Photo courtesy of Greeblemonkey

I really enjoyed the feedback I received from my last series of Recommended Reading so I’m going to continue the series here. While that very often includes will be articles and posts I’ve read online, I also really would like and envision this space to be able to share videos, music and anything else I find interesting. I see these as my “gems” and for the purpose of this series of posts, I’m going to call it your “Weekly Dose Of Inspiration On The Web.”

The beginnings of each article are included (where it fits), but I definitely suggest that you click through to read the posts in their entirety, leave a commend and see what others are saying!

Google’s biggest CSR opportunity yet
In the hype over how Google has up-ended the tech world with its purchase of Motorola Mobility, one aspect of the deal hasn’t yet attracted attention – but is potentially the most important. Google entering the hardware business should lead to the one breakthrough the market truly needs: a smartphone free of conflict minerals.

How Cindy Gallop Broke Through the “Thick Layer of Men” and Became the Counterpoint to Porn
My inaugural post helped benchmark where we are. The majority of my posts from here on out will help tell the stories of where we are going, who is going to get us there and what lessons we can learn from one another to get there even faster. I also frame up the personal side of things to help give depth and context to each interviewee’s insights and advice. First up, one of the most accomplished and authentic women I know: Cindy Gallop. Not only was Cindy the first woman to have a seat on Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) Global Group’s board, but she is also tackling the topic of sex education from an extremely refreshing and effective angle withMakeLoveNotPorn. More seats in the board room? Safer, happier, healthier sex? Yes to both, please. So: How do we get there? Cindy’s responses explore these topics and more (including “the bitch complex” and solutions, solutions, solutions).

10 Rules For Brilliant Women
I coach brilliant women, lots of them. Dedicated, talented, brilliant women. Most of the time, they don’t know their brilliance. They are certain they “aren’t ready” to take on that next bigger role. They are more attuned to the ways they aren’t qualified than to the ways that they are. They are waiting for someone to validate, promote or discover them. Sound familiar? It’s time to step up, brilliant women.

Finance Forward Issue 2 (May 2011)
We are happy to present the second edition of Finance Forward, an environmental scanning document which looks at forces shaping inclusive financial services in Africa (and beyond). The benefit of periodically scanning the business, economic, social, technological, physical, and political environments in the background of the “system” of financial inclusion is that we can continue to monitor and understand the implications of further developments in these trends and act upon our learning. We scanned a large number and variety of articles (academic and popular) that were published during the fourth quarter of 2010 and first quarter of 2011 to produce this issue of Finance Forward. In these edition we present six themes which are built upon those found in the first edition.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There are so many ways we are all sharing content these days. A lot of it is through social media or social bookmarking, but I wanted to be able to share a few of my recent favorite and recommendations with you. Two of my favorite inspirational powerhouse women, Amy Sample Ward and Sarah Evans, do this too so I definitely recommend you check them out for great links to what’s hot on the web this week as well. The beginnings of each article in included, link through to read in its entirety and see what others are saying.

5 Tips for Running Successful Cause Marketing Campaigns
Businesses love cause marketing, and the belief is that supporting a good cause translates into stronger sales. The Cause Marketing Forum has some pretty convincing numbers: In 2009, 72% of American consumers said they avoided purchasing products from companies whose practices they disagreed with. Accordingly, two-thirds of brands started engaging in cause marketing in 2010, up from 58% in 2009, according to a study by PRWeek and Barkely PR. Consumers have taking a healthy shift towards doing good, with 86% of global buyers believing that businesses need to place at least equal weight on societal interests as on business interests, according to an Edelman survey. It’s not enough to make money — businesses also need to do good.

More Female Managers And Board Members Means More Corporate Philanthropy
According to new research it’s the companies with more female senior managers and women board members that give more money to charities. Harvard Business School’s Christopher Marquis and Matthew Lee looked into the world of corporate philanthropy that since the 1970′s has sparked an ongoing controversial debate. The thought being that if these large companies have so much extra money to give to charities, it should be reinvested in the company – the money does belong to shareholders after all. Another complaint from those who are against corporate philanthropy is that it’s an easy way for CEOs and other top executives to give to the charities that are close to their hearts, but without having to dip into their own wallets.

Defend Your Research: What Makes a Team Smarter? More Women
The finding: There’s little correlation between a group’s collective intelligence and the IQs of its individual members. But if a group includes more women, its collective intelligence rises. The research: Professors Woolley and Malone, along with Christopher Chabris, Sandy Pentland, and Nada Hashmi, gave subjects aged 18 to 60 standard intelligence tests and assigned them randomly to teams. Each team was asked to complete several tasks—including brainstorming, decision making, and visual puzzles—and to solve one complex problem. Teams were given intelligence scores based on their performance. Though the teams that had members with higher IQs didn’t earn much higher scores, those that had more women did.

Inside The All-Female Hamptons Hackathon For Humanity
Hackathons, the one- to three-day programming marathons where coders convene to create innovative web applications, tend to resemble 2 a.m. cram sessions at college dorms. Picture a group of hyper-focused twentysomething men craned over Macs, surrounded by empty 12 oz. cans of Red Bull, eventually passing out for a few hours on the floor. Women are not always eager to participate. The founders of Girl Develop It, a female-centric hacker non-profit, in league with the entrepreneurship startup Jump Thru, understand this. And so, this past weekend, they staged the inaugural Hamptons Hackathon for Humanity. The event — billed as an “anti-hackathon,” and aimed to show that computer programming can be an equally female-friendly endeavor — brought 16 female technologists, web developers, and venture capitalists together in a luxurious cedar-shingled mansion.

5 Best Practices for Beauty Brands on Facebook
Among luxury and personal care brands, beauty brands — a category that, for the purposes of this article encompasses cosmetics, fragrance, skin and hair care brands — have emerged as among the most digitally savvy. Although beauty brands continue to invest heavily in traditional advertising and their own websites — open any women’s magazine and you’ll see plenty of makeup ads and a fragrance sample or two — Facebook is playing an increasingly central role in their marketing, ecommerce and customer service strategies.

See more of my favorite articles by following me on Twitter , @sloane.

“What is the one thing we can take back from Haiti with us to tell people?”

That was the question I asked people while in Haiti over the weekend. For there is a lot going on. A lot of sadness. A lot of frustration. A lot of violence. Struggles to reconstruct, rebuild, take a country that was already the poorest in the Western Hemisphere and have it come back better than before.

“Tell the good. There is positive happening here. The (traditional) media only tells the stories of hardship but there are a lot of positive stories coming out of Haiti too.”

And indeed there is. Smiles and laughter. People helping each other. Community leaders stepping up. International aid organizations committed to helping in the reconstructions. Houses are being built. Schools are in session. A presidential election is right around the corner.

So that’s what I want to do. I want to honor the wishes of the people I met in Haiti. I want to tell stories that haven’t been told 100 times. It’s important for us – us in the privileged developed country – to remember that in the aftermath of a natural disaster most other countries don’t have the option to cleanup like we do.

Sanitation is often argued to be the number one indicator of how developed a country is. Second is infrastructure in roads and the ability to get from point A to point B. Haiti is obviously behind the U.S., so is there trash in the streets and piles of rubble? Yes. But I expected that.

What was amazing was the bright colors! The creativity of the Haitians. The way they are embracing art as a means of expression. They are struggling of course, but there is hope in Haiti. There is hope for the future. That is humankind, that is what makes us resilient. Hope.

I hope you’ll remember that when you think of Haiti, if nothing else.

I’ll be sharing more of that perspective of Haiti in the coming days. In the meantime, I’ve just started using Cinch to record audio messages to share. Below is a message I recorded today about Haiti and storytelling.

If you have specific questions about Haiti, please let me know. If I don’t know, I’m happy to help find someone who would. And for more information on the Heart of Haiti campaign visit Fairwinds Trading or follow the hashtag #heartofhaiti on Twitter.

This is the second post in a series about a recent campaign I worked on with Samsung Hope for Children, the national philanthropic initiative of Samsung, The Dan Marino Foundation and JESS3.

Together, we launched a new social action campaign, “Team Up for Autism,” in conjunction with the first annual WalkAbout for Autism that I wrote about in my last post here.

The initiative set about to help raise awareness and funding in support of medical research, services and treatment programs for children with autism. Samsung pledged to contribute up to $100,000 through this social action challenge, providing a donation of $5 to the Dan Marino Foundation each time someone pledged their support of autism awareness by checking into WalkAbout Autism on Foursquare, sharing an infographic with their Facebook friends or sending a tweet with the hashtag #teamautism. JESS3 created the infographic and I worked with them on the overall digital strategy.

In just 72 hours, we were able to reach our goal of $100,000! To see the infographic click over to TeamUpForAutism.com. It was amazing. We thought it might take a few weeks to reach our goal. What made this campaign special? I think there are a few factors.

First, 1 in 110 children are now said to be diagnosed with autism. That means that just about everywhere you turn people know someone or are related to someone with autism. That’s a powerful base.

Second, during this campaign all of the partners came on board to help spread the word. Many times in campaigns, one of the partners wants to be more involved but for a variety of reasons just isn’t. That affects every single social action. You never know where your most passionate supporters will come from. In this case, we all worked together, setting expectations before launch, and that made a huge difference.

Third, evangelists. I am blessed to know Tim Welsh (@tannersdad) for a few years now. He is an amazing advocate for autism and finding a few key people who understand social media and the autism community provided to be a huge value-add for this campaign. We also saw tweets during that period from Alyssa Milano which brought a huge traffic surge. The caveat is that you can’t guarantee a celebrity will pick up on a campaign and you also can’t guarantee that if a celebrity does pick up on something it will get traction. But in this case, her tweet with the hashtag #teamautism made a huge push.

Fourth, the infographic. JESS3 has an incredible eye and amazing team to create data visualization. The infographic clearly said everything it should. What the campaign was about. Who was making the donation and who was receiving it. And most important what you had to do to help. So many amazing campaigns get lost in the execution. The actual social actions don’t make sense or have too many steps. Simple is the name of the game. This infographic was beautiful but simple.

Fifth (and last) the strategy. I have worked on a number of campaigns and knew going in that the difference would be in the preparation. We worked really hard behind the scenes before the campaign launched. Too many times a campaign launches and then people shift into high gear. It doesn’t always work out. You have to hit the ground running and be able to account for a variety of scenarios that could come at your that critical first 24 hour period. We had an army on the ground ready to support us once this launched due to lists we created of influencers and early outreach and engaging our networks in advance. All of this happened before the page TeamUpForAutism event went live.

A big thank you to everyone who participated in this campaign. Together we made this happen! If you’d like to write a blog post or would like more details about this campaign or an interview with anyone, please contact me directly.

To read more about the campaign, check out the following articles:

Mashable
SocialBrite
WhatGives
Amy Sample Ward
Nonprofit.About.com
CafeMom The Stir
JESS3 blog

Help A Woman Out is your guide to finding organizations, events and nonprofits that support women and girls. Attend. Donate. Learn. Join. Jobs. Curated by your biggest cheerleader, me!

I released this site within 3 days of coming up with the idea. I found a domain name. Found a tumblr theme I liked and customized it. Started seeding content and then pushed publish to the world. Sometimes we need to create just to create. The power to press publish is powerful and freeing. I am of the school that (in regards to personal projects) you can fix just about anything after it launches. Start small, start anywhere, see what happens…and then iterate to match the feedback. It’s the entrepreneurial spirit in me that wanted to put this site out there to share, and then get feedback and figure out what needs to change or be upgraded.

I learned a lot about customizing tumblr themes for this site and also how to put the Facebook “like” and Twitter buttons into the HTML. I’m working on learning more of the development parts of websites this year and this was a great introduction towards that goal.

I know many women would like to get involved and help but don’t know how. Because they are too busy with their lives, careers and families. I wanted to create a place on the web that would seem magazine-like. A place to flip through women’s organizations, inspirations quotes by women, events listings and job opportunities that would focus specifically on girls and women. All of this content would create a portal to Help A Woman Out.

I really believe that woman are at a crucial point in history. Women are being recognized as the changemakers for society, an emphasis on girls education exists in some countries for the first time ever, the UN recently joined all of their programs and projects for girls and women together into one platform called UN Women. The third Millennium Development goal focuses on gender parity, and there are only 5 years left until those goals are set to be met.

I have three inspirations I’d like to thank that helped piece this project together first in my head and then in reality:

1. Help A Reporter Out, which if you know it, is a site founded by Peter Shankman to help reporters find sources and sources get stories placed in a quicker and more efficient fashion. There are lots of projects out there that play off of the name of another and I hope Peter (who is an amazing guy I had the privilege of working on My Mardi Gras Experience with in 2010) doesn’t mind this flattery! I didn’t have a name in mind at all for this project and was out walking one night in my neighborhood, where I usually get my best inspirations, and playing with words in my head. Something with the word “woman” and something that indicated “help” but maybe not exactly that word. It all literally happened in one hour. I thought of the name Help A Woman Out and came home to see if the domain was available (the real test) and was surprised that it was. I bought it on the spot…you never know when you’re going to want to use good domain names! I always believe in giving credit where credit is due, so thanks Peter.

2. Nerd Valentine, is a recent web project from my friend Amrit Richmond. When I asked Amrit what prompted her to start this new Tumblr, she said, “Sometimes you just have to create something to the internet for fun. I wanted to create something people would love. Plus there wasn’t a good site of gifts for nerds.” I loved her attitude. I had the idea of a site focused on girls and women-based initiatives for awhile but it was far down my to-do list. After talking with Amrit, it jumped to the top. I realized I didn’t need to create something complex and complicated. I could create just to create! I could create and not ask for anything in return. This was a huge wake-up call. The internet pays my bills, but it also drives a lot of my relationships. I love it. I want to do more to show that respect by creating projects like Help A Woman Out.

3. Susan McPherson is a true inspiration. I’m so lucky to have been connected to her first through To Mama With Love (a 2010 EpicChange project by Stacey Monk) and then in-person when I moved to New York. She is a true connector either through her work at Fenton or by being on the board at BPeace or from just loving to put people together. She immediately included me into her circle of high-achieving women and a good part of my New York experience is thanks to her and the women she’s introduced me to. When I left Los Angeles after five years, I knew I was leaving behind a group of amazing female power brokers and that has consistently been the #1 thing I miss about LA. Those women, some friends and some in my extended network, shaped my experience in Los Angeles. I’ll never forget the change that happened when I started cultivating a strong female network to be around. I know it will take time for that to happen here in New York, but Susan has helped a lot with the first hurdle. Her excitement about women’s issues and conversations about women, CSR and the broader scope of business where a big inspiration to this site.

So thank you to those above. I hope everyone checks out this new site and gives feedback. I’m always looking for more to post on the site. If you have any suggestions for content, please submit the information here or leave a comment below.

Thank you!

I’m really excited to announce that I’ve been asked to co-lead the uber-fabulous #kaizenblog this week. I’d love for you to tune in on Friday at 12pm EST to join our conversation. This week’s topic is Digital Storytelling; Connecting Us to Our Causes and Ourselves.

Some of the questions we’ll be asking, talking about, and debating include:

• How does social media connect us more to each other and to causes we support?
• What does storytelling mean for an individual versus a nonprofit or organization?
• How do we want to hear the story? What about a story compels us to want to know more?
• What is the difference between a connection and noise?

What is #KaizenBlog? This weekly chat uses the concept of “kaizen” for continual improvement in how we think and act in business. And what is kaizen?

Kaizen (改善?), Japanese for “improvement” or “change for the better”, refers to philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, supporting business processes, and management. It has been applied in healthcare, psychotherapy, life-coaching, government, banking, and many other industries. When used in the business sense and applied to the workplace, kaizen refers to activities that continually improve all functions, and involves all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. It also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organizational boundaries into the supply chain. By improving standardized activities and processes, kaizen aims to eliminate waste (see lean manufacturing). Kaizen was first implemented in several Japanese businesses after the Second World War, influenced in part by American business and quality management teachers who visited the country. It has since spread throughout the world and is now being implemented in many other venues besides just business and productivity.

It was started by Valeria Maltoni (@conversationage) and Elli St. George Godfrey (@3keyscoach), two amazing women I admire and so I’m really excited to be joining them in leading the conversation tomorrow.

Look forward to seeing you tomorrow in #kaizenblog. Let me know in advance if you have any specific questions you’d like me to cover!

I’ve been reading a lot of reports and releases this past week about how corportations performed in 2010 with employee giving. Employee giving, and company matching, is growing every year and it’s a crucial component for many nonprofit development and fundraising departments. Many people call company match programs “free money” in that all you have to do is tell your company that you made a donation and they’ll match it up to a certain percentage or in some cases to 100%.

One company I wanted to highlight in particular is Microsoft. I have friends and colleagues who work there (and also worked with Microsoft Windows Phone 7 myself this past summer) and I’ve always been very impressed by how they talk about the commitment to giving at all levels within the company. That shows in their latest release that employees raised $96 million during 2010 for charity, more than any other year in the company’s history and a 9.2% increase over 2009. A few statistics:

• 62.5 percent of U.S. employees participated in the company’s Giving Campaign
• 34,887 U.S. employees gave either time or money (or both) in 2010
• U.S. employees volunteered 353,541 hours in 2010
• More than 16,000 organizations received donations of time or money from Microsoft’s U.S. employees
• Giving was up $8.1 million over 2009 despite economically challenging times

Source: Microsoft

Microsoft’s commitment to corporate social responsibility is so strong and a part of the DNA of the company. The co-chairs of the 2010 Giving campaign posted a blog post on the Microsoft site discussing what made 2010′s campaign a success.

A few other highlights:

• Employees raised more than $2.76 million for the United Way of King County. That money is helping their new Parent-Child Home Program, which ensures that children from low income, struggling families enter school with an equal chance.
• A smaller organization, Summit Assistant Dogs, received about $118,000 from employees – roughly one-third of their operating budget – enabling them to hire an additional full-time employee and train more dogs for people with disabilities.
• Donations made to Jolkona, a nonprofit organization providing effective ways to channel small-scale gifts to high-impact projects around the world, include enough money to feed 550 children in Uganda for two weeks each, educate 30 girls in Afghanistan, provide 12 artificial limbs in Bangladesh, and save 31 children from diarrhea in India.

What an incredible year for giving at Microsoft. I’m actively looking for other examples of corporate giving and also examples of what makes a strong CSR campaign. If you have any links to share, please leave them in the comments!

I like information small and bite-sized and I know most people feel the same. With so much information out there nowadays how are we to find the good stuff? I’m taking a page from Rachael Ray’s Take 5 Ingredients to give you a series I’m calling “Take 5″ but instead of recipes (baby steps people, baby steps) it’s going to include five examples of websites, newsletters, nonprofits, places, people, things (you get the point right lovlies?) that I think rock and get IT right.

This does two things. One, let’s face it, I’m not called “ever-observant” for nothing. I’m always consuming information and it brings me great joy to share what I find. Second, I can’t write posts on each of these things individually – or I could but it would just about break me since there is so much great information to share. So in my quest for stronger and more cohesive content to bring you I’m starting with a topic that I happen to know a lot about. Email newsletters. I get more than the average bear and sorting through them I’m looking for information that tells me something, provides more information about that topic and is designed well (which can be a very simple design, don’t confuse simplicity for lacking in style). I’ll write more at another juncture about what I’ve learned makes a good newsletter, a topic I learned an intense and exhastive amount about this past year running NOLAlicious but until then, let’s start simple.

MY 5 FAVORITE (AND BTW FREE) EMAIL NEWSLETTERS:

1. Startup Digest – Self-designated members of the “email mafia” this newsletter calls itself “the insider’s guide to the startup world.” It is curated by city and provides the best in startup events, what you need to read and jobs at top startups in your city. I subscribe to three editions; New Orleans, New York and Pittsburgh – I could easily find more of interest but these three are a good swatch of what is going on in those cities. Their lists are rapidly growing, they host a pancake breakfast in different markets around the country to meet subscribers and have an awesome blog sharing tips about enewsletters. All around win.

2. Jauntsetter – Every week this enewsletter introduces me to somwhere new I want to go, a hotel to stay at, and a fellow traveller who shares their greatest travel tips and recommandations. They archive and keep everything on their website, but the weekly enewsletter is where it’s at. While aimed at New York travel-lovers, I’ve gotten it practically since they launched and it’s by no means only for New Yorkers. The editors are totally that person you want to sit next to in an airplane and exchange travel stories. Their simple layout helps me with ideas for upcoming trips and this summer when on a whim we ended up in New Paltz without a place to stay, Taylor was looking up places on Google and I went straight to Jauntsetter’s website on my iPhone and found the incredibly affordable and awesome Clove Cottages which was exactly what we were looking for. Curated content beats a google search anyday of the week.

3. Listings Project – This weekly email provides living and workspace for rent, sublet, swap, and sale focused around the arts community of New York and is curated by Stephanie Diamond. What I love about this is the options it provides. It’s like a curated Craigslist and has short and long term options for people looking for a place in New York. From temporary to permanent, art space to brownstone apartment, I browse through and find I’ve learned a lot about neighborhoods, about pricing in different places and it’s just a guilty pleasure to dream about living in one of these awesome places in New York. This enewsletter was recently written up in The New York Times, something that might catapult it past the very grassroots feel it has now, I just hope it keeps the same integrity of listings.

4. The Hired Guns Gig Alerts – The Hired Guns is a recruiting firm that focuses on the digital space. What better way to get the word out about your clients and also increase traffic to your website for job seekers than an enewsletter! The gig alerts are listings of the jobs they have available, networking events and courses they have at The Hired Guns Academy. I like this newsletter first because the copy rocks. Seriously, they write some of the best copy I’ve ever seen. Second, while they don’t say who their client is, it’s very interesting to look and see who might be hiring and what types of jobs are out there. I use this for conversation with friends at agencies and in the digital space and in general to keep me hip about what’s happening. I’m also dying to attend one of their workshops which look awesome (How to get a literary agent for one) and think it’s savvy marketing to combine workshops and a newsletter to an industry where you help place people in companies.

5. New Music Tipsheet – Scott Perry is like the cool rock n’ roll older brother of a friend where you want to break into his room and look at his record collection and dig through his box of concert stubs. New Music Tipsheet gives everyone, from someone like me who is a lifelong music fan to industry insiders, a look at the entire music industry including upcoming releases, TV listings, news, and headlines from today’s top music blogs. I’ll see what’s new, might check it against some of the music blogs, samples a few tracks while I’m working and slowly work my way down the Tipsheet during the week listening to new music and checking out who’s on tour and might be coming to a city near me (since I’m always on the move) and then rinse and repeat the next week. I like that it’s not editorialized, it’s straight information and I can decide for myself what I want to buy and what new artists I want to hear more of.

Well there you have it. A “Take 5″ look at email newsletters in my inbox. Are these new to you? Are you going to sign up for them? What are some of your favorite newsletters? Leave a comment and I’ll look to include feedback I get into an upcoming “Take 5.”

I am really excited to introduce to everyone my newest client, ezetop. I don’t always (or often for that matter) blog about my clients, but I’m really excited to be working with such a forward thinking company in the mobile remittance space and so I wanted to take this opportunity to share a little bit about who ezetop is, what they do, and why you should remember who they are! For my international readers and for those with friends or family abroad in other countries, I’d encourage you to check out their service.

ezetop is the largest, fastest growing international company focused on international and online mobile phone top-ups. They are headquartered in Dublin, Ireland and also have regional offices in Miami, and in Dubai, UAE. They enable people living or working abroad to instantly top-up mobile phones of family and friends back home. Services are available from over 121,000 retail stores across North America, Europe and the Middle East region as well as from their website.

When I lived in the Philippines last summer as a Kiva Fellow, I got a quick crash course in the remittance market. It’s one of those things that for anyone who has spent any time abroad, they would know about, but for many of my friends and family, they had not heard about it before. So let’s start from scratch. In many countries around the world, one member of a family lives and works in a country where they can make a larger salary than they could back home. For example, in the Philippines, a family member might work in the U.S., Canada, Malaysia or UAE. Their jobs vary from a domestic worker to a professional role, but regardless of the job and title, one thing remains the same – they are working abroad to save money and send a significant portion of it back home with hopes of making enough money to either bring their family to the country they live in, or go back to their home country.

So the question becomes, how do they send this money back home? Less than 10% of the world’s population has a bank account. To send money back home they can send it through a Western Union or cash remittance, send it with another family member or friend (that can be official or unofficial) or use another type of remittance. As the mobile market bursts, many people around the world are using their phone not just for personal use, but for business use as well. In most parts of the world, people don’t have cell phone plans like we do here in America. They buy minutes, or load as it sometimes called and when they are low they “topup” or “buy more load.” That’s something I heard every day in the Philippines, there are markets on ever corner selling cards where you can buy various increments to load onto your phone.

See where I’m going with this? Mobile remittance! That’s where ezetop comes in. They provide a service for people to send money directly to someone’s mobile phone. Simple, quick and without the exorbitant fees of a cash remittance service.

Genius.

More bonus points! Ezetop’s services also benefit mobile operators as they generate additional revenue outside their domestic market. ezetop currently offers services in over 95 mobile operators/countries across Asia Pacific, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and Eastern Europe and is adding operators on a regular basis. Existing operators include Airtel, Claro, C&W, Dialog Telecom, Digicel, Globe Telecom, LIME, MTN, Orange, Orascom, Roshan, Singtel, SMART, Telcel, Telefonica, Telenor, Tigo, Ufone, Vodafone, Warid, Zong and others.

How does it work? You can send a top-up instantly to a mobile phone. For family and friends back home, it is an easy way to send support instantly and cost effectively. All of this can happen in three easy steps:

1. Create an ezetop Account – Complete a simple signup process, confirm your email address, and then activate your account. You’re now ready to send a top-up.

2. Enter the Top-Up Details – Select the country and mobile operator you want to top-up, choose how much you want to send and enter the mobile phone number to add the top-up to.

3. Pay for Top Up – Enter your credit or debit card details – the website is fully secure working to industry standards, all transactions are verified by VISA, MasterCard and VeriSign.

As for me? I’ll be working with ezetop on creating their online communications and marketing strategy and working with them through execution. This will be everything from evaluating and helping define their presence in social media, to diving into analytics and helping quantify their online marketing efforts. Along the way, I’ll be working with them to help train their marketing team with a social media bootcamp and working on blogger and press outreach to help get the word out about who they are and what they do.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on services like ezetop. Have you ever used a mobile remittance service? What did you think of it? Check out ezetop and I welcome your feedback about their service. Like I said, I’m really excited to be partnering with this and am always looking to my own online and offline communities to keep me on my toes!

Interested in learning more about ezetop? Check out their website and sign up for a free account, and you can also friend and follow ezetop on Facebook and Twitter.

On September 20, 2010 is TEDxChange, an event co-hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and TED. TEDxChange marks the anniversary of the Millennium Development Goals.

Ten years in, the question remains where do we stand in the work to save and improve lives around the world? And what will the future hold?

The future isn’t fixed. We can all have a hand in making a better world. To coincide with TEDxChange and the tenth anniversary of the Millennium Development Goals, the Gates Foundation is asking you the following question: What is the future we will make?

They want you to help put a personal face to some of the world’s most pressing issues and envision a future where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy and productive life.

To participate, follow these four steps:

Download and print the sign

Personalize the sign with your own message. (Remember: Your sign must relate to one of the Millennium Development Goals to be included.)

Upload your photo to the foundation’s Flickr group.

Join the conversation on our Community Page.

Passion and purpose are important in looking forward and I also believe the role of education for girls globally will continue to impact how developing countries grow and seek to eradicate poverty. That being said, here’s my photo!

What are The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)? They are eight international development targets set forth by the United Nations. Adopted by world leaders in the year 2000 and set to be achieved by 2015, the MDGs seek to spur development by improving social and economic conditions in the world’s poorest countries.

The information and graphical content below are used in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme.

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty.

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education.

Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women.

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality.

Goal 5: Improve maternal health.

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability.

Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development.