I’m Spreading the Word to Help Japan. Are You?

Japan was hit with a massive earthquake and tsunami last week.

We all know this. We also know it is getting worse by the day. More people are being confirmed dead. The nuclear reactors are in a state of emergency as engineers do their best to prevent a meltdown. There is no way to prepare for this kind of devastation.

The only thing we can do is react.

Unfortunately with the disaster being so far away, the only way most of us will be able to help is to donate money. There are very few people I know who can afford the time and expense to go to Japan and get their hands dirty to help. We can, however, either donate money ourselves or try to spread the word and encourage others to donate.

Increase Awareness

If you have a website (whether it’s a blog, facebook, twitter, youtube channel, or anything else), you have an opportunity to reach out to people online and raise awareness of how bad the situation is over there. Sure, people know what happened, but maybe if they keep getting reminded, they will eventually take some action.

You can get your friends involved and come up with fun ways to raise money:

• Auction yourself off for a date to your friends on facebook. The person who pledges to donate the most money wins
• Do a March Madness bracket, but the winner will donate some percentage of the winnings to Japan
• Get all your friends together and play spin the bottle, and if you really don’t want to kiss the person you landed on, you can buy out with a $5 donation to Japan

There are lots of fun ways to keep the people of Japan in your thoughts and have fun at the same time.

If you have a blog, there are a few ways you can raise awareness on your site. You can do what I’ve done and put an image in your sidebar with a clickable donate link. I used the wordpress Image Widget and made my own picture. Feel free to download and use that picture if you’d like.

You could also try the Hello Bar, although I tried it and it stopped working this morning. I think they had too many people sign up for the service, which is great that so many people want to help, but unfortunate it’s not more effective. It may be fixed by now, so you might want to give it a try.

Donate Money

If you have the means to donate yourself, there are a lot of organizations that are collecting money for the relief efforts. You want to make sure that you are donating to a reputable company, so my recommendation is to stick to the big ones like the Red Cross.

• Text REDCROSS to 90999 and you will donate $10 to the Red Cross Japan Relief Fund. This will be charged to your monthly phone bill.
• Donate via websites, such as the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, International Medical Corps, and others.

Keep Japan In Your Thoughts and Prayers

Don’t think about all the bad stuff going on over there; that’s just going to make you tired, upset, and sad. Call me an optimist, but I’m thinking about how brave the relief workers are and how the Japanese people are coming together to help each other. I’m grateful that looting hasn’t been much of an issue there yet, and I hope it stays that way. Even through all the devastation, there is so much good coming through. I like to focus my thoughts and prayers on all the little miracles that are happening every day over there.

The Kevin McKee Show

While some might find this to be a somber post, I really don’t feel that way. Again, this is a tragedy, but I focus on the good that has come of this and I’m so happy to see the response. I didn’t want to let this tragedy derail my first youtube news show, so I did it anyway and made sure to focus on the people of Japan in the video first.

If you’re interested in hearing more news and my opinion on things like the Federal Budget, iPhone Apps for blind people, and Dolla’ Bills, check out the very first edition of The Kevin McKee Show, which is a blatant ripoff of the Philip DeFranco Show. I hope you like it.

Kevin McKee

Kevin McKee is an entrepreneur, IT guru, and personal finance leader. In addition to his writing, Kevin is the head of IT at Buildingstars, Co-Founder of Padmission, and organizer of Laravel STL. He is also the creator of www.contributetoopensource.com. When he’s not working, Kevin enjoys podcasting about movies and spending time with his wife and four children.