“I have signed up to participate in the Clean Water Blogivation campaign. If my blog receives the most votes, I will win an opportunity to join Dr. Greg Allgood on a clean water expedition to Africa and a $15,000 donation to my favorite charity tackling water issues.”

Few days ago, Proctor & Gamble’s GIVE HEALTH program launched the Clean Water Blogivation campaign asking bloggers to post about water issues and their desire to foment change – and to then urge their friends and readers to vote for the entry. The post with the most votes wins $15,000 to donate to their water-related charity of choice.

EVERY TIME YOU VOTE,  (and you can vote EVERY day) P&G will donate

a day’s worth of clean drinking water to an individual in a developing country.

You can vote now, here:

(NOTE: Remember to click through boxes OR the verification email they send! I didn’t … so my own vote didn’t count the first time!)

Per the campaign’s rules, I am supposed to say why I am, or want to be, a Change Agent to help provide clean drinking water to people in developing countries.

It’s actually a harder question to answer than I would have thought. 

I live my life according to something my mother used to say to me often – that our purpose, our duty, in life is to the leave world in a better place than when we entered.

You’ll hardly find it surprising, then, that I am a former Peace Corps volunteer, or that I spent my war correspondent years in the Balkans, Middle and Asia searching out the untold human stories – particularly those related to women and children.

I lived abroad for 11 years in countries where acquiring simple things like medicine, water, food and shelter are a daily challenge for hundreds of millions of people. It should not be like this, plain and simple. There’s no reason for it. And no justification.

The United Nations, at least, agrees. A couple of weeks ago the General Assembly backed a resolution confirming access to clean water and sanitation facilities as basic human rights. The measure got 122 countries’ votes – 41 abstained, but none voted against it. Unsurprisingly, but unfortunately, the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Australia were among those who abstained from the vote.

In my mind, there should be no question that every single member of our global family should have regular access to clean drinking water.  And even with the UN’s affirmation, it will be years before every person on the planet is able to enjoy that right. Which means we still have to act. We must remain involved.

I am a campaigner, as my regular readers know, on everything from human trafficking and freedom of speech, to hunger and maternal health issues. And I am always searching for ways to get more people involved in helping to make our world a better, safer, more healthy place for everyone.

So I urge my fellow bloggers to give a post to the campaign – get involved. It costs nothing, takes only a few minutes and is something we can all feel good about.

If you can’t give a post, please vote. For me. For others. For someone. Or someones. In exchange for a few seconds of your time, an individual in a developing country will receive a day’s worth of drinking water.

I can’t think of a better use of our time.

Ok, truth time.

The run-up to the BlogHer conference later this week in New York City, and all the pre-conference #dayjob meetings I have after coming off a 6 a.m. flight into JFK airport have got my brain a bit scattered.

Full disclosure? I’m so frazzled I freaked myself out earlier today when talking to #TBFF @AspiringMama when I got it in my head that I am leaving tomorrow.  It is actually @AspiringMama who is leaving tomorrow. With all the packing, the organizing, the regular day job tasks, house cleaning, vet visits, prescription filling and dead camera batteries, can you blame me?

What I find particularly amusing about my current state of mind is that while I am attending a major blogging conference where I have been named a Voices of the Year finalist no less, I am not really blogging this week! How’s that for irony? Or slacking? Or …. Well, you get the picture.

But I always post on Mondays so I didn’t want to leave you all with nothing to show for visiting my little blog. (… and, honestly, with 4 minutes left in the day on the U.S. East Coast I won’t make it … but Central and Pacific time zones can still read this on Monday so that counts. Right. Right?!? Yes, right.)

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The battle lines are drawn. Tension is running high. Passion is only slightly behind. The world is abuzz with the vuvuzela. We are on the verge of the first knock-outs of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

As football (soccer) fans around the world gear up to roar their chosen sides onto victory, there is one team people around the world should all be rooting for:

Stand Up United

This side, put together by the world’s largest grassroots human rights organization Amnesty International, features a roster of true heroes – individuals who see wrong in the world around them and choose to stand up and act.

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I thought it was an easy question ….

And after ummmmm….like …(I’m 29 … I tell ya, 29!) … 30 plus some odd years on this earth you would think that I’d know better.

Every day for going on 15 years I have spent hours focused on a constantly (r)evolving variety of human and environmental rights issues as part of my “day job.” This tends to put me in regular contact with academics, government officials, activists, specialists and others equally (and often more) focused on the issue at hand.

Most often the issues I am writing about are near and dear to my heart on a personal level as well (hence, my propensity to suddenly ejaculate massive amounts of passionate information on subjects that have little to do with the actual conversation I am having at the time). Many of my live and virtual friends find this endlessly interesting and a bit odd. As a result, I tend to attract a lot of questions and requests for explanation on issues.

That started me thinking (yes, yes, I know … that’s always a dangerous undertaking):

What does the average person know about human and environmental rights? What are the issues they think about? And then, finally, what are the issues that your average person passionately believes everyone else should also be aware of?

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 With a black man holding the highest office in the land you would think America is past the race-bashing hate-mongering crap that has crippled us from within for the last 200 years or so. Sadly two recent very public events provide more evidence than I really wanted of the cancer that continues to infect our society.

This past weekend protesters associated with the “Tea Party” camped out in front of the U.S. Congress to express their dismay with proposed health care reform – exercising a constitutional right to activism and turning it into a sad public display of small-minded foolishness.

They spat at Congressmen. They hurled racial-slurs at the gay and black communities.

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For a moment there, I forgot what planet we are on. Last time I checked I was living on planet earth – but former Marine general John Sheehan seems to be stuck in a parallel dimension where demeaning gay-bashing comments are socially acceptable.

I am not a member of the LGBT community, but I was Outraged (yes – that’s Outraged with a capital “O”) to see reports of Sheehan giving testimony before the U.S. Congress that pegged Dutch troops failures to prevent the Srebrenica massacre to The Netherland’s acceptance of openly-gay individuals in the military.

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When I think of a cup of tea, I think: calm, tranquil, serene. The mental picture is two hands on a steaming cup, eyes closed while I breathe in vapors that tantalize the senses with hints of chamomile, mint or citrus smells (depending on my mood).  Now thanks to a story from the Associated Press this week on Chinese activists going online to blast “drinking tea” warnings by meddlesome authorities, I’ll never see that cup of tea quite the same way.

According to the Associated Press story:

Police have long tried to shush and isolate potential activists, usually starting with a low-key warning, perhaps over a meal or a cup of tea. Now, the country’s troublemakers are openly blogging and tweeting their stories about “drinking tea” with the cops, allowing the targeted citizens to bond and diluting the intimidation they feel.

The movement is an embarrassment for officials, who are suspicious of anything that looks like an organized challenge to their authority. And it can’t help that “drinking tea” stories seem to be spreading among ordinary Chinese, including ones who signed a recent online call for political reform.

The country’s top political event of the year, the National People’s Congress, has given the stories another bump. More than 200 people say they’ve been invited by police to “drink tea” since just Friday, when the congress began, said independent political blogger Ran Yunfei.

 That Chinese activists found ways to go around official censorship of the Internet and get their stories out to others helps increased a sense of community for those under scrutiny and reinforces the power potential of the Internet.

 As we saw in Iran following the disputed June 2009 elections and for Haiti after January’s massive earthquake social media like Twitter can simultaneously allow users to spread information about events and draw in a truly international “coalition” of people who feel the same or empathize with the challenges. Those coalition members can and have raised the profile of the issue, raised money and provided invaluable moral support to those struggling through difficult situations.

 It’s a strange kind of magic that unfolds via spells crafted of 140 characters or less. And I, for one, can’t wait to see what practitioners come up with next.

When electoral authorities declared Iran’s incumbent Mahmoud Ahmedinejad winner of June 2009 presidential elections the power of technology and social networks became front page news around the world. Six months later the power of these new tools to influence the hearts and minds of users around the world is definitively a mainstream concept – and is attracting attention from policymakers.

 Iran’s opposition politicians and their supporters rallied to oppose the controversial election, using Twitter networks to inform people in and outside Iran of demonstration plans. As authorities blocked an increasing number of websites and prevented most journalists from reporting out of Tehran, protestors and their online supporters set up proxies to help those inside Iran continue using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social networking sites to sidestep official censorship.

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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton paid a visit to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo this week to highlight her concerns over the absolutely appalling level of sexual violence occurring as competing forces battle for control over the region’s natural resources.

Few international dignitaries venture to the war-torn region and Clinton (whatever the politics behind the move) deserves applause for giving attention to a situation that has sickened even the most seasoned humanitarian workers.

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The case of Lubna Hussein is one of those rare instances where an individual chooses to step forward and challenge an unjust system knowing full well the effort may fail. Her bravery should serve as a reminder to us all of the importance of standing up to act for what we believe in.

 Hussein, a Sudanese journalist working in the media department of the United Nations mission, was arrested with a dozen other women on July 3 by members of the public order police for wearing pants in a restaurant. Most of the women were reportedly flogged at the police station.

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