Challenge all 43ers to light a candle to help STOP child pornography at www.lightamillioncandles.com

for me to take this off my list. The online petition to light a million candles against child pornography was originally supposed to end on this date. It’s possible, due to an overwhelming response, that the site might be kept up longer. They are well over their initial goal of a million candles.

I’m happy to have played a part and will continue to be a guardian online for children around the world. I’m sure that hundreds of people were contacted both here on 43things and by word of mouth and have joined the ranks. I’m also mightily impressed with the array of different postings here. Each one has touched my heart with its own unique appeal.

Here’s how you can help.

If you want to find out more information about child pornography on the Internet, you can check out http://www.missingkids.com or http://www.icmec.org

If you want to report a child pornography website, go to http://www.cybertipline.com or http://www.inhope.org

If you want to help shutdown child pornography websites on the Internet, you can make a donation at http://www.race4innocence.org

I’m thrilled that so many of you have taken the time to share your thoughts and comments here and it’s wonderful to see our community coming together for such a worthy cause.

and asking your friends to do the same means that we are heightening awareness of child pornography on the Internet. Many of you have been asking how lighting a candle will help stop child pornography. I try to look at it this way. If a million candles are lit, that means a million people have visited the site and are more aware of the problem. Everyone knows a child and will want to make the Internet a safer place for them. I try to think of us as watchdogs. If we are more aware of this problem, it’s likely we will tell our friends and family about it too. The circle of friends and ‘guardians’ continues to grow with each candle lit.

to help stop child pornography on the 1st of November, 2006.

I challenge all of you to take a little less time on 43things today and light a candle at www.lightamillioncandles.com instead.

This website is an online petition to encourage politicians, Internet service providers, financial institutions and governments to put a stop to child pornography. They are trying to light 1 million candles before December 31, 2006. Let’s see if our 43 community can make a difference. Is it too much to ask you to leave a short message here as well, so we can track how many people light candles for this worthy cause?