JAPAN TSUNAMI RELIEF, PLEASE READ

[Binford 6100]

Generosity? What meaning does generosity have?

... is one of the liberating actions.
might be just my personal trip but i believe that hand that gives flowers smells good.

[edric]

Generosity? What meaning does generosity have?

... is one of the liberating actions.
might be just my personal trip but i believe that hand that gives flowers smells good.

haha, well said. Feels good, man.

I was thinking about what someone said earlier in the thread about finding a grassroots organization somewhere in Japan... A shelter or something local and small that will immediately be able to aid a community. It does hold some interest if someone could do a little research into that. I'll check back when I get home from work.

[BitterTea]

S3052, can you say how much you have collected so far?

I would recommend using Charity Navigator to find a good place to send the donation. Perhaps we could choose a few candidates and have a poll, splitting it up based on popularity, or just choose a single one.

edit... D'oh, thanks randomguy7.

[randomguy7]

208.82

http://blockexplorer.com/address/18JFQrNfYpoCns2sxq5NzXcQt55rdF4K4N

[S3052]

still increasing, just seeing another 22.6 BTC flowing in.

How long should we collect?

perhaps someone of the moderators here you place this call for donations high and prominent in the forum, potentially on bitcoin.org homepage temporarily to collect more.
Possibly calling for donations until a certain time and we then decide to issue the donation to our selected organization.

[edric]

still increasing, just seeing another 22.6 BTC flowing in.

How long should we collect?

perhaps someone of the moderators here you place this call for donations high and prominent in the forum, potentially on bitcoin.org homepage temporarily to collect more.
Possibly calling for donations until a certain time and we then decide to issue the donation to our selected organization.

Seconded
Edit: As for how long we should collect, that's up to you since you're handling the donation money. I say as long as there is a need and people are willing to help out... I wish I could do more but I'm virtually broke IRL and work for next to free.

[BitterTea]

I'd say convert to fiat and donate every X days or Y btc. Maybe 7 days or 250 btc?

[r1b]

20 btc sent

[Distribution]

I just sent 3. I wish I could send more, but I just started and invested my FRNs in a new 5830.

[mcdett]

Come up with some time period to stop taking donations (7 days sounds great).  When you stop have the op edit the heading so people know to stop sending you money.  Convert to fiat.  Send to organization that most of us would find agreeable, but communicate it ahead of time.


Thanks for taking on this responsibility.

[edric]

Hey guys, I was wondering if anyone had come up with any ideas as to organizations that we could directly send some funds to for the best effect. I've really been thinking on the point of trying to give direct monetary aid to an organization within a community such as a shelter or food bank, though I'm unsure how effective money would actually be when what the people need most are food, shelter and clothing. Any ideas off the top of anyone's heads would be excellent. I'm going to be pretty busy for the next 3 days or so, but I will be checking in. S3052, I really appreciate you stepping up to be the caretaker of the funds. I apologize, but I'm just lousy at this sort of thing, and have terrible organizational skills. I'd like to see more of people's thoughts as to what we can do with the collected funds to try to make some sort of difference in the lives of the people over there. In the meantime, I did PM a moderator to see if we can get this thread tacked up, and I'm not sure how it works, but maybe once we get some more ideas going on, maybe some sort of a poll?

As for some of the debating in some previous posts, I did read them, and the points were well taken. Plenty of stuff going on in the world, I guess sometimes you have to pick your battles. Speaking only for myself, the only agenda I have right now is just to help out. I don't care if Bitcoin shoots to the top of CNN news for us trying to help out or not, I would personally rather it didn't.

Anyways, it's late, I have work in a few hours. Gonna crank my miners back up to max and crash. You guys are the best. Thanks for your donations.

[左]

Hi folks, so i've been told I should jump in on this thread. I'm currently living in the Tokyo area, one of the areas affected by that awful earthquake.

Beam me those bit coins brothers and God bless!


(Actually am living in the Tokyo area, don't need your charity though. It's interesting to see how people are seemingly so willing to jump in and send bitcoins to some person (who I wouldn't know from Bob) without any way to verify that they actually are sent to a proper charity (or converted to physical coin and then sent).)

[r1b]

Possible donation option:  http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html

[bitdragon]

Hi folks, so i've been told I should jump in on this thread. I'm currently living in the Tokyo area, one of the areas affected by that awful earthquake.

Beam me those bit coins brothers and God bless!


(Actually am living in the Tokyo area, don't need your charity though. It's interesting to see how people are seemingly so willing to jump in and send bitcoins to some person (who I wouldn't know from Bob) without any way to verify that they actually are sent to a proper charity (or converted to physical coin and then sent).)

That happens all the time, Bob. It's called trust, faith, ignorance, compassion, stupidity and many other names. It happens with taxes, marketing stunts and on and on. People actually donate to beggars on the street believe it or not, with not knowing where the pennies end up. But that is not fully my responsibility and I did my part in giving without expecting much in return when I feel guided to do so. A virtuous circle where one thing leads to another and that first step is insignificant relative to the potential impact in the end. People feel guided, encouraged to do some small insignificant thing and just do it and the end result might well surprise you.
Please do go ahead and scam people and hold a blog and let us all know how your life fans out in the end or only write it down on paper in your personal journal.

Bless you indeed,

[S3052]

Current donation status: around 258 BTC (will get the precise number from blockexplorer)

Thanks so much already to those warmhearter bitcoiners.


Here suggestions on how to move on:

1. We call out deadline for the first donation wave until 12:00 GMT on Wednesday, March 16
    We need a moderator and/or the thread owner edric to announce this more broadly on the forum, to call for all donations people are willing to make.

2. In the meanwhile, until Wednesday, we decide on where to donate to. I think it is best to donate to an organization that uses our funds in the epicentrum of the quake and tsunami (in the Sendai area)

One example could be for affected children in Japan (but clearly we will let the people who donate to add other suggestions and decide ultimately via voting. Please add your favorite in this thread).
http://www.savethechildren.org.au/what-we-do/emergencies/japan-earthquake


3. I will then change the BTC into USD and then either wire it to the organization or use PayPal if they accept it (unless they accept bitcoins..)

Done and at least something good will happen with our bitcoins.


If there is more interest afterwards, we can run a second round of donations, but I prefer we make a big call to the entire bitcoin community to donate as much as possible for the 1st round until Wednesday, 16th and then we close it.

[左]

Hi folks, so i've been told I should jump in on this thread. I'm currently living in the Tokyo area, one of the areas affected by that awful earthquake.

Beam me those bit coins brothers and God bless!


(Actually am living in the Tokyo area, don't need your charity though. It's interesting to see how people are seemingly so willing to jump in and send bitcoins to some person (who I wouldn't know from Bob) without any way to verify that they actually are sent to a proper charity (or converted to physical coin and then sent).)

That happens all the time, Bob. It's called trust, faith, ignorance, compassion, stupidity and many other names. It happens with taxes, marketing stunts and on and on. People actually donate to beggars on the street believe it or not, with not knowing where the pennies end up. But that is not fully my responsibility and I did my part in giving without expecting much in return when I feel guided to do so. A virtuous circle where one thing leads to another and that first step is insignificant relative to the potential impact in the end. People feel guided, encouraged to do some small insignificant thing and just do it and the end result might well surprise you.
Please do go ahead and scam people and hold a blog and let us all know how your life fans out in the end or only write it down on paper in your personal journal.

Bless you indeed,

I'm not about to scam people (which is why I explicitly said I didn't need anything). However, just giving resources without verification is foolish. It makes you feel better, but without verifying that it went to some worthwhile cause, it might well have been a waste. In this case, I doubt that there is a problem, but the point is, I've no way of knowing. 

If you really want to donate to someone, consider the Japanese Red Cross (website doesn't seem to be working just now though).

I read something on Slashdot, one person said:

People were suckered into the whole Haiti thing last year. Morons "texting" cash to charities and schiesters like Bill Clinton and George Bush encouraging people to "just send us your cash". And in the end? No accountability. I don't even need to go into the troubles with the Red Cross and the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, which raised hundreds of millions of dollars, can't seem to account for where all that money went to. Last I recall, Clinton was present to see the handing over of three million bucks or some similarly ridiculously low number.

And idiots gave their cash. But they never looked in on what was going on. Why should they? I texted my $10 to some place, so I'm a good person now! I don't need to figure out whatever happened after that!

[sturle]

If this happened to any other nation in the world, death tolls would have been measured in per cent of the population, and the country would be completely in ruins.  Completely and utterly destroyed for the foreseeable future.  Not only because of the quake and the tsunami, but because of all the effects.  Buildings, homes, schools and hospitals falling down on people or getting washed away with people inside, chemical plants blowing up, large spills of everything poisonous, infrastructure destroyed, meltdowns in every nuclear plant, etc.  Uninhabitable.

Japan is another story.  Japan is prepared.  If Japan asks for something, give them that.  The Japanese Red Cross would probably also be a good idea.  Otherwise, just sit and watch in awe how the Japanese handle this.

[rebuilder]

http://architectureforhumanity.org/programs/2011-sendai-earthquake-and-tsunami

These people seem quite open in their approach.

[Amso]

The Japanese Red Cross site is really busy.

Anyway, this is the page about donation.
http://www.jrc.or.jp/contribution/l3/Vcms3_00002069.html

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Basically there are two ways, deposit into their account in Japan Post Bank (without transfer fees), or online such as credit card.

I can arrange to deposit cash (in Yen) directly into their account. Direct deposit would eliminate possible exchange fee on credit card which could be quite a few percentages and other possible fee. And the amount can be precisely worked out before hand.

I trust the bitcoin community, I can deposit the money first, provide the bank transfer slip before accepting the bitcoin.

And we can work out an exchange rate were the community is comfortable with.


Apart from Japanese Red Cross, there are some other funds such as Yahoo Japan 緊急災害募金 Emergency Disaster funds.
http://bokin.yahoo.co.jp/donation/detail/1630001/index.html

But their are also donating to the Japanese Red Cross. So a direct deposit to the Japanese Red Cross seems to be the most reliable and convenient and "to the point".

Donation to the Japanese Red Cross can be as quickly as a consensus is reached here.

[genjix]

This picture makes me mad. I hope this isn't a common sentiment in America.