Helping Hearts, Blog of Anne Sanders

How do you get thousands of students to raise $37 million and volunteer over nine and a half million hours to change the world? Ask Craig and Marc Kielburger. They’ve done it and it’s called We Day . We Day is a one day stadium-sized event that brings charities and inspiring speakers together for thousands of kids who have already spent a year making a difference. Craig and Marc have shared the We Day stage with change-makers such as Al Gore, Mikhail Gorbachev, Magic Johnson, Rev. Jesse Jackson and Larry King. This 2013-14 We Day season, there are 100,000 youth attending We Day events and 5.4 million people watching via broadcast. The Canadian brothers started the We Day movement that has done all of this six years ago but Craig founded their nonprofit Free the Children when he was 12. Free the Children “ has worked in over 45 countries since its inception, and has built more than 650 schools and school rooms in developing regions.” Along the way, Craig and Mark also star...

Nelson Mandela lays in a hospital bed in South Africa waiting. I wonder if it reminds him of his 27 years in prison. He may not reach his 95 th birthday, which is less than two weeks away on the 18 th of June. It’s a day set aside as a call to action for people everywhere to make the world a better place. For Mandela Day, the Nelson Mandela Foundation asks people to set aside 67 minutes for service, one minute for each year of his service to his country. Although there are organized events, one of the easiest things to do is post something on Facebook that celebrates, or brings awareness to a human rights issue for the 67 days starting with his birthday. That may sound like a lot of days to write about human rights, until you start looking for human rights issues. There’s no shortage of them. Humanrights.com, Amnesty International and other sources report that individuals are: Tortured or abused in at least 81 countries Face unfair trials in at least 54 countries...

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 ...

Top 11 Last Minute Charitable Christmas Gifts Christmas is getting closer but it's not too late to do something to make a difference this holiday. The unique items below can be given with the best intentions—to help others. There’s still time to get a notification card sent to the recipient but even if you wait, you can send the notice of the present by email or in many cases, you can print out your own card to hand to your friend or family member.  1.        Alternative Gifts International - $11 pays for a share of a yak for orphaned and destitute children in the Tibetan regions of remote western China . 2.       Spend $25 or more to free forced labor slaves with International Justice Mission . 3.       A llama from Heifer International  - A share is $20 while a whole llama is $150. Heifer provides all kinds of animals from chicks to water buffalo to families that can use th...

This month people around the nation are walking to support those with diabetes for American Diabetes Month. According to the American Diabetes Association , 25.8 million children and adults in the United States—8.3 percent of population—have diabetes. That’s 18.8 million people who are diagnosed and another 7 million who are not. Worldwide, a s many as 371 million people live with diabetes and more than half of them are unaware that they have diabetes according to the International Diabetes Federation. It's a disease that lurks in the shadows, affecting many before they even know of its existence. So I decided this week to have someone who has lots of experience with diabetes share her story and information about symptoms and how to help those with diabetes. Her name is Carolyn Dailey. 1.        How long have you had diabetes?     I have had it for 37 years.  In September of 1975, I recognized the symptoms a...

Veteran’s Day is this weekend and you might be wondering what veterans want for Christmas this year. Hundreds of veteran’s charities will tell you, but the claims of fraud and fundraising overspending against some military charities has risen in the last few years. Before you donate to any, read this blog. You can and should check out charities that ask for your money. Charity Navigator and Charity Watch are watchdog organizations that rate charities on their transparency and spending habits. Charity Navigator is free while Charity Watch gives access to all its files for a yearly fee. Currently, Charity Navigator (CN) has a donor advisory on the Disabled Veterans National Foundation (DVNF). According to CN, “On May 23, 2012, CNN reported that Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Senator Richard Burr, the senior Republican on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee are investigating charges that the Disabled Veterans National Foundation has spent little ...

What were you doing two Saturdays ago? If you’re like me, life is so busy that you can hardly remember what you did yesterday, never mind two weekends ago. But I had been building up to Saturday, October 20 th for a long time because I’m the captain of an American Cancer Society Relay for Life 2013 team.   We had our first fundraiser the 20 th . It was a great big yard sale in the parking lot of our church. My team is called Angels for a Cure because we operate out of our church, the Gulf Breeze United Methodist Church . I’ve been going there since January of 2004 and we became members in 2005 (I think, once again the mind reels at all to think back that far.) It wasn’t until 2010 that I found out we had a Relay team. We’d gone to other Relays, supported my husband’s work team, my sister’s team and so on. Have you ever been to an event? There’s a Relay for every 60,300 Americans and there were 5,146 Relays in 2010. There were Relays that year in 18 countries outside th...

How does it start? Anger, lack of control and lashing out at someone else. One in four women and one in nine men will experience domestic violence in their lifetime according to the Centers for Disease Control. Five million children are impacted by domestic violence each year and two hundred seventy five million people are impacted worldwide from domestic violence according to Childhood Domestic Violence Association . Can you imagine what it’s like to live in constant fear of violence? Or maybe you know what it’s like from personal experience. It’s not pretty. Long-term effects of domestic violence on women who have been abused may include anxiety, depression, death, health problems, malnutrition, panic attacks, suicide attempts and an inability to adequately respond to the needs of their children according to findcounseling.com. Those children suffer, too. They suffer s hame, guilt and self blame, fear of abandonment or expressing emotions, anger and depression. Children of do...

Do you have a pink bra? Up until about a month ago, I didn’t, but now I have one covered in flowers which I’m waiting to wear on October 27. You see, the last Saturday of this month is the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk. Thousands of women (and men) will be strapping on a decorated pink bra over their t-shirts, putting on pink wigs, wearing pink tutus. Why? Because they want to stop breast cancer in its tracks. This is my second year of involvement with the walk. Last year I volunteered to count money behind the scenes. I’ll be doing that again this year, but I made myself a bra this year and got on a team that’s fundraising, too. October 27, the day of the walk, also happens to be USA Weekend’s Make a Difference Day . What better way to make a difference than to fundraise to fight breast cancer and walk to raise awareness about it? Here’s some more awareness. Women over 40, like myself, need to get mammograms every year. I didn’t get one last year. My gynecolo...

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...

Next month there are two days to remind us of people who are often forgotten—the homeless. In 2011 there were 636,017 people homeless in America. World Homeless Day is October 10 and World Habitat Day is October 1. In honor of these two days, I am featuring an interview today with Angela Smith. Angela is the author of two books End of Mae and No Money Marketing , and the writer of popular blog Dandilyon Fluff . However, Angela also experienced being homeless on and off for five years from 1986 to 1991. As someone who pulled her way out of homelessness, she is an example of how the system works and how it doesn’t. 1.       How did you become homeless? I became homeless as a runaway at 16.  At first I stayed with random friends but when that hospitality ran out my only choice was to live directly on the street. The first night I was wandering around in the dark confused on what to do next. A carload of teenage guys starte...