The Gift Of A Helping Hand Charitable Trust

Contact: Program Director

17148 Waltham, Detroit, MI 48205

Website: http://www.tgoahhct.org

E-mail: tgoahh@hotmail.com

Tax ID: #38-3640111

Shelter Mission

The Gift Of A Helping Hand Emergency Shelter will eliminate homelessness and domestic violence one shelter at a time. We will provide the homeless with the valuable resources, assistances, support groups and opportunities needed to help them to become self-sufficient, self-reliant and living productive and abusive free lifestyle.

Advocacy Philosophy

Domestic violence against women must stop. Let us end the violence, afford battered women and help safeguard them against future abuse, mandate restitution and offer resources for independent, violence-free living.

The search for freedom from domestic violence is often a long and arduous process and it cannot occur until battering and terrorism cease. Even then, it is obstructed unless the battered woman can achieve autonomy and self-determination. Please help us continue our fight against domestic violence against women. With your support we can continue fight against domestic violence against women.

The Gift Of A Helping Hand Emergency Shelter will provide housing for the 60% of homeless single mothers with children and the 39% of homeless single mothers with children leaving out of domestic violence situations in southeastern Michigan.

There is a greater demand now more than ever to provide housing for the homeless constituency because these individuals needs a mailing address in order to be able to apply for a job, job training, educational training and other human services assistance that will help them to become self-sufficient and self-reliant.

While making available housing for the homeless constituency and giving them the opportunity to have access to a telephone, mailing address, day-care services and job referral opportunities will help us toward our goal of eliminating homelessness in southeastern Michigan, while in the long-term making our project and the issues of homelessness we are addressing a success.

Our program promotes diversity and economic self-sufficiency through workforce initiatives. The program will provide resources for our clients to domestic violence support groups, classes and other valuable human services programs. The program will make available outreach programs for the children residing in the shelter such as after school programs and activities.

Nearly 1 million people are homeless on any given night. Most homeless families who received needed services like substance abuse treatment, education and job training, stop being homeless. Homelessness is a condition that we have the power to end. Nevertheless, on any given night in metropolitan Detroit, Michigan 50,000 individuals and families are homeless. Sixty-percent of the homeless constituency are single mothers with children and twenty-one percent of adults employed in the United States are victims of domestic violence's (65% female, 35% male).
Domestic violence in the single greatest cause to injury to women ages 15 to 44 in the United States. In metropolitan Detroit, Michigan 0.2 percent of the cases are domestic violence's and 0.4% of the cases are chronic.

However, only 1,995 emergency shelter beds exist to serve this population and many individuals and families are turn away every night because the homeless shelter facilities are fill to their capacity. Twenty-three percent of shelter guest are a child who enter the shelter with their families in metropolitan Detroit, Michigan and other Wayne counties. So we seek your support in helping us to complete The Gift Of A Helping Hand Emergency Shelter, so we can provide housing for the homeless single mothers with children.

Sincerely,

Cathy P. Russell

Why

Because we can end world hunger with 10% of what is spent on arms. Imagine how life would be if 30-50% of the arms budget went toward improving people’s lives instead of being used for destruction.

Because eliminating wars and violence means leaving human pre-history behind and taking a giant step forward in the evolution of our species.

Because in this aspiration we are accompanied by the strength of the voices of hundreds of prior generations who suffered the consequences of war, and whose echo continues to be heard today in all those places where it continues to leave its sinister trail of dead, disappeared, disabled, refugees and displaced.

Because a “world without wars” is an image that opens the future and seeks to become reality in every corner of the planet, as violence gives way to dialogue.

The moment has come for the voiceless to be heard! Out of agonizing and urgent need, millions of human beings are crying out for an end to wars and violence.

We can make that happen by uniting all the forces of pacifism and active non-violence worldwide.

When

The World March will begin in New Zealand on October 2, 2009, the anniversary of Gandhi’s birth, declared the “International Day of Non-Violence” by the United Nations. It will conclude in the Andes Mountains (Punta de Vacas, Aconcagua, Argentina) on January 2, 2010.

The March will last 90 days, three long months of travel. It will pass through all climates and seasons, from the hot summer of the tropics and the deserts, to the winter of Siberia.

Who is participating

The March was initiated by “World Without Wars,” - an international organization launched by the Humanist Movement - that has been working for 15 years in the fields of pacifism and non-violence.

The World March, however, will be created and shaped by everyone. Open to any person, organization, collective, group, political party, business, etc., that shares the same aspirations and sensibility, this project is not something closed. Instead, it is a journey that will be progressively enriched as different initiatives set their contributions in motion.

That is why this is an invitation to anyone and everyone to participate freely. So that wherever the March goes, the local people can contribute their creativity in a great convergence of multiple activities. There’s space for everything the imagination is capable of conceiving.

The possible channels of participation are multiple and diverse, including virtual participation in the March through Internet.

This is a march by and for the people, with hopes of reaching most of the world’s population. For this reason we are asking all media to spread the word about this journey around the world for Peace and Non-violence.

What is going to happen

As it passes through cities there will be all kinds of forums, conferences and events (sporting, cultural, social, etc.) that will be organised according to the local initiatives that are emerging.

At this time hundreds of projects have already been set in motion by different individuals and organizations.

What are our goals and objectives

To denounce the dangerous world situation that is leading us closer and closer to nuclear war, which would be the greatest catastrophe in human history – a dead end.

To give a voice to the majority of world citizens who want peace. Although the majority of the human race opposes the arms race, we are not sending out a unified signal. Instead we are letting ourselves be manipulated by a powerful minority and suffering the consequences. The time has come to stand together and show our opposition. Join a multitude of others in sending a clear signal, and your voice will have to be heard!

To achieve: the worldwide eradication of nuclear weapons; the immediate withdrawal of invading troops from occupied territories; the progressive and proportional reduction of conventional weapons; the signing of
non-aggression treaties among nations and the renunciation by governments of war as a way to resolve conflicts.

To expose the many other forms of violence (economic, racial, sexual, religious…) that are currently hidden or disguised by their perpetrators; and to provide a way for all who suffer such violence to be heard.

To create global awareness - as has already happened with environmental issues - of the urgent need to condemn of all forms of violence and bring about real Peace.

Mobile phones are intimate. They are our communication devices, our business consoles, our photo albums, our entertainment centers, our pocket connections to the world. For our generation, they are integral to our lives -- we even sleep with them so they can be our alarm clock in the morning and allow us to read emails while still in bed.

What if we could use this intimate object for good? To connect youth from around the world, to let them share their life stories, and to create a funding circle that would encourage philanthropy from resourced young people to help those in the developing world? What if our mobile phones could link young social entrepreneurs in Nairobi or Rio or Mumbai with micro-financing and creative business ideas? And then tell the story of how it happened?

This is the next generation, and it’s called Mobile Movement.

We believe through our mobile devices we can create a new model of Active Philanthropy, a social movement that promotes global community service and partnerships.

Mobile Movement is an innovative network that uses storytelling and social networking to channel both microfinancing and professional advice through ubiquitous mobile technology. In phase one of the prototype, this project will link 15 groups of young Kenyan social entrepreneurs with a network of young North American professionals and students, who can give creative business advice and micro-funding via their mobile phones. The center of the network will be a website with professional-quality videos and mobile photos/videos from the groups in Nairobi that will document the relationships between the participants and their projects over time.  And as the project grows, so will the continents we can reach.

Many young people from the developing world don’t have a personal computer or a stable internet connection, so mobile phones have created an unprecedented opportunity for them to join the global community and experience the internet. We are using mobile technology as a communication bridge between the global north and previously digitally-marginalized people. The combination of propriety networks (carriers) to securely transfer funds, open the communication channel and distribute the message via the internet is the future.

This kind of international initiative with phones is unprecedented. First, supplying mobile phones to grassroots youth groups in slums around the world and asking them to broadcast their stories on the web and to interested audience members via SMS/MMS is historic. Second, to create a web/mobile social network that connects young people from all over the world with a social mandate, who can interact in real time with “business partners” in a microfinance program to seamlessly and effortlessly transfer funds has never been done before.

The use of mobile phone technology makes this project unique in the international development and philanthropic fields, and we feel it may become a model that is applicable to other UN and government development agencies and international NGOs, as they learn from the interaction we create and sustain using technology that is more affordable, accessible and intimate.

Pilot – Phase I Overview

Youth in Kenya constitute over 60% of the population and the majority are living in abject poverty. They have, in the past been on the forefront of the country’s development. However since the late 70’s they have been systematically excluded from the decision making process of the country. Facing a collision between traditional culture and modern technology -- as well as likely long life under-employment and an education system that makes it hard to attain university entrance standards – youth in Kenya face significant obstacles. And yet the young people who Mobile Movement has been working with, under the guidance of Environmental Youth Alliance and UN-HABITAT, are capable and committed young leaders in their communities. They are seeking opportunities – and have embraced the mobile phone as a tool to uplift themselves and future generations.  Theirs is not a unique story. The World Bank’s World Development Report in 2007 states that 1.3 billion young people are now living in the developing world – the largest ever youth group in history.

Mobile Movement fills a need that UN-HABITAT has identified: to connect young urban entrepreneurs with a community of professionals and microfinance donors. This project is designed to inspire young professionals in North America, and around the world, to explore how they can connect with youth from other countries, participate in community development and begin sharing their wealth of resources – and the impacts are far-reaching for all participants in the global North and South. By giving young social entrepreneurs in informal settlements the means to use mobile technology to support their own initiatives, network, and ultimately engage with young people around the world, we are bridging the gap between rich and poor through transfer of technology, transfer of micro-funding, transfer of knowledge. We are creating business partners and perhaps as siginifcantly, we are creating new storytellers.

Mobile Movement is part of an historic retelling of the traditional story of the urban poor. To quote Barack Obama we put our hands, “on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day."
Opportunities for expansion of Mobile Movement are seemingly endless. Revisit the number again:  1.3 billion young people are now living in the developing world.  The writer of the World Bank report followed this statistic with the following warning: “Most developing countries have a short window of opportunity to get this right before their record numbers of youth become middle-aged, and they lose their demographic dividend…with youth unemployment running at up to twice the adult rate, failure to seize this opportunity to train them more effectively for the workplace, and to be active citizens, could lead to widespread disillusionment and social tensions.”
Mobile Movement is mobile. It is a model of active philanthropy that can be expanded to any community where youth are engaged in social/economic entrepreneurship and supported by an NGO or Agency. There has never been a better time to invest in youth.

Phase I Development

The MacArthur Foundation and Microsoft Research India have generously awarded Mobile Movement enough funds to conceptualize the first phase of the Mobile Movement prototype, which is to build a functioning microfinancing website where the public can engage with 15 youth groups/entrepreneurs on the web and on their mobile devices.

Through UN HABITAT's ‘Urban Entrepreneurship Program’ 15 youth groups in Nairobi have been given mobile phones, trained on their use, and can now communicate their small business ideas, needs and successes through their phones. If the audience abroad would like to contribute microfinancing, we can facilitate this through PayPal, and give groups cash and credit on their SIM cards through Vodafone's MPESA program.

We are launching Mobile Movement in May, 2009.  If our pilot proves successful, we intend to expand the initiative to East Africa and beyond.

We are anticipating the audience will get involved in Mobile Movement in various ways, and we want the website to showcase different ways of contributing -- to tell the stories of the young professionals who get involved, to try to inspire others to engage even more deeply. We have broken down our website audience into four tiers so as to create points of entry for each of these types of participants, and to try to target a meaningful experience for each, with the idea that people may begin in one tier, give a small donation and become so excited they naturally move into a higher tier by getting their school, colleagues, friends and family involved.  The next tier is to actually engage in a business initiative with one of the youth groups.  Currently, on our test user site, a jewelry designer from NYC has answered the call to action from a collective of bone crafters and they are sharing design ideas as we speak.  And the final tier is to initiate a larger venture – from building a waste recycling centre to a school.

Phase II: East African Expansion
We anticipate by the end of 2009, we will be ready to expand our youth entrepreneur base to 3 East African cities, likely Kigali, Kampala and Addis Ababa.  Currently, we are discussing with UN-HABITAT how to work with them and their NGO partners for service delivery.  

Phase III: Replicating the model in Asia and the Americas
We will look to expand the program and continue our outreach.

A young Karen woman from Burma living in a refugee camp in Thailand is worried about her baby who has severe diarrhea. She sends an SMS with a question about his symptoms and her location to the Handheld Health shortcode. This information is posted onto an online map where community health specialists are chatting about potential response scenarios when they receive an alert that this young woman is not alone. Many of her immediate neighbors have been querying the system about similar symptoms and the trend points to a potential cholera outbreak in the camp. The admins send a message to a Windows Mobile smartphone of a local health worker who can pull up detailed information about how to effectively isolate and control the problem.

Handheld Health gives health professionals working with vulnerable communities an array of tools to better monitor health conditions in their area, visualize geographic health data, communicate with each other and present community health data to 3rd parties. This system can be used as a way to monitor general health trends or to help track the progress of specific initiatives in a given area. It also gives health and disease-prevention information to those who are most in need and most at risk by empowering the community itself with the technology that they already have.

We aim to launch the project around the borders of Burma where we have an extensive network of local contacts and partners. Inside Burma a repressive military government has sent the health system into ruin with disastrous economic policies and widespread neglect of social services and infrastructure. The result is one of the world’s most vulnerable populations to infectious diseases, many of them, such as malaria, are easily preventable. Especially vulnerable are the ethnic minority groups that live along Burma’s remote mountainous border regions and travel to neighboring countries for treatment. Having won the Netsquared UC Berkeley Human Rights Challenge with our Handheld Human Rights project, we are currently in the process of placing portals in the border countries.

Our Global Partnership for Development model means working with local programmers in the community to develop tools according to the community’s needs. With the Microsoft OS being ubiquitous in the region, we have been providing support for education in website development, systems administration, and programming in Java, C++, .NET, etc. We see a large opportunity for expanding this education by creating new programs using the Windows Mobile SDK by inspiring local innovations. [enable the emergence of local software industries, such as young people who have the skills to be able to write their own applications for their own community] This education and the continuing development of our project allows us to tackle goals 4,5,6 by confronting the health problems that curtail this type of progress. In addition it provides additional opportunities for supporting Goal 2 as communities realize the impact that computer literacy can have in primary and continuing education.

The following is the functionality we’re looking to include in multiple languages:

Concerned individuals:
•    Send SMS
o    ? – Questions
o    ! – Emergencies
•    Receive
o    ? – Automated Answer
o    ! – Specialist Responds
Healthcare Specialists
•    Map-based Chat
o    For coordinating emergency response
o    Using GeoChat sync
•    Surveys
o    For field documentation
o    Using FrontlineSMS Forms
•    Trends
o    For early detection and response
o    Using keyword/keyphrase pair algorithms
•    Incident Report
o    For documentation with photo/video/text/location etc
o    Using Ushahidi for KML generation
•    Supply Chain
o    For inventory management
o    Using FrontlineSMS Forms
•    Secure Transfer
o    For important, but private information uploading/texting/etc
o    Using CryptoSMS & Tor

My Story

Hello, my name is Israel Kloss. I am a Vice President of the Northern Virginia Biodiesel Cooperative. We have been advocating the expansion of Biodiesel use across the greater Washington D.C. area and Cell Alert has offered to help us launch a campaign delivering Biodiesel Alerts announcing the availability of Diesel/Biodiesel vehicles aroiund the nation.

So here's my story.

I am an amateur environmentalist. Last year, I sold my Honda Insight (50 mpg) after reading an article about the sustainability, environmental, national security and financial advantages of biodiesel over diesel and petroleum and even many electric-hybrids in terms of net energy gain. After further research, I learned that vegetable oil can be burned directly by diesel engines with only an engine conversion.

So I set up a Cell Alert Craigslist Alert to my email and cell phone to notify me every time there was a diesel vehicle posted on the Washington DC Craigslist. The moment the vehicle I wanted came up on Craigslist, I was at the door of the seller test-driving the 1997 VW Jetta TDI that I bought. I later learned that the car was sought after so highly that there were 3 out-of-state buyers offering to purchase it if I had not.

You can read the story of converting my diesel Jetta to vegetable oil here.

I now have the excellent advantage of a tri-fuel vehicle. I can now burn diesel, biodiesel or Vegetable oil with just the flip of a switch on my dashbord.

I have only purchased 2 tanks of diesel fuel in the past year. I run almost exclusively on the vegetable oil from the Chinese Restaurant next door. I am going on 1 year of driving nearly free. But let me be clear. Vegetable oil conversion is not for everyone. It's only for the environmentally *and* mechanically committed. It is higher maintenance and unfortunately, conversion can still void the warranty of many vehicles.

Biodiesel is a much more viable option for most people and we have it readily available around the greater DC area and many places nationwide.

Biodiesel Widget & Bioiesel Vehicle Alerts & Political Accountability

As a Vice President of Northern Virginia Biodiesel Coop and the Founder of Cell Alert (a recent applicant to 3 NetSquared challenges), numerous people have asked me about biodiesel conversion on facebook, twitter, blogger.com, etc. They all express a frustration with the following problems:

1) Getting notification when a diesel car is for sale online before someone else gets it.

2) Finding Biodiesel filling stations

Biodiesel Solutions Proposal

To solve these 2 problems, my proposal is simple.

Solution 1a -- Bioidiesel Alerts

Cell Alert solves the first problem, so Cell Alert will create and disseminate Diesel Vehicle Alerts through a large Yahoo Pipe meta feed collection.

Solution 1b -- Bioidiesel Widget

Compile and merge diesel/biodiesel car sales site feeds (both RSS and site scraping using Dapper.net) into a single feed using Yahoo Pipes. I would then stream that single Yahoo meta-feed into a Yahoo Widget. Using the $5K in Yahoo Marketing advertising, I would then post that widget for easy accessibility and distribution on Facebook, Twitter, NovaBiodiesel.org, Digg, Technorati and other social bookmarking tools and distribute invitations to those bookmarks and social networking sites where other biodiesel-related organizations and non-profits will be invited to to embed the widget on their sites, too, thus spreading the word.

Solution 3 Background

Solution 3 requires some background.

A very deserving and committed environmentalist I know who is also a member of the NOVA Biodiesel Cooperative has dedicated his life and evenings to the precise, formulaic meticulous measurement and mixing of biodiesel (the chemical separation of regular plant oils into harmless soap and low-emission, non-flamible and highly environmentally friendly biodiesel).

Well, in the past year, this guy has been blocked at every turn by local politicians for trying to start a business selling environmentally safe and sustainable Biodiesel to many of us here in the DC area.

The Washington DC area has a high demand for his product and this man wants to offer it at a very affordable price to the greater DC area but he's keeps running up against politicians with axes to grind.

Solution 3 -- Political Accountability

Start a petition through Yahoo Marketing, Social Actions and Pledge Bank to bring accountability to politicians who are blocking the expansion of biodiesel production in the Washington DC area.

Why Vote For This Project?

These projects would achieve the following:

1) Encourage higher use of biodiesel fuel by making diesel vehicles available as they become available through immediate notification.

2) Bring better Biodiesel availablilty to the Washington DC area through removal of political blockades to biodiesel business development.  

And if you've read this far, can you vote your opinion on this idea, too? http://www.whynot.net/ideas/5105

Although the recent emergence of online tools such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter has significantly improved the world’s communication and collaboration capabilities, the World Connect team believes that there is much more that can be done.  The current architecture of most social networking and media distribution sites puts the user on the inside of a very complex and dynamic system.  Users are often constrained to continually travel from one profile to another, read a concatenated summary of their networks’ recent actions, or view a subset of media questionable in relevance.  There is no concept of a global view on these sites and it is not easy to get a sense of the actions and sentiments of the overall user community.

World Connect seeks to fill this gap by creating a live media collection and distribution network with a community focus.  The main visual structure of World Connect will be an interactive Google Earth style world globe.  The user will have a score of media filter options in which they can select which types of live media they would like to tune in to.  Each current media broadcast will be visualized by a distinct ray of light emanating from its specific location on the earth.  This will provide the user with an intuitive visual aid and an ability to see the entire live media network at one glance.  The user will then be able to virtually ‘fly’ and tune into any specific broadcast that they choose.

Broadcasts will consist of almost any form of live audio, video, text, or graphical media that can be recorded and transmitted online.  For example, a live piano recital in Moscow, Russia could be broadcast on World Connect by simply using a microphone, World Connect media sharing software, and a computer with an internet connection.  Church sermons, poetry readings, sporting events, news blogs, and almost any other form of media will be available for World Connect sharing.

Additionally World Connect will introduce a unique community visualization system that will allow each user to monitor the actions of the rest of the World Connect user body.  Each user will be represented as a flying orb appearing in their current virtual browsing position over the Earth.  This feature will allow any one user to immediately view the distribution and movements of other users around the World Connect globe.  At a zoomed-out distance, a large number of orbs ‘flying’ in close proximity will appear as a cloud representing a high density viewing zone.  The most popular broadcasts will be immediately evident as well as the communities’ movements between broadcasts.

This global community perspective will allow the user to look down onto the system rather than being trapped inside it.  It will also create an association between popular media and geographical location.  Users in the United States who consistently tune into popular Iranian, Chinese, or Russian broadcasts will develop a sense of interconnection and familiarity with those regions from which the broadcasts originate.  Traveling to concert halls, university classrooms, and living rooms for live shows will become routine and will encourage an attitude of cultural acceptance as users become more familiar with distant locations.  We believe that this type of global media sharing network will directly contribute to Goal 8, Target 8.F of the MDGMonitor initiatives.  World Connect will make available the benefits of unprecedented live information and communications abilities through use of the private sector.  Not only will World Connect provide an international platform for media and cultural dissemination, but it will also engender a deep sense of world-wide community and connectivity.

Modification of Mobile phone SIM card where modern menu Idea such as  auction, study aboard, financing, loan should be exists. This new menu can make an innovative social network infrastructures.

For the first time ever, the World Wilderness Congress (the world's longest running public environmental forum) will convene in Latin America.  From 6-13 November, many of the world’s leading conservation experts, politicians, academics, corporations, artists, native peoples, students and many others will gather in Merida, Mexico to debate and act upon the most urgent environmental issues of our time. WILD9 is open to the public and we anticipate it to be a diverse, inspiring, action-orientated and results driven gathering.

A primary goal of WILD9 is to utilize valuable communications tools to encourage global participation, empower young leaders and provide ongoing content and updates (before, during and following the Congress).  To meet this goal, The WILD Foundation, founder and co-host of each Congress including WILD9, has launched a significant new, online presense to build community, share resources and inspire informed action.   Read more about this goal >

A core part of this communications goal is to involve youth and young leaders in the process.  We know that effective communications is a key part to leadership in the field of conservation, and that the growing online contigent of media tools requires leaders to be more tech-savvy than ever.  We plan to hold a full day media training session for young leaders to learn about the importance of communications and the different needs & styles of available communications tools.  This training will also include hands-on experience in using these tools (social media, software, SMS phones, video cameras, etc).  

At the end of the training day, or corps of young leaders will be well-equipped to communicate their work at WILD9.  Working together, they will write live-blogs, capture video using both SMS phones and video cameras, twitter, flicr, qik.com amd more.  Our communications team will also be working on all of these fronts, to capture events and programs, interview delegates, provide live-updates to those not able to attend the Congress, and organize information for post-Congress reporting.

These young delegates will also have oppotunities to use this training, experience and tools when they return home from the Congress.  We hope to provide select youth delegates with video cameras and/or other technology so they can use their new communications skills to further their work for conservation.   We will provide them with social media tools and outlets for reporting their work following the Congress, and continue peer-learning.

 The Labs mission is to become a catalyst for early stage companies to graduate into venture capital ready companies. Start-ups and entrepreneurs can capitalize on the experience, skills and networks that Semantic Seed can provide to streamline development and accelerate commercialization of ideas.

Ideas are important but we also look for motivation, passion and brains. The ideal start up companies we are looking for usually has one to two founders, and are highly technical. Our founding sponsors, Break Through Ventures, and Urban Technology Ventures provide micro-loans and other resources to help entrepreneurs get started on their ideas in exchange for 2%-10% equity after finishing our program.

We help entrepreneurs go from the idea stage to a real company with a product or service generating revenue.

To attract these young entrepreneurs we have set up a board comprised of a “Think Tank” of mentor entrepreneurs with hands on operating experience. We will also partner with Universities, and established enterprises to identify budding
ideas and future trends.

It's Saturday afternoon and Josh has some downtime so he's laying back on the couch watching some football. He's not particularly interested in the result so he's got his IM open on his laptop and he's texting his friends planning his Saturday night entertainment.

Then the BattFone goes off. Adam receives a Twitter DM alerting him to a Social Action hot off the wires from Idealist.org. There's an asylum seeker at the local welfare centre and they need a translator in a hurry. Just so happens Adam speaks "foreign" and so without much ado he's down there spending less than an hour making someone's life a lot easier.

Adam is the type of guy who'll answer a call for help but he's not always going to go out of his way to look for the needy. That's where BattFone comes in.

***

We want BattFone to be considered the early warning alert system for the Social Actions. An APB for the API.

We aim to combine the Social Actions API with Twitter and eventually other networks  to create a multi-way Social Actions communications system. Using http://BattFone.me users will register to be alerted via Twitter, e-mail and other means when actions they've specified an interest in are created.

BattFone is a filter and alert system to get the right Social Actions to the right Social Actors at the right time.
The right time isn't always quarter a after midnight during a surfing session. It can be whenever and wherever the Action is created.

BattFone is focused heavily on the end-user. It's main purpose is to act as an instigator of real world action. We want to take relevant Social Actions off the social networks and put them into the hands of people who will answer the call for help.

We expect BattFone to be most useful in urban environments where rich sets of actions will be targeted at the most focused set of actors possible. As the Social Actions API develops we expect location awareness to play a key role. Right now however we're working with what we can in this regard.

BattFone.me has been created by Heather MacKenzie and Cian O'Donovan. Heather runs her own private teletherapy practice out of Wilmington, North Carolina. By day Cian heads up the new media operations for the UK broadcaster Setanta Sports. By night he divides his time between social action, sustainability and food issues, and how we can use human networks to solve them.