Micro Donations to The Footprints Network Tackles World Poverty

Project in Zam­bia with Plan Australia

Do you remem­ber the 1999 movie Office Space with Jen­nifer Anis­ton and Ron Liv­ingston? It’s a favorite of mine and if you haven’t seen it, I’ll need to explain one of the plot lines in order to set up this blog post.

Liv­ingston plays Peter Gib­bons, who works in an admin­is­tra­tive role at a com­puter com­pany called Initech. When his friends are laid off, they con­spire to devise a way to skim frac­tions of pen­nies off all finan­cial trans­ac­tions being han­dled by Initech. Con­sider it micro-embezzling.

Think about it… frac­tions of a dol­lar seem like chump change on its own, but com­bine all those frac­tions together and we’re talk­ing big money.

That’s sort of the con­cept that The Foot­prints Net­work, based in Aus­tralia, has embraced to fight poverty across the globe. They believe that micro donations—between $1 and $5—made by con­sumers dur­ing online trans­ac­tions can help fund com­mu­nity devel­op­ment projects.

The net­work funds pro­grams that upgrade farm­ing, edu­ca­tion, access to clean water, and sight restoration—all in an effort to elim­i­nate poverty.

Founded in 2004 by WorldNomads.com after the Asian tsunami, 302,278 indi­vid­u­als have raised more than $785,383 for 53 projects around the world.

“Alle­vi­at­ing the extreme cycle of poverty and the ills that accom­pany it is everyone’s moral respon­si­bil­ity,” said Chris Novel, gen­eral man­ager of WorldNomads.com. “Yet the extent of world poverty can seem so over­whelm­ing that many of us are left feel­ing help­less and that the prob­lems are just too big for any one per­son to make a difference.”

In just five years, WorldNomads.com has devel­oped an inde­pen­dent net­work of e-commerce busi­nesses that share the same ethics and val­ues and, through tech­nol­ogy, seek to change the world by ask­ing cus­tomers spend­ing money online to make a small dona­tion to char­ity at the same time.

WorldNomads.com sup­ports all admin­is­tra­tive costs of the pro­gram so 100 per­cent of dona­tions go directly to the projects.

While the net­work is small, it is grow­ing. “We’re look­ing for more online e-commerce busi­ness part­ners to inte­grate the Foot­prints mech­a­nism into their shop­ping carts and, trans­ac­tion by trans­ac­tion, help make a dif­fer­ence,” said Noble.

This is def­i­nitely a pro­gram worth watch­ing. For more infor­ma­tion, visit The Foot­prints Network.

—Andrea M. Rotondo for LuxurySafariExperts.com

Do you remem­ber the 1999 movie Office Space with Jen­nifer Anis­ton and Ron Liv­ingston? It’s a favorite of mine and if you haven’t seen it, I’ll need to explain one of the plot lines in order to set up this blog post.

Liv­ingston plays Peter Gib­bons, who works in an admin­is­tra­tive role at a com­puter com­pany called Initech. When his friends are laid off, they con­spire to devise a way to skim frac­tions of pen­nies off all finan­cial trans­ac­tions being han­dled by Initech. Con­sider it micro-embezzling.

Think about it… frac­tions of a dol­lar seem like chump change on its own, but com­bine all those frac­tions together and we’re talk­ing big money.

That’s sort of the con­cept that The Foot­prints Net­work, based in Aus­tralia, has embraced to fight poverty across the globe. They believe that micro donations—between $1 and $5—made by con­sumers dur­ing online trans­ac­tions can help fund com­mu­nity devel­op­ment projects.

The net­work funds pro­grams that upgrade farm­ing, edu­ca­tion, access to clean water, and sight restoration—all in an effort to elim­i­nate poverty. One of the cur­rent projects on the docket focuses on improv­ing farm­ing in Zam­bia. This will, in turn, increase access to food for the poor­est fam­i­lies in the region. Plan Aus­tralia is over­see­ing the train­ing program.

Founded in 2004 by WorldNomads.com after the Asian tsunami, 302,278 indi­vid­u­als have raised more than $785,383 for 53 projects around the world.

“Alle­vi­at­ing the extreme cycle of poverty and the ills that accom­pany it is everyone’s moral respon­si­bil­ity,” said Chris Novel, gen­eral man­ager of WorldNomads.com. “Yet the extent of world poverty can seem so over­whelm­ing that many of us are left feel­ing help­less and that the prob­lems are just too big for any one per­son to make a difference.”

In just five years, WorldNomads.com has devel­oped an inde­pen­dent net­work of e-commerce busi­nesses that share the same ethics and val­ues and, through tech­nol­ogy, seek to change the world by ask­ing cus­tomers spend­ing money online to make a small dona­tion to char­ity at the same time.

WorldNomads.com sup­ports all admin­is­tra­tive costs of the pro­gram so 100 per­cent of dona­tions go directly to the projects.

While the net­work is small, it is grow­ing. “We’re look­ing for more online e-commerce busi­ness part­ners to inte­grate the Foot­prints mech­a­nism into their shop­ping carts and, trans­ac­tion by trans­ac­tion, help make a dif­fer­ence,” said Noble.

This is def­i­nitely a pro­gram worth watch­ing. For more infor­ma­tion, visit The Foot­prints Network.