Link TV - What You Can Do!

Those Crazy Kids

The Phillipines is home to one of the most bio-diverse coral reefs in the world.� Coral Reefs that are being poisoned by the illegal cyanide fishing.� Who's doing something about it?� Well, those crazy kids , of course.

In Young Eco-Heroes of the Phillipines, meet three young activists and council members who decided� against� fleeing to the bigger cities for work� as so many of their counterparts had to do� and instead decided to stay and� help re-build their fishing village that has struggled due to the effects of cyanide poising on their coral reefs :the home to their livelihood.

Along with the standard and very necessary projects like the Coastal Cleanup Project or the Seaweed Farming project, these young folk also come up with� inspired ways of� improving community awareness and morale.

The most entertaining� project is Miss Environment� Pageant in which the winner will be an embassador and� educator of coral reef protection� for one year. But these� young ladies�� have to worry about more than just their social graces, Miss Environment� must� also� be able to answer questions about coral reef protection as well as help spread the word about the dangers of cyanide fishing.� Talk about being more than just a pretty face!

Click here for a teaser of Young Eco-Heroes of the Phillipines..

�Get informed/learn more:

Student Environmental Action Coalition�

Rainforest Action Network�

Kids F.A.C.E . (For a Cleaner Environment)

Planetary Coral Reef Foundation�

Litigating Disaster

Twenty years ago, toxic chemical gas spilled from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, killing thousands, poisoning hundreds of thousands, and changing life forever for the inhabitants of that city.

Litigating Disaster is an account of the battle that the city's residents have faced in getting Union Carbide (a subsidiary of Dow Chemical)�to clean up and take responsibility for the toxic spill.

Watch a preview clip, and don't miss the film's� broadcasts only on LinkTV.

Giving Back the Light

During one week they will examine nearly 6,000 people, perform 180 surgeries and 380 eye surgeries, and give out 1,100 pairs of glasses and 269 hearing aids. They are a medical team from Boulder, Colorado that one week each year goes to their sister city of Mante, Mexico to bring desperately needed medical care. Learn more here.

Giving Back the Light tells the story of a group of American medical practitioners�who volunteer a week of their time each year to bring much-needed medical care to their sister city in Mexico.

Want to support their work? The volunteers get donations, including drugs and medical supplies, used hearing aids, wheelchairs, walkers, crutches and used reading glasses, from many sources. Contributions of money will help�to buy everything else they need for the yearly trip.
To send a donation, mail it in care of:

Boulder Community Hospital Foundation

1100 Balsam Ave.

P.O. Box 9019

Boulder, CO 80301-9019

You can check in on this year's trip, at the group's blog site.

Organize�your own community-to-community humanitarian effort.

Clownin Kabul


		What can a pack of silly clowns do, in a war-devastated country like Afghanistan? Famed doctor and activist-clown Patch Adams shows us---in this documentary, Clownin' Kabul, filmed in 2002 soon after the U.S.-led attacks on the country. He takes his groups of clowns on humanitarian missions all over the world, to bring moments of laughter and happiness to some of the places where they are most needed. Its depiction of the suffering that especially children endure as a result of run-ins with landmines has struck a cord in many of our viewers. If you'd like to help, there are many ways to make a difference: Get involved with Patch Adams' Gesundheit! Institute: they've got lots of suggestions of how to do good works, and not all of them involve wearing gigantic shoes and a red nose. Although it never hurts. Their next clowning trip is to Russia�and you can help them to spread their revolutionary love message by buying a copy of the film, or just plain donating. Support the doctors: The Italian medical organization Emergency and The International Committee of the Red Cross are two of the humanitarian groups whose brave work you see featured in Clownin' Kabul. Roots of Peace is an American humanitarian group working to de-mine and re-plant the schoolyards and fields of countries like Afghanistan. They have a great project to get American kids involved in helping children who live in heavily-mined areas to reclaim a normal life. And of course, join the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. The Bush Administration recently abandoned the international Mine Ban Treaty, and as the ICBL reports: -The U.S. still reserves the right to produce antipersonnel mines, along with a dwindling list of 13 other producers. -Although there is no evidence that the U.S. has used antipersonnel mines in its recent operations in Iraq or elsewhere, it still reserves the right to do so and this is cause for grave concern. The last time the U.S. used antipersonnel landmines was against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War. See their special report on the United States and landmines. For more on Patch Adams' philosophy of true health, check out this interview he gave to a Chilean talk show, in 2003.

Dams, American Style

Adding to our growing list of environmental films, Link TV presents Troubled Waters: The Dilemma of Dams. The film acknowledges that there are some reasons to dam the flow of a river: perhaps some of these dams generate energy or benefit some of the up-river residents with more water for agriculture or shipping commerce. But the harm that many dams have done�environmental, cultural, and socio-economic harm�seems to far outweigh the benefits, according to the filmmakers and the experts that they interviewed: the late David Brower, who led the Sierra Club and founded Friends of the Earth and the Earth Island Institute, and Bruce Babbit, former Secretary of the Interior under President Clinton.��

Douglas Watts, one activist in the film, took some very direct action, but there are all sorts of ways to get more information on dams in your area, and to get involved in the issue.

For a checklist of steps and a list of organizations that are working for dam removal, see the helpful article�"So You Want to Remove a Dam" from the International Rivers Network.

Friends of the Earth has a number of river restoration projects in the works, as well as dam removal success stories to keep you motivated.

You've talked the talk, now you want to see what it's like to walk the walk? Read a Grist Magazine interview with Chad Pregracke, young river-lover and barge-dweller who gets his hands dirty and his feet wet every day, cleaning up his local river (you may have heard of it), the Mississippi.