In preparing for the dreamblogue project David and I applied for a grant from Global Voices Online via their new Rising Voices initiative. Rising Voices is the outreach arm of Global Voices.

The recipients have already been chosen (no, I don’t know) and will be announced on Monday. Over 140 applications from 40 countries came in from what appears to be a true “Who’s Who in Global Citizen Journalism.”

According to their website, “Global Voices aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore. Global Voices Online is a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet’s impact on society.”

Ethan Zuckerman and Rebecca McKinnon were the driving forces at Harvard behind the formation of Global Voices. It has become one of the most respected news and reporting endeavors on the net and recently won the Knight-Batten Grand Prize for Innovations in Journalism.

Soon after applying for the grant we were informed by David Sasaki, GVOL’s Outreach Director, that there would be a online group created for all applicants to share their wishes, resources and dreams. In combing the bios of the members thus far I am awed by the creativity, courage and commitment of everyone I have read about: Nasim Fekrat, one of the winners of the Freedom of Expression Blog Awards from Reporters without Borders; Kathleen Gerahty, who co-created Picure Us, a photo exchange program for kids 8-12 aimed at increasing self esteem through photography, storytelling and art; Marnie Gustavson, who now lives in Kabul, Afghanistan and is the executive director of PARSA, (Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Services for Afghanistan); Yuanzhou Qu with the imaginative and much needed China based 1 KG program that brings inspiration and supplies to rural villages; Our own China-sphere’s Tenement Palm with a Blogger Watch group proposal (I am all for this one!) and more….

The list of participants is long and inspiring. David and I are truly grateful to Global Voices for the chance to meet Internet Chance-takers and the Good Samaritans of many faiths and background. Only 4-6 of the projects will initially be funded and I do not envy Mr. Sasaki. I would like to see everyone able to further global connections via this group….We hope to bring you stories on the dreamblogue and here at OMBW about some of these programs. Caution: It could positively change your world-view….

Update on the China Dreamblogue: more than 100 people have visited one of the intended beneficiaries of our group, The Library Project, and have offered services and financing. California Polytechnic will be weighing in with scholarship/educational support for the students we meet along the way and we are firming up a few more such relationships we hope to announce to you by early next week.

I am still nearly bedridden with a fractured ankle, but in high spirits….Regular blogging resumes tomorrow….

If you could save lives and provide needed educational opportunities to rural and orphaned children for a few minutes of your time and for free, would you do it?

The dream is to travel in 2007 to every mainland province in China. During this journey, the China Dreamblogue will chronicle the everyday lives of ordinary Chinese citizens. The motivation for this trip came from a group of women known as the League of Extraordinary Chinese Women. The LOECW was comprised of 5 women from various walks of Chinese life—wives, semi-professional women, a bookkeeper, and a student. The one thing they had in common was advanced-stage cancer. These women, with little access to formal education and less information from outside sources about the disease they had contracted, naturally and courageously combated their disease with friendship, enthusiasm, meditation, and the medical care they could afford.

Around this time, Yanzhi and Dawei also met Thomas Stader, an expat who has devoted his time, talents, and treasures to Chinese people educationally and economically left behind by giving them access to life-changing education. The Dreamblogue is an attempt to unite the strength, courage, and stories of people around China and channel it into a force that will help realize the dreams everyone carries.

All of the money generated from the advertising on this site will go directly from Feedburner and Blogads to the charities we support, The Library Project and The Reading Tub. No one at the Dreamblogue will never directly handle the money.

The Blog of Dreams will have videocasts, podcasts, a China picture contest (to be turned into a coffee table book) , a weekly Chinese horoscope, weekly Chinese recipes (also to be a book), and most importantly, the daily dreams of people from around the world. The Dreamblogue has been created to be a tool of understanding and a place where dreams can be spoken into reality.

To help:

1. Use the logo here or on the blog’s sidebar and click on the little green box that says “favorite this blog.”



2. Follow the instructions on Technorati. This will take you less than one minute.
3. The Technorati favoriting website may send you back to the blog of dreams. Click the “favorite this blog” button one more time to finish.
4. Link to us on your blog.
5. Let us know that you helped by e-mailing me or sending a comment. We’ll return the favor by favoriting your blog. Invite your friends to favorite and link to this blog. We will be creating a Dreamblogue blogroll in the future and will include you.

The other part of the journey is about creating a space on The Dreamblogue where people can blog their dream—they can write about a dream they have for themselves, a dream they have for someone else, or an educational dream they want to fill. There is a Chinese superstition that if you talk about bad things, they will come true. Instead, the Dreamblogue’s vision says that if you share your dream with others, you are willing it into being. Send your dreams to the blog of dreams, and we will post dreams other people want to share with the world.

Help change lives. As Yanzhi and Dawei travel throughout the year, the blog will able to give away a variety of products from different corporate sponsors as well as scholarships to study in China.

Read on »

 浏览中文，请点击这里。

translation by Frances Chen

“Children’s books are a luxury to have in Asia, and a rarity in an orphanage.”

–from The Library Project

Thomas Stader has a vision to build libraries for children living in orphanages and rural areas around Asia.

Stader, is one of those rare people who come to China with big plans and a bigger heart. He came to help and began to put his plan into action in 1998. To accompany Stader’s big heart, is a well organized plan rife with several clever ideas. Instead of trying to organize all of the complex processes that would be required to build libraries, Stader uses pre-existing supply chains and forms cooperative agreements with local NGOs and corporationg for funding and logistics. These tactics, combined with the lower overhead costs in Asia, allow him to build libraries for $150-$300 USD each–without comprimising the structural quality or integrity of the libraries. Welcome to an age when quality NGO work combined with smart marketing and good business sense can transform a philanthropic daydream into a sound reality.

The Project has made remarkable progress. In 2006, Stader was able to create two libraries for approximately $300 USD and some help from Aston Education, JinaLive, and the Dalian Charity Federation. In 2007, The Library Project will expand to do work in Xian and Jinan. By the end of the year, the project plans to create 15 new libraries to schools and orphanages with a total project cost under $15,000 USD.

Here’s a list of the typical costs from one of the recent library projects:

Hard cover book, 100 pages: $3
Soft cover book, 100 pages: $2
Harry Potte Series: $15
Color comic book: $1
Black and white comic book: .5
Book shelf: $25
Table and chairs: $50
Plants, posters, mats: $25

The Library Project plans to have 80 libraries running in China, Cambodia, and Vietnam by 2009. You can help by clicking here.

Note: all pictures featured here come from The Library Project’s site.

There will be follow-up articles on this worthy endeavor soon…..

Read on »

The Dream:

Our dream is to travel in 2007 to every mainland province in China. During this journey, it is our intention to chronicle the everyday lives of ordinary Chinese citizens. Our motivation for the trip came from a group of women known as the League of Extraordinary Chinese Women. The LOECW was comprised of 5 women from various walks of Chinese life—wives, semi-professional women, a bookkeeper, and a student. The one thing they had in common was advanced-stage HER2 breast cancer. These women, with little access to formal education and less information from outside sources about the disease they had contracted, naturally and courageously combated their disease with friendship, enthusiasm, meditation, and what medical care they could afford.

One member of the original group has survived, and a newer, younger member has been added recently—a 22-year-old student who lost her leg to bone cancer. Both of the survivors lack the financial wherewithal to apply standard medical treatment to their illness. We devoted time and energy from our blogs and lives to raise money for members of the league. As a result of our initial efforts, we were able to extend the life of some members, and we enabled the student to purchase a prosthetic leg.

During this first effort, we began to think about other Chinese people left behind in the wake of this huge industrial growth. Around this time, we also met Thomas Stader and Laurie Mackenzie, two expats who have devoted their time, talents, and treasures to Chinese, educationally and economically left behind, by giving them access to life-changing education. Our meetings sparked Yanzhi Liu’s interest, as he was (and still is) a board member for the US-based group The Reading Tub. Because we are educators and bloggers actively involved in search engine marketing optimization and education, we sought to find a way to organize the entrepreneurial energy of the people we met and turn it into a force that would help us, and other people, realize the dreams we now hold dear.

We decided to experiment, via the Blog of Dreams, by asking students in our global internet marketing class to take a hands-on approach to global marketing by contributing to a positive world awareness of China while aiding worthy causes. Students immediately drove a brand new blog to the number 23 position (out of 75 million) in the Favorites section of Technorati, the premiere blog aggregator in the world. Students ensured that one of our blogs was nominated for and eventually won Best Asian Blog in the Annual Weblog Awards. This blog already held dozens of top ten slots in search engine slots for keywords related to China business. So, with this kind of early momentum, student commitment and huge volunteer support, we knew we could create a project that would make a difference in other people’s lives via the Internet.

The Dreamblogue is a simple concept. We will contact people through PR Web, Blogger News Network (BNN, for whom we write), Google News, Social Networks like Facebook and our volunteer network. We will also promote an Internet MEME that asks people be to share real dreams for themselves or someone else. After a specified period of time (maybe once a month or once a quarter), we’ll select a contributor who will win a prize donated by one of our charitable sponsors. We hope to give away vacations to China, scholarships for study abroad, equipment, Software and cutting edge gadgets that will appeal to our broad demographic. We want to attract a Postsecret-type (http://postsecret.blogspot.com) interest in our blog that will drive enough traffic that we can generate advertising revenue to give to educational and medical concerns.

The blog will use Feedburner and Blogads as its primary advertising revenue resources. The number of ads that we allow will be limited: no more than 1 ad in our feed, 1 ad in our posts, and 1 ad in our blog ads. All of the money generated from these sources will go directly from Feedburner and Blogads to the charities we support—we will never directly handle the money.

The other advertising that we will be present on the site will be for other corporations and institutions that sponsor our adventure, and those ads will be top listed display ads in the sidebar of the blog of dreams.

Any educational concerns that join us as sponsors for the trip will have direct links on our site to translated pages or individual websites that will advertise to Chinese students and more importantly, their parents. We will do all of the search engine optimization and translation and ongoing support for these.

The Blog of Dreams will have videocasts, podcasts, a China picture contest (to be turned into a coffee table book) , a weekly Chinese horoscope, weekly Chinese recipes (also to be a book), and most importantly, the daily dreams of people from around the world. In all, the Dreamblogue has been created to be a tool of understanding and a place where dreams can be spoken into reality.

We will be telling you more in the next few days. Right now? head for the siebar and please favorite us in Technorati and add us to your blogrolls!

ABOUT US: Read on »

I had thought this story was lost, but thankfully:

January 4th, 2006

Ms Yue will have her final chemo’ treatment tomorrow. She will then be eligible for experimental treatment. The experimental treatment will cost 40-60,000 US dollars: 30-40 years of salary in China.

The Pearl River Delta in China is not unlike the area devastated in Louisiana and further East or the hard working towns in West Virginia that the coal industry depends on. It suffers through typhoons, floods, mining disasters, and lives are forever changed by devastation, and death. I am pained for people on both sides of the Pacific. I grieve for the families that twice suffered in West Virginia.

Like the Mississippi Delta, the Pearl River Delta is in the midst of a class four silent storm. It is a cancer zone. It is the dumping ground for every industrial success above it: a slow moving sewage system for dozens of cities.
It was the victim of a cadmium spill far north that made the long journey south. The Pearl River, so beautiful at night, is dark and foreboding in the day. No one would dare eat a fish caught from its banks in our city–and there are thousands of more factories on its shores as it meanders to Hong Kong from here.

When industrialization began I am sure most people in China had no idea that its economy would grow so fast that its infrastructure could barely barely hold on to its hat as the winds of change howled, and continue to howl, past daily. I am also sure that they had no idea that their environment would suffer as much as it has and their people with it.

America has had her growing pains and fights with the environment and governmental ineptitude: coal Mining and the recent immense tragedy in West Virginia, deforestation, erosion, Katrina.

I grew up in a Steel Mill Town where every morning you could wipe orange residue off of the hood of your car. The government never helped–even when people were dying.

China is trying to heed calls from these deaths due to close mines, repair hillsides denuded of trees, and in one neighboring town where the cancer rate is so enormous, officials are finally forcing companies to adhere to strict standards.

The effects of the the issue in China invaded my life: The fight became personal.

Let me digress for a second:

The Japanese have an old ritual that they perform when someone leaves for a long time. It is Kagezen. They will set a place for dinner for the loved one until they return. The metaphor found me today when Yue Ying was being wheeled into surgery for a breast cancer biopsy, a problem that struck as fast and as fiercely as Katrina or West Virginia, they handed her slippers to her family. At the risk of sounding trite, I was struck by how small they were. I was taken over by just how tiny, frail and helpless I felt at that moment.

I went to the waiting room with Yue’s sisters. There were a dozen other anxious families there–all with shoes in hand or set neatly down on the floor in anticipation they would be filled again.

It was hard for me to believe that the delicate slippers I held had carried the weight of such an immeasurable heart, such monumental grace and extraordinary integrity. She is 45 years old and has made much of herself despite the lack of resources that were available for anyone who grew up in China when she did.

Yue’s were the last pair of shoes in the room when Dr. Wang, a wonderful, gentle, professor/surgeon/oncologist who did a fellowship at City Hospital in New York, announced that pathology had confirmed a pervasive malignancy and that she would have immediate surgery. Though I had seen the X-rays and read the reports and had taught at Medical schools/Health Science Centers and clinically directed a hospital in the U.S., I was unable to contain my grief. It IS different when it is you that are affected–even obliquely.

She was in surgery for over five hours. She headed for recovery awake, tearful and typically apologetic that she was trouble for those attending to her.

I went home to change, eat, meet with a few colleagues and head back to the hospital where I spent the night. Probably more to comfort her than me.

Kagazen has long been over. Prayers, good wishes and her determination sent death on his way and the unsinkable Ms. Yue has been back fighting an extraordinary fight.

But, regardless of how optimistic one might be, how tied to faith or hope, something beyond a part of your body is forever lost: A strong sense of mortality takes residence in its place. It has been a tough few months of chemotherapy, and uncertainty.

Her shoes are waiting by her bedside. And I am convinced that Yue will be back in them. She will be as strong, beautiful and grace-filled as before. She is now. She has lost her hair but, not her poise and power. If anyone can keep illness or death at bay it is her.

China has a long way to go, as does the U.S. in thinking less of government than it does of its people. And cancer treatment for women worldwide has even further to go. Here people commit suicide or die these days because of lack of protection with health care. They do not want to burden their families.

My heart goes out to the recent and ongoing victims of both Delta areas and the families who have twice suffered in West Virginia. Here is my wish that, one day, you will never do Kagezen for anyone because of pollution, senseless disease, industrial disasters government neglect.

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