A few months back I was very inspired after hearing Scott Harrison, the founder of charity: water speak at the Design Futures Council’s Leadership Summit on Sustainable Design. I wrote a post (here) about the charity and all of the amazing things they are doing to provide clean drinking water to the nearly 1 billion people that do not have access to safe, clean drinking water. One thing I learned about at the summit was a unique fund raising mechanism that charity: water has in place; the organization has created a special part of their site called mycharity: water which allows individuals or groups to set up personalized campaigns to raise money. Mycharity: water can be used in many ways, but one of the suggestions is to create a campaign to “give up your birthday” and ask for donations in increments of the age you will be turning from family and friends instead of asking for gifts. After hearing Scott talk about this initiative in October, I immediately decided to give up my 29th birthday, which will be on January 8. You can visit my personalized campaign page here. It would be amazing if a few blog readers decided to donate to this extremely worthy cause through my campaign, but it would be even more amazing if a few blog readers decided to give up their own future birthdays as well!