I’m going to stray a little from the regular topic of this blog, because this particular issue is close to my heart. It’s about helping build a school in Nepal. As you may or may not know, that is where I’m from. When my friend Shishir recently wrote to me about America’s Giving Challenge I got excited and wanted to whatever I could to help. Shishir is trying to win $50,000 from this challenge on behalf of a school that he’s helping build in Nepal. He works with Sarvodaya USA and they’ve done amazing work in Nepal.

The competition counts the number of people who donate. Multiple donations count multiple times, so if you want to give $30 you may want to consider giving $10 a day for three days. That would count as three donations. You get the point.

So, lets put Nepal on top guys! Click here to donate.

Here is more information about the school Sarvodaya hopes to build with these funds.

The day Kanchan, 7, was born, her father passed away. Several months later her mother went abroad for a job and never returned. Kanchan grew up with her grandmother, 70, and uncle, a retired health worker. Needless to say, life has been very difficult for the family. But when it came to educating Kanchan, they turned to a local community school – Jyotidaya. Jyotidaya provides free education to Kanchan and 40 other children. In addition,  about 300 children who would not have access to quality education currently benefit school’s services.

• National model that examples by the power of community’s collective action. (could be replicated in other communities).
• Alternative to expensive private school and low quality public schools.
• 1 in 8 children, mostly orphans and children from poor family study for free.
• About 300 children benefit from Jyotidaya’s high quality education.
• 100% students who have taken SLC have passed, compared to less than 50% from public schools.
• Students participate in community service and development through shramadana. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38Fd1g2PXLE
• New infrastructure will allow the school to bring innovative educational systems that integrates spiritual traditions with modern and scientific learning processes.
• Planned new construction building will use local materials such as adobe and bamboo, it will be one of the most environmentally friendly school building in Nepal. A model that promotes the use of low cost, local and traditional methods of construction.
• The school will also integrate perm culture and sustainable agriculture programs to inspire young people to take productive life style.
• New buildings will provide facilities to train public school teachers and parents in rural area to begin the transformation process of Nepalese education system.

If you can’t give, please at least forward this blog post to someone or write about it on your blog and give a link back.

I sincerely appreciate your help!

Photo used under creative commons license from Jeff Bauche on Flickr

So you want to be a hit on YouTube. Well, its harder than you think. It’s actually quite sobering to think that the chances of you winning the lottery is higher than your video going viral on YouTube.  In fact just garnering 10,000 views is an admirable feat! I just learned this stuff from a Slate magazine article written by Chris Wilson.  Here is an excerpt:

This is the great promise of YouTube: Your video can soar in popularity through sheer word-of mouth-or rather, click-of-mouth-until eventually people are making T-shirts about it. No one ever said this was going to happen for everyone. So, what are your chances of achieving YouTube stardom? I crunched the numbers to find out what percentage of YouTube videos hit it big, cracking even 10,000 or 100,000 views. The results: You might have better odds playing the lottery than of becoming a viral video sensation.

So, Charlie Bit Me is quite special after all!

The winner of the Tempe Thumbs video contest was announced earlier this week. A hearty congratulations to Suzanne B. (a.k.a. Crunchy Green Mom). Here is her winning entry:

Hope you enjoy Tempe Suzanne. Do share your experience on your trip. We look forward to living through you!

I am not known to display romantic flair. I should though. I’m sure Aimee would appreciate it more if I did. However, I’m coming around. In fact to get into the spirit of Valentines this year I submitted my romantic music stack as part of the Share the Love competition sponsored by SearchMe. I’m not terribly excited about the prize ( a trip to Los Angeles, California to see Britney Spears LIVE and in concert), but what the heck. If I win, I may give it away to a friend or something.

In case you’re curious here are the six songs I consider to be the most romantic music (in the English language). I say that because I’ve got a list of Hindi songs from the 1970s and 1980s the top this list even more, but that is a discussion for a different day.

If you are unable to view this video, you can watch on SearchMe as well. In case you’re wondering SearchMe is a pretty neat visual search engine. I’ve been using it from time to time and have found it to be useful.