A volunteer and client at EBALDC which has been and EKS Coalition member since 2002

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is the largest, and arguably the most effective, anti-poverty program in the United States. It lifts millions above the poverty line each year—half of them children. Unfortunately, as many as a quarter of eligible low-wage workers nationwide fail to claim the credit, which can now bring a family of five up to $5,657—the largest payment many receive all year long.

For the last seven years, United Way’s Earn It! Keep It! Save It! (EKS) initiative, a free tax preparation service with more than 180 locations in the Bay Area, has been helping low-income individuals and families claim the tax refunds they deserve. These tax refunds don’t just help families. The$47.4 million returned by EKS sites to more than 47,000 Bay Area households last year stimulates our local economy. By some estimates for every dollar received, $1.40 is spent locally.

Unfortunately, rather than taking advantage of the free IRS-certified volunteer tax preparation available to them through Earn It! Keep It! Save It!, many EITC recipients file their tax returns through a paid tax preparer, which can cost hundreds of dollars. “I’m a big fan of Earn It! Keep It! Save It! I’ve been a client for two years. They saved me $700 in what I would have paid to Jackson Hewitt,” said Stacey Troupe, an EKS client. “In fact, the EKS volunteer corrected a mistake that Jackson Hewitt made in the previous year, and I got an even bigger refund.” All Earn It! Keep It! Save It! sites are open until April 15 and some are open year round. Households
with income under $49,000 qualify for free tax help.

Call 2-1-1 or go to visit Earn It! Keep It! Save It! today to find a site near you.

The Extraordinaires' new project is helping to sort through the flood of images emerging from Haiti

The pictures of the devastation in Haiti, have caused an incredible outpouring of support from business and individuals around the world. Along with the usual organizations that are on the frontlines when disasters strike, there are a number of technology organizations (from Google to Ushahidi to Frontline SMS), working around the clock with the State Department on a coordinated effort, that uses technology to support the relief efforts in Haiti.

The Extraordinaries (which we’ve written about before) has teamed up with these organizations to help.  According to an email they sent to us, they’ve just built a Haiti Earthquake Support Center with brand new image recognition technology, which provides two ways that volunteers can micro-volunteer anywhere they have access to the internet.

Here’s how people can help, right now, from right here at home:

The Image Tagger — Micro-volunteers can help sort through news photos coming out of Haiti and categorize (tag) them with keywords like “adult, child, alive, deceased.” Never before has there been a system that can bring together thousands of photos from across the web and have them sorted by live human beings (no computer could ever know that there is a teenager in a photo).

The Matcher — A system that matches faces of missing people to faces in photos coming from Haiti. The goal is to help desperate families find their loved ones. Volunteers use the matcher to look for a missing person in images that have been tagged with the image tagger. This system will be live very soon.