Helping Hearts, Blog of Anne Sanders

    May is lots of things—the gateway to summer, the last full month of school, the month of flowers after April showers—but also it’s national foster care month. I know some foster care parents and have shared their stories before, but not all of us are able to be foster care parents. So, I want to share some things that we can get involved in to help foster kids without being a foster parent. The first one is Together We Rise. What I like about Together We Rise is that it started out of a real need. Danny Mendoza had a cousin who was living on his own. Danny couldn’t find a way to help because he was told he was too young. He decided to start his own charity that could help children in foster care while mobilizing young people to make a difference in the world. Through its fundraising and network of passionate volunteers, Together We Rise gives foster children a brighter future and a sense of normalcy and belonging. They provide bikes, sports camps and simple...

Remember those cool surfer shoes Van’s made with the checkered design? Well, now you can make your own design and earn money for the art program at your school. It’s called Van’s Custom Culture and it’s a nationwide contest where the first place winner gets $50,000 for its art program. Only schools can enter and each school can send in four pairs of shoes that its students design. Fifty finalist schools go to the public vote and then surprise celebrity judges make the final determination of the winners from the top five finalists. The four runners up receive $4,000 for their school art programs as well. Registration begins in January and the schools submit their designs February through April. The final event when the winners are announced is June 10 in New York City, where the finalists get a tour of art sites in the city before the main event. School is winding up around the country now and I usually talk about treats for teachers to show them how you care in May....

  Can you imagine getting the news when you’re just four that you have cancer? It might not mean much, until you start the medical tests, shots, surgeries, chemotherapy and so on. What if while you were going through this, you decided to do something about it, to help people find a cure. That’s what Alexandra “Alex” Scott did. Alex, at age four, held a lemonade stand to help find a cure for all childhood cancers, including her own. Since that time, more than 20,000 Alex’s Lemonade Stands have been held across the country! Alex is no longer with us, but her idea of helping to find a cure is still alive and is part of a nationwide movement. It was just last weekend that I was raising money for the American Cancer Society through Relay for Life. Our Relay raised over $100,000 and I am so excited to have been part of it. But the reason I relay is for my son who was healed of cancer when he was 6. So, Alex’s Lemonade Stand is dear to me, too. National Lemonade Days are ...

Today is the day! My Relay for Life in Niceville, Florida. I haven’t spoken much about being on the steering committee for Relay this year because it’s just not as exciting as having your own team. I have been calling people, recruiting teams, setting up chairs at team meetings and helping to plan the event. It’s not like planning events to fundraise. You don’t get to count the money at the end of the evening and know it’s going to fight cancer. Of course, everything you do on the steering committee helps the teams do their fundraising so it’s all important. We have had rain in too many of our past Relays in Niceville I’m told and it looks like it might happen again. There’s a fifty percent chance of rain pretty much throughout the Relay. The skies have been cloudy but it hasn’t actually rained yet as I write this. I wish it would rain early and get it over with or hold off until Sunday. But we don’t know God’s plans. I just know we have almost 50 teams and we are ready t...

Tomorrow starts National Park Week, a week to get out and visit a national park, for free! Sunday is the day to celebrate Easter, and it's also a perfect time to simply get outdoors and take advantage of the more than 17,000 miles of trails in national parks and another 15,600 miles of national recreation trails. God's creation is made for us to enjoy! Did you know there are more miles of trails in the national trails system than miles of road in the interstate highway system? Search here for events going on this week at national parks. Next Saturday is also National Junior Ranger Day for young visitors to "explore, learn, protect" and be sworn in as junior rangers. We have visited a few national parks in our time and there are always programs going on for Junior Rangers. There’s even a site for Web Rangers. Tuesday, April 22, is Earth Day, so if you want to roll up your sleeves and pitch in with a project, look for a park where you can help out...

It’s just a simple little test. That’s what they all say, right?   This one could help save you and you don't have to give blood for it. Answer some questions about weight, age, family history and some other risk factors. Risk factors for what? Diabetes.   According to the American Diabetes Association, the number of Americans with diagnosed diabetes is projected to increase 165%, from 11 million in 2000 to 29 million in 2050. According to the Centers for Disease Control, o ne in 10 U.S. adults has the disease now but that could grow to 1 in 3 in the next 40 years. The disease also presents serious threats to health, including increased risk of heart attack, kidney failure, blindness and many other complications. With so many Americans overweight and obese, the number of people with Type II Diabetes keeps growing. Tuesday, March 25, you can find out if you might be one of them one day and at the same time, $5 will go to the American Diabetes Association w...

In 2013 for the first post of the new year, I made a list. Not of resolutions, but of actions, actions you could take to “change the world.” They were personal things like opening a savings account with Able Banking , because they give $25 to charity when you do as well as a percentage of the interest you earn. It’s something like what I post on the main page of my website in the Today’s Ways to Help section and my list of Cost-Free Ways to Help Others . For 2014, I want to continue the tradition, but with a twist. I’m still going to list things you can do to help charities, but this time I want to focus on ways to raise larger amounts of money. People have asked me for ideas on how to do this and I want to give you some tips for 2014. These ideas aren’t as easy as opening a savings account, but they are more rewarding. For these ideas, you need the help of others. As someone who has led a team of people devoted to a cause, I must say it is an amazing feeling when it all comes...

Can you imagine waking up to nothing? No food, no clothes, no water, perhaps no family or friends. Where there was a house before, now nothing stands. Where there was a tree is emptiness.    This is what thousands of people are experiencing in the Philippines. The Red Cross estimates 10 million people across 40 provinces have been affected with as many as 600,000 people displaced . A total of 78,476 families (380,552 persons) are being served inside 1,028 evacuation centers in the Philippines according to the government’s official gazette following the supertyphoon that made landfall last Friday. Estimates are that 10,000 people are dead. The U.S. government has only pledged $100,000 and other kinds of support to the Philippines, but U.S. companies have pledged $20 million. You can see what companies are donating at this link . I recently began looking for an internship to do next semester as part of my master’s program. I contacted some local ...

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...

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. ...

I cried so much doing the research for this week’s blog. I guess that’s nothing new. My husband often sees me with tears running down my face as I work on my blog. It’s usually a mixture of sadness and happiness at what happens in this world that causes it.   Have you heard about the 26 acts of kindness that NBC News Host Ann Curry suggested people do in honor of each person who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School? She started out just suggesting people do 20 acts for the kids, but everyone wanted to do something for each person who died.   If you want to see some examples of what people are doing and her explanation of how it all happened, visit the NBC News page about it . I think it’s such a fabulous idea that I had to mention it.   I also found out about a local mother who started her own random acts of kindness initiative.   Were your kids bored over the Christmas holiday when they were out of school?   Courtney Fell’s two boys were, too...

Last week I asked you to think about which charities you might want to support in the new year. This week I have thirteen ways to do so. Not all of these ways allow you to choose the charity you benefit, but many of them do so get ready to give back! 1.        Open a savings account with ableBanking and get $25 given to the charity of your choice and a quarter percent of your average balance once a year as well. They are an online bank with no fees so you will be saving money, too! 2.       Give a dime a day to charity without thinking about it. Help Every Day takes what it calls a “coin of compassion” each day , charged monthly to your credit card, to support various charity projects around the world. You don’t miss it, but it’s helping other people. 3.       Like Carrie Underwood, James Taylor, Katy Perry or the Rolling Stones? Then buy your ticket to their concerts at Tickets for Charity ...

My mother in law made a comment a few weeks ago that struck me. She knows I volunteer for the American Cancer Society . Many times she has said she hears about so many more people who have cancer now than when she was growing up. She said that back then everyone talked about the March of Dimes . Now I know the name the March of Dimes and I know it has to do with children. But what I didn’t know was that the March of Dimes has been around for 75 years, was started by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to fight polio and has had famous supporters like Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. Cancer may be the disease many people are concerned with today, but healthy babies are always a concern and that’s why the March of Dimes changed its focus to preventing birth defects and infant mortality after the polio vaccine was developed. I have to be honest, the March of Dimes is not the best organization for keeping administrative and fundraising costs down. According to Charity Navigator...

Have you ever thought of yourself as an angel? Angels are messengers from God who sometimes intercede for Him. One Christmas I was such a messenger. It began one night after work when we got a list of children. We drove to where each one lived and delivered something very special. You see it was Christmastime and these children were without their parents. Either one or more of their parents was in prison. We had bought presents for one little girl ourselves and got to deliver them, too.   We drove to a dilapidated, dirty, old apartment complex where our brightly wrapped presents seemed out of place. We knocked at the dark brown door and an older woman opened it. She asked us to come in and inside was a girl about six years old sitting on the floor in her pajamas. Her eyes lit up when she saw what we had for her. Her grandmother, for that was who answered the door, told us to come in. So, we chatted for a little bit about the weather and Christmas while the girl’s eyes...

A dime a day. Does it sound like too much or too little? It adds up to about three dollars a month, less than the cost of a Starbucks espresso or a Burger King Whopper. It is the coin of compassion that Help Every Day deducts from your credit card monthly to support its projects. If you’re not sure how to go about helping other people and you don’t have much money to do so, then Help Every Day is a great option. They’ve done projects around the world: improving water collection in Tanzania, developing literacy and vocational skills among poor adolescent girls in India, providing bikes for new health care professionals in Tanzania, financing difficult deliveries of babies in Sierra Leone, caring for orphaned Kenyan babies, providing training for older orphans in Kenya. Their current project is helping the indigenous Quechua communities in Peru. By financing a project over a six month period, Help Every Day will assist these threatened communities with economic developmen...

Those of you who have followed my Working Mother Magazine blog the last couple of years know that I couldn’t get through September without sharing that it’s National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. This designation has only been around a few years, but I’ve written about it the last two because I have a son who was diagnosed with cancer at the age of five. Thanks to a lot of prayer and two surgeries, he has been cancer free for almost six years. I’m thanking God for his remission. His great grandfather died of the kind of cancer with which he was diagnosed. I have been volunteering for the American Cancer Society for over a year now and am also the captain of my church’s Relay for Life team Angels for a Cure.   Although the American Cancer Society is a great organization and I love Relay for Life, there’s another organization that’s dear to my heart because of my son. It’s Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF). Alex is a little girl who was diagnosed with a childho...