Helping Hearts, Blog of Anne Sanders

I often brainstorm topics to write about for this blog. I keep a list of over 250 ideas to which I am always adding. But sometimes I miss the obvious. Have you heard of Volunteers of America ? Neither had I, until today. It’s a Christian organization that’s been around since 1896. It provides help for homelessness, people with mental health problems, children, communities, veterans, those with disabilities or substance abuse problems and seniors. It also provides emergency services for people in crisis. As its name implies, it provides its ministry just in America. It provides services to more than two million people in over 400 communities in 46 states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. You can search for a local office near you at its website . I love its statement of Why We Do What We Do:   We are Volunteers of America. And we are the first to step forward, Taking on the most crushing problems. The dire. The hopeless. The untouchable. And we make a...

Have you ever wondered how charitable your neighbors are ?   Your town? Your state?   A new study by The Chronicle of Philanthropy compares tax returns of taxpayers who earned $50,000 or more in 2008 to determine their levels of giving. The trends were that those that had less gave more.   States that voted Republican in 2008 gave more.   People in states considered deeply religious gave more, too. As for volunteering, the statistics show that more than one in four Americans volunteer. The families studied gave $135 billion or almost two-thirds of the $214 billion donated by all individuals in 2008. Giving was calculated after major expenses like taxes, housing and food to level the playing field . The median charitable donation was 4.7 percent of discretionary income. The state with the highest percentage of giving was Utah at 10.6 percent.   The people of Utah also topped the chart for volunteering at a rate of f orty-five percent.   That’s almo...

Our son is a boy scout and loves to camp.   I like to think he got his love of the outdoors from us since I love hiking and enjoy camping myself. Before boy scouts, he was in the Adventure Guides program through the YMCA. The leader of the group was wonderful and one of the things he always made the boys do before they set up camp and after we broke it down was to pick up 10 pieces of trash. It’s something I hope my son will always take with him, the idea that taking care of the environment is an important responsibility of stewardship.   If we are to enjoy the great outdoors, we need to take care of them.    This month began the Keep America Beautiful (KAB) Great American Cleanup. It goes from March 1 through May 31 every year and is America’s largest annual community improvement program. Last year 3.8 million volunteers put in 5.2 million hours at 30,629 events around the country and the world. Volunteers also planted 166,000 trees and planted 1.5 mill...