It’s awesome when we can bring you news of people reaching out and volunteering, especially when those people are well-known. Their service isn’t more important than any service that you or I do. But let’s face it, they can help inspire lots of other people to do service. So I got excited when I came across MTV EXIT (End Exploitation and Trafficking), a campaign by MTV and alternative band The Killers to combat exploitation of children. Here’s how MTV describes the campaign:

MTV EXIT is a campaign about freedom — about our rights as human beings to choose where we live, where we work, who our friends are, and who we love. Most of us take these freedoms for granted, but hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world have had these basic human rights taken away. They are victims of trafficking - modern-day slaves — and criminals have forced, defrauded, or coerced them into various forms of labor, or prostitution.

MTV EXIT aims to increase awareness and prevention of human trafficking through television programs, online content, live events, and partnerships with anti-trafficking organizations.

The UN’s International Labor Organization estimates that worldwide about 2.5 million people are victims of trafficking (ILO) Over half of these people are in Asia and the Pacific (ILO)

Criminals earn an estimated US$10 billion every year through buying and selling human beings (UN)

A big part of the effort is a music video featuring The Killers that is directed by David Slade (who also directed 30 Days of Night and Hard Candy) and is produced through Anonymous Content.

A similar collaboration happened last year, between MTV EXIT and Radiohead, which also highlighted the horrors of child trafficking.

Here’s what UNICEF has to say about the campaign:

“There is almost no country in the world now that isn’t affected by human trafficking in some way,” said Susan Bissell, UNICEF’s Head of Child Protection. “The statistics are staggering. More than 1.2 million children are being trafficked each year and nearly 80 per cent of all trafficking is for sexual exploitation, and the most at risk are girls. We see this music video as a powerful way to reach out and raise awareness among young people, across borders and across language barriers.”

Here’s this year’s video (WARNING: Child exploitation is a difficult subject and this video contains images that may be disturbing). Get mad and then get involved here:

Do you miss the days of Prize Patrol and long to hear that knock on your door that means you’ve won? Well, Project 100 could be the answer to your prayers.

Last week, Project 100 started a campaign to hand out $100 to 100 random people in Southeast Michigan over 100 days. And there are no strings attached (really, we swear…)

Project 100 does ask that if you receive money you think about this before you buy those Prada shoes you’ve been eyeing: how could the $100 be used to do good in your community? The possibilities for this are endless: give it to a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter, use it to clean up a park, help fund a tutoring program for underprivileged youth or just give it to someone who looks like they need it.

It’s really up to you.

Does everyone use the money to give back to the community? Not necessarily – Project 100 says they’ve had people do things as mundane as paint their kids’ bedrooms with the money.

So, if there’s no guarantee that the money will go to the community, why is Project 100 doing this?

Project 100 is simply an organization of people who are trying to help people. It is our belief that even the smallest act of kindness can spark change, creating a positive impact on the community and a sense of renewed hope. Recipients can do whatever they wish with their money. All we ask is that they think about what they can do to make the community a better place — whether it’s volunteering for a community event, helping out a neighbor in need or choosing to spend or donate money. The act itself doesn’t matter. It is our belief that one kind act leads to another.

The winners are chosen randomly, based on people who have signed up online. If you live in southeast Michigan (and even if you don’t) check out the website. Besides signing up to be entered in the draw, you can also check out service ideas and read about what others have been doing with their $100.

So, got an idea of how you could use $100 to make your community a better place? Sign up here and Project 100 might knock on your door.

Check out this video of someone getting their $100 and see more videos here:

1. One of the great trends in our culture is that universities are increasingly honoring–and promoting–service. Late last week, the New York Times reported that many colleges and universities are offering incentives to students who take a year off to perform public service (incentives which will supplement the AmeriCorps Education Award). Here’s the gist:

More than 80 colleges and universities have started offering some matching grants to students who volunteer for AmeriCorps and receive an AmeriCorps Education Award, which is $4,725 for a full year of service. Princeton University encourages students to take a gap year through a new program titled the Bridge Year Program. Although Princeton does not provide financial incentives for delaying entry to the university, the Bridge Year Program is tuition-free. Students in the program must spend one year outside the United States and within a chosen community, in the company of fellow Princeton students and a host family. Members of the 2009-2010 pilot class will be stationed in Ghana, India, Peru or Serbia.

Read about institutions mentioned and check out the full article here.

2. The economy’s hurting everyone, which means that applications for AmeriCorps positions continue to exceed the positions available. Here’s a snapshot from South Florida, which starkly illustrates the big gap between demand and supply:

Motivated by a sagging economy, high unemployment and the Obama administration’s call for national service, South Floridians in record numbers are offering to teach reading, clean up parks and mentor troubled teens.

The problem: There are not enough volunteer jobs to go around.

“Last year we had two applications for every one position available. This year we anticipate five for every one,” said Wendy Spencer, chief of the Florida commission on volunteerism. “We are turning away people, and these are high-quality people applying.”

Many volunteers are young people, including students required to perform community service for credit and college graduates who can’t find jobs.

Among local agencies swamped with those willing to work either for free, or for a modest allowance, is Women In Distress of Broward County.

Social change director Erica Herman said she expects to receive several hundred applications for just 13 federally funded AmeriCorps positions — paying up to $11,400, plus health benefits — to be filled by September.
“The economy, the job market, and people who just want to give back,” Herman said of the overwhelming interest.

All the more reason that the Serve America Act needs to be fully funded. It is the key to opening up service opportunities quickly. 

3. Capital City Weekly, the newspaper of Alaska’s capital city of Juneau, gives fabulous examples of AmeriCorps’ projects throughout Alaska. They’ve been doing a series on the volunteers’ work and here’s the latest update.

4. To wrap it up, President Obama went on a historic trip to Africa and here’s some video of his speech in Ghana:

Sometimes, I throw my iPod on shuffle and it’s like the machine has read my mind. What came up today? “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?”, by Creedence Clearwater Revival and, since I feel like I haven’t seen the sun in weeks (I guess summer missed the memo), I thought a little CCR would be appropriate for this week’s Peace Out.

For the second act, to celebrate the fact that it’s the weekend, we have “Looking Out My Back Door”. As wacky as this song gets, the line at the very end – ”Bother me tomorrow, today, I’ll buy no sorrows” – pretty much sums up my weekend perspective to perfection.

See ya Monday.

We’ve talked a lot recently about nonprofits that help children in Africa and Asia, but what about our kids here at home? Well, here’s a great story about a women named Jennifer Frances, who started a program called “Bess the Book Bus.” Bess – a 1972 Volkswagen bus – is Jennifer’s vehicle of choice to deliver books of all sorts to children in the Tampa-area.

Since the program’s inception in 2002, Jennifer has delivered nearly 40,000 books each year to area preschools, elementary, middle and high schools.

In order to fund her program, Jennifer relies of grants from the government and corporate sponsorships. With the economy slowly tanking, her nonprofit has been losing precious resources and she even ran out of books at one point.

Even so, Jennifer keeps on going because, as she says: “This has been such a gift to be able to do this with my life. I realize now that it’s also a responsibility of mine, because these kids do expect and do depend on this.”

For Jennifer, help came in the way of being named one CBS’ Early Show’s “Early’s Angels.” After that, she received from Ford Motor Group a van which can be customized to fit her individual needs, including alphabet carpeting. Sears gave her a laptop and video camera to document her progress, and a bevy of book publishers donated their hottest books to CBS so that each child on the plaza that morning could have a new book.

This summer, Jennifer and Bess the Book Bus (Version 2.0, thanks to Ford) will be traveling to 45 cities across the country, to give over 11,000 books to kids across the USA. See if your city is on the list.

Read the article from CBS and check out Jennifer Frances and Bess the Book Bus. Get in contact with the program and have her visit your school or community center, or donate to a worthy cause.

Here’s the feature on CBS’s Early Show that got Bess and Jennifer rolling:

What do Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter have in common (besides the fact that they are all, um, presidents)?

Answer: a video to promote service. All 5 will appear in a PSA before the 2009 Major League All Star Game honoring 30 Americans who have been named “All-Stars Among Us” by the MLB and PEOPLE magazine. Thirty All-Stars were chosen by fans online as MLB’s response to President Obama’s call for service, and they include some of the most inspiring people our country has to offer. One of the coolest things about this video is that it will be the first time that all living Presidents have participated together in a ceremony at a sporting event – which shows just how valued service is in America these days.

Here are a few of the people that the Presidents will be highlighting:

President Obama honors Richard Nares (San Diego, CA - Padres), whose Emilio Nares Foundation, which he began after his young son died of cancer, includes a program called Ride With Emilio that transports sick children who lack access to transportation to their cancer treatments and medical appointments.

Former President George W. Bush honors Rob Dixon (Brockton, MA - Red Sox), who founded Project RISE, a non-profit organization that transforms at-risk youth into serious students.

Former President Bill Clinton honors Christine Shively (Newport Beach, CA - Angels), who crochets and knits cancer caps and sends them to 140 cancer centers in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico through her organization, “Knots of Love.”

Former President George H.W. Bush honors Gary Lynn (Houston, TX - Astros), a 17-year old with cerebral palsy who started his own foundation and has raised more $12,000 for cerebral palsy research.

Former President Jimmy Carter honors Ryan Housley (Tyrone, GA - Braves), who started HeroBox, a nonprofit that supplies specialized packages for soldiers based on their individual needs.

So, tune in to the All-Star Game on July 14 on FOX at 8 PM ET to catch some great baseball (Boston’s got 6 guys playing, so you know I’ll be watching) and some great people.

Check out the three finalists from Arizona below or visit the site to learn more about the finalists and winners from other ballclubs:

With last week’s 4^th of July celebrations so fresh in our memories, many of us are feeling a bit more patriotic than usual. Keep America Beautiful is an organization that seeks to engage individuals to take greater responsibility for improving their community environments by working to prevent litter, reduce waste and beautify local environments.

Even the music scene is getting involved with saving the environment. The Lost Trailers – an up-and-coming band that plays a unique combination of country and hip-hop (yeah, I thought it was a strange combination at first, too, but take a listen to these guys – the music is worth a try) – has partnered with Keep America Beautiful to raise awareness of the importance of living green. Their national tour – the “Lean, Clean and Local” tour – kicked off in September, and since then they’ve managed to reduce their carbon footprint by 132 tons.

How do they do it? The band has given up the tour bus, choosing instead to fly commercial to their tour destinations, saving gallons of diesel fuel. They’ve also given up their road crew, hiring people locally when they reach their destination. Band member Jeff Potter has even left his drum set at home – they hire a drum set at each tour site and rent equipment from local businesses.

Stokes Nielson: Obviously, the government is putting a lot of money into trying to get this thing (the economy) kick-started. As small-business owners, we want to do our part as well. It’s also really been great to realize that we actually can do something besides just writin’ a song and singin’ it.

Ryder Lee: We’ve set up a Web site: leanandcleanandlocal.com, and the become kind of a Yellow Pages for the local businesses we’ve hired. And we have videos on there and a directory of the folks we’ve used, so if the other acts were to hire this way, they could come in and use these same people.

Recently, the band met with members of the LA Conservation Corps to help clean up a local beach. Watch the video of their meeting with area teens and check out their tour dates here.

Visit the Keep America Beautiful site and see what you can do to help preserve America’s natural beauty and check out the Lean, Clean and Local tour website.

Here’s a music video or listen to some of the band’s music:

We’ve shown you YouTube videos from all sorts of nonprofits – ever wondered how they get on there and get viewer traffic? The people at YouTube have started a Nonprofit Program, which offers nonprofits from the US (including ServiceNation!) the opportunities to share their message with the world.

YouTube offers growing nonprofits the chance to connect with supporters, volunteers and donors without spending exorbitant amounts of money.

YouTube offers nonprofits:

§ Premium branding capabilities and increased uploading capacity

§ The option to drive fundraising through a Google Checkout “Donate” button

§ Listing on the Nonprofit channels and the Nonprofit videos pages

§ Ability to add a Call-to-action overlay on your videos to drive campaigns

How does a nonprofit qualify? All they have to do is be a US-based nonprofit that holds IRS 501(c)(3) tax status – basically, it has to be considered a nonprofit by the US government. They can’t be religious or political in nature, nor can they be focused solely on lobbying for political or policy change – other than that, most nonprofits qualify to use this awesome program from YouTube.

YouTube also offers free tutorials on how to run a video campaign, how to make and edit videos inexpensively and how to use Google tools to share your work.

So, got a nonprofit whose message you want to share with the world? Go check out YouTube’s terms of service and start spreading your message to the whole world.

Here’s what YouTube has to say about its nonprofit program:

With articles, news coverage and other press every day about the wars currently happening all across the world, it’s hard to believe that we don’t hear more about refugees. In Africa alone, there are more the 9.4 million people displaced by war – that’s almost more than the populations of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined.

The problem lies in that these refugees are often simply looked at as helpless victims, unable to do anything to better their lives. While we can’t solve all their problems, a nonprofit company called FORGE has helped immensely since its founding in 2003. They try to build the skills of refugees while they are in refugee camps, in order to help them return to their homes and rebuild after the conflict ends. That’s the sort of creative approach that can really make a difference.

Donors can choose the projects that they want to support, and receive frequent feedback and updates from the field about how the money they’ve donated will help in Africa.

How does FORGE choose projects?

FORGE begins the Collaborative Project Planning Process by identifying leaders in the refugee community who are especially capable of spearheading development initiatives. Once chosen, these leaders conduct extensive research through various participatory methods to determine specific community needs. The refugee leaders and FORGE staff work to develop a deep understanding of these needs and to suggest and analyze possible solutions. This process culminates in the completion of an official project proposal, drafted by refugee leaders, that is submitted for funding by FORGE donors. Once funded, the project is implemented and monitored by a ‘Project Facilitator’ chosen from and by the group of refugee leaders.

Since its inception, FORGE has helped the communities of over 70,000 refugees. Many of the refugees that they have helped will soon be returning to their homes. With the help of FORGE, they will continue to place emphasis on peace keeping and ending war in Africa.

Here’s more information about FORGE and how you can help.

clueLess, a band based out of the NYC area, joined ServiceNation in January. Since then, they’ve given several concerts to benefit the Global Fund for Women, which is a nonprofit that tries to advance women’s rights across the world. They raise funds to make grants to women-led organizations that help to ensure the economic security, health, safety, education and leadership of women and girls.

clueLess will be on FJS Radio today at 5:30 PM to promote their show tomorrow, July 8, at Maxwell’s, so listen in if you can get to a radio or computer, but if you can’t here are the details:

clueLess will be playing a concert which proceeds will help benefit the Global Fund for Women on July 8 at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, NJ. The doors open at 7 PM, and the concert is open to people of all ages (so all you teens out there looking to do something besides sit at home on a summer night, check this place out and help a great cause). There’s a fee at the door, so mention that you’re there to see clueLess to make sure the money goes to the right place.

Anyone in the area of Maxwell’s should plan to head out there on Wednesday, July 8 for a pretty fabulous band benefiting an awesome cause. As Nelson Pla, one of the members of clueLess put it: “Get out and stimulate the economy, your generosity, mind, body and (dare I say) soul?”

Check out clueLess, Maxwell’s or see some of the other bands that are playing the same night.

And here’s a PSA that the members of clueLess have created. Great music serving a great cause. Love it: