Seeds of Kindness: A Healing Touch

Prizes Needed for Seeds of Kindness 2: Faithful and Strong

Hello everyone,

Thanks to the contributions of so many musicians and artists and to the generosity of you all, Seeds of Kindness has managed to raise over €37,000 ($47,000) and fully fund three Your Siblings projects: a clinic in Uganda, the Green Village for street children in Burundi and the expansion of an orphanage in Tanzania.

Following this success, dozens of musicians from the pony fan community over at My Little Remix are now close to the completion of another charity album, Faithful and Strong. All proceeds will go towards funding the Safe Project in Uganda, an HIV-stricken country where more than 2.3 million children are orphaned due to AIDS. By expanding the orphanage and building a chicken farm to guarantee its long-term sustainability, this project will provide to this lost generation care and education and guarantee them a brighter future.

To help support this cause, we are looking for gifts and prizes to be offered to the top donors, such as custom figurines, plushies, paintings, commissions for any of these, or electronic items such as games. With the previous iteration of Seeds of Kindness, the sum of all donations from the ten prize winners added up to as much as €9,800 thanks to these generous contributions! If you would like to offer such items, please contact us at [email protected].

 

Update: The album will be released by the end of the week, so have a teaser and a full song performed live!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvDAZs_FCKI

 

 

Thank you all so much once again for your amazing ongoing support,

Bronies for Good

Nurse Red Heart’s Round-Up Addendum: Platelets and more

Medic Redheart by CombieTTW

Hey Everyone! We just wanted to make a quick follow up post to some initial feedback that we’ve had in Nurse RedHeart’s Round Up, so have this awesome art of Nurse herself and be sure check out the information below!

We’ve recently had a great question brought up, “Would donating platelets count towards the drive?” And the answer is, absolutely yes!

Donating Platelets (Or White Blood Cells) is a type of blood donation that only extracts one part of the blood you donate. When you donate normally, you give what is known as “whole” blood, (both your various blood cells and plasma), which is what is used in blood transfusions or other life-saving procedures. However, when you donate platelets, your blood is drawn through a needle to a centrifuge that separates the Platelets from your “whole blood.” The remaining blood product is the returned to your body through another needle connected to your other arm.

Just as with regular blood donations, you also must be at least 17 years old and weigh at least 110 pounds to qualify as a candidate. You also need to be sure that you are in good health to maximize the amount of Platelets that you can donate.

So instead of counting this a normal unit-based donation within the drive, we ask that you specify that you donated platelets on your post to Bronies for the Better so that we can start off a separate tally of that as well.

Now for a few responses to other common questions we’ve been getting:

 “Can I still be a part of the raffle if I am in Europe?”

Yes, you are also eligible for the raffle. Just be sure to follow the instructions on posting, and you shall be counted into the raffle!

“Will enlisting and working as a blood drive or site volunteer during the span of the NHH event make you eligible for the raffle?”  

Yes, but you will need to show us some sort of proof of this, such as a registration confirmation, or an account of your volunteering experience from a verifiable blood drive initiative in your community.

“Can I make multiple entries into the raffle if I donate and volunteer at a blood drive event in my community?”

No, even if you do both, we will only be allowing one entry per person.

That’s it for now everyone. Be sure to donate if you can and as always, take care!

Love and Solidarity,

Bronies for Good.

Nurse Red Hearts Round-Up Reboot!

By bluenudibranch

"Don't worry, needles arn't THAT painful." By bluenudibranch

Nurse Redheart’s Round Up – The Reboot!

So about a year ago back when we at Bronies for Good had first started organizing, we put together one relatively small project called “Nurse Red Heart’s Round-Up”. This endeavour was essentially a brony blood drive that encouraged bronies to go out and donate blood to their local blood donation sites. The project was our first attempt at a community wide effort. By the end of the project, we were able to confirm the donation of 17 liters of blood by bronies across the country to local blood banks, hospitals, or to organizations such as the Red Cross.

Well, a year has passed since this donation drive took place and seeing as how there was quite a bit of enthusiasm for it last time, we’ve decided to make this drive an annual event. So, without further pause, we would like to announce the official reboot of Nurse Red Heart’s Round-up blood drive!

HOW TO DONATE! 

Like the previous drive, we’ll be asking you to take some time out of your schedule this September to go donate blood! But this time, you’ll be eligible for a mini-raffle that we’re holding to help reach our donation goal of 100 liters! So if you’re among the brave and willing, here is how you can participate in the blood drive and be eligible for our mini-raffle:

First and foremost, you’ll need to locate a donation site. If you are in the US, a good place to start would be by locating and getting in contact with your local Red Cross or United Blood Services chapter, or equivalent institution (i.e. UCLA medical center). They should be able to accommodate for your donation, or at least provide a link to any local event or site from where you can donate. If you are, for some reason, unable to establish any sort of rapport with these organizations, you can try inquiring at your local hospital to see if they are available to take blood donations. Once you have your location set, then you’ll need to arrange an appointment as if you were going in for any regular doctor’s visit.

Once you have your appointment and location set, you’ll need to make sure undertake some minor preparations for the screening and donation process. Therefore, we recommend taking a look at this online guide from the Red cross, so that way you can set yourself for a successful donation experience.

HOW TO QUALIFY FOR THE RAFFLE!

Now to get into the raffle, you’ll need to send us proof that you have made a confirmed blood donation. You can do this by submitting a post on the
on the Bronies for the Better Tumblr with the subject [NHH Donation], the date, location of your donation along with the amount donated. You will also have to include either a brief message detailing your experience during the donation or a photo of yourself and your dapper bandage! We’ll then undertake a randomized selection process to select winners for the raffle prizes we’ll have up for grabs.

If you have donated within the last 2 weeks of the official launch of Nurse Red Heart’s Round-up, then just follow the instructions detailed above and you’ll still be eligible for the raffle and be a part of the amount collected so far in the drive.

So With that said everyone, go make some appointments, donate some blood and help save some lives!

-Bronies for Good & Collaborators.

For any further questions, concerns, comments or suggestions about the drive, raffle or how to get involved, please feel free to email us at [email protected].

The GalaCon 2012 Charity Auction

Photo courtesy 404compliant

Photo courtesy 404compliant

The first German Friendship is Magic convention, GalaCon, held a charity auction on the second day, the proceeds of which, 100% of them, went to our Seeds of Kindness fundraiser. To the shock and utter amazement of probably all involved, the auction generated more funds than the charity auction at BronyCon, despite its one order of magnitude more attendees. Here an excerpt from my report for Derpy Hooves News.

The Sunday was first and foremost the day of our charity auction. As a member of Bronies for Good and board member of Your Siblings, I already expected the auction to become the single most momentous event for me at the Gala. Little did I know. After a hastened meal I hastened downstairs and was promptly greeted by Perry who asked me if I could join her on stage to introduce Bronies for Good, Your Siblings, the Seeds of Kindness fundraiser, and the project that was to receive the donations. Though I was reasonably confident in my knowledge of the topic and of the English language, stages, microphones, and speaking were among the things I habitually shunned.

My intro went well enough and it was time for Perry with her silver tongue to take over.

As activist in the area of charity work you are too often confronted with people who either don’t help at all, or for who their support is only a means to better their public image or that of a group they represent. I can’t find fault with enjoying those perks at times, but centrally your motivation should always be born of your love for those you help. Of that love I have felt plenty that afternoon—so overwhelmingly even that I almost cried several times:

A Flim cosplayer donating his hat, praising its value, and then buying it right back; friends pooling their money and driving the auction into vertiginous heights; someone winning a Canni figurine and donating it back; Perry bowing to public demand and spontaneously donating her beloved hat (signed of course) to vie with Weatherhoof’s; and one person repeatedly winning items for friends who couldn’t keep up with the bidding and directly gifting them to them. In total, the auction generated €8145 (about $10,060) for the expansion of the orphanage in Uganda. On behalf of the project, I extend my warmest thanks to these people, to everyone who participated in the auction, to all those who donated in kind, and of course to the organizers!

Update: One of the bidders at the auction has yet to pay a final installment of €600 as of 2014-07-11. Not counting this outstanding payment, the auction netted €7545. Legends of Equestria graciously donated another €274 at the con.