This September, we held our third Nurse Redheart’s Roundup blood drive, which resulted in the donation of approximately 5.95 liters in lifesaving blood.

Traditionally, we’ve held Nurse Redheart’s Roundup every September, and it’s always been a success. Even though we’ve had a few incentives to offer, it has always been out of the goodness of their hearts that folks have turned up and given their time and blood for the betterment of others.

However, we’ve noticed that our current model of focusing on a specific month can be somewhat limiting. For starters, regular blood donors need approximately six to eight weeks to recuperate after each donation, and many of them are unable to participate in the Roundup due to timing. Also, the needs of local blood donation centers vary, and a September-only blood drive can’t factor in the specific needs and shortages of local communities. Last but not least, meetup groups don’t always have time to organize September gatherings that could facilitate collective blood donation efforts.

In light of these and other considerations, we’ve decided to make a change. Nurse Redheart’s Roundup is becoming an ongoing effort. To facilitate that, we are putting a dedicated page up on the Bronies for Good website. On it you will find information on donation procedures, and resources to help put you in touch with blood drives and facilities near you.

What We Need from You

Nurse Redheart’s Roundup relies on the communication we receive from those of you who are so very generous with your blood. If you donate blood and want it to be counted as part of the Roundup, please start by visiting our Nurse Redheart’s Roundup page, and fill out the form there. Please remember to link to a scan or photo of your receipt, which you can upload to Dropbox, Imgur, or any number of similar services.

The tally will be automatically updated on our webpage every five minutes, so if you don’t see the tally change immediately after you’ve made your submission, please give it a moment.

Fabulous Prizes

We will still have a prize giveaway in the month of September, but instead of taking into account only participants from that month, all donors who complete submissions through our website at any point in the year will be eligible for prizes come September.

We will also be organizing more pledge drives than ever at future conventions. To aid in this particular effort and other Roundup-related projects, we would like to quickly introduce you all to Radtech Redheart, who has been kind enough to climb aboard to devote her time and energy to helping organize the effort, and to help transition Nurse Redheart’s Roundup into its new and exciting model:

Radtech Redheart here, and shall I say thrilled to be invited to join the team behind Redheart’s Roundup. I am looking forward to working to make this the most successful year ever for the Roundup. With international and domestic disasters happening at an alarming rate, giving of ourselves (more specifically of our blood) can make more of a difference now than ever. We must join together to be strong and help those in need. I look forward to updating you as we go through this next year.

Thank you all for having supported Nurse Redheart’s Roundup so far. We hope we can count on your ongoing support as we move into the future.

About a week ago we announced our eight-hour charity gaming livestream Gaming for Good. This is a final reminder in case you missed the post!

You are invited to join us on November 16 at noon EST on events.yoursiblings.org where repesentatives of Bronies for Good, Derpy News, and Equestria Daily, as well as Emily Jones, and Dpad Pony will be playing Team Fortress 2 (competitive hat simulator), DoTA 2, League of Legends, Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition, Skull Girls, Papers Please, and much more—all benefiting the Seeds of Kindness 3 fundraising initiative!

With a little luck you may even be able to jump in on a few rounds, or you may win steam games, pony swag, and more!

We’ll also be interviewing the development teams of both Legends of Equestria and Mane 6 to bring us the latest on their respective projects!

We look forward to seeing you all there for a big collaborative push for humanitarian projects for sustainable development in Uganda and Burundi!

Super Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful typhoons ever recorded, has left a terrible trail of destruction across the Central Philippines. The provincial capital of Leyte, Tacloban, was almost completely devastated with estimated fatalities reaching well over 10,000 individuals. Needless to say, the destruction alone has left thousands without access to even the basic necessities of food, shelter, medicine, and clean drinking water.

As part of the general disaster relief efforts responding to the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, Bronies for Good and the Brony Thank You Fund have teamed up to raise funds for Habitat for Humanity’s Disaster Response Fund. Monies from this fund will go to the provisioning of emergency shelter kits to victims requiring immediate short-term shelter and long term reconstruction efforts.

To participate, head on over to the Brony Thank You Fund’s eBay Giving Works page to donate directly to the fund, or to donate or bid on items that will have varying portions of proceeds allocated for disaster relief. All collected donations will be sent as an aggregate via the BTYF to Habitat for Humanity’s Disaster Response Fund. Further ways to lend support to other first response organizations can be found here.

1. Gaming for Good

What do you get when you assemble an eight-hour palette of exciting and potentially rage-inducing video games, prize giveaways, and a fluffy altruistic cause? A splendiferous, pony-infused, video game–themed fundraising event of course!

Bronies for Good, in tandem with intrepid folks from Derpy News and Equestria Daily, as well as Everfree Network’s podcast hosts Emily Jones and Dpad Pony are excited to bring you Gaming for Good! A Brony video games–themed charity fundraising event benefiting the Seeds of Kindness 3 fundraising initiative!

Come join us November 16, noon EST on events.yoursiblings.org with our show hosts, featured guests, and cadre as we delve headlong into your favorite competitive video games! We’ll be playing Team Fortress 2 (competitive hat simulator), DoTA 2, League of Legends, Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition, Skull Girls, Papers Please, and much more!

Play your cards right and generously, and you’ll even be able to jump in on a few rounds as the bullets start flying and frustration keeps mounting, not to mention getting your chance to win steam games, pony swag, and more!

We’ll also be interviewing the development teams from both Legends of Equestria and Mane 6 to bring us the latest on their respective projects!

Be sure to bookmark events.yoursiblings.org to join the fun on November 16 at noon EST!

We look forward to seeing you all there while helping us ensure the advancement of ongoing humanitarian projects for sustainable development in Uganda and Burundi!

2. Release of “Under The Moon”

We are also pleased to announce the release of an updated and remastered version of “Under the Moon,” a bluesy orchestral ballad featured on our fourth and most recent charity album, A Beautiful Heart. “Under the Moon” features the musical talents of Sprocket and Feather, and poses the question: What if the princess had sung a soliloquy during “Luna Eclipsed”?

The Seeds of Kindness 3 fundraising drive is an ongoing effort that has been in the works since August of this year. We have raised more than €25,000 for the Safe Project orphanage in Uganda and the Green Village for street children in Burundi. As a direct result, the scores of children in the care of the orphanage were able to move into their new building a few weeks ago. Everypony who donates to this drive receives a complimentary download of A Beautiful Heart as well as the other three charity albums. (Those who have already donated can also download the updated version of “Under the Moon.”)

A Beautiful Heart is our fourth album. It is the culmination of months of work from many talented musical artists throughout the fandom. Featuring 38 tracks, more than two hours of music, several ambitious collaborations, and music from both popular artists throughout the fandom and up-and-coming musicians alike, A Beautiful Heart is a testament to the generosity and spirit of altruism running strong in the brony music scene today. It’s our pleasure to share it with you now. Keep an eye out for contributions from artists such as EileMonty, MEMJ, Forest Rain, Feather, Makkon, Carbon Maestro, Seventh Element, MC Flowny, and many more.

Listen to it after the break!

Continue reading →

The latest report from Your Siblings shows what we have achieved so far:

1. Seeds of Kindness 1 and 2 funded the Safe Project orphanage of Another Hope in Uganda, who just moved into their new building.
2. Seeds of Kindness 1 funded a medical clinic in Uganda that has already made a difference hundreds of people’s lives.
3. Seeds of Kindness 1 also funded the Green Village in Burundi, which has been able to accept more street children in, and has been able to reunite others with their families.

Now it is upon us again—this community—to show that we have not lost what it takes to turn a fundraiser into a resounding success.

Donate to Seeds of Kindness 3 to fund a major extension of the Green Village for street children!

This has been another successful year, especially for the projects. Another Hope has moved into their new orphanage building, Child Need Africa’s clinic is running and they are treating patients, and Green Life has been able to accepted more children into their care while reuniting others with their families!

The Another Hope Orphanage

Last week, Aisha, the little girl who has been in the care of the Another Hope orphanage since her parents deserted her in 2011, moved into her new orphanage building, the building that you, our donors and supporters, have funded. Now that they have their own building, Another Hope will no longer have to pay rent for her and her scores of friends who are in the care of the orphanage, money that can now go toward school fees.

In the last week before the move the organization applied a few finishing touches to the interior, mostly painting and cleaning, and installed their solar energy system, which provides electricity, for example, for lighting. You can find all the latest photos on the project gallery.

Next, they’ll build another smaller house next to the orphanage, a house that will serve as a guest house where volunteers can sleep, saving the organization expenses for lodging, and where also paying tourist can stay and thereby provide for the children through their fees. They are already in contact with local tourism companies to arrange such deals.

The Medical Clinic

The Ugandan clinic that we funded has been running smoothly for several months now. As we already indicated in our report earlier this year, Mawanda and his team will also need a side project like Another Hope’s guest house to generate enough income to hold a wide array of medicine in stock. Even without this supporting project, however, they already provided 150 families with medicine or medical assistance at the clinic, tested over 200 people for HIV, among them 50 positive cases, and educated people and administered deworming medicine in the course of their outreach program.

The Green Village for Street Children

Green Life has been caring for children for many years, but our funding of the Green Village allowed them to accept more children into their care. Before they come to the Green Village, however, these children live in groups in the streets of the city and tend to be very suspicious of adults who profess to wanting to help them. Green Life has been working hard to win the trust of these children to expand their program. At the same time they are trying to find out whether the children still have relatives, and if so, whether the conflicts that drove them to escape have been resolved or can be resolved with a little extra help. The objective is always to enable the children to grow up to becoming independent adults who can not only lead self-determined lives but can also help other children from the street follow their example.

When they built the Green Village last year, three children were in their care, Mugisha, Abdoul, and Aboubakar. Years earlier, when Mugisha’s father died, he chose the street over his increasingly unsanitary home. Green Life has since helped him and his mother to resolve this problem and allow then to live together again. He missed her a lot after years of living on the street. They are very poor, however, so the organization continues to monitor their situation closely. Most recently, the reunited family decided to build a house for themselves, and Green Life suggested that they also acquire a goat as they would need the manure of their field, their primary source of income.

Abdoul is the one child of the three who continues to live in the Green Village. His educational level is still too low for a normal school, so they will continue to school him until they can admit him to a place where he can get his primary school education. In the meantime, he helps with taking care of the animals in the Village.

Aboubakar also fled his home when his father died and his mother was no longer able to take care of him or provide for his education. Green Life managed to mediate between him and his mother, and found that she had remarried and that his stepfather welcomed him back home. They succeeded in reuniting the family. He had gone to primary school prior to the death of his biological father and has now returned to secondary school.

Since then, five new children have entered the care of the Green Village, so that they are currently looking after six children including Abdoul. Prospère is the oldest of them. He is in secondary school and helps in supervising the younger children. Claude, on the other hand, is only six years old and can’t properly explain where he comes from and what the situation of his family was. He is also still too young to start school, so their first objective is to find out all they can about his origins. Richard and Noel are orphans who Green Life readmitted to primary school. The same is true for the sixth child, Estache.

Their expenses for their care are paid from several sources of income, the most reliable of which are their farming projects including the eggs they sell. Honey is also an important source of income but has proved to be less reliable. Currently, they’re preparing their vegetable and crop farming for the rainy season. All these are activities that the children can take part in to acquire practical experience and knowledge, but Green Life also teaches them reading and drawing.

October 3 would’ve been Kiki Havivy’s 8th birthday if she didn’t succumb to brain cancer in early June. Hence Tara Strong had the idea for a birthday fundraiser for a renowned US charity that greatly helped the Havivy family in their years of struggle.

After our last unsuccessful attempt to organize a livestream event within just one day, we—Bronies for Good and the Brony Thank You Fund—have spent the past week planning it properly again for this weekend.

Tune into our dedicated livestream page this October 12 at 6 p.m. EDT for charity auctions and even the chance to win autograph cards by Tara Strong and for a chance to bid on awesome items like this:

For many people, Kiki’s fight against cancer was truly an inspiration. In the spirit of those ‘Hope’ posters that we have all seen, brony artist Ol’ Sarge consulted with the Havivy family for their permission and created ‘Inspire’ based on Nathan Barlow’s design of Kiki’s OC as his tribute to Kiki and her long and heroic fight against cancer. During BronyCon 2013, the attending VAs signed this 24? × 36? print with the hopes that it will help raise money for children’s cancer research. This print comes framed, but it can be removed and framed by your own frame shop.

The livestream page: broniesforgood.org/stream/

The fundraiser page: rmhcgroupgive.kintera.org/global/kiki4childrenshealth

All further details will be announced during the stream. Don’t miss it!

Every day approximately 250 children just like Kiki die from cancer. Let us retroactively make October 3 a day to remember the struggles of the tens of thousands just like the Havivys and help them prevail over the disease!

Today would’ve been Kiki Havivy’s 8th birthday if she didn’t succumb to brain cancer in early June. Hence Tara Strong had the idea for a spontaneous birthday fundraiser for a charity that greatly helped the Havivy family in their years of struggle.

Thus, Bronies for Good and the Brony Thank You Fund are getting together to organize a birthday edition livestream in her honor.

The fundraiser page:  http://rmhcgroupgive.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=1047034&supid=393131759

Let’s make October 3 a day to remember the struggles of thousands just like the Havivys and help them prevail over the disease!

Important update: The charity auction livestream that was supposed to take place today at 6 p.m. EDT had to be canceled.

We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion that this may have caused any potential participants and we hope that you will join us next week for a properly set fundraiser livestream featuring multiple online auction items and prizes!

Details and event information will be announced.

Do you still have some of the cocktails, coffee, and Kleenex left? Because it’s party time again! In the first days of this month, the Seeds of Kindness 3 fundraiser successfully funded its second project, and now, on the last day of September, we have a new milestone to announce!

The Green Village

Do you like—wait for it—potatoes? Potatoes are pretty rad! (Pun intended.) We all know that Jayson Thiessen has the ability to morph into a flying potato with hat at will, but potatoes also display high levels of awesomeness based on their nutritious value. That is why Green Life has chosen to grow potatoes, along with tomatoes, onions, and other fruit and vegetables, as food for the street children in their care. Another reason is that this kind of produce yields high returns on the local market, so that they can pay all the various running costs of the children’s health care and education.

So far they had to run this agricultural project on a rather small scale, but thanks to your donations they’ll now be able to purchase a bigger field, seeds, and equipment!

The next stage for the Green Village project will be to break into the dairy business. They want to build a stable and buy a cow, again with the same priorities, to first satisfy the immediate needs of the children and then to sell the surplus to fund the running costs of their medical care and education. What is true for the project itself, that it is designed to be self-sufficient and independent, also needs to be true for the children once they grow up: Green Life prepares them for a new, self-determined future.

In total, the project still requires a little over €16,000. You know what to do!

sok.yoursiblings.org

Ponychan /good/ Rules

Of course it does! But what the mods are looking to establish are rules as a plural noun. For that, they need the input of the community, be it just an informed, appreciative nod.

The /good/ thread can be found here.

By the way, the grapevine has it that Your Siblings is about to release some happy news from two of our past projects. More about that soon!

Continue reading →

In conjunction with Seeds of Kindness altruistic event series, the Bronies for Good Nurse Redheart’s Roundup blood drive (NRR) and charity giveaway has returned for another run around the proverbial stable! Aiming to raise blood for thinly stretched blood bank supplies worldwide, the NRR blood drive will last a full month, from September 5th all the way through to October 5th!

With blood transfusion and plasma supplies at records lows and demand ever increasing, it is time once more for everyone to give their best and help out many of those in dire need! To participate in giving blood, simply find a local blood bank, such as those with the American Red Cross, or many other equivalent options worldwide. If you are unfamiliar with blood banks or have never donated blood before, please refer to our list below of rated national and international blood banks. Further, if you are a first time donor, please pay extra attention to the rules, regulations and guidelines for your local blood banks. These rules and tips are extremely helpful for donors, and ensure that your experience is as safe and pleasant as possible.

For all of you that are interested in participating and helping those in need, there is a bonus to your efforts which takes the form of a two-tiered sweepstakes. First, for those that pledged to donate for NRR at GalaCon and BronyCon, there will be a special high-value prize drawing. This drawing will be taken from the items that BfG acquired at BronyCon including leftover charity auction items. Secondly, those who participate in the blood drive from September to October will also be entered into a prize drawing, separate from the first.

To qualify for entry into the giveaway for NRR, all participants must provide some form of documentation of their donation. This could include a testimonial, photo with appropriate caption, copy of your blood donation confirmation, etc. along with what type of blood was given and what amount was donated. This can all be recorded down on our dedicated Ponychan thread for NRR.

There is still plenty of time to prepare, so let’s all work hard and make this the biggest NRR drive ever!

Blood donor registries in the US:

• America’s Blood
• Red Cross
• Gulf Coast Regional Blood Donation Centers
• AABB Blood Donation Center Search
• Blood Centers of America
• NY Blood Center (East Coast)
• Armed Services Blood Program (domestic US and international)
• UCLA Blood and Platelet Center

International donor registries:

• AABB Blood Donation Center Search
• Red Cross
• Give Blood (UK and North Wales)
• Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service
• French Blood Service
• Give Blood (Sweden!)
• Caitlin Raymond International Registry
• Deutsches Rotes Kreuz
• Cruz Roja (España)
• Finnish Red Cross
• Gift of Life Australia
• Magen David Adom in Israel

Seeds of Kindness 3: A Beautiful Heart

Unrelated to the blood drive, we have of course our fundraiser Seeds of Kindness 3 going on, where every donors gets the latest two albums by Le Soldat Pony as a thank you, and our new charity album A Beautiful Heart.

sok.yoursiblings.org

A Beautiful Heart is our fourth album, and the culmination of months of work from many talented musical artists throughout the fandom. Featuring 38 tracks, over two hours of music, several ambitious collaborations, and music from both popular artists throughout the fandom and up-and-coming musicians alike, A Beautiful Heart is a testament to the generosity and spirit of altruism running strong in the brony music scene today. It’s our pleasure to share it with you now. Keep an eye out for contributions from artists such as EileMonty, MEMJ, Forest Rain, Feather, Makkon, Carbon Maestro, Seventh Element, MC Flowny, and many more.

Ponychan /good/

Our friends over at Ponychan have launched /good/, a new board to facilitate, discuss, and share ideas for charity, volunteerism, altruism, and random acts of kindness. The Forum o’ Good, as it’s called, is looking to be a useful tool for those seeking inspiration for ways to make the world a better place. Opportunities are on the horizon to really bring people together in the spirit of good. So if you like that which is good… Check it out!

About Bronies for Good

Bronies for Good, first and foremost, is you. We are the facilitators who organize service events worldwide and encourage individual, group, and social involvement to fostering the growth of a global community of caring, socially conscious individuals: you. (You can also follow Bronies for Good on Twitter and Facebook.)

About Your Siblings

Your Siblings is a nonprofit charity organization registered in Germany that provides 100% effective monetary aid to select Third World projects that representatives of Your Siblings have personally visited and assessed. The projects need to be themselves nonprofit, nongovernmental, run by locals of the respective country, and geared towards providing the most essential means and services to those most severely disadvantaged in society, all to ensure that the donations will have the greatest and most permanent impact. (You can also follow Your Siblings on Twitter and Facebook.)

Today, we have three items for your perusal:

1. A party: Seeds of Kindness 3 has funded the second project.
2. A question: We want to make a slight adjustment to a Seeds of Kindness 2 beneficiary—but only with your support.
3. A forum: We want you to join Ponychan’s new /good/ board.

Two Projects Funded

If you’ve already donated to Seeds of Kindness 3, then you’ll need a lot of cocktails, coffee, and Kleenex now, because it’s party time!

Your donations will enable Another Hope to complete the orphanage building, and erect a sizable guest house right next to it. Over fifty children will be able to live in the new orphanage, and the small business next door will endow the nonprofit with a greater degree of financial security, so they can more easily pay the various running expenses for the children.

Now all donations go to the extension of the Green Village. You will remember the project from the first Seeds of Kindness fundraiser. Green Life has since built several houses on the property for living, sleeping, educational activities, and the small-scale agriculture projects they started together with the children in their care. They’ve also been accepting new children in, a gradual process as they have to first win their trust. To provide housing, food, clothing, medical care, education to even more children, they want to extend their agricultural program, and also establish their own water and electricity supply.

sok.yoursiblings.org

A little over €20,000 are still needed to reach this goal. Only a matter of days, right?

(By the way, if you missed or lost the download link and you used the “advanced donating” option, just return to the abovelinked page and enter your email address to regain the link.)

Well, Well, Well

Here’s a question for you. Toward the end of Seeds of Kindness 2, we were raising money for a project by Ingenieure Ohne Grenzen, the German version of Engineers Without Borders, that seeks to build a large number of rainwater harvesting tanks throughout Tanzania at various sites where they benefit people who would otherwise not have access to an uncontaminated water source. We already had Betterplace forward €4,271 from Seeds of Kindness 2 and €3,413 from two Kallistis to the project.

Now, however, something changed: The project is flourishing much better than we ever anticipated. Engineers Without Borders has won a long-term partner for constructing the tanks, and they’ve already built 110 tanks by now with 45 more on their way. Three teams of specialists are assisting local engineers in the construction, and the project is making great progress.

Hence, Engineers Without Borders asked us whether we could instead support a very similar project that still depends on our help. Since 2010, they’ve been supporting the establishment of a boarding school in Chonyonyo, Tanzania, that is to be completed by the end of 2014. Unfortunately, there is, as it’s so often the case, no safe water source in the region that could support the projected 1,000 students. Their conclusion from analyses and surveys of the region is that the most effective and durable solution is a well, which they want to build in cooperation with the same local partner that also realizes the rainwater tank project.

The well they’re planning to build would provide water for 3,000 people, so apart from the students, 2,000 more residents of the region would gain access to clean drinking water. At this stage, they need funds to analyze the water quality and for the drilling itself.

Of course, we raised the Seeds of Kindness 2 donations in question—€1778 and about €5 more from Kallistis—in the belief that we would assign them to the water tanks project and communicated this intention to you. Now, however, it seems greatly more effective and urgent to support the new, very similar project, so we want to let you, our donors to Seeds of Kindness 2, decide how we should proceed.

If you are one of the donors in question and you have any objections or reservations about having your donation instead support the well for the boarding school, please contact us, and we will work something out with Engineers Without Borders, so that your donation can still benefit the water tanks.

You are one of the donors in question if you donated after the given date but before August 24, 2013, to any of the following Betterplace fundraisers:

• Kallisti III after July 1, 2013
• Seeds of Kindness 2 after March 25, 2013
• Kallisti II after February 24, 2013
• Seeds of Kindness 1 after December 22, 2012
• Kallisti I after November 19, 2012
• Elements of Charity after June 17, 2012

We want to let Betterplace proceed with the transfers on September 9, 2013, so if you do not want to support the well for the boarding school, please contact us before that date and specify which fundraiser you donated to, when, and how much. If you have no reservations about the new project, no action is required. Thank you!

Ponychan’s Shiny New /good/

This is not directly related to Seeds of Kindness, but our friends over at Ponychan have launched /good/, a new board to facilitate, discuss, and share ideas for charity, volunteerism, altruism, and random acts of kindness. The Forum o’ Good, as it’s called, is looking to be a useful tool for those seeking inspiration for ways to make the world a better place. Opportunities are on the horizon to really bring people together in the spirit of good. So if you like that which is good… Check it out!

About Bronies for Good

Bronies for Good, first and foremost, is you. We are the facilitators who organize service events worldwide and encourage individual, group, and social involvement to fostering the growth of a global community of caring, socially conscious individuals: you. (You can also follow Bronies for Good on Twitter and Facebook.)

About Your Siblings

Your Siblings is a nonprofit charity organization registered in Germany that provides 100% effective monetary aid to select Third World projects that representatives of Your Siblings have personally visited and assessed. The projects need to be themselves nonprofit, nongovernmental, run by locals of the respective country, and geared towards providing the most essential means and services to those most severely disadvantaged in society, all to ensure that the donations will have the greatest and most permanent impact. (You can also follow Your Siblings on Twitter and Facebook.)