New Floor

I am remodeling a bathroom for the little one. Work is slowly progressing.

Progress on the Construction

The renovations to the children's home are under way:

A New Home

We started construction on the renovations of the new home for the children this week.

Here is the floor plan:












Here are the before pictures:

A few of my not so favorite things

Truth in Advertising?

(photo was taken at a bar in Cape Town, South Africa)

Have a Killer Holiday with (Red)

The Killers' new Christmas single "A Great Big Sled" is available on iTunes now! Buy the song for 99 cents with 100% of the proceeds going to the Global Fund as part of (RED) to help eliminate AIDS in Africa.

And read this story from The Independent to find out why The Killers are having a (RED) Christmas.

Today is World AIDS Day

Today is World AIDS Day. There are many ways to help, but here are a few suggestions:
World Aids Day
The Clinton Foundation
One
Join Red

Watch Bono's Message on World AIDS Day:

The Alternative Christmas Market

This Weekend is our annual Alternative Christmas Market at Christ Church Cathedral in Nashville.
The annual Gift Market provides an opportunity to recapture the joy of giving by making donations to local agencies and global ministries in honor of family and friends. Donors receive a "gift card" to give the honoree telling him/her that a donation has been made in his/her honor.
We have a booth set up to sell items to raise money for the Orphanage in South Africa.

Ten Million Dollars and Counting

Want to Help Treat AIDS in Africa? Buy a Cellphone

A new line of products from companies like Gap, Armani Exchange and Motorola aims to raise money to help fight AIDS in Africa.
Those companies, along with Converse and American Express, created the new products, which bear the brand name RED and are to begin appearing in stores this month. The companies are committed to selling the products for at least five years, and plan to donate part of their profits to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
If the Red products sell the way the companies’ other products do, the fund stands to gain hundreds of millions of dollars annually — enough to provide AIDS medications to hundreds of thousands of Africans each year.
The campaign was created by the musician Bono and Bobby Shriver, a California politician and member of the Kennedy family. Both are leading advocates for the Global Fund. The fund, which will collect and distribute money from Red in Africa, says the hundreds of millions of dollars each year given by world governments is not enough to provide medications to all of the people who need them.
The retailers who have partnered with Red are not the first to participate in cause-related marketing. Companies paid $1.11 billion last year to charities that lent the use of their names to sell products, according to IEG Inc., a sponsorship consultant firm. But the Red marketing plan has the potential to create a profitable fund-raising model for the retail industry, which in the past has sold mainly trinkets that helped burnish the company image rather than increase the bottom line.“Red is one of the first major efforts to tap more Americans to contribute to fighting AIDS a continent away. And they can do so simply, just by switching their cellphone or buying some of the clothing that’s part of the Red line,” Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman who has made fighting AIDS a center of his own philanthropy, said in an e-mail message.
Mr. Gates said he was at first skeptical that the group would be able to persuade large retailers to participate. “I wasn’t sure they would get enough companies on board to make Red a viable entity, and whether it could generate enough revenue for the global fund to make it worthwhile,” he said. “I was pleasantly surprised on both counts.”
The Red retailers are embracing a brand that is not their own, a move retailers are usually loath to do, and Red products will sit at the heart of the companies’ collections rather than in small baskets on check-out counters. The Global Fund and Red say they intend for the retailers to pocket a profit on Red products.
“Gap in the beginning couldn’t understand how they were going to make money,” Mr. Shriver said. “They wanted to do a T-shirt and give us all the money. But, we want them to make money. We don’t want anyone to be thinking, ‘I’m not making money on this thing,’ because then we failed. We want people buying houses in the Hamptons based on this because, if that happens, this thing is sustainable.”
Red products have been in stores in Britain since February, and the share of profits that has gone to the fund passed the $10 million mark last month, said Richard Feachem, the executive director of the Global Fund. That is twice what the fund received from companies and individuals from 2002 to 2006, he said. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been the largest nongovernmental donor to the fund, pledging $650 million.
“I could go with my begging bowl every year to a major corporation and say ‘give me some money,’ and they might give me a one-off contribution, but it wouldn’t be large and it wouldn’t be sustainable,” Dr. Feachem said. “Red is intrinsically sustainable because Red is good for the companies.”
With the $10 million it has earned so far from Red, the fund is financing testing and treatment of HIV-positive women and children in Rwanda and is taking care of orphans in Swaziland whose parents died of AIDS, Dr. Feachem said.
HIV infection has exploded in developing countries in the past decade. The fund plans to dedicate money from Red solely to help people in Africa, which has the world’s highest percentage of HIV-positive adults, according to Dr. Feachem. But there are also substantial AIDS problems in other countries like China and India, which has the highest number of people infected with HIV, Dr. Feachem added.
The cost of AIDS medications has fallen in recent years in part because of negotiations with several pharmaceutical companies, led by former President Bill Clinton. Today, medical care for one person costs about $1,000 a year, and there are about five million people in Africa who need treatment, Dr. Feachem said. That puts the bill to treat them all at $5 billion a year.
The fund has received $5.7 billion over the last four years, and an additional $4.3 billion, mostly from governments, has been promised. The United States contributes about $600 million a year.
Income from Red will not close the budget gap, but its money will certainly help, said Tommy G. Thompson, the former secretary of health and human services and current honorary chairman of the Global Fund.
“The reason the private sector’s got to be involved is there’s just not enough money coming in from the government,” Mr. Thompson said. “This is a huge thing and the demand and the need is so great that we just don’t have enough money coming in from the governments to do it.”
The retailers selling Red items have gone to great lengths to link the products to Africa. Gap has produced several of its Red items at its factory in Lesotho. American Express carries writing on its red-color card, now available only in Britain, that says: “This card is designed to help eliminate AIDS in Africa.” Motorola is manufacturing some of its Red phones in Nigeria.
Converse, too, has incorporated African themes into its Red line. One of the company’s shoes is made of Mali mud cloth, a traditional woven cotton fabric that is painted with dyes made of mud and bark, said David Maddocks, the chief marketing officer at Converse, which is owned by Nike.
While Bono and Mr. Shriver had to persuade some of the retailers to participate, Motorola competed with other wireless companies to be included. Motorola and the other partner companies are paying Red a licensing fee, which helps cover Red’s administrative expenses, and are donating part of their profits to the Global Fund.
The amounts donated in the United States vary, but Converse is giving Red 15 percent of the revenue from its shoes sold online, Mr. Maddocks said. Motorola and a wireless partner whose identity Motorola is to announce on Oct. 13 plan to together donate $44.50 for each Motokrzr phone sold, said Alan Buddendeck, a Motorola spokesman.
“I don’t believe it’s giving up profit. What I believe it is, is making more profit,” said Ron G. Garriques, president of mobile devices at Motorola.
Bono and Mr. Shriver have persuaded some celebrities, like Chris Rock, Edward Norton and Leonardo DiCaprio, to pitch Red products in print and on TV spots posted on the Red Web site, www.joinred.com. Gap and the other retailers are paying for their own promotions of Red products. Mr. Shriver said he hoped other retailers, particularly those with large marketing budgets, would join. Next, he said, he would like to recruit a cosmetics company.
“We’d like to have an everyday product,” Mr. Shriver said. “So that people can feel that for three bucks they can participate.”
While the retailers have committed to sell Red products for five years, the success of the campaign will depend on whether customers continue buying the products, supporters acknowledged.
“Ultimately, this idea lives or dies with the consumer — if they like it and buy Red, then it’s here to stay,” Mr. Clinton said in an e-mail message.
One long-lasting charity brand is Newman’s Own, a company co-founded by the actor Paul Newman in 1982 to raise money for charities. Kirsten McKamy, public relations manager for Newman’s Own, said the key was for consumers to buy the products because they liked them, rather than purely to give money to charity.
“Mr. Newman knew from the start that ‘Yes, I can put my face on the product, people will buy it, but they’re not going to come back if it’s not good,’ ” Ms. McKamy said. “The more money the company gives to Mr. Newman every year to give away, the happier we are. That’s the reason we’re in business.”

Getting Some Love From The Local Press

The following article was in our local newspaper, The Tennessean:

AIDS orphans inspire volunteers
Group tries to address basic needs

Faith in Action

Even while sitting in his office in a renovated Hillsboro Village bungalow, Art Stinson's mind frequently travels to Zulu country and the mortal struggle of his beloved AIDS orphans.
"You should see them," he says, turning his laptop computer around to display a digital image of children, either orphaned by the HIV/AIDS epidemic or suffering themselves, playing soccer.
Stinson recently returned from an exploratory mission trip to South Africa. He returned to Nashville armed with information about how to apply his design-build skills to revive this orphanage. The gleam in his eyes is evidence he left a chunk of his heart back in Umzinyathi.
"We brought them the soccer ball," he says. "The only things they had to play with before were a grocery cart they rode in and a tire swing in that acacia tree."
The acacia stands in front of the primitive assembly hall of the orphanage founded by Zulu Pastor Sylvester Cele's Faith in Action group, which tries to shed spiritual light on those dwelling in AIDS' shadow.
"That building needs a lot of work," says Stinson, whose Trace Ventures specializes in home renovations and additions. It's a fulfilling profession.
But in the African bush occupied by a proud tribe under constant attack by merciless AIDS, he found a desperate need for his talents. "There was only so much Pastor Cele's group could do. They really needed our help."
Stinson is a relatively "new recruit" to the Sihawukelwe Lauren's Children's Home volunteer board, sprouted from the global missions program at Christ Church Cathedral.
The board is headed by local children's activist Sandie Griffith, who like most of her cohorts is a member of the historic Episcopal church. "But we need to get help from a lot of other people," she says.
Griffith and Stinson estimate $250,000 is needed just to seriously begin their open-ended commitment.
Beyond turning the assembly hall into a dormitory, complete with kitchen and study areas, these missionaries want to tend to the youngsters' health and education needs. More knowledge may help stem the brutal epidemic.
First things first, though: provide sanitation, nutrition and basic human needs.
Griffith made her first trip to the children's home a year ago and returned with Stinson and the others this summer. "Once you've been there, it gets in your blood."
On her first trip, the children were sleeping on a concrete floor. The board purchased bunk beds, but the kids still lack reliable electricity and water and sewers.
Griffith smiles when Stinson details how the children and the village Zulus "were so excited to see us bringing something as basic as the Port-a-Johns."
Stinson says it may take two years to complete the dormitory. In the meantime, the children's home board has seeded a cottage industry, providing funds for the locals to make jewelry and carvings that will be sold here in Nashville.
"We want them to be able to help themselves," says Griffith, noting that women from throughout the village will be participating and all profits will go to the orphanage.
Seventeen AIDS orphans live in the actual facility. Dozens more have "graduated" to foster families. The board feeds the foster families as well as the orphanage residents and caregivers.
Grim reality does cast a shadow on this endeavor of hope. Some of these orphans may die before the project is completed. The AIDS epidemic certainly will bring more residents to the orphanage.
"I'm fortunate to live relatively comfortably," muses Stinson. "I have the duty to give back. I've done things in our community. Now I see this as giving to our global community."
Griffith nods. "My faith requires me to serve people and to love people. What you get back is the ultimate joy." •

By TIM GHIANNI
Senior Writer
Published: Saturday, 09/23/06