Help needed!

Operation Christmas Christmas needs you! Can you help??

Please see the image below for details.

Blessings!

Ronell x

ActionAid: Ready for Anything appeal

Today’s post is about ActionAid, a charity that is aiming for a world without poverty, by working with local people to fight hunger, seek justice for women and education for children, and cope with emergencies. You can find out more about what ActionAid does here.

Wherever there is poverty and injustice, in over 40 countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas, ActionAid is working to help people free themselves from poverty. Whether they are building a well, hiring a teacher, or lobbying a government, Action Aid makes sure that every pound they spend goes as far as possible. You can read more about the specific details of where ActionAid works and how it spends the money raised on their site.

Over 300 million people are affected by disasters every year. The poorest and most vulnerable people are the hardest hit. Lives are at risk, communities are wiped out and families lose everything. Now there is also an opportunity for you to double your donation! From TODAY until 3 May, the UK Govt will match donations to ActionAid pound by pound as part of our Ready for Anything appeal. The extra money will go towards our emergency work - helping the world’s poorest people to survive disasters.

Together we can ensure the world’s poorest people are Ready for Anything. Donate now and help us to stop disasters becoming tragedies.

Donate now! Visit www.actionaid.org.uk/rfa or text ‘DOUB13 £10’ to 70070 to give £10. Double the difference you can make at no extra cost to yourself!

Blessings!

Ronell x

“Give generously to the poor, not grudgingly, for the LORD your God will bless you in everything you do.” {Deuteronomy 15:10}

21 Ways to get involved with the A21 Campaign (Suggestion 2 of 21): fast on the 21st

Today we’re back to 21 ways to get involved with the A21 Campaign to fight against modern day slavery and human trafficking (http://www.thea21campaign.org/21-ways-to-help.php&lang=en). Suggestion 2 of 21: fast on the 21^st.

Every day millions of people are starving and unable to feed their families. I can’t imagine how it would feel to physically have no food at all available to eat or to give to your children to eat! But sadly, that is an every day reality for many around the world.

Today’s suggestion from the A21 Campaign is that, on the 21^st day of every month (today for example), you fast to show solidarity for the millions of people around the world who are going without food for many or even all of their meals each day. Fasting is simply giving up food for a period of time. During this time it is also suggested/advised that you pray for/about something specific. In this case, world hunger, poverty and abolishing slavery.

Fasting can sound like a scary concept, but really it is up to you how you interpret it. Some people might like to fast for one meal, two meals or all three of their meals. I find it easier to fast from after lunch through to the next morning, as I find that I can’t concentrate/work during the day if I do any more than that! (not good when you work with small children!). Some months, I may feel it is necessary to fast more than just that one meal, so I will.

Others may do specific fasts where they are only allowed to have certain foods over a period of time. An American contact of mine (Gina) has committed to over 100 days of this kind of fast on an extremely low calorie intake as a pledge of solidarity to those starving all around the world (so really one day a month is not so bad!). She is documenting this on her blog One Daily Serving: A challenge to raise awareness of world hunger—one daily serving for one daily serving Jesus Christ. Go to www.onedailyserving.com to check it out to see how she is doing!

Choosing to fast on the 21^st of every month is a way of showing your commitment to ending the injustice of modern day slavery and human trafficking. So make a start TODAY! Join people all around the world who are fasting to see and end to this injustice!

Blessings!

Ronell x

“This is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people.” {Isaiah 58v6}

The Child Health Site: Free Clicks to Provide Medical Care for Children in Need!

Tying into my post from yesterday about supporting underprivileged girls’ futures (http://365days2changetheworld.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/plan-ukorg-international-day-of-girl.html),  today’s post is about helping to provide free medical care for children in need by visiting The Child Health Site, which is another site run by The GreaterGood Network. It is pretty much the same principle as The Hunger Site, The Breast Cancer Site and The Animal Rescue Site free clicks, except that it supports charities that provide free medical care for children in need.

The Child Health Site is a charitable site that sells a whole host of items that donate to supporting these charities. It also has a lot of excellent information on different causes that need supporting and how we can help.

Over 200,000 children die every week from preventable causes! Many millions suffer from preventable, curable diseases such as blindness and malnutrition. Since its launch in 2002, The Child Health Site has supported and helped hundreds of thousands of children directly through the ‘free clicks’ initiative. You can help with this for free too! This has got to be one of my favourite features of the site (which I use every day that I log onto the internet using my laptop): using the ‘daily free clicks’ to donate. Basically, you visit http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=5&link=ctg_chs_home_from_aut_home_sitenav and click on the ‘Click Here to Give - it's FREE’ button, which generates money for charity, paid for by site sponsors. When you click, these companies and groups actually pay for your click! That's 365 free chances each year to help! The Child Health site gives 100% of sponsor advertising fees to their charitable partners- so all of the money generated by your daily clicks will actually go to helping to provide medical care for children in need!

The Child Health Site are particularly focusing on two areas of medical care: (1) Distributing Vitamin A, which strengthens young immune systems, improving resistance to disease. Vitamin A supplementation also prevents as many as 400,000 cases of childhood blindness each year! (2) Administering oral re-hydration therapy to children with severe dehydration, often due to diarrhea, which is a serious killer of children under the age of five worldwide (it causes roughly 1 in 5 child deaths and can kill a newborn within hours).

I have added a bookmark called ‘click’ to my bookmark bar at the top of my web browser to help me remember. Other suggestions would be to set The Child Health Site (http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=5&link=ctg_chs_home_from_aut_home_sitenav) as your home page, or to sign up for a free click reminder email (under the big ‘Click Here to Give - it's FREE’ button). You control how often you get a reminder! Bonus: if you are a new registrant to the GreaterGood Network (owners and operators of The Child Health Site), they will make an extra donation to the cause when you sign up. Funding from this site helps an average of over a 1,000 children every day!

Thank you click sponsors!

Blessings!

Ronell x

“It is not my Father’s will that one of these little ones should perish” {Matthew 18v14}

FareShare & Sainsbury's 'Million Meal Appeal' (6th-7th October)

Did you know that an estimated 5.8 million people in the UK live in deep poverty and struggle to buy basic foods? Sainsbury's is helping to make a difference by donating some of their surplus food to FareShare, a national charity that aims to tackle food poverty and waste.
This month, Sainsbury's has teamed up with FareShare to organise the 'Million Meal Appeal' for Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th October. With the help of the public, they are aiming to donate over 1 million meals to disadvantaged people in our local communities. This will be the UK's largest charity food collection! Sainsbury's will help FareShare to distribute the food to those who need it the most, including homeless charities, children's clubs and women refugees.

Be a part of this initiative to help reduce the effects of poverty and hunger in the UK! Go down to your local participating Sainsbury's store over the weekend of 6th-7th October and donate food to support the collection.
Getting involved is simple:
(1) Just pick one (or more!) item from the Million Meal shopping list (see below) and donate it at the collection box after checkout.
Million Meal shopping list:
- tinned food
- tea
- instant coffee
- pasta sauce
- dried pasta
- rice
(2) shop online between 3rd-9th October and donate £1 at the checkout.
Sainsbury's have pledged to match the donations made by the public, so get donating! In 2011, over 1.2 million meals were donated in just one day! Let's see if we can smash that figure this year!
To find out more about this event, click here.
To find out more about the FareShare charity, click here
Blessings!
Ronell x
"Blessed are those who are generous, because they feed the poor." {Proverbs 22v9}