I’m not Kemetic, but I’m participating in Opet this year via the Emboatening Crew on Kiva.
Sort of?
Basically a bunch of Kemetic friends mark Opet by charitable giving; they call it “emboatening the boatless”. They created a team on Kiva to focus their efforts on loaning money to people in need of boats. You don’t have to be Kemetic to join the team, so I ended up joining because helping people is part of my religious obligations too.
Especially with cattle.
Both Brighid and Morrigan are associated with the action of giving cattle to the cattle-less, which is why They can be interpreted in a modern sense as Goddesses of Social Justice. (Cattle as a symbol of wealth; helping erase class differences and end class warfare by making sure people have what they need.)
When talking with Danny about emboatening he came up with the term “embovining”, which I then told the rest of the members of The Emboatening Crew. The description of the group was changed to embrace embovining, emgoatening, emsheepening, and more.
I was able to do this because Kiva is running a promotion right now where if you join, you get a free 25 dollars to loan to someone. If you recruit someone via your referral link, they get a free 25 dollars and you get a 25 dollar bonus for signing them up.
I don’t currently have enough of my own money to participate, but I was able to donate 50 dollars from my two bonuses: one for signing up, one for recruiting Danny.
So if this is something that interests you, please use my referral link to sign up and we can both help people get boats, cows, sheep, houses…the list goes on. (The link earlier in this post is also a referral link from me, and it’s for joining the team as well.)
Not sure what Kiva is? Here’s a brief description:
We are a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Leveraging the internet and a worldwide network of microfinance institutions, Kiva lets individuals lend as little as $25 to help create opportunity around the world.
Learn more about how it works here.
So it’s sort of like Kickstarter, only you get the money back and the perk is that you helped someone in need. Pretty awesome.
-Morag
Since your gods favor “embovining”, and it really IS a highly effective way to help people in third-world countries, I thought you (and your readers) should know about a charity which does exactly that: Heifer International. (And you can give 10% of the cost of a cow, or smaller animals, if a whole cow is out of reach.) Rather than offer loans, they operate on a pay-it-forward basis: when they give someone a cow and training in caring for it, the recipient agrees to give the first female calf to someone else in need in their community and share the training. Which means you’re not just giving cows, you’re making it possible for other people to give cows!
http://www.heifer.org/