Fandom Gives: Strikeback
fandom_gives came about as an irony in the wake of Strikethrough '07: What if Livejournal fandom turned the tables around? What if everyone who vowed not to renew their paid account, everyone who swore to give LJ and SixApart no more financial support in the form of extra userpics, or virtual gifts, or more storage - what if all those people took that money and instead donated it to charities for the prevention of child abuse and sexual assault?And so the idea was born: a fandom drive to collect funds for RAINN, the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, which has been called one of America's Top 100 charities - which then expanded to include a number of the USA and UK's foremost child-protection charities.
This drive is Fandom Gives: Strikeback. Two weeks of intense pimping, and intense donating, commencing at 00:01am EST, June 2nd 2007 and ending at 11:59pm EST, June 15th.
Because
fandom_gives is about more than simply a response to the events of May 29, 2007 here on LJ. It's about the idea that fandom has a serious potential energy, a collective drive that can be harnessed, not to make money for others, FanLib, but to bring about positive social change. We express that energy every time we write or beta a fic, or participate in a discussion - just by doing what we do, every day. But sometimes it's good to realize that we also have strength in numbers.
fandom_counts taught us that. fandom_gives is about using our strength and our energy to celebrate fandom while supporting worthwhile charities. As we give back to our real life communities, our online community becomes stronger. Let's prove the strength of fandom, and help support worthwhile charities at the same time.Here are a list of charities, divided by country, dedicated to combatting violence, abuse, and exploitation of all kinds. We've chosen ones we believe to be truly efficient and effective - whether through assessment of their distribution of funds and adherence to the Standards of Charity Accountability by dedicated analytical organisations such as Give.org and CharitiesDirect.com, or through personal experience working with or receiving aid from them. But most of all, we have tried to find organisations that are doing real work for prevention, and charities that are out there, in homes and hospices and helplines, actively working with and for victims and survivors, every day.
USA ++ UK ++ ICELAND ++ ISRAEL ++ AUSTRALIA ++ NEW ZEALAND ++ CANADA ++ GERMANY
USA
| RAINN |
| The Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network, one of America's '100 Best Charities' (Worth Magazine) is the USA's largest anti-sexual assault organization. RAINN operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline (1.800.656.HOPE; a 24-hour, free, confidential service) and carries out programs to prevent sexual assault, help victims and ensure that rapists are brought to justice. |
| DONATE |
| (Please note that the minimum online donation on RAINN's website is $25; we are currently working hard to organise a method for allowing smaller individual donations. We'll keep you posted!) |
| National Center for Missing and Exploited Children |
| Home to the Exploited Child Unit (ECU) established by U.S. Congress in 1996. As well as serving as a resource center for the public, parents, and others about the issues surrounding the sexual exploitation of children, ECU analysts work closely in providing leads from CyberTipline and technical assistance to federal, state, local, and international law-enforcement agencies investigating child-sexual-exploitation cases. |
| DONATE |
| PCA America |
| Prevent Child Abuse America exists in 42 statewide chapters, focusing on building awareness and preventing child abuse and neglect on both a national and local level since 1972. |
| DONATE BUY A WRISTBAND |
UK
| Women's Aid |
| Women's Aid is a UK society dedicated to the protection of women and children from domestic violence since 1974. In partnership with Refuge, they operate emergency safe accommodation refuges all over the country, as well as the National Domestic Violence helpline (0808 2000 247; freephone, 24-hour). They run nationwide awareness, prevention, and protection campaigns against domestic violence, provide the child/teen-oriented service The Hideout, and also work with the government, providing expert views on laws, policy and practice affecting abused women and children. |
| DONATE TO WOMEN'S AID DONATE TO REFUGE |
| Barnardo's |
| Barnardo's is over 130 years old - one of the UK and Ireland's most longstanding children's charities. No longer running children's orphanages, Barnardo's provides direct support to 110,000 disadvantaged or vulnerable children, young people and their families. Projects include - but are by no means limited to - fostering and adoption services, counselling for children who have been abused and who self-harm, help for young people who are being sexually exploited, and befrienders for women and children who have suffered from domestic violence. And seriously, these guys do so, so much more - please check their website and see. |
| DONATE |
| NSPCC |
| The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children operates ChildLine (0800 1111) for children and the NSPCC Child Protection Helpline (0808 800 5000) for adults worried about a child - both free and confidential. They provide school-affiliated listening and counselling services, young people's centres, teams for domestic violence prevention, specialist assessment and investigation services for violence and abuse cases, therapeutic services, and support for young witnesses. They run public awareness and education campaigns, work closely with members of parliament, respond to government consultation documents and ensure that new legislation is appropriate and that the welfare of children remains high on the political agenda. |
| DONATE |
| Mankind UK |
| Mankind UK is a support and resource service for men who have been sexually abused, sexually assaulted and/or raped. It is a National UK charitable organisation based in Newhaven, East Sussex, established to provide counselling and support for victims of male rape, male sexual assault and violence, as well as sex abuse support for men. Please note that this charity only accepts cheques at this time. |
| DONATE |
| Men's Aid |
| Men's Aid is a registered charity which has been set up in Milton Keynes to provide free practical advice and support to men who have been abused. |
| DONATE |
ICELAND
| Blátt Áfram |
| Blátt Áfram is comprised of mostly survivors of childhood sexual abuse who speak out about their individual experiences in order to educate the Icelandic public about the consequences of surviving abuse, the possibility and responsibility of healing and the importance of breaking the silence. |
| DONATE |
| Stígamót |
| Stígamót is run by a collective of women, some of whom are themselves survivors of different forms of sexual violence, who in turn offer information and counseling to survivors of sexual violence. |
| DONATE |
ISRAEL
| Elem |
| Elem assists adolescents dealing with different types of crises: pressures, trauma, risk and distress. Adolescence is a period rife with problems. These problems are exacerbated by the economic, social and security difficulties in Israel and where relevant, by the immigration process. This complex environment makes some of the youngsters all the more vulnerable to a variety of risk situations. |
| DONATE |
AUSTRALIA
| The Australian Childhood Foundation |
| The Australian Childhood Foundation works to give children a happy and secure childhood - a childhood free from the devastation of abuse, family violence and neglect. We are a national charity that provides programs for children and parents. We aim to strengthen community responsibility for promoting the well-being and protection of all children throughout Australia. Childhood should be important to everyone. |
| DONATE |
| Kids Help Line |
| Kids Help Line is Australia's only free, confidential and anonymous, telephone and online counselling service specifically for young people aged between 5 and 25. |
| DONATE |
NEW ZEALAND
| Barnardos NZ |
| Barnados works within the community to provide a range of care, education and support services for children and their families. As a not-for-profit organisation Barnardos is dedicated to ensuring all New Zealand children and families have access to services which are appropriate to their needs. |
| DONATE |
CANADA
| Kids Help Phone |
| Kids Help Phone is Canada's only national, bilingual, 24-hour, toll-free confidential and anonymous phone and web counselling, referral and information service for children and youth. |
| DONATE |
GERMANY
| Dunkelziffer e.V. |
| Dunkelziffer e.V. kämpft seit 1993 gegen sexuellen Missbrauch von Kindern und gegen Kinderpornographie, mit Therapie, Beratung, Prävention und Fortbildung. Mit unseren Projekten unterstützen wir Opfer, ihre Vertrauenspersonen und alle, die beruflich oder privat mit dem Thema in Berührung kommen. Der Verein setzt sich seit langem für einen besseren Opferschutz undhärtere Strafen ein, sowie für die Enttabuisierung des Themas durch Medienarbeit und eine umfassende Aufklärung der Öffentlichkeit. In English: against child abuse and child pornography. They do therapy, advice/consulting, prevention and education. They fight for better protection of the victims, harder punishments and part of their mission to make the topic less of a taboo in public debate. (Thank you,  _workinprogress, for the translation.) |
| DONATE |
Have you donated? Head on over here and tell us about it.
Please, please, if you guys have any other suggestions for charities you know do real and effective work in this area (especially ones in countries we haven't covered), if you think any of the ones that are already listed shouldn't be, please go over to the feedback/suggestions post and let us know. Strikethrough showed us what we can accomplish - we want to make Strikeback as meaningful as possible.
We humbly ask you to pimp this as hard and fast as you can. For your convenience, have some banners! Just copy and paste the text underneath to link back to us.
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Contact an organiser at copinggoggles[at]livejournal.com, bookshop[at]livejournal.com, or tropes[at]livejournal.com.
As you may have noticed, we haven't made any significant updates to the charities list -- not for lack of trying! LJ isn't currently letting us edit our sticky post, probably having something to do with the DDOS attacks.
As soon as we can edit, we will.
In the meantime, I want to SCREAM out my encouragement to you all. In the last three days, we have raised thousands of dollars for very good causes. (I don't trust my math skills to tell you how many thousands exactly, but suffice it to say that I believe we passed the $3000 mark today.)
So, other than a HUGE amount of pride and gratitude for all the pimping and the generosity, I have one thing to say:
We did this much in three days. There are eleven days left. We can do SO MUCH. Keep spreading the word, keep digging deep.
Okay, I am gonna try to update the stickypost again. If you're looking for a charity in or near your country, check out the info-gathering post until the stickypost gets squared away.
As soon as we can edit, we will.
In the meantime, I want to SCREAM out my encouragement to you all. In the last three days, we have raised thousands of dollars for very good causes. (I don't trust my math skills to tell you how many thousands exactly, but suffice it to say that I believe we passed the $3000 mark today.)
So, other than a HUGE amount of pride and gratitude for all the pimping and the generosity, I have one thing to say:
SPREAD THE WORD AS FAR AS YOU CAN.
We did this much in three days. There are eleven days left. We can do SO MUCH. Keep spreading the word, keep digging deep.
Okay, I am gonna try to update the stickypost again. If you're looking for a charity in or near your country, check out the info-gathering post until the stickypost gets squared away.
♥
- Current Mood:
jubilant
This is such a wonderful idea. And I have my own to add to it:
Give $1/$5/$10 for every instance of rape, sexual abuse, child abuse, domestic violence or incest you have written in your own fanfic. I know that, for some of you, it will really add up, but these are worthy causes, and deserve whatever you can afford to give. Fandom is huge. We can make a huge difference. I am so proud to be a member of fandom culture right now!
Give $1/$5/$10 for every instance of rape, sexual abuse, child abuse, domestic violence or incest you have written in your own fanfic. I know that, for some of you, it will really add up, but these are worthy causes, and deserve whatever you can afford to give. Fandom is huge. We can make a huge difference. I am so proud to be a member of fandom culture right now!
- Current Location:Lancaster, OH
- Current Mood: hopeful
If you're here, you probably donated, so the first thing we have to say is: thank you. Sincerely thank you. You've made a difference - every donation does.
But what Fandom Gives is trying to do is harness the immense and inspiring energy of fandom to change the world for the better, so let's see how much of a difference we all make together. Tell us who you donated to, and how much, and at the end of the two weeks, we will be able to see just how big a force for good fandom can be when it wants to be.
But what Fandom Gives is trying to do is harness the immense and inspiring energy of fandom to change the world for the better, so let's see how much of a difference we all make together. Tell us who you donated to, and how much, and at the end of the two weeks, we will be able to see just how big a force for good fandom can be when it wants to be.
Tell us how much you gave, and to whom!
Do you have any feedback about Fandom Gives? Do you have any suggestions for relevant charities we could include in this drive (international suggestions are particularly welcome!)?
This is the place to leave your comment. We would love to hear from you.
This is the place to leave your comment. We would love to hear from you.
