Helping Hearts, Blog of Anne Sanders

Sometimes we all need a reminder. I’m the Volunteer and Charity Guru, but the other day my husband reminded me of what charity is all about. He and I love Tropical Smoothie, which is a smoothie, salad and sandwich place with lots of veggies and fruits. The great thing about Tropical Smoothie is that everything tastes delicious so you feel good about eating your fruits and veggies. So when my husband came home with a bunch of coupons for free smoothies and sandwiches, I was excited. I took some for myself and left the rest for him. Then he told me a couple days later that he went to Tropical Smoothie and got a smoothie, but he didn’t have his coupons. I said, “Well, then what’s the point of having them?” So, he let me know. He told me that he paid $10 for the coupons because it goes to Camp Sunshine. Tropical Smoothie helps raise funds for Camp Sunshine so kids with serious illnesses and their families can take a break at a beautiful camp in Maine for free. Tr...

Relay for Life season is coming to its end for 2013. Over the past year, you’ve heard about my preparations and fundraising for my church’s team Angels for a Cure. It’s the last time I’ll be able to say I’m on a team of Angels, at least one that raises money to fight against cancer. We went out with a bang. We won fifth place overall for fundraising and got first place for most number of laps walked. We went to the silver team level, raising over $4500 which was $1,000 over our goal. It was an amazing year, starting with a garage sale last October and finishing with photography sessions this April just a couple weeks before the actual Relay. We also had our first ever Chili Cookoff and a two-day bake sale to end all bake sales. We auctioned off donated items at the Elks annual auction and ate at Ruby Tuesday’s, getting ten percent for the team. We sold over $900 in luminaria as well as several trackmarkers, something we had never sold before. We had the final team part...

Next week is your chance to do something for kids in foster care. Even if you can’t take a child into your home, you can do something for them and the families that care for them. What can you do? You can pray and ask others to pray for the more than 400,000 children in our nation’s foster care system, as well as their families, their workers, and the Church’s response to the foster care crisis. You can find a map of prayer vigils already scheduled at the Cry of the Orphan’s website . They offer a prayer guide you can download as well. May is National Foster Care Month. We just celebrated Mother’s Day and Father’s Day is around the corner. Can you put yourself in the place of a foster child who has been waiting to be adopted for three years or more? That’s the average time that a child waits in foster care to be adopted but they can wait five years or more or never get adopted. Those years are usually spent in several different foster homes, not just one. Many are older kids,...

It’s national teacher appreciation week and although this is the last day today, I wanted to share the great idea that my son’s Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) had because it is both easy and creative. Maybe some of you can share it with your own PTAs or PTOs. His PTO designated a different gift idea for each day of the week and asked parents to do as little or as much as they wanted. Monday was chocolate day. My son has six teachers so we bought six jumbo Hershey bars, one for each of them. Tuesday was school supply day. I personally think Post–it Notes are very useful, so I bought a few packs in bright colors for each teacher. Wednesday was flower day. I asked my son if he wanted to get flowers for all his teachers or just the female ones. He has three male teachers and three female ones. He chose to get flowers just for the ladies. I bought a bunch of roses and wrapped a stem for each teacher in a wet paper towel covered in aluminum foil to keep the water from getting...

Today is the day. Today we have the Relay for Life in my hometown. We have already made about $500 over our goal of $3500 so I’m very happy going into the Relay.  I am so excited about today. We’re going to be selling homemade coconut salt scrub that our Miss Pinterest Sam Roberts has made for us. She also had the idea of making hair ribbons and got us started on that.  We’re going to be braiding hair, doing nails, selling jewelry and raffling some items, too. While the moms are getting pampered, we have some games for the kids to do as well. As for food, we went pretty simple, just muffins, apples, bananas, green tea, water and coffee.  We’re having a spa theme to the booth this year and I’ve called it the Angels for a Cure Stress Reduction and Cancer Prevention Booth! I can’t wait to see what all the other teams are doing. I hope we make our goal for the Relay. Our team has really come together. I’m so thankful to them. When my mother was sick, the...

Today I’m going to pray. Today I’m going to pray that slaves are freed. I have a lot going on today. I’m still captain of a Relay team, still helping with my son’s boy scout troop, still working a part-time job and taking three master’s level classes. I’m also planning a move and working on my mother’s estate. But right now, I’m going to join the Global Prayer Gathering (GPG) sponsored by the International Justice Mission (IJM). The International Justice Mission is a human rights agency that brings rescue to victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. The GPG is going on today through Sunday. Sometimes we feel like there’s nothing we can do to help others. We may not have the money or a lot of time. But we can pray. The Global Prayer Gathering is bringing together friends and IJM staff from around the world to engage in the work of justice through prayer. They say, “Through storytelling, worship and reflection, we will celebr...

In my younger years, I spent days listening to U2’s dvds (and cassettes, too, admittedly) screaming, “With or without you.” Well, now U2 front man Bono is pushing for change and he has good news. In a TED conference in February Bono said , “The number of people living in backbreaking, soul-crushing, extreme poverty has declined from 43 percent of the world’s population in 1990 to 33 percent by 2000. And then to 21 percent by 2010. Halved! It’s heart stopping! If you live on less than $1.25 a day, if you live in that kind of poverty, this is not just data. This is everything. This rapid transition is a route out of despair and into hope.” On the trajectory Bono presented, by 2030 there will be zero people living on less than $1.25 per day. But Bono knows this trend won’t continue “with or without you.” It needs to be nurtured by governments that are eyeing cuts to charitable programs and supported by people so governments don’t make those cuts. Bono is hoping that the spread of ...