June 13, 2008 Weekend Challenge - Donate A Phone®
June 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment
So how many of you have old cell phones sitting in a drawer? What about your brothers or sisters? Neighbors? Cousins? What about your best friends sisters boyfriend? You get the picture. For me, I know I have two.
Why are they just sitting in my drawer taking up space and collecting dust? Well, I’m done with them. I received an email from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence yesterday letting me know about their 2008 National Conference. I spent some time around the site and the Donate a Phone Program jumped out at me. They describe it as:
NCADV has partnered with The Wireless Foundation for over seven years through the CALL TO PROTECT program which was created to provide victims of domestic violence who may encounter emergency situations with free cell phones for that use. The collection of deactivated cell and wireless phones for this purpose has literally saved hundreds of lives over the course of our partnership. In addition to phones being distributed for emergency use, proceeds from the sale of phones not utilized for emergency use help fund agencies that work to end violence in the home, such as NCADV.
So my challenge to you is to go find as many phones as you can get your hands on. Make sure the phone is deactivated, is turned off, and has a battery before mailing it off.
Sound like an easy plan?
Well, I made it even easier. You can download a free mailing label and send it on its way this weekend. Don’t forget to ask your friends and family too!
Have a great weekend.
Just Give
June 9, 2008 | 1 Comment
How simple that sounds. Two small four letter words. It is so easy to just give to someone. Some people give so much and some give just the right amount. Search inside your soul to find out if you want to Just Give. I stumbled upon Just Give as I googled Domestic Violence charities. It amazed me as it appeared before my eyes how many different options they have for you. So many to choose from. If you click Just Give Domesitc Violence Charities you can see for yourself that there are at least ten different places for you to look into. You can donate monetarily, volunteer your time or even add this charity to your wedding registry if you are about to be married. Could you imagine how wonderful your soul would feel donating something to charity instead of receiving for yourself?
I want to commit myself to working toward the day when all women and men will be safe and abuse will be no more. Violence against women, inside or outside the home, is never justified. Violence in any form—physical, sexual, psychological, or verbal is wrong.
When you give to someone the gratitude you feel is very overpowering. It will make you realize that you have just helped save another soul from the torture that they are enduring everyday.
I thank you from all the battered men and women out there. I know, I was there years ago. In my heart I know when we work together as a team, anything is possible.
So please, go visit Just Give and take a look for yourself.
May 23, 2008 Weekend Challenge
May 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment
The weekend is here and it is time for the Weekend Challenge.
I’m going to kill two birds with one stone this weekend. I’m going to clean and organize my pantry and head on over to our local food bank to drop off some donations.
Sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it? Well, it is.
The quickest way to locate your nearest food pantry is to simply Google it. I typed in California Food Bank. You can also check out America’s Second Harvest Food Bank and go to the Food Bank Locator.
So get moving. Clean out that pantry and help your community.
It’s that simple!
The Cradle to Grave Pipeline
April 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment
People often ask “What’s wrong with our children?” Children having children. Children killing children. Children killing others. Children killing themselves. Children roaming streets alone or in gangs all day and night. Children floating through life like driftwood on a beach. Children addicted to tobacco and alcohol and heroin and cocaine and pot, drinking and drugging themselves to death to escape reality. Children running away from home and being thrown away or abused and neglected by parents. Children being locked up in jails with adult criminal mentors or all alone. Children bubbling with rage and crushed by depression.
The answer is that we adults are what’s wrong with our children. Parents letting children raise themselves or be raised by television or the Internet. Children being shaped by peers and gangs and foul mouth rappers instead of parents, grandparents and kin. Children roaming the streets because there’s nobody at home or paying enough attention. Children going to drug houses that are always open instead of to school houses and church houses, mosques and temples that are too often closed. Children seeing adults take and sell drugs and be violent to each other and to them. Adults making promises we don’t keep and preaching what we don’t practice. Adults telling children to control themselves while slapping and spanking. Adults telling children to be honest while lying and cheating in our homes, offices and public life. Adults telling children not to be violent while marketing and glorifying violence and tolerating gun saturated war zones in communities all across our land. Adults telling children to be healthy while selling them junk food and addicting them to smoke and drink and careless sex.
There is a crisis facing our children today. The Children’s Defense Fund has released a report documenting America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline, the path by which the chances of an individual one day ending up in prison can be predicted based on factors present in his or her childhood, which make that child much more likely to end up incarcerated as an adult. This is an urgent national crisis at the intersection of poverty and race that puts Black boys at a one in three lifetime risk of going to jail, and Latino boys at a one in six lifetime risk of the same fate.
Tens of thousands of children and teens are sucked into the Pipeline each year. Poverty is the largest driving force of the Cradle to Prison Pipeline crisis. In Texas, among all children, 1 in 4 (24.9 percent or 1,548,069) was poor. A baby is born poor every five minutes in the state:
- A Black baby is born poor every 32 minutes.
- A Latino baby is born poor every 7 minutes.
- A White, non-Latino baby is born poor every 33 minutes.
- An Asian baby is born poor every 9 hours.
- An American Indian/Alaska Native baby is born poor every 20 hours.
Other factors that significantly impact the odds of a child entering the Cradle to Prison Pipeline include lack of early childhood education, poor education received later, disadvantaged health care, experienced violence, and simply being a person of color.
It’s time for America to become America. The Cradle to Prison Pipeline crisis can be reduced to one simple fact: The United States of America is not a level playing field for all children and our nation does not value and protect all children’s lives equally. As parents, adults, citizens and leaders we must examine ourselves regularly to determine whether we are contributing to the crisis our children face or to the solutions they urgently need. And if we are not a part of the solution, we are a part of the problem and need to do better. Before we can pull up the moral weeds of violence, materialism and greed in our society and world that are strangling so many of our children, we must pull up the moral weeds in our own homes, backyards, neighborhoods, institutions and public policies.
You can download the entire report HERE.
Wishes are wonderful
March 23, 2008 | 1 Comment
When you wish upon a star……is it ever granted? When you close your eyes…just what is it you are wishing for ? Is it for yourself? Your children? What would you say if I told you that a wish can be and is granted every 40 minutes of every day, to a child with fragile medical needs? That precious miracle of granting wishes is precisely what the make-a-wish foundation does. Make-a-wish is for children over the age of 2 1/2 years old and who are diagnosed with a life-threatening medical condition. Now, for a moment, imagine a life where your routine is focused on medical intervention. Your surroundings are foreign, procedures are invasive. The pain is both emotional and physical. You look out the window, and long to be like the stranger on the street; running, jumping, and free from medical concerns. Imagine you are 6 years old, or 9 or 15. Now imagine it is your child enduring such struggles just to get through another day where the quality of life is less than perfect or ideal. Now imagine that a group of people, can alleviate all that pain and suffering, and replace it with joy, love, and magic—if only for a day. The wish experience may only last hours, but the positive memories are relived everyday. The mission of the make-a-wish foundation is to affirm life and hope.
On the make-a-wish foundation website, the visitor can read recent wishes. While I was reading these wishes, I found them to be so simple, so sweet, so endearing. The wish of a teenage girl to have a sweet 17th birthday or a 7 year old to ride a horse. Simple wishes. Yet the impact on the child and family is tremendous. There are so many ways to help and support the amazing work done by the make-a-wish foundation. You can donate money, volunteer time or talents, attend entertaining fundraisers, donate frequent flier miles, or adopt a wish. Tonight, when you look to the moon, and you tell your children to wish on a star, please say an extra wish that all the children will get their wish granted. I pray that these medically fragile children are all able to experience their dream, their hope, their wish. For there is no one more deserving than the children served by the make-a-wish foundation.
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