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Help From Home Newsletter - February 2010

Sister Schools - This organisation is dedicated to expanding and enhancing the education of children between Africa and US. African schools need equipping with so many things including stationery, toiletries and toys. Post your surplus items and help a school in need.

easysearch - Use easysearch every time you search the web and they'll give 50% of the fees paid by their advertising sponsors to your chosen cause. Loads of minor and major causes to choose from.

Plant More Trees - For every 100 virtual trees planted, a real tree will be planted in the UK. Simply choose the tree you wish to plant and leave a message for upto 4 friends. It's probably best to visit the site to see how it works.

God's Tiny Angels - Crafting handmade sewn, crocheted, quilted or knitted items to donate to hospitals in the US caring for needy babies. Loads of patterns available for all types of clothing.

SkyWish - Donate your spare SkyMiles to various worthy causes, via Delta's Skywish programme. Minimum of 1000 miles can be donated.

Experience Project - The Experience Project community cares passionately about a variety of issues that face our society today, to the extent that loads of active petitions have been created for you to sign.

WirelessFundraiser - WirelessFundraiser allows you to donate the value of your cell phone to an organization you feel is worthy. Loads of organizations to choose from.

SITES OMITTED

Black Rhinocerous

All sites omitted because they have either closed down or are no longer operational.

FEATURED VOLUNTEER ACTION

Distributed Computing

This website is basically a list of all the known distributed computing projects out there in webland. Distributed computing isn't the most well known of phrases, so a brief description follows. When you use a pc, it needs a certain amount of processing power to operate your programs and tasks. More often than not, there is always some processing power going spare and distributed computing projects use this spare capacity to work on complicated tasks. The results are combined with thousands of other pcs out there to solve problems that a super computer could not achieve in a reasonable amount of time. And all you need to do is to download some free software and once installed, you just let the computer take the strain. Your involvement from this point on is minimal as the software will usually handle the upload of results and download of new work packets automatically. It really can't get any easier than this.

The Distributed Computing website is kept up to date on a regular basis and provides 10 different categories to choose from, some of which are: Science, Life Sciences, Cryptography, Internet, Financial and Mathematics. Clicking on a category will take you to a more descriptive list of the distributed computing projects on offer.

All in all, it's a very comprehensive list. You don't need to go anywhere else for this type of information. If it's not on the list, then it's not out there!

This action can be found here in the 'Distributed Computing' category.

VOLUNTEER ACTIONS LISTED

Charity = 204

'Green' = 189

Advocacy = 124

SITES OF INTEREST

Good Gifts

Good Gifts provide gifts that actually benefit worthy causes out there. In return for your generosity, you get a gift card which you can give as a present to somebody you know for their birthday, for example. If they're that way inclined, they'll be delighted their gift went to somebody less advantaged than themselves.

We Want Tap

Tap is an ethical enterprise that is taking on the bottled water industry. It is a company, a campaign and a fundraising initiative, committed to getting people to re-think bottled water and rediscover a refreshing, clean alternative – tap water! Why buy plastic bottles with water in them when it's free from the tap.

CHARITY GAMES

Play a game and a donation goes to charity at no cost to you.

Dolphin Dash

Use the keyboard arrows to guide your dolphin through a maze of coins. The more coins your dolphin hits, the higher your score. The more you play, the more difference you'll make!

10 SECOND FREE DONATION

Click the link below to take you to a webpage that generates cash donations to programs that fund one minute of health care with each click - all at no cost to you. Just click on the 'giveaminute.org' banner.