Helping Hearts, Blog of Anne Sanders

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 ...

The two weeks I missed doing blogs during my mother's sickness were around the Academy Awards and I was going to do a series on what charities the stars support. In honor of my mother, the first star I’m going to feature is Meryl Streep. Streep was one of her favorite actresses. She’s an amazing actress who’s won numerous Academy Awards, Emmys, Screen Actors Guild awards and even a Cannes Film Festival award. She also acts as National Spokesperson for the National Women’s History Museum (NWHM). Last Friday was International Women’s Day . The Women’s Museum is still a dream that hasn’t come true yet with legislation in Congress to be passed before it can become a reality. But NWHM has already gotten a monument of Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony out of its 76‑year confinement in the Capitol Crypt to the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol so that DC visitors can see this testament to the contributors of the women’s suffrage movement. This year marked the...

You may already know that January is national mentoring month, but did you know you can mentor children as far away as Africa and as close as Philadelphia without ever leaving your home? Or that you can become a buddy to someone with intellectual and developmental disabilities from your computer? It’s called E mentoring. There are many different ways of doing it, from video conversations to email pen pal programs. Infinite Family matches children in Africa affected by HIV/AIDS and poverty with adults around the world, who through weekly half hour video conversations, improve the life and future of these children. E-Buddies pairs people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in one-to-one e-mail friendships with peer volunteers who do not have intellectual or developmental disabilities. Matched pairs exchange emails once a week. E-Buddies provides people with IDD an opportunity to develop new friendships and acquire much needed computer skills. ...

Because this blog comes out on Friday, I wasn’t able to write about World AIDS Day on the actual day, which was yesterday.   But fighting AIDS isn’t a one day event.   This is the 30 th year since AIDS was discovered. According to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 34 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS, two million of which are children. Some of the organizations that fight AIDS on a daily basis are: Aids.org AIDS United America Social Health Association Avert Bailey House Elton John AIDS Foundation Gay Men’s Health Crisis Elizabeth Glaser Pediatrics AIDS Foundation Keep A Child Alive Project Hope The theme for World AIDS Day this year is 'Getting to Zero.'   That stands for zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. If you want to be a part of doing that, y ou can do something tangible by donating to the 2015 AIDS quilt .   It includes more than 94,000 names of people who have ...