I posted a video last weekend that we made about a month ago. We were pretty excited about getting some video up here on the site. It seems that everything I have been reading about the internet for the last year has been talking about video and how its the future and all. But here is my rub, I don’t know if you have been over to the Do Some Good Now site lately but we are now pushing 7000 visitors. Which is pretty cool! Here is the thing, out of 7000 people only 290 watched the video… Only 290, I am going to get a calculator and check the percentage on that… It’s only 4%!! That is way too low. So we are not as bursting at the seams to get video published anymore. Oh well, you live and learn right? We are going to keep at the blog and the Burkina Faso posts. Because after all 18,000 page views per month is not bad for a little developer like LJUrban.

Another thing we learned is that 100,000 is a really big number. The Do Some Good now site now says we are going to train a mason for every 100,000 visitors. We shot that high because we keep hearing stories of people who have that many hits in one day from a big blog posting about them. Well we have had several good size blogs link to us and we are just not seeing 100,000. So starting in the next few days (as soon as we get our site team to make the change) we are going to make that number 10,000! Look for those trained masons to start racking up very soon.

Here are just a few of the links we got on the Do Some Good Now site.

Springwise

Everything 2.0

Hugg

Tribe

Linny For Africa

Dandelife

StumbleUpon

Roebot

Inspired to Action

Digg

Veronica

Mojisola

Seeds of Growth

Buying with a Heart

I am sure there are more I am missing here but this is a good example of the reception we are getting.

Thanks to everyone who posted about Do Some Good Now, You are the best in my world!

Levi

The following is another excerpt from the story of our travels to Burkina Faso.  Read along as we brave the Metro in Paris, become red with African Dust, and climb rickety ladders to reach rooftops.  Our intent?  To learn more about Earth Roofs in the Sahel and to see for ourselves the life-changing effect of this program. If you’re reading for the first time, you can see the other entries here.

We eventually leave the smoky little café where we first met with Thomas and Antoine, and make our way across Paris to another little smoky café.  Making our way through the city is like a dream.  Architecture I’ve only ever imagined, men and women everywhere with effortless style and intriguing faces.  A scarf casually tossed over a shoulder, a hat set just so, it is hard to pinpoint what exactly makes French men and women appear so incredibly unique.  Later, I see a young man on the Metro who has even perfected the starving artist look.  Big worn leather shoes, pinstriped pants that are too short, a threadbare jacket that his wrists stick out of, tousled hair, rough goatee, and of course, the scarf, the perfect scarf.  I shake my head in awe.

As our friends lead us through narrow streets, I take photos as fast as I can, barely able to wait for the next day, when I assume I will be able to spend some time making more shots.  Jessie talks to Thomas and Antoine.  Every time she asks a question they start discussing animatedly in French.  It usually ends with Antoine shrugging and throwing up his hands.  He concedes, but not without a few sneaky remarks in French, to which Thomas responds with a yell, “You give me no trouble today!”

It is wonderful to see Thomas and Antoine together; Thomas the older genius, in his early fifties, with a better command on English than I have on any other language, but still faltering with his words at times.  Not faltering with his opinions or ideas, however.  Somehow I believe he would be quite intimidating in his own language.  And Antoine, younger, sweeter, always asking if we are doing okay, if we understand, if we are tired.  Ribbing Thomas about his problems with English. Thomas in return mocking Antoine’s age.  In French he says, “Wine is not for children,” he says to Antoine, who is twenty-four, and is someone whom Thomas trusts explicitly.  Or maybe he says, “Wine is only for those who have children,” which doesn’t include Antoine.  It is lost in translation. We love the banter.  Banter feels like home.

Eventually we find the place we are looking for, and we end up spending several more hours, both on this night and during the next day, brainstorming and discussing things that will shape the way our work together is created.  During these talks we see a little more of who Thomas and Antoine are, and a little more of the nature of what they are trying to do.

They emphasize, again and again, that the health of the community is more important than almost anything else.  How mistaken it would be in our “philanthropy,” to walk in and give houses away willy-nilly, causing jealousies and rifts within the villages. It reminds me of a story I heard recently, of a group that spent thousands of dollars to build a fish processing plant for a people group in Kenya.  A people group who, unfortunately, don’t fish, but who traditionally raise goats.  We are impressed, again, by the indigenous nature of what AVN does in West Africa, and the absolute respect they have for the community.

Every once in a while, while we are speaking, Thomas will put his head down to his chest and start muttering to himself in French.   We look around at each other while he is doing this, and take a couple of sips of our Café Crème, our coffee with cream.  (I made the mistake of ordering an Americano at one point and was brought a cocktail.  From then on I just chirped, “Café Crème!” to be safe.)

Finally his head shoots up and his generous eyebrows are at his hairline.  “Un maçon pour une maison!” he practically shouts.  We can’t really understand what he is saying, but he keeps repeating himself. Finally, I pick up the idea.  It doesn’t rhyme as well in English.  The general idea is one mason for one house.  For every house that is bought, the money will be provided for the training of one mason, a job creation and economic boon for any fortunate man to be trained.  We mull over the idea, and then get talking about other things.

Later, as see the program in Burkina Faso with our own eyes, we will see how great of an idea it really is.

The following is another excerpt from the story of our travels to Burkina Faso. Read along as we brave the Metro in Paris, become red with African Dust, and climb rickety ladders to reach rooftops. Our intent? To learn more about Earth Roofs in the Sahel and to see for ourselves the life-changing effect of this program. If you’re reading for the first time, you can see the other entries here.

While we wait, I touch my arms and legs to make sure they are still there. We’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours, now, and maybe I am missing fingers? But no, they are all still hanging from the ends of my hands. We watch the street. A man drives by on a moped, carrying a bouquet of long baguettes. It is a theme that I notice again and again. In Paris, everywhere, everywhere, there is bread. An old woman carries nothing but her purse and a baguette. On the Metro, a couple feed each other little bites of bread. And there are bakeries on every street.

A man approaches, gestures to the three of us, and some form of unspoken communication passes between us all. This is Thomas. We tell him about the closed restaurant. “Oh la la,” he says, and we walk off to find somewhere else to eat. Thomas is short, stocky, and energetic. I feel that right away I recognize him. He’s one of those visionary types, the ones that never stop moving and are always pulling you into some sort of adventure. These are the kind of people who keep you on your toes.

“Where is Antoine?” we ask.

“He’s on the train,” Thomas replies. “There was a problem on the tracks, and it was delayed.” He will call Antoine to let him know where we end up eating. We find a restaurant and enter. It is smoky and we wander to the very back of the room to sit at a table. Now. The menu.

I recognize many of the words. One thing we did cover in school was food names. I would love to have retained more conversational French, but at least I can help with the menu. We decide on the lunch specials, and then have to order an entrée, a plat, and a dessert. It takes us a very long time to order. Thomas suggests the Fois Gras. I shake my head. “Oh, la la, the suffering animals, Rachelle?” I nod. Thomas shakes his head and turns back to his menu.

Soon, Antoine arrives, and he orders, also. Then we sit back and take stock of one another. What Jessie and Cindy and I all note right away, is that Thomas and Antoine feel like old friends. It doesn’t feel like we have just met. We recognize them, maybe in the recognition of people with hearts almost too large for their chests, people who spend most of their time trying to help out in an unbalanced global society, trying to do some good now.

Cindy’s “salad” arrives and it is covered with piles of all sorts of very interesting looking meat. Definitely some liver. Maybe some other organs? Which animal does it all come from? Maybe we’ll never know. Cindy eats very little meat, and ordered a salad because it seemed safe. But other than a slight widening of the eyes, she doesn’t really let it be known that she is concerned at all, about the meat-mountain in front of her. It’s a good indication of the kind of traveler she’ll be. Always ready for whatever is thrown to us.

Trying to let Antoine know that he didn’t need to worry about our comfort too much, as we go to Burkina Faso, and not sure of the cultural differences around women, Jessie had said to Antoine, “We’re girls, but we’re not girly girls.” And indeed, Thomas, while we talk about the car rental details, looking at us dryly, says, “I was expecting three elderly ladies carrying little dogs. If I had known that you would look like this,” -he looks at me, “and that one of you would have dreadlocks, I wouldn’t have rented a car for you.” Then he laughs. “But I am only joking. You will need a car, even if you are very strong.”

We will find out, eventually, how very, very right he is about needing a car. But at the moment, we just laugh at the thought of showing up in Africa with three little dogs.

(Today I’m posting the beginning of my travel log of our journey to Burkina Faso. I’ll be updating this series a few times a week with tales all the way from Paris to West Africa. Don’t be confused by my present tense writing; I’m not actually there anymore, but sharing our experiences the way we felt them as I wrote them down. This way it is really a journey together.)

As I write this I’m flying over the border between Arkansas and Oklahoma. Hello! I think, to the places I have and haven’t been below, on roads in Oklahoma. This plane will put us in Atlanta, Georgia–soon, really, and after that we’ll board a plane to Paris; a fact that I like to toss into the air nonchalantly. “Soon we’ll be in Paris,” I say, with just the right amount of emphasis on Paris, not too much or too little.

I should probably introduce myself. Hi. I’m Rachel Ford, guest blogger. I usually blog at Journey Mama. I have the incredible opportunity to write about the Do Some Good Now project (which I secretly like to call the Do Some Good Already Project) and Paris is totally not the point. Just a convenient way to get to our real destination: Burkina Faso.

Have you heard of it? If you watch the Amazing Race, (which I usually don’t, and had to scratch my head to reference what it was called just now… the Greatest Race? That Big Ol’ Race? Rat Race?) you have seen Burkina Faso recently. Or, more accurately, you have seen crazy reality show contestants trying to milk camels in Burkina Faso. Which is not at all our plan. As far as I know.

But what I have learned is that Burkina Faso is a fairly sizable country, land-locked in the Sahel, a region of arid land south of the Sahara, and it’s there that we are headed, to discover the work of the “Earth Roofs in the Sahel,” project. In Paris we will meet with Thomas Granier, and Antoine Horellou, Directors of Association La Voûte Nubienne, the visionaries who are heading this project up.

West Africa is a place that I’ve only ever dreamed of seeing, and I revel in these moments right now, moments of dreaming. Because once you are somewhere, you’ve never not-been there again. Am I right?

Now that I’ve introduced myself, let me introduce my beautiful traveling companions, Jessie Benkert and Cindy Kruschel. If you know LJUrban at all, you probably know Jessie, the incredible wife of Levi Benkert, LJUrban’s owner. You may not have met Cindy, our intrepid and inquisitive friend. Together we are embarking on a journey that will teach us new things about the world we live in.

Maybe one day you’ll be sitting and talking with us while we tell our stories in person. Or maybe you’ll eat soup with all of us one day. Who knows, but over the course of this journey you’ll get to know us well, I think. I promise to share a lot. We want you to travel with us, in a way, to see this through the eyes that we have brought with us, halfway across the world.

We have a mission, the best kind of mission there is, to explore. We are here to learn about the people of Burkina Faso, to enter into their homes, to find ways to express their needs. We are here for the revolutionary act of saying, “It’s Not Fair.” It’s not fair that so many people have homes that are safe and dry, and that some people don’t. It’s not fair that people live in extreme poverty.

The idea is a way of living where every choice you make is a choice of empowerment. Every day you can influence someone’s life in a way that lifts it up. The idea is finding our kinship, so that we are not only consumers, but brothers and sisters with our global neighbors. The idea is this crazy opportunity: If you buy a home with LJUrban, you will be influencing the global economy for the better. Specifically, you will be creating jobs in Burkina Faso, enabling better houses to be built.

In buying a home, we carve a place for ourselves, but not only for us, but our friends across the world, the ones who can so greatly benefit from our resources, the ones who don’t have the water we do, the trees we do. We want to help to make a better way of life for the people in the Sahel.

And here I am with my traveling companions, ready to reach in and find a new place to be in the world. Burkina Faso, home to some of the poorest people on the earth, a place of art and music and a large sub-Saharan desert, where we’ve heard that there are people whom we can help. Who will we meet? What kind of connections will we make? What will we see?

All I know is that I am sure we will be changed. For me, the world stretches a little, with every place I go, giving me one more place to hold in my heart.

We’ve been hinting for awhile about some new projects we’ve been working on. Today, we finally get to talk about it!

From Shoes to Burkina Faso
Awhile ago, we posted about Tom’s shoes…blog-wise, it was just a quick nod but we were pretty floored by the simplicity of the idea he had: buy a shoe, give a shoe. It just works.

Since then, we’ve been on a wild journey (at one point, all the way to Burkina Faso, West Africa) to figure out how we could do some good of our own for people in developing nations.

The Kind of Good That Just Makes Sense
We wanted the good to be real and tangible. We didn’t just want to throw money into some philanthropic pot and pat ourselves on the shoulder. We needed to be able to see, touch and feel it. We wanted to meet the people who would be affected by it and learn from them.

• Since we build homes for a living, we wanted the good to be about homes and about community.

• Since we’re eco-urbanists, we wanted the good to be sustainable. Not just for the earth, but for the people as well.

• Since doing good is a lot more fun (and effective) in collaboration, we wanted to invite others to get involved and participate.

The Result?

A New Website. www.dosomegoodnow.com.
You can do some good just by visiting.

And you can do even more good by sharing it with others.

We even have a Good-O-Meter so you can track the progress (and load on your own site, if you have one).

And pictures you can see (and share) on Flickr.

A New Commitment.
We’re calling it our Do Some Good Now Commitment and you can read about it here.

This is a monumental step for us. But it’s not one we can do by ourselves, so consider this an open invitation to jump on board and help. If you’ve got any suggestions or ways to spread this, our ears are wide open.

Jason

Thanks to Rachel and Chinua Ford, we’ll be posting a steady stream of entries here (starting tomorrow), more photos on Flickr, and videos about the journey thus far and as we continue on. You can stay tuned via RSS or by subscribing to our e-mail list at the top.