Got a serious Sodoku habit? Addicted to Bejeweled or Mafia Wars? Here’s a chance to enjoy some guiltless gaming:  GamesThatGive turns online gaming into dollars for charity. You play games for free, Games That Give sells advertising, and 70% of the ad proceeds go to charity. It’s that simple. Currently, there are 13 games including Bubble Burst, Smashteroids, Gems and Solitaire. Charities include Unicef, the Wilderness Society, the Ronald McDonald House,  the Breast Cancer Network, and many others. Ch0ose your charity, choose your game, and start giving. Have fun, do good. What could be better than that?

I found this video a couple of years ago, when there was much talk about whether the Bush administration would go to war with Iran. Thought it appropriate to pull it out and share it now, giving recent events in Tehran. Behind all of the images on the news, there are people just like us…

Seth Godin on the tribes we lead:

I’d like to wish all of you mothers out there a happy Mother’s Day, and inspire you with a little bit of history about the original meaning of Mother’s Day.

In 1872, Julia Ward Howe led the first Mother’s Day event, an anti-war observance in New York City. In honor of that event, Howe wrote her Mother’s Day Proclamation. Here’s an excerpt:

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…

It was Howe’s hope to convene a permanent annual gathering of women united to advocate peace, and under her leadership, there were annual Mother’s Day gatherings in Boston for several years. But Howe’s attempts to win formal recognition for a national Mother’s Day for Peace failed. Her idea, however, lived on.

Howe had been influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who worked to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers’ Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to create better sanitary conditions for both sides, and after the war she worked to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors. When Jarvis died, her daughter, Anna, continued to champion the idea of Mothers’ Day by campaigning for a national memorial day for women.

The first such Mother’s Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 10, 1908. From there, the custom caught on, spreading eventually to 45 states, until, in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother’s Day as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

Sadly, nine years after the first official Mother’s Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday was so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother’s Day continues to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. holidays, and it’s original meaning is all but lost in popular culture.

This year, in honor of the original founders of Mother’s Day and and to revive the spirit of their intent in today’s celebrations, here are a 21st century reading of Julia Ward Howe’s proclamation and some opportunities to honor the original meaning of the day.

• If you’re in or around Washington, D.C., Code Pink has organized a 24-hour vigil in front of the White House, to honor all mothers and women who live where war is happening, to call for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, and to send a message of sorrow, friendship and peace directly to women war victims and their families.
• Through Code Pink’s website you can also send a Mother’s Day e-card, and donate to help provide school supplies or a playground to children in Gaza who have been effected by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• Sponsor a war survivor through Women for Women International, an organization that promotes the recovery and rehabilitation of women war victims. Through participation in programs in eight countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, Rwanda and Sudan, Women for Women’s graduates become active leaders in the reconstruction of their communities. They start businesses, train other women, build civil society and serve as role models. For $27 a month (or, you know, 9 trips to Starbucks), you can give a woman leadership education, job skills training, and seed money to start a sustainable business.
• Even if you can’t afford a sponsorship right now, there are plenty of other ways to participate with Women for Women, from hosting events, to sending messages of support, to purchasing from Women for Women graduates’ businesses.
• Recycle your old cell phone with HopeLine. It’ll help fight violence against women and help Mother Earth at the same time. HopeLine is a program at Verizon stores nationwide that collects and recycles used wireless phones, batteries and accessories from any wireless provider. The proceeds go towards providing cell phones to survivors of domestic violence or cash grants to local shelters and non-profit organizations that focus on domestic violence prevention and awareness.

I hope this Mother’s Day you’ll enjoy the blessings of your families. I hope you’ll also take a moment to honor the original spirit of Mother’s Day and, in empathy with all mothers suffering through war, violence, poverty, and hunger, reflect on how we might come together, in Howe’s words, to “take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace…”

If recent events concerning Roxana Saberi have made you curious about Iran, here’s an unusual way to learn more. In these two graphic novels,  Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and  Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return and in the film based on them, Marjane Satrapi tells her story of growing up in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution, leaving home to study in Europe, and then returning home to a much changed and very repressive Iran.

From the book jacket:

Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. Marjane’s child’s-eye view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of the fascinating country and her own extraordinary family.

There’s also a combined volume of both books called The Complete Persepolis.

Persepolis, the film, was a Cannes Jury Prize winning movie featuring (in the English version) the voice talents of Sean Penn, Gena Rowlands, Iggy Pop, and Cathernine Deneuve, among others. Here’s the trailer:

The DVD is available through Netflix, Amazon, or your local library.

In 2005, after recording street musician, Roger Ridley, in Santa Monica, Mark Johnson began a remarkable journey. Moved by a crowd in a New York subway pausing in the morning rush to watch a pair of monk musicians, Johnson was enchanted by the power of music to bring together people who would otherwise ignore each other. Believing in the necessity of our coming together as a human race and that music is the best way to do this, Johnson embarked on a journey around the world with a mobile recording studio and crew. He filmed and recorded 100 musicians in locales from subways to African villages to the Himalayas, and from New Orleans to Johannesburg to Moscow to Jerusalem.

The result is Playing for Change, a multi-media movement that includes an online community, a documentary, Playing for Change: Peace Through Music, a series of concerts, and a cd/dvd that’s scheduled for general release on April 28.

Out of the project, the Playing for Change Foundation was created in 2007, to organize benefit concerts and other efforts to raise funds for building music and arts schools and other projects in communities in need of hope. So far, the Playing for Change Foundation has projects in Johannesburg and Guguletu, South Africa and in Dharamsala, India and Kathmandu, Nepal.

You can read more about Playing For Change here and here and here, and watch Mark Johnson’s interview with Bill Moyers here.

Want to get involved?

• Visit Playing for Change to find ways to participate.
• Join the Playing for Change street team to help spread the word.
• Connect with Playing for Change at Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and MySpace.
• Contact the Playing for Change Foundation to join the movement and find out how to attend a concert, view the film, host a screening, mentor a new musician, contribute a song, share some lyrics… or share others ways you’d like to contribute.
• But most of all, and for the pure pleasure and inspiration of it, watch the videos right here, and spread the word.

No Impact Man is a gold mine of information on how to make realistic adjustments toward sustainability in your lifestyle. Colin Beavan began his blog in February of 2007 to chronicle his family’s efforts to adjust their lifestyle so they would have no net impact on the environment. Since then, in addition to the blog, which continues with frequent practical articles that will help you to live more sustainably, Beavan has created a a soon-to-be-released book, a film, and an action-packed online community website.

Here’s how  Beavan described No Impact Man when he began the project:

No Impact Man is my experiment with researching, developing and adopting a way of life for me and my little family—one wife, one toddler, one dog—to live in the heart of New York City while causing no net environmental impact. To do this, we will decrease the things we do that hurt the earth—make trash, cause carbon dioxide emissions, for example—and increase the things we do that help the earth—clean up the banks of the Hudson River, give money to charity, rescue sea birds, say.

In mathematical terms, in case you are an engineer or just a geek who likes math, we are trying to achieve an equilibrium that looks something like this:

Negative Impact + Positive Impact = Zero.

No net impact. Get it?

Beavan and his family completed their one year experiment and decided to continue their no-impact lifestyle. His blog shares the whole process with a lively community of readers and includes articles like “42 Ways Not To Make Trash”, “The No Impact Sustainable Eating Plan” and “Doing Stuff Instead of Watching Stuff”. If you’re unsure about where or how to take further steps toward sustainability in your own lifestyle, No Impact Man will give you plenty of ideas to consider and lots of encouragement along the way.

With so many problems in the world today, and so much crisis in the news, doing our parts to make things better can seem overwhelming. It’s hard to know what to do, where to begin, and what matters most. Sometimes, adding one more task, like recycling or packing our own lunch, to our overfilled lives seems like one task too many. And when it comes to making our communities better, with our busy schedules and the multitude of causes requesting our time and resources, it’s hard to imagine how and where we should contribute. The choices are confusing and change is hard. Often we begin with good intentions, but find ourselves giving up.

If this is how you feel, then a neat little website I just discovered might be just right for you. It’s called I’m Doing My Part and it’s simple, helpful, encouraging and full of doable ideas and a strategy for incorporating them into your life that just might work.

I’m Doing My Part allows you to take action in four different areas: water, energy, waste, and, interestingly, happiness. Each action area is introduced with some simple and inspirational “facts”, then opens into a list of actions you can take in that area. Actions are divided into “first steps” and “moderate” actions. Click on an action and you’ll see a brief explanation of that action’s impact, details about how to do it, further reading, videos and other resources to help you succeed.

The strategy of I’m Doing My Part is to add one or two simple tasks at a time and do them until they becomes part of your routine. Once you’re doing those tasks, add them to your profile and I’m Doing My Part gives you positive feedback and an opportunity to share your actions on Facebook or Twitter. So not only does it help and encourage you to do good but it helps you spread the goodness!

I’m Doing My Part also includes a cool real-time Social Actions map that tracks volunteer social action activities and opportunities around the world and a blog aggregator that will connect you with news from sources like Change.org, InvisiblePeople.tv, and Refugees International.

Ready to do your part? Click here, and I’m Doing My Part will help you get started.

Roxana Saberi

By now you’ve surely heard about Roxana Saberi, the Iranian-American reporter imprisoned in Tehran. Despite an outcry from governments, press organizations, human rights groups and individuals all around the world, Saberi remains in Iran’s notorious Evin prison, weakened in the seventh day of a hunger strike to protest her imprisonment.

If you don’t know the story, here’s the capsule version: Saberi is a U.S. citizen of Iranian and Japanese descent. She was born in New Jersey,  grew up in Fargo, is a former Miss North Dakota, and has a masters in journalism from Northwestern. She’s been living in Iran for six years, studying for a masters degree in Iranian studies, and reporting for NPR, the BBC, ABC News and other international news organizations. She planned to return to the U.S. this year, after finishing a book about Iranian culture.

Saberi was arrested at the end of January and has been held in Evin prison ever since. Ten days after she was arrested, she was allowed a brief phone call to her parents. She told her father she had been detained for purchasing a bottle of wine. Subsequently, Iranian officials accused her of illegal reporting activities, saying she continued her work as a reporter after her press credentials were revoked in 2006.

On March 9, after her parents had not heard from her for nearly a month, Saberi’s family attorney was finally allowed to visit her in Evin prison. In early March, the U.S. State Department took the unusual step, through Swiss intermediaries, of asking the Iranian government to clarify Saberi’s status. The U. S. has had no diplomatic relations with Iran since 1980 when Iranian students occupied the U.S. Embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Despite U.S. government inquiries, the Iranian government continued to hold Saberi without any clarification of her status and without formal charges for another month. Because Saberi’s father is Iranian, Iran’s government, which doesn’t acknowledge dual citizenship, considers Saberi an Iranian citizen and has stated that the United States must not seek to interfere with it’s internal affairs.

Finally, on April 5, after being imprisoned for more than two months, Saberi was charged by Iran’s judiciary. The Iranian news agency ISNA reported that Saberi had been charged with espionage and quoted Iranian officials as saying that she had “accepted” the charges. “She had been carrying out espionage activities … under the cover of a journalist … and she has accepted the accusations,” ISNA quoted judge Haddad as saying.

On April 18, after a closed, one-day trial, Saberi was convicted of espionage and sentenced to eight years in prison.

By all accounts of people who have known and worked with her, Roxana Saberi is a journalist, not a spy. President Obama has stated that he is concerned for Saberi’s safety, urges the Iranian government to free her and is confident that Saberi is not a spy. The U.S. State Department has confirmed that the espionage charges against Saberi are baseless and continues its diplomatic efforts to gain her release through the intervention of the Swiss and Japanese governments. Meanwhile, American and international news agencies and organizations have joined to assert her innocence, protest her detention, and petition for her release. Among the organizations advocating for Saberi are Amnesty International, The International Press Institute,  the Overseas Press Club of America, the Society of Professional Journalists, the International Women’s Media Foundation, and Reporters Without Borders. Mirek Topolanek, the President of the European Union has also petitioned Iran to release Saberi.  And Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to receive the  Nobel Peace Prize, has joined Saberi’s defense for an appeal which will be presented before an Iranian appeals court.

On Sunday, Saberi turned 32. The previous Tuesday, she started a hunger strike which is now in it’s seventh day. And while even Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wrote a letter to Tehran’s top prosecutor urging him to ensure that Saberi’s right to defend herself is not violated, Saberi’s attorneys have continued to be denied access to see her. With Iran’s Foreign Ministry pressing the U.S. to release five Iranians arrested by U.S. forces in Kurdistan in 2007, and with Iranian elections coming up in June, it appears more and more that Saberi is a pawn in a very intense game of international political maneuvering.

So with all of these forces at work in her case, what can you do to help Roxana Saberi?

1. You can let Saberi know that she is not alone and promise her that she won’t be forgotten. As Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, explained to the editors of the New York Times, political prisoners experience profound feelings of isolation and helplessness. “Roxana Saberi has now been in one of Iran’s most notorious prisons for nearly three months… In order to withstand her ordeal, she needs to know that there are thousands of people, journalists and average citizens, who are aware of her fate, who are concerned for her welfare and who will stand with her and her family.” You can help Roxana Saberi survive her prison ordeal by writing to her here or here.
2. Now to make good on your promise that Saberi won’t be forgotten, make sure that people in important places don’t forget about her either. Start by sending a letter to Iran’s Ambassador to the U.N. asking the Iranian government to release Saberi.
3. Next, send a letter or email to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei.
4. Send an email expressing your concern about Saberi’s case to Iran’s judiciary at info@dadiran.ir .
5. Sign this petition urging Iranian authorities to release Saberi.
6. Sign this one, too.
7. Join the Free Roxana Saberi Facebook group to stay up-to-date with new ways that take action to help Saberi. Invite your friends to join, too.
8. Follow @freeroxana on Twitter to get the latest updates and re-tweet them to all of your friends.
9. Visit the Committe to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and the International Press Institute to find out more about how you can join their work to safeguard press freedom. All three of these organizations are working to secure Roxana Saberi’s release.
10. Finally, spend a little bit of time each day bringing attention to Saberi’s case. Send this post and other links to your friends and family and networks, Tweet about Saberi, blog about her, send letters to your local newspapers, and do whatever else you can to create noise about Saberi’s case. The more attention, the more pressure on Iran, the sooner Roxana Saberi will be released.

(Photo credit: Eustacio Humphrey / ZUMA Press)

Here are a few goodies to help you celebrate Earth Day:

How about starting out with a little history of Earth Day?

Then, check out Top Ten Earth Day Campaigns You Can’t Miss at TakePart˚. It includes links for volunteer opportunities in your community, National Geographic’s history of Earth Day video, a powerful film exploring the connection between environmental protection and human rights, ideas for creating a locally sourced Earth Day meal, and other nice resources for making your Earth Day, and all of your days, more green.

Also at TakePart˚, 17 Prime Ways to TakePart on Earth Day is a listing of seventeen simple things you can do today (and everyday) that have serious green impact. Ideas include air drying your laundry, visiting a farmer’s market, taking shorter showers, changing your lightbulbs, planting trees and twelve other actions that require very little time or effort, but make a big difference to the planet.

Hulu has a special Earth Day portal with video clips on green related topics, including a clip of scenes from the first Earth Day and videos about ingenious new energy technologies, endangered animal restoration and other timely topics.

The Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation‘s Call2Recyle program has successfully recycled 50 million pounds of cell phone and rechargeable batteries. Visit their website to find a drop-off location near you for all of of those old batteries cluttering up your junk drawers.

Read about the Meatless Monday movement, watch a video to get inspired, and then make a commitment to cut your carbon footprint and improve your health by forgoing meat once a week.

Visit the HuffPost Earth Day page to see what’s going on in Earth Day news. Some of the good news you’ll find: a list of proposed Earth Day resolutions (start composting, stop using paper plates, use public transit, and more), ways to green your sex life (no, really!), and the best Earth Day jokes of the decade.

Finally, for your viewing pleasure, and for your edification, at 9 pm tonight you can watch the cool young eco-capitalists from TerraCycle on National Geographic Channel’s new series, Garbage Moguls, while they up-cycle candy wrappers and old bill boards and other trash into cool new stuff. (Learn how to make a trendy, colorful wallet from a cookie wrapper right here.) Here’s a preview:

Happy Earth Day, and if you find other Earth Day goodies during your travels today, please share them with us here at ChangeAction by commenting below.