Posts tagged foybles
Flying Pigs in the Queen City
May 4th
Flying Pigs in the Queen City, originally uploaded by foyble.
Friend of foyble Brian Geraghty ran the half during this year’s Flying
Pig Marathon. And he wore some foyble SWAG (as Michael Scott says:
“stuff we all get”)!
Hey, races are a great way to see a city and participate in some fund raising or causes. Search for races in your neck of the woods to participate in or think of a city you’d like to see and search for races there. And check out sites like TEAM in training (http://www.teamintraining.org/) to find a cause to train for.
According to Brian’s blog it’s a milestone for him! So to Brian we
say congrats and thanks for sporting the foyble burst in the streets
of Cincy!
Posted by Brian (Foy, not Geraghty).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Brian G. on foyble: www.foyble.com/users/454/foybles/331
Brian G. on the internet by himself: www.hottjava.com/
The Flying Pig: http://www.flyingpigmarathon.com/ AND http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_pig
Team in Training: http://www.teamintraining.org/
Massive Earthquake in Haiti. Here’s how you can help.
Jan 13th
Image via AFP.
An earthquake registering 7.0 on the Richter Scale rocked Port-Au-Prince, Haiti collapsing buildings and killing untold thousands yesterday. You can read more on the earthquake on every news outlet anywhere, so pick your favorite.
What’s important for us, is how you can start committing foybles to help this impoverished nation in the very long road to getting back on their already fragile feet.
foyble co-founder John Frazier supports a missionary in Haiti that builds schools and health clinics. You can find them at www.lifeline.org.
An article from The Huffington Post via Yahoo shares several ways that you, (YES YOU!), can help the people of Haiti. You can make a difference whether you donate $1.00 or $10,000 or more. You can also donate supplies. Here are their ideas and they are all foybles for you:
•The American Red Cross is pledging an initial $200,000 to assist communities impacted by this earthquake. They expect to provide immediate needs for food, water, temporary shelter, medical services and emotional support. They are accepting donations through their International Response Fund.
Five Winter giving ideas
Jan 12th
Never mind. I'll use the valet.
It’s been pretty brutal here in Chicago and all over the midwest, weather-wise, for the last few weeks. We’ve had a few snow storms and temperatures in the teens or twenties for a few weeks straight. But we think it would be shame to waste a whole season just because the weather is terrible. Below are a few ideas we have for making the cold winter months productive giving months.
1) Use the time to research some new organizations to get involved with once the weather breaks. So you’re stuck inside because it’s 10 below and the driveway is unpassable? Go with it. Stay inside and let your internet do the walking. Use our resources page to find a new organization. Or search for them on your own- using your fave search engine use search terms for things that you’re interested in like “soccer” or “little league” or “gardening” and pair them with good giving ‘action’ words like “giving”, “volunteerism”, or “helping”. Throw in your city or a nearby larger city for good measure. Check this ‘gardening volunteerism’ search result on google.
Friday foyble of the week: helping out commuters
Jan 8th
Note: the Friday foyble of the week (FFOTW) is a once per week post where we single out one of our favorite foybles from the many over at www.foyble.com. We don’t have any criteria for the foybles we pick and you don’t get anything but our gratitude and an internet high five. Check back every Friday for another installment. Email us at contact@foyble.com to nominate someone for the honor!
Today we bring you “pick up” by Corey Luffler. Corey tells us the story of Sergeant First Class Ruiz, who stopped on a rainy morning and picked up Corey and crew while they were walking to breakfast. keep reading the friday foyble…
Google foybles with free holiday wi-fi and asks you to pay it forward.
Nov 10th
Sometimes I catch a story or two on the world wide interweb that just screams “foyble!” Today, it was Google’s announcement that it is providing free wi-fi access to 47 participating airports during the holiday season and on every Virgin America flight. So, from now through January 15, 2010, you won’t be annoyed when firing up your laptop or mobile device during your layover only to find that wi-fi access will cost you $10 for the couple hours you have before you board again. You can find more information on the site Google set up to officially spread the news www.freeholidaywifi.com.
Google is not only doing us all a great service by hooking us up with free holiday wi-fi, but they are doing a foyble at the same time! When you visit freeholidaywifi.com, you will see they are encouraging you to follow Google’s example by making a donation to some worthy non-profits by using Google Checkout. What’s more? Google is going to match all the donations made through participating wifi networks up to $250,000!
Find out more about Google’s Give Back right HERE.
Do you like Google’s free wi-fi program and the Give Back?
Will you be using the free wi-fi over the holiday?
Are you going to participate in Google’s Give Back?
Comments Please! If you do, make sure you share your foyble right here. Also…safe travels to you all from the foyble guys.
Click “continue reading” for a list of the participating airports.
Posted by Jerry
Friday Foyble of the Week: the 200th foyble
Oct 29th
Note: the Friday foyble of the week (FFOTW) is a once per week post where we single out one of our favorite foybles from the many over at www.foyble.com. We don’t have any criteria for the foybles we pick and you don’t get anything but our gratitude and an internet high five. Check back every Friday for another installment. Email us at contact@foyble.com to nominate someone for the honor!
Milestones are fun, no? This week’s FFOTW is a milestone. We now have 200 foybles logged on the site. That’s 200 stories that have the potential to make you smile, encourage you, or inspire you to do something remarkable. Some of these stories would have happened without us and foyble is simply a way for the people who committed the act to share with you about what they did. But some of the stories happened because of foyble. We love those stories. Not because we want to take credit for someone else’s inspiration, but because we have created this wonderful ecosystem on the internet that is having an impact in the real world.
Our 200th foyble, teen in need, was committed by Phyllis Haimov. Phyllis heard a story about a co-worker’s daughter’s friend whose family was having trouble making ends meet, so she gave her co-worker $100 to get to the girl for school clothes and whatnot. We really lucked out with this act being our 200th foyble- it is extremely generous, it was clearly altruistic, and a little risky. Click the link to the act, read Phyllis’ story, and see if you are inspired to do something similar. If you are, tell your story and connect your foyble to Phyllis’ on foyble.com!
We continue to be humbled by the stories that people share with us, the stories that inspire other stories, and the number of people using our little service. So here’s an internet high five to Phyllis. While we are at it, here is an internet high five to everyone who created the 199 other foybles out there as of this post. Boom and boom.
Thanks everyone! Happy foyble-ing!
Posted by Brian
Friday foyble of the week
Oct 2nd
Note: the Friday foyble of the week (FFOTW) is a once per week post where we single out one of our favorite foybles from the many over at www.foyble.com. We don’t have any criteria for the foybles we pick and you don’t get anything but our gratitude and an internet high five. Check back every Friday for another installment. Email us at contact@foyble.com to nominate someone for the honor!
This week’s Friday foyble goes to Chris Kabealo’s “Buying Gas” foyble. The reason I picked this particular story is for some of the reasons that we blogged in our previous post- Chris was just doing a task he probably does about once per week. But he kept his eyes peeled and not only noticed that a guy was struggling with something, but he went and chatted him up. One of the things we’re stressing in our bid to get folks to make giving and good will a habit is the notion of staying alert and in the moment so you don’t miss an opportunity to have a brief but possibly powerful interaction with someone.
We’ve all been where the guy in Chris’s story was: stressing because the wallet may be gone and stressing some more because you needed gas. Chris did a great thing by chatting the guy up and hooking him up with some free gas. We think he deserves AT LEAST an internet high five. So here you go Chris- internet high five. Boom. Keep doing your thing and thanks for sharing your story with us over on foyble.com!
posted by Brian
Easy ways to start the GIVE- how to get into the habit of giving (updated x10)
Oct 1st
“Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.” – Aristotle
We here at foyble love those large, inspirational, newsworthy acts that have the potential to energize lots of people. We also think that living a life that includes making a commitment to doing lots of small but important acts can be equally inspirational. You can become a source of inspiration in the lives of the people closest to you by demonstrating your ability to consistently devote time to helping others.
It may be that you find this daunting. That your days are full of all the things that make modern life hectic- your family, your work, your friends, and the day to day activities that need to get done. But foyble thinks that devoting a small amount of time to the GIVE every day is not as difficult as you think. And it’s more energizing that you imagine. We think that all it takes is for you to devote some small amount of time to thinking about giving and to resolve to look at the world a little bit differently- to try to regard every day situations as opportunities for inspiration. We think that you may even find that looking at the world as one big opportunity to help others could actually make the mundane fun.
Inspired by the 10 day give (learn more here) we are committing one act of kindness every day for the first 10 days of October. Of course we want you to check foyble.com out and log your acts of kindness on the site (check out the 10 day give group on foyble.com) but we also want to show you that it’s not really that difficult to get into a habit of giving. We think you’ll see that there are rewards beyond the acts themselves. So Check out the 10 day give group on foyble.com where we’ll log all of these acts- you’ll be able to see all the other acts that our fellow foyblers have logged.
Try doing one nice thing for someone everyday for 10 days. Make the acts as big or as small as you want- but make sure you complete the goal. Try to see if you can find new ways of helping friends, family, or strangers. See if you can change your outlook on life and experience the satisfaction of meeting a pretty good goal. Maybe your habit of giving will last longer than 10 days? Read below to see how we did for the 10 day give. Leave your pointers for great giving ideas in the comments.
(check back each day for a new post!)
Brian and the boys getting ready to deliver the bread
Day 1: Thursday, October 1st. Today my wife cooked up some banana bread while I was at work and when I got home my boys and I took it over to our neighbors house. They just moved in a couple of weeks ago and we’ve been meaning to welcome them to the neighborhood. Besides the bread, we also gave them a business card with both of our cell numbers on it and told them to give us a call if they ever needed anything. We can’t wait to get to know these people better! We hope we’ve made the new neighborhood just a little warmer for our new neighbors! Also, as we left my boys were so excited to go home and start baking bread for all the neighbors. They’ve got the giving fever and the only prescription is….bread.
Day 2: Friday, October 2nd: During my lunch today I went over to the nearest McDonalds and picked up two $5 gift cards. Everyday I walk to and from the train station to work and I wanted to be prepared to help just a few of the homeless folks I usually encounter on my way to the train station. The McDonalds I went to at lunch didn’t have the paper gift certificates I was hoping for so I bought two gift cards. On my way home I gave one card to a guy I see every night playing some buckets for drums and one card to an older woman. Nothing drastic, but hopefully I made Friday a little easier for those two folks.
Day 3: Saturday, October 3rd: Our good friends Zach, Erin, and their 3-year-old firecracker, Landon, were moving from a teeny tiny apartment they had been renting to their first home. It was an absolutely lovely fall afternoon with plenty of chair-gripping football games on TV to watch and relax from a very long, stressful workweek. Did I watch football? Nay, I helped our friends move instead! A couple u-haul loads and near crippling experiences of wedging large furniture through small openings and I was exhausted and they were thankful. GIVE on.
Day 4: Sunday, October 4th: Foyble co-founder John Frazier is up in Montreal, Canada doing some work on an IT project. Being across the border doesn’t stifle the GIVE, it only provides another reason to pay it forward. John bought a new umbrella after a storm defeated his old one. With the weather clearing out and the forecast looking up, John gave his new umbrella to a homeless person that will get much more use out of it in the future.
Day 5: Monday, October 5th: We cleaned our house and collected a whole bunch of older children’s clothes, women’s dress clothes, men’s dress clothes, and shoes for children and adults alike. We try to put stuff aside when we don’t wear it anymore or when we buy new clothes. So it turns out that we have some nice things to donate. We took the clothes to a few organizations we like. Here’s to hoping the clothes make their way to those who truly need them!
Day 6: Tuesday, October 6th: Foyble’s four-strong bartending team rolled up its sleeves and ran the bar all night for the very first Taste of Italy preview banquet for the Italian Festival this weekend. We worked our tails off, moved drinks, and gave out free smiles. We also collected tips that are all going to the festival’s scholarship fund. Remember to come by the foyble booth at the Columbus Italian Festival this weekend, Oct. 9-11 in Italian Village. Check out their group page on foyble.com for more info.
Day 7: Wednesday, October 7th: I have an “older” ski jacket, meaning it is in perfectly good condition but I just haven’t worn it in a long time because I have a newer one. It’s warm as all get out thanks to its removable fleece liner. Feeling the chill in the October air, and in the spirit of the 10 Day GIVE, I donated it to “Just Coats” through my wife’s work. I hope its recipient stays warm, toasty, and dry given its GORE-TEX outer layer.
Day 8: Thursday, October 8th: The guy behind me at Tim Horton’s got a little surprise. I paid for his breakfast and drove off.
Foyble's booth at the Columbus Italian Festival
Day 9: Friday, October 9th: Day 1 of the Italian Festival. There will be much more blogged on this later, but we started spreading the GIVE. We focused our festival booth on raising awareness about foyble in the community to get people in the mindset of the GIVE. Despite all day and all night rain and chilly temperatures, we were also able to raise some money for some of our favorite charities. Sweet.
Day 10: Saturday, October 10th: The FULL day of foyble at the festival running from noon to 11:00 PM. Foyble guys Brian and Jerry have put in over 22 total hours of time at the booth raising awareness about the great tools at foyble.com to help you track and spread your GIVE. Jerry’s wife Georgia has gone the long haul too and we need to thank our volunteers Mike Reichert, Chris Young, and Francesca Quaranto for helping out!
Day 11: Sunday, October 11th: Wait….this was supposed to be the 10 Day Give, right? Well, we wouldn’t be foyble if we just hit the mark, we like to go past it! The Columbus Italian Festival runs from noon until 8:00 PM today, so we are loading up the truck and heading back to one more day of festival fun, spreading the word about foyble, and raising some money for our favorite charities. If you are in the Columbus, Ohio area, please come down to the festival and meet the foyble guys, get some cool swag, enter to win ipods, and make a charity donation to great causes. See you there!
