clothing and other necessities to individuals, children and families who lack these essentials due to famine, war, poverty, or natural disaster."

Stop Child Abuse: "Founded in 1959 by Sara O’Meara and Yvonne Fedderson, Childhelp® is a leading national non-profit organization dedicated to helping victims of child abuse and neglect. Childhelp’s approach focuses on prevention, intervention and treatment."

End Homelessness: "The National Alliance to End Homelessness (Alliance) works to end homelessness. Though the popular response to homelessness in America has long been shelter, the Alliance maintains that we can end homelessness altogether and not just one night at a time. Years of research, pilot projects, and case studies show that there are solutions to effectively and efficiently end homelessness through housing."

Breast Cancer: "NBCF [National Breast Cancer Foundation] is committed to spreading knowledge and fostering hope in the fight against breast cancer. By funding free mammograms for women who could otherwise not afford them and supporting research programs in leading facilities across the country, NBCF helps inspire the courage needed to win this monumental battle. Be a part of the solution and discover how to help."

Sponsor Children: "Our mission is very simple. The more clicks you guys give daily, the more funding we then have to sponsor and maintain current sponsorships of these children in need. We will be adding and updating each sponsored child profile as it becomes available. We'll also be contacting and interacting with the sponsored children as much as possible and very excited to post all communication responses by each angel for you to view."

Click-donors can click anonymously, if they so choose, though Click to Give offers an interesting alternative. You can register an account, and you gain 1 point for each click you make. You can redeem these clicks for rewards, bought from the charities' gift shops, which still supports the charities. The only downfall to this system is that you can only get 6 points per 24 hours, and the cheapest item is near 1000 points.

With the account, you can also keep track of all of your donations. Simply click the 'View My Impact' link in the Members Control Panel on the middle right of the page, and you will be taken to your statistics. The more you click, the more it will show you as having donated.

This site is working a great form of charity that can earn quite a bit of money and make it easy on everyone involved, so head on over to Click to Give!

FreePoverty - Knowing Helps

FreePoverty

"Knowing Helps"

FreePoverty is a click-to-give site that is free and easy to use. It's in the form of a game, much like FreeRice, but it focuses solely on geography (instead of FreeRice's multiple subjects). As one plays the game, and answers correctly, a certain amount of water (depending on how close to correct the answer was) is added to the individual and total score donated. Near the top of their pages, a counter claims (at the time of this article's writing):

"In total we have donated 225,520,538 Cups of Water!"

The idea for the site itself is that a person who plays the games will view the ads placed on that page; the water donated is then paid for by the money earned from the sponsors' ads. The site isn't just a simple game with ads, though. The game itself is very well-made, and the look of the site is wonderful, so one doesn't mind the ads as much.

Why donate water, though? On their Home page, FreePoverty says:

"70% of a human being is made up of water. Water is the second most essential element for survival, after oxygen. Over one billion people in the world do not have access to clean drinking water; hence, causing them to develop deadly diseases. Moreover, without water, the brain is not able to function properly. One cup of water can make difference to someone's day. FreePoverty allows you to donate as many cups of water as you can to save millions of people."

FreePoverty states on its FAQ page that it is in between organizations due to some sort of "unforeseen issues." These issues are not expounded on, and the link they give promising further explanation leads to a 404 page.

Naturally, this does make FreePoverty seem a bit on the shadier side, though the site is much blogged about, and was associated previously with the popular WaterAid. Spending time on the site at your own discretion, as though the site seems trustworthy, it's hard to be sure at the moment. Perhaps when FreePoverty partners up with a reputable organization, we can all rest assured.

Regardless, the geography game on the site is actually quite fun. Go ahead and check it out at FreePoverty.

helpthirst.com - We Donate 1 Cup of Water to World Vision Every Time You Win

helpthirst.com

We donate 1 cup of water to World Vision every time you win

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UPDATE: Helpthirst.com is down.
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Helpthirst.com is a click-to-give charity site that operates much like the other click-to-give sites, especially FreeRice. To start, you the "Play" button in the dialog box, and it will give you a question and an answer. In the answer is a number that you must remember within the short time allotted, and when it disappears, you must input the correct number. The level will increase as you enter right answers in a row, or decrease for wrong answers. For each right answer, 1 cup of water will be donated. For quite a bit of time, the game is very simple.

It works in the same way many of its click-to-give contemporaries do: you answer to refresh the page, and with it, a new ad appears. On helpthirst.com, the ad is at the top of the page, in banner form. The price of the ad's placement pays for the donations; thus the more one plays, the more money the sponsors must pay, and the more that is donated.

Helpthirst.com donates the water to World Vision, which is an international relief and development organization. According to the World Vision International 'What We Do' page:

"Because poverty has both local and global causes, World Vision works within communities and across geographical areas to help individuals and groups improve the well-being of children and overcome poverty."

They do not work by themselves, however. They engage many other groups and people to participate in the betterment of their communities, and their world. Also on the 'What We Do' page, they state:

"World Vision engages institutions, donors and the general public to address the global problems that perpetuate poverty. Advocacy staff empower communities to speak up for their rights, locally and globally."

Another popular World Vision charity is AIDtoCHILDREN, about whom I wrote an article in my last post. AIDtoCHILDREN also donates to those in need by asking one a question, and paying for the donations through ads. AIDtoCHILDREN donates such things as school supplies, clothing, and food to impoverished children around the world.

If you want to help those in the developing world and disaster areas get fresh, clean water, get to playing on helpthirst.com!

Update! FreeRice Releases Beta of New Layout

The site we know and love - FreeRice - has released a new beta version for users to test out. The new beta site is for everyone to use. It has some new features that will definitely impress anyone who has used the site before the beta (as well as those who lamented the lack of a leader board!) and even a new, fancier layout.

Among the new features is the ability to create an account. With the creation of accounts, one has access to joining, creating, and playing for new user groups, and keeping track of their total scores (either individually or for an entire group). Also requiring an account is the friends system. Having an account may be integral to accessing all of the new goodies on the site, but it's not necessary to play the game.


Save for the necessary addition of account creation, groups are perhaps the most important update to the FreeRice game in the beta. Groups allow users to compete in rice count; competition will surely raise the rice count. Players can join multiple groups, but can only play for one at a time. To "play" for a group, simply click the double arrow button next to "Groups" on your info bar, and then select the group you wish to play for. The top 5 players will be featured on the group's information.

In addition to receiving recognition through groups, players can show off by sharing on Facebook and Twitter. Such information such as totals earned per group, overall, etc. can be posted. Extensive information on totals can be viewed on the user profiles, which can also feature a website, some personal information, and a description.

Go to the FreeRice beta now!

AIDtoCHILDREN - Helping Children in Need Through Learning

AIDtoCHILDREN

"HELPING CHILDREN IN NEED THROUGH LEARNING"

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UPDATE: As of Sept. 18, 2011, AIDtoCHILDREN is down.
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AIDtoCHILDREN is one more great site to add to the list of easy-to-play browser games that help the world. Have you played FreeRice or Charitii lately? Then you'll definitely recognize AIDtoCHILDREN's style as soon as you jump in, with the question answering to raise funds for the charity (or charities).

The style is recognizable, with a question, and four possible answers. You click the answer you think is right, and if it is, then your skill level progresses and you donate money to the cause. If it's wrong, your skill level goes down, but that's it. It's simple, doesn't take time to load, and is very quick to play. You can exit whenever you wish, but there is no way to save your skill level and amount donated as of yet. Whenever you reload the site, you must start the questions over again.

Answering a question correctly will donate .25 cents to the AIDtoCHILDREN/World Vision cause, which is used to feed children in need. That's $0.0025, meaning 4 correct answers donates a penny. While that may not seem very helpful at all, consider this: you can answer 4 questions in about 10 seconds quite easily. According to the site, it takes just 25 cents to feed a child in need. All it takes to feed a child is roughly 250 seconds, or just over 4 minutes! Four minutes of your day to give another starving child some food, thanks to AIDtoCHILDREN.

The site itself is run by the World Vision charity. According to an article in the Puget Sound Business Journal:

"World Vision says it collected about $1.1 billion — an increase of 16 percent — from U.S. donors during its fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2008. The group’s total revenue, including grants, product donations and foreign donations, climbed 16 percent to $2.6 billion."

Even in a global recession, especially in the U.S., there was a considerable increase in the amount of donations pouring in to the charity. World Vision looks like it is and will continue to be a successful cause to donate to, and AIDtoCHILDREN lets you do that for free and with ease. So head on over the the site, and help feed children in need: AIDtoCHILDREN.

Charitii - Play Multiple-choice Crossword Puzzles for Charity.

Charitii

"Play multiple-choice crossword puzzles for charity"

Charitii is another very easy game that donates to a worthy cause where all you have to do is play. There actually multiple causes, but it's main (and original) cause is donating water to places where it's much needed, and hard to get. As soon as you get on, you can start playing to get donations for whichever cause you chose.

Charitii bases itself around the same things that sites like FreeRice, The Hunger Site, and GamesThatGive base themselves around: advertisements. By playing the game, you earn money via the advertisements for the site, which then gets used to pay for donations to the cause you chose. The site itself features the banner at the bottom, much like FreeRice, and in the same way, bots can cause problems, since advertisers will not invest their money if it's only bots viewing the ads.

You don't have to play anonymously, though; you can register. The register button is at the top right, as well as right under the box with the "Difficulty Level" in it. Once you register, it will save the charity you choose, as well as the amount of points you have earned for that charity. The charities are, as listed on the Charitii site (with the amount donated for each correct answer):

charity: water: 10 ounces of water
Invisible Youth Network ??? Unknown (10 points)
The Nature Conservancy: 10 square inches of rainforest
The Oaktree Foundation: 10 minutes of education
Philippine Aid Society: ??? Unknown (10 points)

For each question you get correct, 10 points will be added to your score. For every two correct answers you give, the difficulty will rise one level. For every one wrong answer, it will go down one level. After a specific amount correct, one letter will disappear, and then two, and so on until it becomes too hard to figure out, and starts over. If you are registered, your score and difficulty will be left from the previous session; if you are not, it will be reset.

Just in the month of July 2009, the highest donating month for charity: water, Charitii claims 11,000 gallons of water were donated. In the same month, they also claim to have donated almost 54,200 feet of rainforest for The Nature Conservancy, and almost 13,000 minutes of education for the Oaktree Foundation.

You can help the world, as well. All you have to do is go the site, play their word game, and aid a cause that could really use it: Charitii.

GamesThatGive - You Play. We Give. No Catch.

GamesThatGive

"You play. We give. No catch."

GamesThatGive is another very intriguing site that utilizes advertisement money to give to causes, much like FreeRice and The Hunger Site. Unlike those two sites, though, GamesThatGive is oriented around causes other than food, such as education, veterans, etc., as well as games, as the title gets across quite well.

How you earn money for the available causes is by playing games. You can bring up such games as Solitaire, Gems, FreeCell, and Bubble Burst, in your browser. You play these games, as sponsored by select advertisers, and the cause gets money for the time you spent playing (and, thus, the time you spent viewing the ads of the sponsors).

GamesThatGive does this by changing the background of your game to one of the select advertisers (such as Dominos Pizza or Propel Fitness Water), which you will view the entire time you play the game. For the amount of time you are playing, you earn the GamesThatGive site advertisement money. They, in turn, send a portion of the money earned to the cause you selected (you may permanently select a cause by selecting one here, if you are signed in).

While this sounds like a much more fun alternative to what some may consider dull trivia or clicking a button once a day, it's also good to note something very important. GamesThatGive only donates '70% of... ad revenue' to the charity you chose, which means they do make a profit instead of donating the full amount earned.

However, the selection of charities is actually quite respectable; there are currently 14 to choose from. Here is a list of available charities to select on the site:

The Wilderness Society
United Way
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America
City Year
Breast Cancer Network of Strength
Unicef
ACCESS
Jumpstart
American Heart Association
Mercy Corps
ServiceNation
Ronald McDonald House Charities
Feeding America
DoSomething.org

If you're the kind of person who takes pleasure from doing something you enjoy and helping the world at the same time (and who isn't?), then get on over to start a game and help a cause: GamesThatGive.

The Hunger Site - To Help Eradicate World Hunger

The Hunger Site

"The heart and soul of The Hunger Site's mission, to help eradicate world hunger, is rooted in the struggle against poverty and hopelessness."

The Hunger Site is another very simple, easy to use click-to-give. You can earn food for the hungry people around the world by clicking a button on each page. FreeRice.com, as mentioned in my previous post, utilized the genius idea pioneered here by The Hunger Site.

The point of the site, like FreeRice.com, is for people to actually view a page in which there are advertisements. The money generated from the viewing of these advertisements is used to buy food for the hungry. However, unlike FreeRice.com, you can only click once a day (though this one click pays for a whopping 1.1 cups of rice, in comparison to the 10 grains per correct click on FreeRice).

You can also check out the other tabs at the very top of the site, such as Literacy, or Breast Cancer, and you can click once a day per cause. Yes, that's right -- you can click once a day for EACH cause, instead of just one. So make your rounds while you're there. The causes listed are:

Hunger
Breast Cancer
Child Health
Literacy
Rain Forest
Animal Rescue

The site provides a very useful service to help you remember when to do your daily click: simply click the Daily Reminder button (to the bottom left of the "Click Here To Give - it's free" button) and enter your e-mail. Please note that if you do not wish to receive e-mails from them that are not the daily reminder, you will need to uncheck the box that says, "Send me free weekly e-newsletters."

For doing so, they also claim that you will receive a free wristband for the cause. Also note that this wristband will require you put in a credit card (PayPal is not working for them, currently) and pay about USD $4 shipping and handling, which is way more than a wristband is worth, and I doubt the money goes to charity. I suggest you steer clear of the wristband unless you truly adore it and must have it.

The site was created way back in 1999, by John Breen (the same man who invented FreeRice in 2007, and thus displays notable similarities). It was then sold to GreaterGood, and eventually CharityUSA. The site is not actually a charity, though it started out that way. As quoted on Wikipedia and similarly stated on the site itself, "CharityUSA currently claims that 100% of the website's sponsor advertising revenue is paid to... non-profit partners."

Any way the site works, all it takes from you is one click a day-- that's just seconds of your time daily-- to give some food to those who need it. With the Daily Reminder to your e-mail, it's only easier. Check it out, and do your part for humanity: The Hunger Site.

FreeRice - For Each Answer You Get Right, We Donate 10 Grains of Rice

FreeRice

"For each answer you get right, we donate 10 grains of rice through the World Food Programme to help end hunger"

FreeRice is one of the most ingenious, easy, and helpful sites I have seen on the internet in quite a while (if not in my entire time on it!). It donates many, many billions of grains of rice to the hungry people in third-world countries, where local inhabitants would not normally be able to feed themselves. It also doubles as an excellent device for learning or practicing such subjects as English vocabulary, foreign languages, geography, and more.

The idea at FreeRice is very simple -- in fact, it is so simple, you might not believe I am being 100% genuine until you try it out for yourself. Essentially, when you go to the site, you will immediately be presented with a question; answer it correct, and you will instantly be told that you have donated 10 grains of rice.

Answer as many questions as you want on any subject you want (you can click "Change Subjects" at the top right corner of the question box or the "Subjects" tab at the very top to change subjects) and for each correct answer, the site will donate 10 grains of rice instantly, guaranteed.

How can they do it? Well, this is where the ingenuity comes in (and for this, I think the creator, John Breen, deserves a medal or something!): each time you get a question, a banner appears at the bottom of the screen. This banner is not obtrusive at all (in fact, it is quite out of the way), but the advertisers pay for each time their banner is viewed. The current owners of the FreeRice site (the World Food Programme of the U.N.) use all of the money earned by advertising to pay for the rice.

Win-win!

Just by clicking the correct answer to a question, and perhaps even learning something, you can feed children and families all around the world! The World Food Programme says that 20,000 grains of rice provide enough caloric intake to sustain an adult for one day. That means it takes 100 people less than 2 minutes of consistently answering questions at a normal speed to feed an adult for the whole day!

The site also has a free FreeRice toolbar that's quick and easy to download. Once downloaded, use the search bar as you normally would your default search bar. For every 5 searches you do, FreeRice will donate 2,500 grains of rice, up to 5,000 grains per day. Search naturally, though; apparently "fake searches" to simply raise the rice donations will result in disabling of your rice donations for using the toolbar.

It is absolutely free, it is incredibly simple, and it is a really great thing to do. If you happen have some spare time, or if you are feeling a bit generous, go on there and do some good for your world, at FreeRice.

World Food Programme - Fighting Hunger Worldwide

World Food Programme

Fighting Hunger Worldwide

The World Food Programme is a branch of the United Nations that addresses the problems of world hunger. From the organization headquarters in Rome, the WFP aid those who cannot obtain enough food for themselves or their families. According to their 'About page', the WFP claims:

"The World Food Programme is the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide."

The World Food Programme has clear, well-stated goals, as expressed on their 'Our Work' page in the 'Objectives' section:

"WFP's strategic plan lays out five objectives and all our work is geared towards achieving them. They are:

1. Save lives and protect livelihoods in emergencies
2. Prepare for emergencies
3. Restore and rebuild lives after emergencies
4. Reduce chronic hunger and undernutrition everywhere
5. Strengthen the capacity of countries to reduce hunger"

The WFP has clear direction, and is integral to saving lives all around the world by feeding those who are hungry. Donate and save lives all across to the globe, too, with the World Food Programme.