There’s more to The Goodest Story Ever Contest than making others feel good by your act of kindness and then sharing your heartfelt holiday stories with the world. It’s more than the competition and the chance to win awesome prizes, like a trip for 2 to Cancun, a flip digital camcorder and $100 Starbucks gift card. It’s also a great opportunity to support an initiative called, Nikibasika, which provides support for 52 children in Kasese, Uganda.
Nikibasika, meaning “it is possible” in the Western Ugandan language of Runyankole, is the theme of this extraordinary learning and development project in Kasese, Uganda. Our goal is use social media to raise $10,000 for the Nikibasika: The Kasese Children Learning & Development Project. There are 52 children in Kasese that come from families who have been affected by HIV Aids or civil wars and a group of Canadians have taken it upon themselves to sponsor them and ensure that they have a chance to understand that “it is possible.”
Meet these brave children in the following 2 minute video:
If you’re inspired to do what you can for these kids and support the Nikibasika project, you can donate to the cause or you can help grab the attention of corporate sponsors by submitting your holiday story. You can also contact your friends to see if they’d be interested in helping out.
The contest deadline is January 31, 2009. But don’t wait too long! You might want some extra time to promote your story and beg your friends to get on DailyChallenge.org and vote for you.
The holidays are over now, but they don’t have to be! Keep the spirit alive by sharing your feel good holiday story with the world. And hey, you might even find yourself on a sizzling hot Cancun beach ($1,800 value) for all your efforts! If you haven’t already, submit your story to The Goodest Story Ever Contest today.
But the fun doesn’t stop there. If you really want to win one of the great prizes being offered, this post is for you! Since the community decides who wins by voting for their favourite story, you can increase your odds by spreading the word to your network.
Here are 6.5 ideas for promoting your story to your peeps:
Tell everyone you know. Phone and/or email all your friends, family, co-workers, classmates and anyone else you can think of, and ask them to take 5 minutes to help send you to sunny Mexico. If they’re already registered Do Gooders, it’ll take them even less time! Mention all the prizes and how easy it is to submit a story, and you might even inspire some healthy competition. Continue Reading
We hope you all had a safe, happy and healthy holiday season; and that you rang in 2009, the year of change, with a bang! We noticed that despite the holidays, many of you continued to accept and complete challenges. Thank you for your dedication!
In addition to the challenges, we’re proud to announce that 11 Do Gooders shared their ‘Goodest’ holiday stories with the community! Some of them are funny, but most of them are really touching. Why not read them for yourself? And don’t forget to vote for your favourites!
There’s still plenty of time to enter the contest for a chance to win a flight for 2 to sizzling Cancun,aflip video HD camcorder,or a$100 Starbucks gift card! All you have to do is upload your video to YouTube and bring the link to the Contest submission page, and/or grab your digital photos, and then write your story to the best of your ability.
And to help you increase your odds at winning a prize, stay tuned for an upcoming post, “6.5 Ways to Get Yourself to Cancun”.
Metro ran a great article on Monday written by David Suzuki and Dr. Faisal Moola, “What would you do with $4 trillion?” with the subheading: Money handed out to failing companies could be put toward saving the planet. The article says that between the U.S. and 17 Western European countries, they’re giving $4.1 trillion to save financial institutions from the economic crisis.
Corporations are suffering but,
The effect on people in developing nations is even worse. Most of them didn’t have savings to begin with, and now the economic crisis, coupled with the effects of the climate crisis - including drought and food shortages - is causing more of our human family to suffer from extreme poverty and joblessness.
So Suzuki suggests that instead of funding companies to continue their business as usual, this money would be better spent in renewable energy sources, sustainable urban planning, and research into methods to reduce the impact of climate change. He thinks by investing into our future as a whole planet, we would in effect be stimulating the global economy.
Brilliant idea, Mr. Suzuki! This article ties into the auto industry bailout initiatives that both the Canadian and American governments are considering. In my mind, this is simply a band-aid solution. Thousands of jobs will be lost if the auto industry goes down, but is automobile production a sustainable industry? Especially considering that gas is a finite resource and automobiles are non-recyclable?
Wouldn’t corporate bailout money be better spent in creating new jobs that have a future? What about funding for the production of cars that use renewable energy, or in creating ways to reuse old automobile materials?
“Time Magazine heralds Deepak Chopra as one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century, and credits him as `the poet-prophet of alternative medicine’.” Time Magazine, June 1999.
We are completely head over heels ecstatic about this morning’s news: Deepak Chopra, best selling author and world renowned physician, has joined Daily Challenge and will be participating as a Celebrity Challenger in the near future.
In addition, we’re very excited to join forces with Dr. Chopra in helping him complete his own mission to “Inspire 100 Million people across the world to take a vow of non-violence in their thoughts, words and actions.”
Already 4777 people have taken this vow with Dr. Chopra. It all began November 7, 2008 when he took the vow personally. Since then, people continue to take this vow with him on a daily basis. Go to http://Itakethevow.com to “watch and support the dramatic effects this tidal wave of shift in consciousness is going to create.”
Just last week the Toronto City Council announced two big policies that will help all Torontonians Do Good for the environment. The first one, effective immediately, is to ban the sale and distribution of bottled water at City Hall and civic centres across the G.T.A. By 2011, this ban will transfer to other city-owned facilities.
The second environmentally-sound motion councillors voted on was a $0.05 fee on plastic bags. Starting June 1, 2009, retailers will be required to accept reusable bags and containers in lue of retailer-supplied bags. The final tally was 30 in favour of the bag and bottle measures, 13 against.
Mayor David Miller said “free” shopping bags come at a cost. “There’s a cost to the city and the people of Toronto in disposing of them, there’s a cost to the environment and there’s a cost to the retailers,” he said after the vote…
In response to a personalized video invite to check out Daily Challenge, Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.org, a personal hero of our President, Darius, has signed up as a Do Gooder and is ready to challenge us all to do one good.
For those of you involved in the Search Industry, Rand needs no special introduction. You probably know him as the dude with the canary yellow shoes at all the Search Engine Optimization conventions. For the rest of you, Rand is a pioneer in his field and defies the stereotypical marketer. His positive attitude, altruistic actions and good intentions have placed him leagues ahead of the rest, allowing him to find success by doing what he loves.
It is these admirable characteristics that have persuaded us here at Daily Challenge to believe that Rand is an all-around good guy. He fights those who would use the Internet for their own selfish interests while working hard to enhance the true essence of what drives the Internet: collaboration and sharing.
Having someone like Rand in our Do Gooder network will definitely help us all in changing the world for the better. We warmly welcome him to Daily Challenge and we’re extremely honoured to have him star as Celebrity Challenger.
Make sure to check out the site for Tuesday, December 9th, and even better, to accept Rand’s challenge!
Although the extreme challenges have been extra challenging, they’ve been (for the most part) a blast to undertake! We’ve been documenting them to: a) prove that they are possible to complete and b) provide a little entertainment for you, the community.
And from your reaction so far - you love these challenges!
So we want to do more of them, and maybe even raise the bar a bit. We need your help! Please post your extreme challenge ideas in the comment section below. To help you out, here are a couple of examples from the past few weeks:
By the way, if you’re in the King and Spadina Toronto downtown area today for lunch, the Daily Challenge team will be heading out to complete today’s “Make a lunch for a homeless person” challenge.
If you didn’t catch our President, Darius Bashar, on CFRB this past Sunday, you have a chance to hear him again this Saturday on The Ben Mercer Show! Darius will be there to share the Daily Challenge story with listeners and how Do Gooders around the world are uniting to Do One Good, Daily.
Catch Darius on the popular 1010 AM news talk show at 5pm this Saturday, December 6th.
And there’s MORE…
Flow 93.5 FM Producer to be Celebrity Challenger
Musiklee Inzane is DJ, Producer, Label Founder and Co-Founder of The Real Frequency, the first all Hip Hop show on Canada’s first commercial urban radio station, Flow 93.5 FM. He has graciously accepted our challenge to challenge you!
Check out Muskilee’s challenge on DailyChallenge.org next Thursday, December 11th. And if you’re looking to get your Hip Hop groove on, tune into The Real Frequency on Monday nights from 11PM to 1AM on Flow.
The holidays are fast approaching (actually, they’re already here!) and ask anyone, even Scrooge, and they’d tell you this is the season for doing good.
So we need your help, Do Gooders! We need primo challenges worthy of this Do Good Season. We’d like to know:
1) what are some of your holiday challenges?
2) how would you like to star on the homepage of Daily Challenge?
Please leave your challenge ideas in the comments below, and if you’re not too shy, tell us you want to be celebrity challenger sometime over the holidays!
This is the official blog for Do Gooders. It is the vehicle for the Daily Challenge story and the tool to get you directly involved in the project so you can become part of the story, too.
The holidays are over now, but they don’t have to be! Keep the spirit alive by sharing your feel good holiday story with the world. And hey, you might even find yourself on a sizzling hot Cancun beach ($1,800 value) for all your efforts! If you haven’t already, submit your story to 
We are completely head over heels ecstatic about this morning’s news: Deepak Chopra, best selling author and world renowned physician, has joined Daily Challenge and will be participating as a Celebrity Challenger in the near future.
Just last week the Toronto City Council announced two big policies that will help all Torontonians Do Good for the environment. The first one, effective immediately, is to ban the sale and distribution of bottled water at City Hall and civic centres across the G.T.A. By 2011, this ban will transfer to other city-owned facilities.
Although the extreme challenges have been extra challenging, they’ve been (for the most part) a blast to undertake! We’ve been documenting them to: a) prove that they are possible to complete and b) provide a little entertainment for you, the community.
The holidays are fast approaching (actually, they’re already here!) and ask anyone, even Scrooge, and they’d tell you this is the season for doing good.
