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 ...

In my series on what charities the stars support, I am going to talk about a younger actress who has been very busy this past year. She was featured in the Hunger Games and The Silver Linings Playbook , for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress. She’s also a very kind and compassionate young woman.  Last month, Lawrence was part of the Silver Linings Playbook’s support of the Glenholme School, a therapeutic boarding school for students with special needs.  Growing up, Jennifer was friends with Andy Strunk, who has Down syndrome. They met at church and then became close friends in Kammerer Middle School where she helped him get the title of being “Mr. Kammerer” at the school. She’s also part of a fundraiser for the Kenny Gordon Foundation which funds research regarding sudden cardiac death caused by arrhythmias, scholarships, and a camp for children.  Going on through March 27, you can bid in an online auction through CharityBuzz to do a ...

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...

Since The Hunger Games movie came out in March, I’ve been featuring in my Today’s Ways to Help how you can fight hunger by taking a quiz from World Food Programme and Feeding America . Last October when I heard that Manna Food Bank , a local food bank in my area, was almost out of food, it didn’t occur to me that Hunger Action Month had been the month before in September. I just wanted to do something to help. Since 11/11/11 occurred last year and it happened to be my birthday, I had planned with another friend who shares that birthday to have a big shindig. We wanted to do something to benefit a worthy charity in lieu of gifts so we collected nonperishable food and money for Manna and another food bank. A couple of days after the party (after we had recovered), we brought the food to one food bank and I mailed a gift card to the other one. It was just a drop in the bucket but I’m sure it helped some people. This year I want to get the word out about Hunger Action Month ...