charity
November is a time to remember to give thanks for everything we have in life- from something huge right down to the tiniest thing.
It’s also a time of giving- showing your thanks and appreciation by giving back to something or somebody that needs it.
The biggest reason people don’t give is because they feel they don’t have anything to offer or can’t afford it. Well, here are 2 ways you can make a difference for less than a dollar.
1. Fill the Cup: World Food Programme
Just 25 cents fills a cup with porridge, rice, or beans for hungry kids in 70 countries around the world in the World Food Programme’s Fill the Cup initiative. $50 can feed a child for a year. A year. That’s a dinner out for a couple in an only semi-nice restaurant around here.
Without food, kids can’t learn. Something as small as being hungry robs them of the ability to develop their full potential. In addition, serving food at school {where the cups are distributed} encourages families to send their children, increasing attendance rates- especially for girls.
It’s something to think about next time the barista fills up your holiday red Starbucks cup with a $4 beverage.
Prefer to keep things local? Check out No Kid Hungry, which does a similar thing at the US level.
Or find a similar program in your community. Around here, Backpack Beginnings is a remarkable program feeding kids in my county over the weekend, a time they would often go hungry before. {Did you know it takes 2 days for your brain to recover from not eating? That meant kids weren’t learning until Wednesday. The cycle starts all over just 2 days later.}
The husband and I support the World Food Programme & No Kid Hungry each year at our Red Cup holiday party.
2. You Are the One: Friends of Maddie
Heather & Mike Spohr’s daughter Maddie should be turning 4 this Friday. Unfortunately due to complications from a premature birth, this will be the third time her parents spend her birthday without her.
Instead of feeling sorry for themselves, the Spohrs turned their tragedy into something positive for other families by creating Friends of Maddie, a not for profit organization that supports families and babies in the NICU with care packages, assistance in finding a place for the family to stay, and helping families connect to other families for support.
To honor her birthday this year, the Spohr’s are selling a song Mike wrote for his wife that has specially meaning for them for Maddie. For 99 cents you can download the song from iTunes and all proceeds go towards supporting and expanding the Friends of Maddie program.
How are you giving back this Thanksgiving?
Holidays
While I love the spirit of gift-giving, and I can’t complain about gift-receiving, I’ve always had a little bit of a funny feeling about how wrapped up people get about “getting” stuff for the holidays.
“What do you want?” “What’s Santa bringing?” “I got ___.” Sometimes the “wants” and “have to haves” of Christmas brush me the wrong way. Especially if for those over the age of 13. Wanting stuff is fine, but there’s more to the holidays than that. And what about the people that don’t have anything to give, and certainly won’t be getting anything?
The first Christmas the husband and I spent together after we were married, we knew we wanted to do something “good”. Whatever that may be. Only, like a lot of young newlyweds, we didn’t really have much extra to give. And that made us feel even worse- even if we didn’t have much, there were certainly people worse off than us.
So the next year we came up with a plan. Surely there were other people in the same situation as us- they wanted to give, but didn’t have a lot.
Enter the Red Cup Party.
The World Food Programme has always been one of my favorite charities. When I read about their “Fill the Cup” Campaign, I knew exactly what we could do. The Fill the Cup campaign focused on raising money for third-world children who didn’t have enough food to eat. 25 cents could literally feed a child for a day. We named our event the “Red Cup” party after the red mugs the World Food Programme serves oatmeal in. [Which works perfectly because the infamous Solo party cups are red. 
]
I knew immediately when I read that how we could solve our Christmas dilemma. We didn’t have a lot of money, but surely we had some quarters lying around. And surely our friends did too. So we sent out party invitations telling everyone to look between their couch cushions, under their car floor mats, and on top of their washing machines. We told them to bring any change they could find. One person’s pile of change isn’t much. Lots of people’s piles of change is a lot.
Within an hour of the party starting, the box I’d set up for change was bursting at the seams. By the end of the night we’d raised almost $150. Not a ton, but a lot for a people just coming to a Christmas party. We knew that night we’d be doing it again.
And so we did. Last night we had a 2nd annual Red Cup Party. We still focused on collecting change -knowing small amounts add up to make a big impact- but this year we decided to focus on a more local charity. We picked No Kid Hungry, a campaign to help feed hungry kids in the US. The campaign can use $25 to a feed a child 3 meals a day for more than a month.
While any amount would be great, I was secretly hoping we’d beat last year’s $149.47.
And drum roll……
We did!!
$175.05
Talk about having awesome friends. 
[The food part’s coming tomorrow. Can’t have a party without food. ]
Thanks to everyone that came last night!! I’m so grateful to have friends that don’t laugh in my face [at least in front of me] for telling them to bring pennies to a party, and instead, just do it.
