Caroline with Deepak, March 2009

The Miracle Foundation secured the place on Global Giving for two years, by raising $4,000 from 50 unique donors, in 30 days. Now, the foundation has a chance to win from $3,000 to $6,000 in grant money from Global Giving – and you can help make that happen!

As part of their Global Open Challenge 2009, Global Giving is awarding bonus grants of up to $3,000 for the nonprofit organizations that raise the most money during the Challenge – and an additional $3,000 will be awarded to the organization that has the most unique donors.

Please click here to go to The Miracle Foundation’s page on Global Giving and make your donation to help get us there – the foundation is currently in 3rd place out of 121 organizations! No donation is too small - even $10 will help a lot! Online donations will be accepted through September 18th, 2009.

Miracle Foundation’s project will save the lives of single mothers and their babies, by providing a home, nutrition, healthcare and love to these marginalized members of India’s untouchable caste. Caroline Boudreaux, founder of The Miracle Foundation, says, “By offering a safe environment to these abandoned and destitute mothers, we improve the maternal and infant mortality rate and care for those who are not cared for by others. It is a powerful way to make a significant difference.”

Providing pre-natal care, hospital births, formula, and immunizations ensures healthy mothers and children. Hear the impact that The Miracle Foundation is having direct from a mother herself. Sangeeta, a woman who gave birth at the home in Simdega, said, “I now have hope for both my own and my child’s future.”

Global Giving is an online marketplace that connects you to the causes and countries you care about. You select the projects you want to support, make a tax-deductible contribution, and get regular progress updates – so you can see your impact. Their mission is to build an efficient, open, thriving marketplace that connects people who have community and world-changing ideas with people who can support them.

Mythology, Beauty and Reality

Harmonia: In Greek mythology, Harmonia is the immortal goddess of harmony and concord. Her Roman counterpart is Concordia, and her Greek opposite is Eris, whose Roman counterpart is Discordia.

So you think you know where this article  is headed?  Harmony and discord?!  No, that is everywhere: at home, at work, in love, at the market, on the freeway. Don’t get me started on the interaction with children.

Now then, back to my story…. legend believes that Harmonia had a necklace that most people and theologians associate with her name.  This magical necklace was highly coveted amongst women; for it was believed that who ever wore it would have eternal youth and beauty.  However, the necklace was wrought with curses and disasters to any one who wore it.   Many tales involving Oedipus, Zeus, and Aprodite revolve around Harmonia’s infamous necklace.

So I wonder this, though this really has nothing to do with the state of the world today, it does have to do with the billions of dollars spent on anti-aging products by Americans.  Eternal youth and beauty.  The end all for so many women and men.  The endless stream of reality shows based on beauty and good looks. Even though the economy is in a tail spin, we are still obsessed and will spend on our looks.  Is botox the new necklace of Harmonia?

I wonder what the Greek gods would think of skinny models– the greek gods and goddesses all seemed rather robust to me.  That was considered beauty.  I wonder about eternal beauty, anyone who wore Harmonia’s necklace had  ill fated consequences.  With what we know about silicone, botox, restalyn, etc… I do see a parallel between the perils of seeking eternal beauty and Harmonia’s necklace.  Meaning that perhaps not everyone should pursue the idea of beauty, but rather be beautiful from within.  Instead of being like Aprodite, we should remember Gaia, after all she is Mother Earth.  She is beauty.  She could balance harmony and discord.

And as I sit here in awe of our “HeadMutha Rocky” she is to me, Gaia and Harmonia, with a little Aprodite thrown in the mix.  But she, like the goddesses before her, are securing the earth, the beauty and the people in it.  Bless your soul Rocky, you have and continue to change the world.  You are most definitely-  a beautiful person.

I don’t usually go to the movies. It’s just too darn expensive. But I am going tomorrow. I know this will be worth every penny. You see, tomorrow is International Women’s Day, and I am celebrating by going to see this movie. I watched the preview and I felt inspired. I hope you do too.

Here is some information from the site:

“In honor of International Women’s Day on Thursday, March 5th, Fathom Events presents the acclaimed documentary, A Powerful Noise. This exclusive event will be followed by a live panel discussion with top experts and celebrity activists. You can be a part of the discussion by submitting your questions. Let your voice be heard.”

You can also use the power of Twitter

“You can help fight global poverty on Twitter! Just tweet “#apowerfulnoise” anytime from March 2nd to March 5th, and NCM Fathom will donate $.50 for up to 10,000 Tweets to CARE, an organization working to end global poverty, in honor of the upcoming one-night event featuring the acclaimed documentary A Powerful Noise.”

Check your local listings to see where A Powerful Noise is playing.

Please take a moment and watch the preview. I hope to hear about your own night at the movies.

International Women’s Day is a chance to stand with the women of southern Sudan, Rwanda, Afghanistan or any other country where we work and proclaim that women have rights and value. They are worthy of celebration and honor.  They are worthy of the economic and social change.

Racquel, hundreds of supporters have added their name to the list joining our call on March 5 or hosting an event of their own. They are standing with the women for grassroots solutions to end the food crisis and empower socially excluded women everywhere.

Join us for our celebration of the women we serve and supporters like you who are causing social change.

With food prices skyrocketing, women are wondering where they’ll find the next meal for their children and themselves. Women in the field are seeking the tools and skills that will allow them to end the food crisis forever. Thanks to your support, our commercial farming initiatives in Rwanda and Sudan go beyond traditional means of aid and actually teach the women the techniques and sustainable practices of organic farming.

Add your name to the list of supporters that are celebrating women on International Women’s Day.

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This tale of life and love in the slums of Mumbai alternates between heartbreak and triumph. The story follows two brothers who live in abject poverty, whose lives are made even more difficult after they are orphaned. Following them throughout their childhood and into early adulthood – along with their friend Latika – we see them fight against exploiters, brothel owners, child abusers, and even each other, in their struggle to survive.

I spent a day as an “Un-Tourist” in these very slums of Mumbai – a place called Dharavi. I went with Deepa Krishnan, owner of tour operator Mumbai Magic. Immersing yourself in the real lives of ordinary people in a place traveled to is a unique experience, and one that can truly bring the spirit and culture of a place alive to the traveler.

Slumdog Millionaire captures this brilliantly and is a fantastic movie, that caused me at times to want to applaud and at times to cringe and shut my eyes. Despite its upbeat ending and “rags to riches” Hollywood/Bollywood mechanism, Slumdog Millionaire shows us a side of India, and a way of life, that millions of children struggle to survive every day. Orphaning, abandonment, homelessness, begging, working, being exploited and abused…this is real, daily life for hundreds of thousands of children in Mumbai alone.

The actors who play the characters at their youngest ages are themselves Hindi-speaking street kids, discovered by casting director Loveleen Tandan. This fact reminded me of the 1988 movie Salaam Bombay, a movie by Mira Nair that was also about street kids in Mumbai, and which featured a cast of actual street children. Nair went on to start a foundation, the Salaam Baalak Trust, with proceeds from the film, and today SBT assists thousands of street children in Mumbai and Delhi. I interviewed Nair’s mother, Praveen, in my book The Weight of Silence; Praveen started SBT with her daughter Mira.

Salaam Bombay has a grittier, more realistic feel without the rags-to-riches ending. While I love the Slumdog Millionaire movie, while watching it there did resonate in me a sense of reinforcement of just such fantasies that lead kids into street life in Mumbai all the time. While traveling India and researching for my book, I interviewed many social workers and child advocates who told me that thousands of children run away from home and catch a train to “Bombay” with fantasies of the movies or making it big in the glamorous city filling their head. Sadly, most of them fall prey to just such exploiters as those found in both these movies: traffickers, begging rings, brothel owners or factory recruiters. Many of them remain living in the railway stations in which they arrive, begging or scratching out a living by sorting through trash for recycling or other dangerous endeavors. You can read my story here about my day spent with just such railway boys in Mumbai.

The lesson I would like to leave about this movie is: please see it. Enjoy it. Revel with these kids when luck comes there way. But please, please – don’t forget the millions of others whose lives continue in poverty, abuse and despair.

What Can You Do?

• Go to the “How Can You Help” section of Salaam Baalak Trust
• Read about child trafficking and what you can do at Oasis India’s website
• Donate to Childline India, the hotline for homeless children or those in trouble
  

“What are you doing for others?”

Martin Luther King asked this of us many year ago.  What is your answer?

This Monday,  January 19, 2009 is more than just a holiday to honor Martin Luther King’s birthday.  It is a chance to join people from around the country  in our National Day of Service.  Initiated by Congress in 1994, King Day of Service builds on his legacy by transforming the Federal holiday honoring his birthday to a national day of community service.

President-Elect Barack Obama has issued his own call to serve and asks everyone to join him by volunteering on Monday as he too will be serving the community on this special holiday just one day before his inauguration.

Imagine if every person in the US spent an hour doing something selfless and useful.  From helping in a soup kitchen to joining in a “Foreclosure Canvass” when you canvas a neighborhood hardest hit by Foreclosures…the options are as endless as your imagination.

What are your talents?  If you want to teach children about the environment, read a copy of Dr. Seuss’s Lorax.  Are you tech savvy….how about creating a blog and profile one worthy non-profit every single day or help a non-profit set up their own blog.  Handy with tools?  Offer to repair a non-profit facility, paint a group home, build a ramp for a disabled veteran.

On the official Martin Luther King Day website you can learn more about this celebration including tools and tips for MLK Day Mobilization and, most importantly, Find a Volunteer Opportunity close to YOU.  The Corporation for National and Community Service is collaborating with the Presidential Inaugural Committee and created a national registry of projects at USAService.org.

I entered my location on their site and it came up with 54 volunteer opportunities within 30 miles of my home!

Thank you to all of you!

Tell someone, anyone, and be part of the solution.

The 1st of December, World AIDS Day, is the day when individuals and organizations from around the world come together to bring attention to the global AIDS epidemic. 2008 marks the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day. Whilst we have come a long ways since 1988, there is still much more to be done.

World AIDS Day 2008 materials are available online. Click here to download resources.

Sorry, the mail version of the World AIDS Day materials are SOLD OUT!!!!!

To prepare for World AIDS Day 2008, you can do the following:

• Download World AIDS Day materials for 2008.
• Enter your World AIDS Day event on our INTERNATIONAL WORLD AIDS DAY CALENDAR
• Read more about leadership and why 2008 is the time to LEAD-EMPOWER-DELIVER
• Learn more about events and SMS pledge campaign happening for World AIDS Day in India
• Find out more about events happening in countries such as Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia
• Read about what happened on World AIDS Day in 2007
• Find out about more information about themes and resources for World AIDS Day 2007, 2006 and 2005
• View the campaigners tools available for 2008, 2007 and 2006

Please continue to check back for updates on events and resources. If you would like us to inform you about World AIDS Day updates via email, please sign up here.

 You can contact World AIDS Campaign directly for further information.

**Taken from WorldAidsCampaign.org

She ended up in Seattle, Washington where she was granted asylum in 1999. But even today, ten years later, Oswaha has nightmares about the ongoing genocides in her home country. She has lost brothers, sisters, cousins angrandparents in Sudan. In October 2004, her little sister Esther, a medical student, was lit on fire near the family’s house in Khartoum. Although Esther survived, she is still living with the physical pain, deformity and paralyzing fear of being attacked again by those who hate her because of her ethnic and religious background.

According to the U.S. Committee for Refugees, more than 2 million Sudanese—one out of every five—have been killed and over four million displaced since 1983. The civil war rages between the predominantly northern Arab Muslim population and the southern region’s Christian population. Raised as a Christian in Khartoum, the predominantly Arab capital city, Oswaha faced severe discrimination. “For the first 20 years of my life, I lived as a southern Sudanese Christian minority in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. In Khartoum, Arab-Muslims are the majority and hold the positions of power. Growing up, I faced educational and social obstacles as a young Christian female in a predominantly Muslim nation. There is a saying that my mother, my reservoir of strength, always used,” she says. “When two elephants fight, the grass underneath suffers the most.”  It is an apt depiction of the suffering faced by those caught in Sudan’s genocide.

With the conflicts in Sudan continuing to rage, much media attention has been given to the “Lost Boys” through documentaries, books, and newspaper reports. But very little is ever said about the Lost Girls, who often faces struggles even more difficult. Girls and female teens who lost both parents–and sometimes those who had not–were either placed in African foster homes, pushed into marriages with dowries or used as domestic servants. Many of these arrangements involved payments to guardians. As a result, far more male than female refugees found themselves in a position to meet aid workers who could help them gain referrals for resettlement overseas.

A 2003 congressional report by the Office of Refugee Resettlement found the young women’s male refugee counterparts–who outnumber them roughly by 38 to 1–were making substantial strides in achieving independence, with employment rates 18 percent higher than among male U.S. counterparts. Lost Girls, by contrast, lag U.S. female counterparts by 25 percent. “Our children in southern Sudan and Darfur are suffering the most,” says Oswaha. “They, along with their mothers, have been victims of crossfire, land mines, rape, slavery and human-created famine.”

Oswaha now has two degrees from the University of Washington: a Bachelor of Arts degree in Law, Society and Justice and a second Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science. She intends to concentrate on helping other immigrants and victims of injustice, and currently works as a legal advocate in the citizenship unit at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project – the same organization through which she obtained asylum. Oswaha and Harriet Dumba, another Sudanese refugee who was separated from her parents at age five, helped found the Southern Sudanese Women’s Association in 2000, which provides assistance to Sudanese women through a variety of programs that include job training, assistance with local housing, and education about HIV/AIDS.

Oswaha and Dumba also founded Hearts of Angels for Health-Sudan Initiative (HAH-S), a nonprofit organization focused both on improving health and empowering Sudanese women and men to overcome their traumatic pasts and learn new skills in conflict resolution.

“My personal experiences of persecution and living in a war-torn environment put me in close contact with the needs and challenges of people around the world facing various injustices,” Oswaha says. “As long as violence, persecution and discrimination continue in Sudan and beyond, I will continue to fight for social justice and human rights amongst the most marginalized and too often forgotten in our world.“