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 ...

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. ...

Easter has come and gone. It was a busy but nice day for us.   I volunteer in our church’s three and four year old Sunday School class and usually have from about 17 to 23 kids in there.   I have a helper most days, too, because that’s a lot of kids for one person. This Easter, we ended up having 35 children in the class.   Thank God for my friend who came in during the first service to drop off her child and saw that I had 31 children already. She volunteered to help me and in the end we split the class up into two classes next door to each other.   The kids are so adorable.   They love the little games we play in there like playing hot potato with different items or taping stickers to a picture on the wall. They also love to share. One child shared his mealtime prayer on Easter with the rest of us, closing his eyes and singing it to the whole class. I’m sure you’ve heard of the James 1:27 verse: “Re ligion that God our Father accepts as pure and fau...