Hello everyone, it is wartime in Cyber Nations and we are all focused on the fun of war, but we should time some time out of nuking and launching ground attacks against other nations and bickering with each other on IRC or the forums to look at the real world for a minute - What about the less fortunate people in this world?
The charity that won the vote was charity:water, so it will be the charity that is the subject of the donation drive..
If you are unfamiliar with charity: water, please read the bottom of the post for info.
A variety of alliances have been contacted regarding this drive and all alliances contacted support this drive overwhelmingly.
Starting today and ending approximately two months from today, on Saturday, April 20th the donation drive will be going on, with stats being updated weekly. I will also post totals of how each alliance is doing.
This is not a competition and the real winners are the people who get the assistance they need. The goal is to raise money for an outstanding charity that helps people around the world. So please donate what you can to support this charity and give yourself that warm and gooey feeling you get when you do something nice for someone else.
Description of Charity: It's hard not to think about water today. In the western world, we face growing concerns about our stewardship of the world's most precious resource. There's talk of shortages, evidence of reservoirs and aquifers drying up, and of course, plenty of people who simply don't care.
But forget about us.
Most of us have never really been thirsty. We've never had to leave our houses and walk five miles to fetch water. We simply turn on the tap, and water comes out. Clean. Yet there are 800 million people on the planet who don't have clean water.
It's hard to imagine what 800 million people looks like really, but one in nine might be easier. One in nine people in our world doesn't have access to the most basic of human needs. Something we can't imagine going 12 hours without.
Here, we'd like to introduce you to a few of those 800 million. They are very real, and they need our help. They didn't choose to be born into a village where the only source of water is a polluted swamp. And we didn't choose to be born in a country where even the homeless have access to clean water and a toilet.
We invite you to put yourself in their shoes. Follow them on their daily journey. Carry 80 pounds of water in yellow fuel cans. Dig with their children in sand for water. Line up at a well and wait eight hours for a turn.
Now, make a decision to help. We're not offering grand solutions and billion dollar schemes, but instead, simple things that work. Things like freshwater wells, rainwater catchments and sand filters. For about $20 a person, we know how to help millions.
I'm normally very suspicious of charities that claim to be acting to benefit people in the third world; frequently there is a scam going on or some kind of ulterior motive. Charity: water does not appear to be a religious organization, which is a good first step; it means that they aren't just, say, giving away free Bibles to starving Africans. However I was not able to find any information about their activities in the third world except via their own website, which raises alarm bells. To their credit, on their website they say they are doing things like drilling wells, which is commendable if that's what they're really doing, but I haven't been able to find any independent verification of that.
They are a genuine charity in the legal sense; they are based in New York City, and their board of directors includes mostly bigshots from the American financial industry. They're not a front for MK.
