HELPING OTHERS VIA THE NET

Ready to help someone today? Today's column focuses on the many ways you can help others via the Internet.

Today is Breast Cancer Awareness Day, and just by visiting NFL for Her, money will be donated for each page view.

www.nfl.com/nflforher

In fact, the NFL will donate $5 for every page view, up to $50,000 for the Komen Foundation. But you must visit today.

In addition, NFL for Her will sponsor chat sessions today with several special people involved in the fight against breast cancer.

Through its partnership with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, the NFL is a national sponsor of the Komen Race for the Cure, the largest series of 5K runs/fitness walks in the world.

I find it interesting that many of the breast cancer stories on this site involve relatives of NFL owners and players. That certainly makes the connection more real.

www.yoplaitUSA.com

Yoplait, the yogurt people, are also joining in the fight against breast cancer. For every pink Yoplait lid you mail back by Dec. 1, the company will give 10 cents to breast cancer.

Yoplait has donated more than $2 million to the breast cancer cause over the past two years.

What's interesting is that you can form a "Save Lids to Save Lives" team and sign up online.

They keep a running total of the lids donated, and the team in the lead for the lid collection. The Yoplait fund raiser will continue through Dec. 1. The company has guaranteed $550,000 and will contribute up to $500,000 more through the lid program.

After you're done donating, click on over to The Hunger Site. Your visit alone will mean food for the needy.

www.thehungersite.com

By clicking on the donation button, you can give 1 cup of staple food to a hungry person, paid for by participating sponsors. You can only click on the "Donate Free Food" button once each day. There is no charge for the surfer.

The donated food is distributed through the United Nations World Food Programme, the world's largest food aid organization, with projects in 82 countries, including those in Africa, Asia and South America.

It's also startling to watch the graphic on the front page. Each time a country darkens, someone dies of starvation. Every 3.6 seconds someone dies from hunger, according to the site, and 75 percent of those are children.

The Hunger Site began in June 1999 and more than 100 million donations have been made since then. You can check out specific gifts per country and locale.

www.thekidsaidssite.com

This is a companion site to The Hunger Site, and your visit can pay for free care to a child with AIDS. You can click on the button at the top of The Hunger Site or type in the direct address.

Visitors to The Kids AIDS Site are generating about 14 days of nursing care each day. My visit paid for 18 seconds of time toward prevention and treatment of childhood AIDS, again paid for by sponsors.

But it doesn't take many visits by people all across the world for those 18 seconds to add up.

The site says that 1,800 children worldwide are infected with HIV each day.

The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation's Call to Action Project currently funds eight different sites around the world: seven in sub-Saharan Africa and one in Thailand. At each of these locations, pregnant women and mothers with newborns receive HIV counseling, screening, testing and ongoing education. Additionally, these centers also provide women with proven medicine that help prevent the transmission of HIV to their babies.

Believe it or not, you can also help the rainforests online. The third companion site allows you to donate land to the rainforests by a click of the button. You can click on the tab at the top of the Hunger or AIDS sites, or go directly there.

www.therainforestsite.com

Visitors to The Rainforest Site are preserving about 30 acres of land each day, again thanks to generous sponsors. My click of a button gave 20 square feet of rainforest.

Not bad for a simple click of my mouse.

According to this site, almost two acres of tropical rainforest disappear every second. Politics aside, these Internet sites certainly make you feel a little better about helping others.

This Internet activism is certainly an interesting development. These sites are popping up across the World Wide Web.

Another site that brings together donations for "free" is called just that.

www.freedonation.com

Again, this site provides donations to a number of causes all paid for by participating sponsors. All you have to do is click on the donate button. Of course, many of the sponsors will give even more if you click on their ads.

If you click on the "Donate" button, you will give to a random worthy cause. My click provided a donation to the homeless.

Typically, each donation will generate between a fraction of one cent to several cents. The site says: "While this does not sound like a large amount of money, a few cents will provide a cup of food for a hungry person or vaccinate a young child against tuberculosis. With each free donation, you will be making a real difference in someone's life." It's certainly easy enough to do.

You can make free donations to such causes as: AIDS, education, the arts, protecting the environment, defecting cancer, housing the homeless, helping children and fighting hunger. On this site, you can donate multiple times.

www.clickforunitedway.com

I also found an interesting site in which a click donates money to the United Way of Canada. This is certainly should not stop you from donating to our local United Way Fund Drive something I do each year. But a click each day at this site is will help someone far away.

The clicks benefit 4,300 United Way agencies across Canada again paid for by giving sponsors. Because of an agreement with sponsors, the system will only recognize your click once per day.

And if you're really feeling charitable, you might want to check out thousands of charities in the clearinghouse called GuideStar.

www.guidestar.org.

GuideStar is a searchable database of more than 640,000 nonprofit organizations in the United States. You can type a name in the Charity Search box to find your favorite charity, or use the Advanced Search to find a charity by subject, state, ZIP code or other criteria.

You can even give online to select charities.

GuideStar offers tutorials to newcomers to the site because it is so large.

It can help you learn how to use GuideStar to find information about nonprofits, or help you better understand an organization's report.

Nonprofits don't pay to be listed on GuideStar, but neither is this site a watchdog site. The site doesn't judge nonprofits; its goal is to help donors to make their own judgments, based on the information provided at GuideStar.

When I put in the 63701 ZIP code and searched within 10 miles, GuideStar offered up nearly 200 local charities. Impressive.

Feeling generous today? The Internet certainly can make it easy for you to help others. What's your favorite charitable site? E-mail me at jonia@sehosp.org.

See you in Cyberspace.

Joni Adam is the Webmaster at Southeast Missouri Hospital in Cape Girardeau, www.southeastmissourihospital.com.