Showing posts with label givemeaning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label givemeaning. Show all posts

14 August 2007

GiveMeaning? - Give Me a Break

I wrote recently about the plight of the Tibetan people. One of the problems is that it is hard for an average non-Tibetan to do much to help the situation. So I was pleased that Boing Boing pointed me to what sounded a worthy cause that might, even if in a small way, help preserve Tibetan culture:

The Tibetan Endangered Music Project has so far recorded about 400 endangered traditional Tibetan songs. We now have the opportunity to make these songs available online, at a leading Tibetan language website (www.tibettl.com). However, this volunteer run website is unable to fund hosting for our material. The cost of hosting space is 1.5 RMB (less than 20 US cents) for every MB. One song in mp3 format is approximately 1.5 MB. 1900 USD would allow us to buy 10 GB of hosting space, which will take care of all our needs for the forseeable future (allowing 6700 1.5 MB songs to be uploaded). It would also allow us to expand to video hosting in the future, or to provide high quality (.wav) formats instead of only compressed mp3 format.

Wow - preserving the Tibetan musical commons for the Tibetans: sign me up, I thought.

So I did sign up. But that's where the problem began.

Despite being signed up and in, I could not - can not - find anywhere to give money to this lot. Now, naively, I would have thought that a site called GiveMeaning, expressly designed to help people give money to worthy causes, would, er, you know, help people give money, maybe with a big button saying "GIVE NOW". But what do I know? I've only been using the Web for about 14 years, so maybe I'm still a little wet behind the ears.

On the other hand, it could just be that this is one of the most stupid sites in the known universe, designed to drive altruists mad as a punishment for wanting to help others. Either way, it looks like the Tibetan musical commons is going to have to do without my support, which is a pity.