Seeds of Kindness 3: A Beautiful Heart

Rarity Vector by FlawlessTea

They say that beauty is in the eye of the culturally-conditioned beholder, or that it comes from within as the individual undertakes acts of kindness and reciprocity. Well, abstract definitions aside, having a beautiful heart is certainly something worth sharing with others. And what is one way of sharing said beauty? Of course, through the art of music!

We are therefore pleased to announce the third installment of our Seeds of Kindness charity album campaign: A Beautiful Heart!

If you are a musician and you’d like to find out how to be a part of the album, then please check out the guidelines for submission on our Seeds of Kindness 3 pages. You can also hit up this My Little Remix thread for more discussion on the album guidelines.

In the past, Seeds of Kindness has raised over $90,000 for charity projects in Uganda, Burundi, and Tanzania from people like you! Continuing on with this wonderful legacy, we are proud to announce that the proceeds from Seeds of Kindness 3 will go to our wonderful partner in charity, Your Siblings! If you have yet to learn of who this amazingly altruistic group is, then please do yourself a favor and go check out their beautifully-written FAQ.

Seeds of Kindness 3 Prize Contest – Call for Donations

The gift of music is not the only way of sharing beauty. The abilities to craft ornate equine-inspired objects or to sew heartfelt narratives and musings are equally beautiful, especially when gifted to others!

Whether pony crafts, customs, official toys, or commissions, anything that may serve as a prize is accepted and appreciated, and will help in our customary prize contest. It’s the generosity of our fellow fans that makes our work possible!

If anyone is interested in making any sort of donation or has any comments or questions, please feel free to email us at broniesforgood@gmail.com.

Convention Appearances

On a bit of an unrelated yet equally important note, we like to formally announce our attendance to this lovely set of conventions this spring and summer. If you’ll have time while you’re getting your fill of pony, then please be sure to drop by our table and say hi, chat, or to make a donation to one of our ongoing fundraising campaigns.

• Equestria LA, May 10–12
• Pon3 Con, May 10–12
• Fiesta Equestria, June 28–30
• Everfree NW, July 5–7
• Sweet Apple Acres Con, July 12–14
• BronyCon, August 2–4
• GalaCon, August 3–4
• SacBrony, September 14
• Trotcon, June 14–16

Seeds of Kindness 2: Faithful and Strong

As announced earlier on Derpy Hooves News, the second Seeds of Kindness fundraiser has now launched, and within a few days has already raised more than $10,000 for the Safe Project, an orphanage in Uganda.

Of outside media, already the Alabamian TV station WTVY and the Lez Get Real blog reported on it.

It is our great pleasure to announce the launch of Seeds of Kindness 2: Faithful and Strong! Dozens of musicians from the pony fan community over at My Little Remix have completed a 2.5 hour long charity album, Faithful and Strong, to be offered for every donation. Moreover, the most generous donors following these instructions by December 25th will receive unique Christmas gifts donated by artists from the community!

All proceeds will go towards funding the Safe Project in Uganda, an HIV-stricken country where more than 2.3 million children are orphaned due to AIDS. By expanding the orphanage and building a chicken farm to guarantee its long-term sustainability, this project will provide to this lost generation care and education and guarantee them a brighter future.

More information:

• How to donate
• The gifts
• The album tracklist

Now, let’s go do some good in the world!

Love and Solidarity,
The Bronies for Good Team

You can learn more about our non-profit partner Your Siblings, in their FAQ—it’s a good read. Sustainability, transparency, local roots, need, and urgency are their primary criteria, ensuring that they only support the projects with the strongest long-term impact. Moreover, their policy is to cover all travel and personal costs as well as money transfer fees independently from donations, so that 100% of what you give will be spent exclusively on the projects.

Microaggressions

By Mn27

Introduction

In this article, I want to give a little background on the subject of microaggressions and provide references to more formal studies, for the topic has recently been the center of several heated debates on DeviantArt and image boards.

One caveat: I will not euphemize any pertaining terms. For further information on the use-mention distinction, see Wikipedia and Language Log. A trigger warning may still apply.

Definition

Pierce et al. (1977) observed that “the chief vehicle for proracist behaviors are microaggressions. These are subtle, stunning, often automatic, and nonverbal exchanges which are ‘put-downs’ of blacks by offenders,” which is probably the first use of the term. Since, the definition, specifically of “racial microaggressions,” has been widened to “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color.” (Sue et al., 2007) They observe furthermore that “perpetrators of microaggressions are often unaware that they engage in such communications when they interact with racial/ethnic minorities.”

This definition can be further expanded to include a wider range of minorities. Kevin L. Nadal, author and associate professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, adapted the definition to “Microaggressions are brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights and insults toward members of oppressed groups.” (Emphasis added)

I doubt that mules are oppressed in Equestria, but apart from that, there are two instances in which two of the mane six inadvertently insulted a mule (in Applebuck Season and Hurricane Fluttershy). Of course they promptly apologized (“No offense.”) when they noticed their faux pas. What this example, by analogy, also shows is that, as Burn et al., (2005) put it, “heterosexuals, deprived of seeing whom their comments ultimately harm, are not inclined to carefully monitor their colloquial speech (Thurlow, 2001).”  (The mule was voiced by James Wootton, by the way.)

Seeds of Kindness

By nowego

Bronies for Good, My Little Remix, countless musicians, and many others have worked relentlessly for months to bring you Seeds of Kindness, a fundraiser and an eponymous music album. Today we celebrate the launch of the project with an EverFree Radio livestream at 16:00Z (noon ET). (More info here.)

Everyone who donates to the fundraiser can download the album as a thank you. (There’s also a preview.) Moreover, artists of all trades have contributed prizes for those who donate the most. More detailed instructions on what you need to consider especially when making bigger donations can be found on the instructions page. There is also the track listing of the Seeds of Kindness album and the list of prizes.

The reason why you are reading this on Ponyleaks is that all donations benefit two of our, Your Siblings’s, projects, the clinic in Uganda and the Green Village in Burundi. We forward the donations in full, and after this initial financial impetus, the projects will be completely self-sustainable and independent of outside aid.

Now go and give us your moneys; every bit counts!

Change in Format

By Gavalanche

What an epic, glorious finale!

However, I’ll use this caesura to make two off-topic observations: First, when something important and time-critical happens, I usually notify my Derpy Hooves News friends or post it there myself. Then, I post it here. That is not a problem in itself, but it is an indicator of unnecessary redundancy. Second, important stuff often happens when it’s around 2 or 3 a.m. in my neck of the Everfree, and I’m fast asleep.

Consequently, I’ll try to get back to the roots, as it were, and shift all my real-time reportage to Derpy Hooves News, so that Ponyleaks is again reserved to the longer articles of more permanent value that I used to write in the beginning.

I’ve embedded the Derpy Hooves News feed to the right, but if you aren’t yet following Derpy Hooves News, a.k.a. the oldest, most venerable, and generally best news outlet in the fandom, then better fix that now than in five minutes. Here is our Twitter account, our Atom feed, and an explanation how to use feeds. Do eet!