!deation (KooDooZ, Charity Water, & Lemonade Int’l)

Charles Lee created and hosted the !deation Conference.  Here are more highlights:

Lee Fox created KooDooZ which is a website designed to empower youth by challenging them to find their life balance of heart, mind, body and spirit. Whether it’s attaining a personal goal, accomplishing a community objective, or being part of a humanitarian cause, KooDooZ lays the foundation for middle and high school kids to understand how to articulate and act upon their own values, motivations and passions.

Scott Harrison and Charity Water seeks to bring clean water to the 1 billion people who do not have it by using 100% of public donations to directly fund sustainable water solutions. Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of diseases and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Children are especially vulnerable, as their bodies aren’t strong enough to fight diarrhea, dysentery and other illnesses.

Unshaken – charity: water’s campaign for Haiti from charity: water on Vimeo.

Bill Cummings and his wife Sherie created Lemonade International which is educating and empowering people in the largest urban slum in Central America – La Limonada in Guatemala City. Since 2001, Tita Evertsz and her team have provided love, education, healthy meals, mentoring, counseling, medical care, scholarships, gang prevention through the “Vidas Plenas” (translation: “Full Lives”) program.


!deation Conference Highlights (Just One & Plywood People)

Charles Lee created and hosted the !deation Conference.  Here are more highlights:

Greg Russinger from Just One introduced Laundry Love, an initiative that brought health, hygiene, and tutoring to those in need in multiple cities across North America and as far away as Singapore and Nigeria.

In the U.S. we have a malnutrition problem called obesity. As a result, Just One introduced On Bike With Love to encourage bicycling as exercise.

TCMD is a collaborative redistribution effort that uses trashcans for the collection of new goods for those in need. The items collected are then specifically distributed to those in need through partnerships we’ve developed with other local non-profit organizations. TCMD is continually growing through franchise activism—that is, a growing network of concerned individuals, families, businesses, groups, churches and schools collaborating autonomously to host a trashcan in various locales, providing those communities with a visual reminder and an opportunity to embrace the values of generosity, social concern and cooperative living.

Jeff Shinabarger from Plywood People and Gift Card Giver.  57% of all birthday gifts are gift cards and 15% of these will never be used. he gift card industry has risen to be a $90 billion industry with $8 Billion going unused every year. Plywood created a new philanthropic non-profit organization to collect gift cards and give them to people and organizations in great need. This unique project has already been featured by NPR, Paste Magazine, Relevant Magazine, Chicago Sun-Times, Atlanta Journal Constitution. This idea has resulted in giving over $30,000 of unused gift cards directly to people. Learn more at http://www.giftcardgiver.com

!deation Conference Highlights (Wedded Bliss & World Vision)

Ideas are a dime-a-dozen. What really brings positive change to an individual, organization, or
business is the actual implementation of these ideas. But in order to get there, ideas need
intentional strategy, development of skill-sets, sustainable infrastructure, and a viable network.

The !deation Conference is a unique conference experience that gathers some of the most innovative thinkers and practitioners from a given field in order to help fellow practitioners develop thoughts and tangible next steps for greater impact in their respective work.

Here are some of the highlights:

Nisa Islam Muhammad decided to promote the benefits of marriage in her community by creating the Wedded Bliss Foundation and Black Marriage Day.  During slavery marriage was illegal. After slavery strong marriages were the norm due to strong cultural cues. Now the cultural cues are missing. Through courses, conferences, and relationships, Nisa and her team are bringing cultural change.

Keith Kall serves as executive director for Corporate Engagement at World Vision, a Christian relief, development and advocacy organization dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice working in nearly 100 countries around the globe. Capitalism and the private sector can build democracies, provide clean drinking water, bring about the end of famine, etc.. The goal is not to make people less poor but more rich. Capitalism has problems, but when allowed to function properly the private sector finds needs and seeks to meet them. Capitalism at its best is not about greed but self-interest. You can be profitable without damaging your own credibility or the working relationship. Too often “a hand up” is really “a hand out” which does not help in the long term. For example, Food Aid destroys the local markets.  NGOs can learn a lot from the corporate world. A great example would be Toms Shoes. We shouldn’t treat corporations as ATMs or adversaries but partners in bringing good to the planet.