Helping Hearts, Blog of Anne Sanders

I was trying to think of what to write about today and doing searches on Google and finding all kinds of things that I already knew about. Then I came across an idea which I have never tried. I LOVE doing that. On my website http://helping-hearts.net and in my blogs, I’ve written about free ways to help others, fun ways to help others, cyber-volunteering, virtual mentoring, donating, volunteering, random acts of kindness and paying it forward. I have never written about becoming a “professional volunteer” also known as a docent. Now, although I haven’t done it myself, I’ve met people who are docents at my local zoo and at museums around the U.S. I’m calling docents “professional volunteers” because they train so they can become like a professional. A docent is someone who has been trained by the organization that they volunteer for to take the place of a paid employee. Like most volunteers, they do the work that needs to be done for free, but usually docents have to make...

    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...

Ever feel helpless? When a friend is very sick, you may feel like there’s nothing you can do. It’s not true. You can always pray for someone and prayer can change things. There’s another thing you can do. Get some help for your friend. Recently, a friend of mine was sick. She was self aware enough to know she’d have trouble cooking so she asked me to have some of our friends make her some meals. I did so gladly. Thank God it was just a temporary illness and she was back on her feet in a few weeks. Sometimes that’s not the case. In those cases, there’s a lot to do. Take your friend to the doctor, help with laundry and housecleaning, watch the kids while she rests or is at the doctor, give her primary caregiver a break. The list goes on. So, how do you coordinate what needs to be done with the people who can do it? You can spend all your time on the phone calling and setting things up. Or, you can use Lotsa Helping Hands . What is Lotsa Helping Hands? An online service...

Yesterday, I started calling businesses in the area asking for donations. This month is American Red Cross month and next month is Volunteer Appreciation month. So, since I have been helping the Red Cross with their volunteers, I offered to get some goodies to give to them next month! About 96 percent of the services the Red Cross provides are done by volunteers. At our local Red Cross of Northwest Florida which covers four counties, that means just seven people are employed by the Red Cross. Everyone else is a volunteer. That’s awesome! All those people come together to help others at a moment’s notice in their time of need during a disaster.   The mission of the Red Cross is to prevent and alleviate human suffering in the face of emergencies by mobilizing the power of volunteers and the generosity of donors. It completes its mission well with the help of more than 13 million active volunteers. I want to give a shout out to Olive Garden and Red Lobster who immed...

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 ...

I couldn’t get you a better list of people. They provide wishes for foster children, fresh fruits and vegetables in “food deserts” and schools for the unschooled.   They clean up rivers, build homes for disabled veterans, empower the poor through dance and help children who are fighting cancer, poverty and a lack of opportunity. They bring computers to those who can’t afford them and electricity to hospitals around the world. They are the top 10 CNN Heroes of 2013. For their extraordinary efforts to change the world, each will receive $50,000 and be recognized at a globally broadcast event that airs December 1. One of the top 10 will receive an additional $250,000 for their cause. That person will be chosen by those who vote for their favorite hero at CNNHeroes.com . SO, read their stories, and then vote for the one whom you like the best. You can also give to their causes if you feel so inspired. It’s a great way to start, end, or fill the middle of y...

What gets you out of bed in the morning? Work? School? Or the fun of helping others? For about 450 high school students in Pensacola, Florida, it’s helping others that gets them out of bed early on a Saturday morning, no less. That’s how many Catholic High School students will participate in this year’s Make a Difference Day on October 26. Why do they do it? Twelfth grader Zack Wyant remembers his first Make a Difference Day. “I just took a second and thought, ‘Look at all these kids out here. It’s early. It’s cold. Look at these people willing to give up and sacrifice.’ It exemplifies how much we want to help others.” Fellow Catholic High School Senior Tiarra Blackshear said, “My favorite part of being in high school is Make a Difference Day. I get a lot out of helping students and other people. It’s really fun to see students come together and help different people in our community, no matter who they are.” Both have done a variety of things over the past few Make a D...

Retired teacher Nancy Reynolds is happy. She has learned a secret of happy people which I’m going to tell you. Helping other people makes you happy! She started volunteering for the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) Christian Values Conference in 1976 and, except for a few breaks here and there, has been doing it ever since. She got involved when the activity director Don Kyzer at her school “conned” her into doing the program. He told her she’d get to go relax in the mountains of North Carolina, but when she got there, she found out she was supposed to facilitate sessions with the teens. “What I like about it is it’s not like a church camp. We do have a chaplain; we have devotions in the morning. There was the theme this year, God is here. It just goes down the path of making good choices, which you need to reiterate with high school kids. We keep them busy. When we hit the mountain, they get one afternoon free and that’s it…But once we get them up there, they want to co...

Besides doing this blog and my website ( www.helping-hearts.net ), I am the Volunteer and Charity Guru on Facebook where I post interesting tidbits about the charity and volunteering world on a semi-daily basis. At my Facebook page , you can find inspiring stories of people changing the world, links to fun and easy opportunities to do some changing yourself, as well as quotes and videos. I recently found out I’m not the only guru in the volunteering and charity business. Who knew?   Tom Kelly is the Fundraising Guru on Facebook. We’re joined by the Gap Guru as well. The more the merrier, I say! Kelly has some great tips for how to start a fundraising organization and how to raise money. His fundraising ideas include how to use QR codes and smartphones , mobile fundraising options and crowdfunding as well as categories like school fundraising, church fundraising, club fundraising, nonprofit fundraising and corporate fundraising. The Gap Guru specializes in students who...

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...

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...

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 ...

I am ecstatic. My husband who has been in Kuwait for a year and in Birmingham the year before is BACK!   He’s been home for a little over a week. We went on a nearby base a couple of days ago and I stopped and got Slim Jims for the guys at the gate.   It’s something I started doing back during Random Acts of Kindness week in February. I bring them snacks since they’re on their feet outside for hours at a time.   He asked me why I did it and I said because I like to. Another great kindness event is coming up next Saturday, the Great Kindness Challenge .   It’s an event aimed at getting children involved in helping others, but it’s also a great day for everyone to do as many kind deeds as they can. If you’re having trouble thinking of some things your kids can do, the Great Kindness Challenge website has a list of 50 suggestions which you can print and check off as you do them.   They include things like leaving a flower on someone’s doorstep, reading a b...

Have you been looking forward to your vacation for months? Going to a new place in the states or to another country?   As of right now, we’re not planning to take a vacation unless it’s a weekend trip nearby, but I would love one day to do a volunteer vacation.   You can go as an individual, group or even as a family. Like any vacation, you get to see a new place but with volunteer vacations you can also make a positive impact on that place.   The opportunities range widely, from tapping maple syrup at a Native American reservation in America to constructing a health center in Kenya. The Volunteer Family provides a list of companies that give families an opportunity to do a project together.   That’s the kind of trip I would really like to take. Another good source is Volunteer Guide because it categorizes the type of projects so you can choose between animal welfare, helping children, community development, environmental protection, health and sa...