It’s holiday time and that means year-end giving campaigns from your favorite charities and political organizations.  It’s a noisy time to make an appeal and economic times are tough (tax deductibles donations are not as helpful when you’ve got less income to deduct!) but all that aside, this one is quite personal.

Last week, I joined the Board of Advisors of Darfur Stoves.  If you’re in search of an organization to support this time of year, I’d encourage you to read more of the Darfur Stoves story.  

For all of us tech-centric folk who think technology really has the power to change the world, Darfur Stoves is putting theory into practice.  

There are two keys reason that I joined this organization and why I’d encourage you to take a look!

#1: I believe that those of us developing and promoting technology in the first world, particularly in my current field of cleantech, have an absolute obligation to find ways to transfer these technologies to the developing world.  Darfur Stoves was founded via the pioneering work of Ashok Gadgil at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. In addition to a variety of work on energy problems in the first world, Ashok has been one of the leading thinkers in the world today on adapting technologies to the realities of developing world conditions and markets.    

#2: One of the first lessons I learned in building startups was that you bet on people not ideas.  Darfur Stoves is a wonderful idea and a wonderful technology, but organizations like this are built on great people.  Andree Sosler, Darfur Stove’s Executive Director is not only a good friend, but she’s one of the smartest, most fiercely committed people that I’ve met operating in the non-profit world.  Andree and I met at Wharton where she took two years out of her life not in pursuit of personal profit, but rather in search of for-profit frameworks that would help her back in the developing world.  While most of our Wharton classmates headed up to Wall Street, Andree went straight from Philadelphia to Rwanda to consult on development issues. 

If you’ve set aside some savings to give to people out in the world using technology to fight the good fight, please consider supporting Darfur Stoves.