5 Cool Things You Can Do RIGHT NOW To Make a Difference

Want to make a difference but don't have time to spend all day doing it?  Check out these 5 quick actions you can take right now to help some great causes:

1. Earn World Shares and Donate Them to Charity
   Sign up to Mother Nature Network's World Shares programme - and next time you're catching up on your green news take the time to share an article, make a comment or sign up for a newsletter (among other actions) to earn World Shares that let you make donations to some very deserving charities.
   
2. How to Make a Difference Toolbar
   Download the How to Make a Difference toolbar - every time you use it you're helping raise money for SALVEASERRA and funding their efforts to restore the Atlantic Forest in Brazil.
   
3. Care2's Butterfly Rewards
   If you're not a member of Care2 already sign up (it only takes a few minutes) and earns you 200 Butterfly points straight away.  You can also earn Butterfly Rewards points by leaving comments, sending e-cards and e-mails and searching the web.  In fact, there are 17 ways to earn points!  And you can redeem them to help fund a loan on Kiva, provide safe drinking water, and feed abandoned cats (along with a few other great causes).
   
4. Take Action on Social Vibe
   It only takes a minute or two to help a friend raise money for their favourite charity on Social Vibe.  Or you can sign up yourself and recruit your own network of friends to support a cause you care about.
   
5. Join 'Mum's Making a Difference'
   If your a Mum and a blogger, then The Mom Bloggers Club is a great place to be.  Take a few moments to sign up and then join the 'Mum's Making a Difference' group and start friendraising for your cause and helping other Mum Bloggers spread the word about the causes that move them!

Volunteering in your pyjamas

This is a guest post by Mike Bright

'Help From Home' is an initiative that provides information on easy, no commitment volunteering opportunities that can all be performed from the comfort of a person's home. Almost all of the 450 plus actions listed on the site will cost nothing or very little to complete and take no more than 30 minutes to accomplish. Some can even be performed in under 10 seconds without getting out of your favourite chair or pyjamas!

There are 3 main categories of easy actions to choose from, each one having the potential to benefit all sorts of worthy causes. Here's just a brief taster of what's included on the website:

Good Causes – Helping charities and worthy causes
- Feed a starving person for free with a simple click of the mouse.
- Make a very seriously ill child smile with just a letter or an email.
- Play games that donate to charities for free
- Install free software to help fight cancer with your pc.

'Green' Actions – Tackling environmental and energy issues
- Lower pc power consumption by using free software.
- Save the rainforests by planting a tree for free just by using a search engine.
- Donate your excess food, plants and seeds to be redistributed to needy causes.
- Help predict climate change with your pc.

Advocacy Actions – Highlighting injustices and wrongdoings
- Posters for Peace. Print them out and display them somewhere prominently
- Send a pre-written email to a decision maker on global poverty
- Join a Virtual March on global warming
- Boycott socially irresponsible companies

Help From Home's aim is to encourage people to see that volunteering for worthy causes can actually be conducted from within their own house. It reckons that if people were collectively able to volunteer between 1 to 30 minutes of their time spent at home on a one-off, daily, weekly or monthly basis, it could potentially make a huge impact into the goals and aims of initiatives that are attempting to create a better world for us to live in.

So, if you've ever felt like helping out a worthy cause, but didn't want the comittment or the impact it might have on your time or finances, then Help From Home's website might be just the answer. Put on those pyjamas and change the world. It's so easy to do!