Hi, Brenndan-
This is Barrett Brown; I've recently begun working with your father on his Excellere funds, mainly by writing correspondence to his various contacts on his behalf. I met him through my father Robert Brown, who works with S.K. Oil and Gas.
I understand that you've been heavily involved in various charitable programs intent on encouraging development in Africa and that you've spent quite a bit of time there. I lived briefly in Dar es Salaam when I was 17 and have since spent a little time in South Africa as well. I also write for Vanity Fair, D Magazine, the Skeptical Inquirer, and some other outlets and have written a couple of books. In the last six months I've managed to use these and other outlets to recruit a group of about fifty people with varying backgrounds and skill sets into an organization called Project PM, which is sort of an online think-tank intent on encouraging the development of more efficient techniques for operating institutions ranging from media outlets to charities.
Aside from our main thrust, which is the development of a better method for blogs to communicate with each other, we have so far launched two sub-programs. One of them, the Africa Development Project, is intended to find and implement efficient solutions by which to promote the development of sub-Saharan Africa. To this end we've been trying to identify the most substantive and cost-effective methods of tackling such issues as water purification and education in such a way as to create a self-sustaining chain reaction that will continue largely on its own, perhaps through an incentive program by which to encourage recipients of our work to share the techniques and information with neighboring communities.
We've identified a few techniques that could be relayed to a community and put into action with available resources and skills, but of course we'd like to make sure that we're aware of as many possible components - methods of purifying water, disease prevention, agricultural techniques - as we can so that the information and initial resources we provide will be of the highest possible caliber. I'm already in touch with a couple of charities that provide some or another specific service such as bicycle donation, and have brought on several people with knowledge of the problems we're trying to tackle, but I imagine that you yourself would probably have some particularly valuable insight into what sort of methods have shown the best results as well as other facets that would be of help to us.
If you'd
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Regards,
Barrett Brown
512-560-2302