Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday. So earlier this year you and I had a photoshoot
with the brilliant longtime nerdfighter Ashe Walker.
And I was under the impression this photoshoot existed to get like a semi-professional picture of us
that we could send out for formal media stuff so we didn’t have to keep sending out this picture,
although it is by far my favorite picture of us.
But then at the end Ashe was like, “Now make a bunch of funny faces,”
and Hank, as you know I cannot make funny faces or do anything else that even vaguely resembles acting.
I am such a bad actor that my cameo in the film adaptation of my book was cut from the movie,
although they did let me keep my wardrobe, and you're darn right I'm wearing it.
That’s right, Hank, I’m cosplaying Girl’s Father right now, the role for which I was inexplicably denied an Oscar.
But anyway, Ashe told us to make some funny faces, and I tried.
And then Ashe used those faces to make the 2020 Project for Awesome calendar, which is,
to borrow a phrase, “a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.”
Each month, we are transmogrified in great and terrible ways into various animals.
Lemurs? We got lemurs. Elephants? Heck yes, we become elephants.
Oh my God, this one is like the trailer for the movie Cats, only self-aware and for the benefit of charity.
You can get the 2020 calendar right now at projectforawesome.com/donate,
where there are also lots of other amazing perks.
My favorite is our spouses’ incredible spinoff podcast Dear Katherine and Sarah,
but we also have a Project for Awesome poster, a Project for Awesome t-shirt, a commemorative coin.
You can also get a limited edition signed vinyl of The Anthropocene Reviewed.
And also, you know how the United States continues to mint one-cent coins,
even though they cost more than one cent to make
and do not facilitate the exchange of goods and services, which is the point of currency?
Well, at the DFTBA warehouse in Missoula, Montana, we’re crushing hundreds of these reprehensible coins
and turning them into beautiful souvenirs for you and/or your friends.
And most importantly, lest the cost of producing and shipping any physical perks you buy,
100% of the proceeds go to charity.
During this first half of the Project for Awesome, we are raising money
for Save the Children and Partners in Health.
Awkward transition to the serious part of the video.
I think it’s really important to understand where that money is going and the good that it’s doing.
I mean, in the last ten years, the Project for Awesome has raised over 10 million dollars for charity,
and to cite just one example of what’s happened in that decade,
Partners in Health has been able to help build and support the Butaro Cancer Center in Rwanda.
70% of cancer cases occur in poor countries, and because access to care is so difficult,
outcomes are far worse.
For example, in the United States, many types of childhood leukemia have cure rates over 80%,
while in poor communities, those same cancers are virtual death sentences.
And the Butaro Cancer Center offers real hope, and it hasn’t just treated thousands of people with cancer.
It has also helped to train many healthcare workers in oncology.
Save the Children, meanwhile, has helped reduce stunting due to malnutrition and helped to build
safe places for kids in refugee camps amid the greatest refugee crisis since World War II.
PIH recently released a video about a Sierra Leonean woman named Mabel
who was diagnosed with HIV while she was pregnant.
“That day, I felt the world is over for me.”
But Partners in Health helped her get access to anti-retroviral therapy
and eventually to become a community health worker, one of over 11,000 supported by PIH around the world.
Now Mabel helps people with HIV and tuberculosis get the care they need and reduce the risk of transmission.
And because she’s paid a salary, she’s been able to send her kids to school,
and that is the kind of generational change we’re trying to support with the Project for Awesome.
Also, right now every dollar you donate will be matched by nerdfighters who’ve contributed to a matching fund
AND by donors to PIH and Save the Children,
so every dollar you donate counts as $4 to those amazing charities.
So yeah, go to projectforawesome.com/donate now to donate.
The P4A will officially begin on Friday at noon Eastern Time.
There will be a 48 hour livestream extravaganza at projectforawesome.com/live.
Hank, I will see you then.
P.S. Hank, we are going on tour in January. Also, for charity.
Link in the doobly-doo for tickets. Bye!