Font Aid IV. The Society of Typographic Aficionados is calling for designers to submit a black and white "ampersand" icon to build a collaborative font that will be sold to raise funds for relief efforts in Haiti. Previous Font Aid fonts have benefitted UNICEF to help war and disaster refugees, victims of the September 11 tragedies in the US, and relief efforts in countries affected by the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamis.  ¶

26 Well Designed Websites that Help Haiti. Maps and large photos of suffering children are a frequent motif, but the sites do present a modest range of development approaches. I’m also interested in what’s happening at CrisisCommons, rapidly developing open source community technology projects for humanitarian relief.

Update 3/21/2010: the open source project Ushahidi has had some good press lately about its role in the Hatian and Chilean earthquake relief efforts, mapping the crisis and response with text-messages.  ¶

Chance for Peace. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.” — President Dwight D. Eisenhower before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953. Those Republican 5-star generals sure sound like a bunch of socialists.  ¶

Text "Haiti" to 90999. As of January 18, a cellphone fundraising campaign to support Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti had raised $22 million, smashing all previous mobile giving records. The initiative is a partnership between the Red Cross, the US State Depatment and the mGive Foundation. Customers of participating wireless carriers can text message "HAITI" to 90999 to make a $10 donation. The State Department is posting periodic updates about the campaign on their blog and Twitter stream.  ¶

The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV. His call for economic and human rights, his push to redistribute wealth and power, his activism against the Vietnam War. “True compassion,” King declared, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”  ¶

Clothing Slashed. “It is winter. A third of the city is poor. And unworn clothing is being destroyed nightly.” Brief NY Times piece exposes big clothing retailers, particularly H&M, destroying clothes before discarding instead of donating or recycling.  ¶

Bodega Down Bronx. “Where does the food in your bodega come from? Who decides whether to stock tortilla chips or salad greens, and how much they’ll cost? How come it’s easier to find fresh fruits and vegetables in Brooklyn Heights than in the South Bronx? What’s the connection between the incidence of diabetes and the food market supply chain?” Bodega Down Bronx is a 30-minute video produced by Jonathan Bogarín, a group of Bronx students and the Center for Urban Pedagogy. Interviewing residents, bodega owners, distributors, politicians, and health professionals, it’s a fantastic, holistic breakdown of the day-to-day realities that flow from public policy, and what you can do about it.  ¶