Two hundred and eighty-five days will have passed since Kallisti III when on May 3 at noon EDT (4 p.m. UTC) we launch the fourth of our art and charity livestreams on events.yoursiblings.org.

The 24-hour livestream—organized by Bronies for Good and GalaCon with the help of Ponyville Live—will allow you to watch famous fandom artists draw your art requests while you listen to live interviews with the talent working on Friendship is Magic. With a little luck, you’ll even be able to pose your own questions to them.

The interview guests. We’ve reached out to many potential guests and already have several confirmed and more interested, among them a writer, a voice actor, and a certain composer you will know. Below the confirmed guests so far.

• Anneli Heed: The Swedish Spike, Sweetie Belle, Cheerilee, Spitfire, Photo Finish, singing voice of Rainbow Dash, and many more
• Cindy Morrow: The writer of “Winter Wrap Up,” “Sisterhooves Social,” “Read It and Weep,” “Hurricane Fluttershy,” and many more
• Jennifer Weiß: The German voice of Pinkie Pie
• Nicole Oliver: The voice of Princess Celestia, Cheerilee, and many more
• Tara Strong: The speaking voice of Princess Twilight Sparkle

We will announce the schedule closer to the event, so keep your eyes peeled to our Twitter and Tumblr! (By the way, we also have a FIMFiction group.)

The artists. So far, Adlynh, ChuckyBB, DeathPwny, DerpTime, Feyrah, futzi, James Corck, Sketchy, St-Timid, Suikuzu, Tsitra360, XTailsDudex, and Yooyfull, have signed up to draw on the stream. However, we’re still looking for more artist guests. If you can draw well, you have experience streaming your work, and you are interested in doing so for Kallisti IV, please contact us and link us your art portfolio. We’ll also need your Skype handle.

The cause. The donations are again split fifty-fifty between GalaCon—who support us with their charity auction and other charity programming—and Your Siblings’ support project for the nonprofit Child Need Africa, which runs the medical clinic in Uganda that we all have helped to fund in 2012. In order to keep up the level of life-saving medical service that they’ve been providing to the impoverished region, they need a strong and sustainable source of income for the clinic, one that will be independent of donations in the long term.

The first step to achieving this is for Child Need Africa to buy and renovate a house near the capital, so that the complete revenue from the rents can help pay for essential supplies for the clinic, especially the medication. All details of the project can be found on Your Siblings’ Permanent Income for the Clinic project page.

Now bookmark events.yoursiblings.org and set an alarm for May 3, so you can’t miss it!

As announced earlier this week, Fillydelphia Radio’s Ministry of Brony: Sessions One charity album has been released this Saturday—a release that also marks the launch of the associated fundraiser.

To obtain the album, all you have to do is donate an amount of your choosing to the Ministry of Brony fundraiser. On the thank you page, you will obtain a secret link to the album, which you can download as archive of FLAC, MP3, and OGG files.

Click to go to the Ministry of Brony fundraiser page!

The album Ministry of Brony: Sessions One is a DJ mix compilation of fifty-four minutes of house, trance, and electro music mixed by Waranto Wingbeats. It features twelve tracks of awesome, pumping music from the community, a homage to the popular Ministry of Sound releases. Below, you can find the track list, further below a preview of the album.

1. Sym-Pony – Hope
2. Evdog – For Andrea
3. Captivated – I Like You (Afrox Remix)
4. DJ Alez Android – A True Rarity
5. DJ TACTM – Benedict Cumberpickle
6. Faren – Alteration
7. DitzyRhythm – Standalone Client (Original Mix)
8. Sonic Rainboom – Somnambulent
9. Azerty – Tree Of Harmony
10. Metapony – Torn
11. MrMehster – Tease and Sieze
12. Baradoros – Chaos Cannon

The altruistic cause of the fundraiser is a support project for the nonprofit Child Need Africa, which runs the medical clinic in Uganda that we all have helped to fund in 2012. In order to keep up the level of life-saving medical service that they’ve been providing to the impoverished region, they need a strong and sustainable source of income for the clinic, one that will be independent of donations in the long term.

The first step to achieving this is for Child Need Africa to buy and renovate a house near the capital, so that the complete revenue from the rents can help pay for essential supplies for the clinic, especially the medication. All details of the project can be found on Your Siblings’ Permanent Income for the Clinic project page.

Video after the break.

We are proud to announce that Fillydelphia Radio has compiled the charity album Ministry of Brony: Sessions One to benefit the support project for Child Need Africa’s medical clinic in Uganda.

This Saturday, March 29, 2014, at 8 p.m. EDT (midnight UTC), they will launch the fundraiser and premiere the album live on Fillydelphia Radio!

The album Ministry of Brony: Sessions One is a DJ mix compilation of fifty-four minutes of house, trance, and electro music mixed by Waranto Wingbeats. It features twelve tracks of awesome, pumping music from the community, a homage to the popular Ministry of Sound releases. You’ll be able to download it as archive of FLAC, MP3, AAC, and OGG files, including the twelve split tracks and a full-length mix.

The cause is a support project for the nonprofit Child Need Africa, which runs the medical clinic in Uganda that we all have helped to fund in 2012. In order to keep up the level of life-saving medical service that they’ve been providing to the impoverished region, they need a strong and sustainable source of income for the clinic, one that will be independent of donations in the long term.

The first step to achieving this is for Child Need Africa to buy and renovate a house near the capital, so that the complete revenue from the rents can help pay for essential supplies for the clinic, especially the medication. All details of the project can be found on Your Siblings’ Permanent Income for the Clinic project page.

One of the core aspects of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is how it strives to provide empowerment for young girls through a medium that is typically unfavorable to women. As part of the content blitz for International Women’s Day discussed in more detail in our previous post, and in collaboration with The Round Stable, we have invited fellow fans to discuss femininity, feminism, and women’s issues in the context of MLP:FiM and its fandom.

• Sonya Lynn, convention chair of BABSCon.
• Factory Factory, moderator emeritus and contributor to the TRS Forums.
• Lilli, a regular poster on the TRS Forums.
• TechPhek, writer for Derpy News and Pickle Barrel Kumquat, and editor of the MLP G4 Merch Tumblr.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is special in how it strives to go beyond the commonly accepted boundaries of girls’ entertainment, providing a wide diversity of role models and conflict-driven story lines that do not only encourage cooperation but also celebrate individuality. When “girly” is too commonly used as a pejorative, FiM rejects many attributes associated with girls’ animation not to be closer to gender neutrality but to use overt girliness to embrace the many facets of femininity.

It is no secret that this show has garnered a large adult following of both female and male fans, and that the existence of the latter has often sparked strong reactions—much stronger than against women watching a boys’ cartoon. While it is indeed important to claim the right of both men and women to pursue their interests regardless of gender roles, we must fight the core reason behind such a backlash—the internalized preconception that femininity is weaker than masculinity, that girl things are inherently lesser than boy things, and that a work targeted toward girls cannot possibly have value. In fact, this is another testament to the necessity of such works as FiM, and how important it is for us to not downplay but embrace its girliness and champion the show’s core message of empowerment for young girls and women.

Today is International Women’s Day, this year’s theme being “Inspiring Change.” We would like to encourage all of you to reflect on not only femininity and gender roles as they pertain to this show but also take advantage of this opportunity to research women’s issues and gender equality, to discuss it with your peers both within and outside of this fandom, to try and inspire change. It is true that many people and groups tend to be hostile to feminist discourse, to react defensively to any discussion on the issues women may face, as if it was an attack on the integrity of an entire group that it needs to be defended from above all things, and this may be intimidating. However, we firmly believe that discussing any problems we may have as a group is healthy regardless of how widespread or uncommon it may be, not as an accusatory debate on who should be blamed but as an attempt to fix issues that arise. To inspire change is to refrain from claiming not to be part of the problem but instead work actively to be part of the solution.

To encourage reflection and discussion, for the next few days we will be posting regularly on @BroniesForGood and our dusty Facebook page various resources and opinion pieces relevant to women’s issues both in the context of all things ponies and the world at large, as well as host a podcast as a platform for various educated individuals tuned to the fandom to discuss and express their opinions on the matter.

To kick this off, we encourage you to check out A Step Forward Too Late: The Impact of Femininity and Pony, a piece and testament to the importance of representation in girls’ media by Rarietty on The Round Stable!

With much love and solidarity,

Bronies for Good

Charity in the Bay with BABSCon

That’s right folks! We’ll be working with the intrepid folks from Bay Area Brony Spectacular on a fantastic selection of charitable programming this April! This includes a charity auction benefiting the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and SF Suicide, the hosting of a mobile adoption center with Peninsula Humane, and more! You can also visit us at our fan table, where you’ll be able to donate to the ongoing Seeds of Kindness 3 initiative and our newest charitable beneficiary, Community Grows!

Community Grows is San Francisco based nonprofit dedicated to the cultivation of healthy youth through the growing of gardens in low-income, diverse communities. These gardens and parks are situated in SF’s urban center, where staff work with at-risk youth to provide food, environmental education, and skills training free of charge to kids aged five to nineteen.

You have plenty of options to support these amazing organizations and their worthwhile efforts. You can stop by our table to place a donation, adopt a pet at the Mobile Adoption Center on Friday 1–4 p.m., participate in the charity auction, and more! Or, if you’re short on funds, you can support us directly by volunteering with us during BABSCon! In return for your time, you’ll receive a discounted price on your admission, acquire some sweet BfG swag, and enjoy an enriching experience working with our staff.

Be sure to check out our volunteer page to apply!

If you have yet to check ’em out, head on over to www.babscon.com to preregister while you still can! Till then, stay fluffy, everyone!

Volunteering with Another Hope

Throughout 2012 and 2013, Seeds of Kindness funded an orphanage building and a support project for the NGO Another Hope. Since then, the children have moved into their new home and the support project, a guest house, is about to be finished as well.

What Another Hope is looking for now are more volunteers who would like to help at the site of the orphanage in one of the following ways.

They are looking for people with experience in providing basic childcare, for example, making sure that the children bathe, brush their teeth, and wear clean clothes. They could also use support in the area of sports and other recreation for the children.

Furthermore, they need support for construction work, for example, for a the perimeter wall, permanent offices, and the vocational school that they are planning to start.

They also need volunteers who can provide training, assessments, and assistance in the area of basic health care, be it only simple tasks as putting bandages on scraped knees or giving classes on avoiding dehydration. Qualified physicians are particularly needed for community health outreach programs.

In addition, monetary donations directly to Another Hope and experience in fundraising are of course also always welcome.

More details as well as contact data can be found in their freshly updated volunteer manual and on their website. If you are interested in volunteering for the orphanage, please get in touch with Another Hope directly.

Whatcha doin’?

Maybe rewatching “Pinkie Apple Pie” or “Pinkie Pride”?

Good choice! If you have any questions for the authors of these episodes—Natasha Levinger and Amy Keating Rogers—then tune in

February 22 at 4 p.m. EST (9 p.m. UTC) on events.yoursiblings.org!

Charity Chitchat is an interview livestream that we’ve put together so that you can meet these two esteemed writers while they meet on air as well. You’ll be able to listen to their writers’ lore and even ask questions for them in the chat!

But of course we have ulterior motives: The next phase of our Seeds of Kindness fundraiser will be in support of a Your Siblings project by the nonprofit Child Need Africa who are running the medical clinic in Uganda that we all have helped to fund in 2012. The site of the clinic was chosen because that region of the Rubirizi District is one of several especially impoverished parts of the country and also one with particularly bad access to medical services. There, the nonprofit aims to provide free healthcare to those who would otherwise not be able to afford it.

Over more than half a year that the clinic has been in operation and helped countless people who were suffering from malaria, worm infections, STDs, and other diseases, and provided medical education in secluded parts of the region, it showed that the medical situation was even more dire than the physician in charge had estimated. In order to keep up the level of service that they’ve been providing, they’ll need a strong and sustainable source of income for the clinic, one that will be independent of donations in the long term.

The first step to achieving this is by tapping into the flourishing real estate market in and around Kampala. Child Need Africa wants to buy and renovate a house there, so that the complete revenue from the rents can benefit the operation of the clinic. All the details of the project can be found on the Your Siblings website on their “Permanent Income for the Clinic” project page and in their latest blog post.

So tune in on February 22 for this premiere! Unlike with our previous streams, we will not interview our guests consecutively: After an intro of approximately half an hour both will be with us live in Ponyville Live’s virtual studio!

First of all, I would like to voice once again my support of Michael Morones, who has suffered through hardships no one should have to endure, and of his loving family. There are some additional thoughts regarding the overall issue of bullying that I would like to share. This is something most of you might agree with, but some things are healthy to discuss and remind ourselves of, and I think now is a good time for that. A few days ago, a Daily Dot article was published. It is a sensationalistic piece that generalizes the behavior of the few in order to vilify the many. This post is not directed to the few but to the many.

After seeing a particular kind of discourse in several places in the fandom, I believe this is something that is worth discussing. Comparing two instances of bullying should never happen. There is a point beyond which asking which is worse should not have any relevance, because neither are tolerable and both must be fought with all our might. A certain episode of a popular cartoon has taken the task of teaching children that bullying even your enemy is never acceptable, and maybe as adults we should remember that.

Disagree with her ideas, with her methods, with her actions, think ill of her if you must. Do not downplay, minimize, belittle, excuse, or justify in any way or even only in part the organized harassment of an individual. Harassment that, in this particular case, goes as far as graphic depictions of rape and the public disclosure of her name and address. “It’s not the same as …” is not acceptable. “She isn’t innocent” is not acceptable. “The other side also …” is not acceptable. “Some people went too far, but …” is not acceptable. There are no shades of gray here. Bullying is always black, and must be condemned without restraint. It’s easy to support your allies, but bullies rarely attack the popular, and we can’t pick our fights here. Even if you disagree with the victim, even if the topic makes you uncomfortable. We can’t pick our fights.

It also saddens me that much too often, the first and sometimes only reaction to criticism against the community is to claim that “we are not all like this.” Of course not. It should go without saying for anyone with an ounce of common sense that far from all members of such a large and diverse fandom share the traits described in that article, or any traits for that matter. Rather than looking inward and making it known that we are not part of the problem, we should more often look outward and try to be part of the solution.

I don’t claim to have the solution to our problems, but I do know that it will take each of us to build it. Here, the best I can do for now is to voice my support for Michael Morones, PinkiePony, and everyone else who was bullied anywhere, anytime. When most if not all of us were either bullied ourselves or know a close relative who was, we at Bronies for Good hope that the majority can stay united against all harassment and bullying.

With much love and solidarity,

InC

Bronies for Good

First a word of caution: This is not “Minibro”—it’s not grim and ominous like 1984; neither is it silly enough to be a Monty Python reference: The title “Ministry of Brony” is an allusion to the club and record label Ministry of Sound.

In that terpsichorean spirit, Fillydelphia Radio has teamed up with Bronies for Good to launch a quest for the best original house, techno, and trance music to fill an album of approximately 160 minutes, possibly more.

Submissions are accepted till February 28, 2014, so that the album can be released March 15, 2014! All further details for the musicians can be found on My Little Remix.

Our Bronies for Good side of the bargain is that the proceeds from the album will benefit the same causes that the Seeds of Kindness fundraisers support. At the moment we’re fundraising for the Green Life’s Green Village project in Burundi.

In the region around Gitega, many children are without a home and often have to steal to survive. Green Life has been established to save these children’s lives and grant them a new future. In the Green Village smaller street children can obtain a basic education that will enable them to later visit a regular school; older street children can learn crafts such as welding and pottery, and various agricultural skills; and all of them can find the safety of a new family. All the while, the nonprofit tries to reunite children with their families when they have one and to solve the domestic problems that caused them to flee.

When that project is completed, we are planning to move on to one that will cement the sustainability of the medical clinic we funded with the first Seeds of Kindness fundraiser. In order to be able to hold more life-saving medicine in stock, the physician and chair or the nonprofit Childneed Africa, wants to establish a source of additional income for the clinic. We’ll keep you posted!

If you want to learn more about these projects, then have a look at the report that Your Siblings has published.

For months, Fillydelphia Radio and Ponyville Live have been planning and posting and counting so you can enjoy a countdown of the top 50 songs of 2013 as voted on by the community. According to this Google Form, the event will take place next Tuesday, December 31, 2013 between 1 and 7 p.m. EST. For the viewer page and for confirmation on the date, please watch the websites of Ponyville Live and Fillydelphia Radio for updates.

The event, however, is neither self-adulation of the fandom nor a mere end in itself: Giveaways will be linked to donations to the Seeds of Kindness 3 fundraiser. After you have already allowed Green Life to invest €10,422 into extending their agricultural program to various kinds of vegetables that will serve to keep the street children in their care healthy and well nourished, they now need €8,634 to build a stable and buy a dairy cow.

In both cases Green Life expects a surplus of produce that they can sell to earn additional money for school fees and medical care for the children. All the while the children have an opportunity to acquire valuable skills in agriculture and the keeping of animals, in addition, that is, to the education Green Life already provides to those who can’t yet attend a regular school.

So donate right away but also tune in on December 31 to get the scoop on the top 50 songs of the year—and to donate again of course. Note that there’s a little spoiler below the break.

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