Thank you for helping Free The Children build a school in Kenya!

Last fall, we at NikeTalk donated $17,204 to Free the Children, a nonprofit organization responsible for building over 500 schools around the world since 1995. For $8,500, the organization can build and provide the infrastructure for a clean, safe, well-lit school building for communities in dire need.



Our contribution benefited the community of Salabwek, Kenya.

As part of their Fall 2008 Community Report    , which I received this afternoon and have made available online, Free the Children provided some additional background material about the community, as well as photos of the new school buildings:

• Salabwek is a community of 5,000 Kipsigis people, located near the Massai Mara region of Kenya.
• Despite free education in Kenya, 1.7 million children in the country still have no access to education due to poverty, child labour and lack of schools.
• The few schools in the region are virtually inaccessible because of the long distances between schools and communities.
• Children often walk 3 to 4 kilometres to school each day.
• Women and girls in Salabwek frequently spend all day collecting water.
• The Massai Mara has the highest school drop-out rate in Kenya and a 90 percent illiteracy rate.
• The biggest employer in the region is the agricultural industry, which earns each farming family an average of $130 USD annually.





We at NikeTalk donate 100% of our advertising revenue above the basic cost of hosting to charity. To date, we've announced the donation of over $53,000 to charities.
By visiting NikeTalk without using an ad blocker, you're helping us raise money for important causes like education, medical research, environmental protection, poverty elimination, and more.


For those curious about previous donations, here's a quick recap:

Thank you for helping NikeTalk donate over $2,500 to UNICEF!
Thank you for helping NT donate over $4,000 to Access Books!
Thanks to you, NikeTalk has just donated $3,656 to the UNCF!
Thanks for helping NT donate over $2,000 to Operation Smile
NikeTalk Donates $2,553 to the American Cancer Society
Thank You for Helping NT Donate $2,768.60 to JDRF!
Thank you for helping NikeTalk donate $5,000 to Green For All! www.greenforall.org
Thanks for helping NikeTalk allocate $6,820 to Kiva.org - now YOU can decide who we loan it to!

Though the announcement posts have since been lost, we also donated $2,907 to Gawad Kalinga and $3,908 to Ettie Lee Homes.


Thank you so much for your role in supporting these donations. We look forward to sharing more donation announcements with you soon. In the meantime, if you're interested in any of the above causes, please visit their websites and consider offering a contribution.

Together, we continue to prove that NikeTalk isn't about commodity - it's about community.

 

You still can. http://www.freethechildren.com/donate/index.php

Honestly, and I think a lot of my fellow staff members feel the same way, I'd genuinely be MORE proud to see even a dozen of our members get involved insupporting causes like this one than I am of the community donation. The community donation is certainly a sacrifice from the staff, but it's generally apassive act of support for most.

What I'd LOVE to see is an effect on some of our peers - to get our fellow members involved, too. Granted most of us came here to discuss shoes at onepoint - but the community is about more than that and we, as individuals, are about more than that. Regardless of what the folks in Beaverton may think,NikeTalk is not an industry marketing tool - it's a gathering place for like minded people, and it's my sincerest hope that we can use it to make apositive difference in the greater global community of which we're all a part.

We run NT like a social business. For-profit ventures kick in a few bucks to charity to improve their image for thesake of ultimately benefiting the bottom line. Charitable impact IS our bottom line. Our goal is to generate the greatest possible POSITIVE effect for ourinvestment as a group. So, when we try things like the t-shirts, etc. as fundraising - that's the goal, not sales. There's a limit to how much we canaccomplish with ad revenue and we need to move beyond it, so we're exploring fundraising options and, given that many people expressed demand for t-shirts,those interests dovetailed. It's a shame more didn't support that, since Rajah had some AMAZING designs that I wish we could've produced by now,but perhaps we can come up with something more effective. The point, though, is that this is the type of thing I want us ALL to be involved with. Itisn't a one way flow from the staff out.

So if you all have ideas - for fundraisers, for causes, and so on - this is the space to share that and work together to continue to improve our contribution. We really want to see people take something like our kiva.org lending team, for example, and really run with it. $63,000 since we started running ads is fine- but it's really only the tip of the iceberg. Again, if you had any idea how little we received for ad views and even clicks, you'd realize howeasily we could DOUBLE our charitable impact if the few of your who are interested would just kick in even $10 to these or other causes each time we donate. It may seem like a drop in the bucket - but remember, we're making these donations after getting FRACTIONS of pennies for each page view. If thatisn't proof that these droplets add up, I don't know what is.

If this inspires you to donate - please do. Seriously, that would absolutely make my day.

We try to help encourage donations with fundraisers, to give people products at our cost to help get donations out there, and it's like coating vegetablesin a deep fried, chocolate batter. The contribution itself, service to the community, IS the nourishing component. It's healthier to eliminate the"incentive" portion of that and just get people involved directly, hoping that it will eventually become part of their lifestyle. In the globalcontext, we're all incredibly privileged - and that represents a responsibility. We're here having a good time together online, and yet at the sametime - here's a village in which 90% of the children can't read. We complain about Yuku being down - they can't get online. This charity builtlatrines and classrooms some of our younger and more sheltered members probably wouldn't deign to set foot in - and we're here celebrating it becauseof the improvement it's made to this community. So, we hope this acts as something of a reality check for people who come here because they've beendazzled by some sneaker companies multi-million dollar marketing blitz, who feel they need to spend more on a pair of shoddily made sneakers than familes inSalabwek, Kenya make in an entire YEAR. For the cost of that streetwear t-shirt you don't need, we can really make a big difference in someone's lifeor support those working to preserve our environment and save the lives of people and animals around the world and, really, that should bring you greatersatisfaction than the t-shirt would. Maybe it sounds like a silly stump speech, and I don't expect everyone to become ascetics, join greenpeace, becomevegans, and become social justice activists overnight. What we can do, though, is try to move forward together one step at a time and become better and moreresponsible global citizens - and I hope that becomes a true COMMUNITY process and an ongoing component of our activities here, not just a quarterly donationannouncement thread in which 20 of our thousands of members come through with the golf clap.

Obviously there's no comparison between what we're doing and what other sites in this sector are doing - we're not even playing the same game. This sort of donation is a positive step, one we hope others will follow, but there's too much potential here to feel satisfied with grants like this one.

So, the question then is, well, how do we then take that next step - and the answer begins with you all. We take that next step together, it can't just beabout ad revenue.