It’s no secret that Alissa and I give away a fair amount of what we make off of music to organizations we feel need attention to. If we had more money, we’d give more, but unfortunately we’re not Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Alissa loves to give to The Humane Society while I feel there needs to be a greater attention placed on malaria-related deaths in Africa. Nothing but Nets does this….and apparently to a GREAT degree!

Everyday Jones would love for you to be involved in Nothing but Nets. If you’re interested, please get in contact with us.

Here’s an email I received today from them:

Dear Jason,

One of the best things about Nothing But Nets is our ability to share stories with you and our partners about how your support makes a difference. In the last several months, we’ve told you the stories of Kharto and Dahabo, bed net recipients in refugee camps in Africa. We’ve also shown you the smiles of refugees upon reading your messages of hope.

But with World Refugee Day this Saturday, June 20, we wanted to dig a little deeper into the stories and show you what happens after the nets are delivered to tell you that your efforts are saving lives. Keep spreading hope by sending nets and saving lives.

Our partner, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), reports that countries that have taken a coordinated approach to combating malaria, including the use of bed nets, have shown dramatic declines in malaria-related illness and deaths over the last several years. For example, in 2006, malaria caused 33% of all illness in refugee camps in Kenya. Now it accounts for just 8%. That means malaria is no longer the number-one killer of refugees in Kenya, and we are getting closer to reaching our goal of no malaria deaths.

In the Ugandan refugee camp Nakivale, a Somali refugee named Sheikl has formed a club of 25 young people to teach families about malaria prevention and proper bed net usage. Every Thursday, Sheikl’s club goes door-to-door to check that the nets delivered last year are still hanging and being used. Sheikl proudly told us that since the nets were distributed there have been zero deaths from malaria in Nakivale.

But this is just one refugee camp, and the country of Uganda still has high malaria rates overall, which means there is more work to be done. With your help, we will continue to see malaria rates decrease as more lives are saved with a simple bed net, for just $10.

Send a net, save a life, and send a message of hope today.

Thank you for helping us make a difference in the lives of so many people.

Adrianna Logalbo, Director of Nothing But Nets
http://www.NothingButNets.net/

Jason on the farm

Ahhh, it’s nice to be back home in Seattle (Duvall actually) and back on the 150 acre farm. So peaceful. It’s nice to come back to the farm after being on the road for so long. You’re so busy traveling, meeting people and playing music that you barely have time to breathe. So, it is really nice when we get back to slow down, write more music and enjoy the tranquility and simplicity of the farm (although we do have the niceties of internet here).

Along some of the things I needed to do when I got back was to get our new website up and running. I paid someone awhile back to create our old one, but unfortunately I had to end our professional relationship over a mishap and move my website to a different server. The developer didn’t tell me the core modules used to create the website only worked on his webhosting company. So, when I switched servers, I had an inoperable website. I’m not a website developer, so I was stuck trying to figure something out (and trying not to seethe after loosing nearly $1000).

I ended up downloading Drupal, which is a Content Management System, not really knowing what I was getting into. After about a year of trying to figure it out, I just flat out gave up. I didn’t have the time to be a guru php coder (nor did I want to..BORING!), but I still needed something that was quick, seemless, hopefully free and easy to use.

An excellent musician and personal friend, Scott Andrew, runs his site using WordPress. Upon a few email exchanges, I decided to download and install WordPress. AHHHH….SO

Jason, Alissa and Jeremy on the farm

much easier!!! I have to say, down with Drupal, up with WordPress.

I do like the fact I can just quickly get a site up, throw a simple theme on, and away we go. Even the plug-ins that WordPress uses are brainless to get working. It seemed like everytime I used a plug-in for Drupal, it was either out of date or had too many bugs. Blech! Now with the installation of WordPress, I can finally get a website going that I can update frequently with images, videos and audio.

I welcome the discussion of Drupal vs WordPress by those that know code (and those that don’t!) 

-J