Charity: Water

October and November have been 100% nuts (in a pretty fantastic way), but now that I've had a moment to rest, I wanted to start down this road to the Holiday's highlighting something I'm pretty stoked about:

Charity: Water

For Christmas this year, my wife and I wanted to do something different in the spirit of giving and sacrifice, so we're targeting something that means a lot to us - clean water.

More than a billion people are living without water on our planet. Some walk miles every day to get to the nearest source: a stagnant, parasite-infested stream or pond. They lug it back to their families. They suffer from diarrhea, worms and skin diseases because they can't wash themselves. 45,000 people die each day from waterborne illnesses.

So it's pretty simple - instead of us receiving gifts from friends and family - we're asking them to donate the money they would have spent to our Charity: Water fundraiser. On average it takes about $5,000 to build a well for a village in need - so that's our goal.

The cool thing is that it's not only about clean water - it goes so much deeper. In Africa alone, people spend 40 billion hours every year just walking for water. Women and children usually bear the burden of water collection, walking miles to the nearest source, which is unprotected and likely to make them sick.

Time spent walking and resulting diseases keep them from school, work and taking care of their families. Along their long walk, they're subjected to a greater risk of harassment and sexual assault. Hauling cans of water for long distances takes a toll on the spine and many women experience back pain early in life.

With safe water nearby, women are free to pursue new opportunities and improve their families’ lives. Kids can earn their education and build the future of their communities.

We know that there's so many worthy places to give our time, attention and resources to year-round - but if you're looking for a place to give this holiday season, we'd love your help in bringing clean water to a village in need.

I love this time of year, hope to run into you all soon!

Cheers, Jonathan

I'm alive!

I guess you might say it's been for good reason that there hasn't been a recent blog post...

I've actually been too busy!

Let's give bullet points a go:

• September 16: Donald Miller - an author I enjoy - posted a blog saying that a movie he (and others) had been working on for years was being put on hold indefinitely due to lack of finances.

• I sent am email to a buddy of mine claiming a belief that they should have been able to raise the money, and I had a general idea how they should have gone about it.

• My buddy (Zach) said he would have said the same thing to me first if he'd had the chance.

• We knew a mutual friend of the author, and so we sent a hail mary email: Just two normal guys making a pitch to raise funds for a movie we had no part of. Typically you and I might refer to this as 'dreaming.'

• Within hours of sending the email - we heard back, "Tell us more."

• We bought some whiteboards and stayed up all that night in my garage putting together a pitch to raise an unknown amount of funds in less than a month. We sent it out on Friday.

• Sunday night - the Director-to-be, Steve Taylor, came over to Zach's place and met with us...he even bought us coffee. About midnight, Don conferenced in - and in a matter of days Zach and I went from Joe Blow's working the corporate gig to Joe Blow's working the corporate gig and in charge of spear-heading a campaign to raise $125,000 in less than 30 days.

• From there it's a bit of a whirlwind...we put together a viral marketing campaign in 5 days, launched www.savebluelikejazz.com, slept minimally, and tried to soak in an incredible story that somehow we landed upon. In the end the campaign raised just shy of $346,000. The movie was saved!

There's other news though...in the midst of all this, a couple really cool opportunities happened upon me. I was offered a gig to go cover the release week of what was anticipated to be one of the biggest record releases in recent history. The anticipation proved true! In fact - she's the latest (and one of the few) to sell a million copies in her first week! This was obviously an exciting gig, and one that allowed me to travel out to NYC and LA for the coverage. Along with that - once the movie was saved - Zach and I were both offered jobs on the set of the movie. While both these opportunities were beyond wonderful - they forced me to a crossroads: up until now, whenever good gigs came up I would take vacation from my day job and it all worked out. Well - turns out I didn't have 5-6 weeks of vacation time left. :)

That said - here I sit, proclaiming to you now...

I'm officially full-time Creative.

Exciting and scary are both terms that come to mind, but the adventure is on and I can't help but smile about it.

More soon, I promise.

JF