Committing to 10 things

[blatherskite]

The Aviva Foundation and the 10byTen project of "Free the Children" are offering an opportunity to make a difference if you're willing to share a list of 10 commitments you'll take on to make the world a better place. For each such list, they'll contribute $10 to Free the Children.

This group is new enough that they don't yet seem to have an entry on Charity Navigator (see below for more details), but Aviva has an entry at Guidestar, suggesting they're legitimate. Have a look and see whether you're willing to share your 10 commitments. To get you thinking, here are 10 things I've chosen:

First, five things I plan to continue:

sharing information with no strings attached rather than hoarding.

treating my clients as people rather than cash cows by trying to learn more about them during each exchange of information.

treating my professional colleagues as valued friends, not sources of consulting information or cash.

editing humanely, always remembering that authors are people too and desire and deserve respect no matter how bad their writing.

finding ways to give people a reason to think whenever they read my writing.

The five things I plant to start anew or do more of:

Give more to charity each year. This year, because of the number of natural disasters and growing poverty, I chose Oxfam. If you don't have money, how about Donating some of your time? The Free Rice Project is one of many places you can donate your time to a good cause. (If you have any favorites, please share them here.)

Share useful charity information. For example, the Charity Navigator site is a great place to research charities in considerable detail to see if you like what they're doing and how they're doing it. Guidestar is also useful, but takes more effort and requires registration.

Embrace cultural, racial, ethnic, and other forms of diversity wherever relevant in my writing. But I'll also seek ways to make it relevant rather than making this simply a passive declaration of "wouldn't it be nice". (At some point, I'll be writing about this in my ongoing series of Worldcon reports.)

Recycle more. As a household, we already recycle a larger volume of materials than we trash, but we could do better. For example, I've just added a bin under the sink to collect small plastic bits and bottle caps that we used to just toss into the trash. I'll also continue nagging Shoshanna to turn off lights behind her when she leaves a room.

Emphasize the human side of things in my presentations and workshops.

Comments

[the_shoshanna]

I'll also continue nagging Shoshanna to turn off lights

You're just checking to see if I'm reading these, aren't you?