International Women’s Day (8th March)

Tomorrow is International Women’s Day (8^th March). The Hungersite has a petition that you can sign to show support for women tomorrow. International Women's Day has been celebrated for over a hundred years. Each year all over the world, people get together for conferences, rallies, theatrical performances, craft markets — activities that honor women's achievements and progress.

Did you know that close to 70% of the world's poverty-stricken are women? Did you know that between 100 and 140 million girls have experienced genital mutilation? How about that one in five women will be a victim of rape in her lifetime?

With numbers like these, it's clear that women have not yet attained full equality in our world. We need programs for job training, education, and family planning to give women the tools to make their own informed and educated decisions.

International Women's Day is a great place to start. Sign the pledge promoting women's equality everywhere.  

Blessings!

Ronell x

Locks of Love

My best friend is getting married in less than six weeks and I am incredibly excited! I am obviously a bridesmaid, which obviously adds to the excitement.

In preparation, I have (amongst other things) been growing my hair. A couple of weeks ago, I went to my (amazing) hair dresser to have my hair done and he happened to cut off a little more than I would have liked (obviously needed to be done though). I wasn’t angry, but I was worried about how I would possibly look good at my friend’s wedding! Silly, I know, but bear with me! (I’m sure many ladies can empathise here).

Anyway, so there I am, fussing over a couple of inches of hair, when I saw this picture of my cousin’s cousin, Adri, who had cut off most of her hair to give to Locks of Love. Obviously, this made me feel even more silly for fussing about a couple of inches of hair, but more than anything I felt great admiration for what Adri had done and wanted to find out more about Locks of Love.

So Locks of Love is a public non-profit organisation that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children in the United States and Canada under age 21 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis. They meet a unique need for children by using donated hair to create the highest quality hair prosthetics. Most of the children helped by Locks of Love have lost their hair due to a medical condition called alopecia areata, which has no known cause or cure. The prostheses they provide help to restore the children’s self-esteem and their confidence, enabling them to face the world and their peers.

Their mission is to return a sense of self, confidence and normalcy to children suffering from hair loss by utilizing donated ponytails to provide the highest quality hair prosthetics to financially disadvantaged children. The children receive hair prostheses free of charge or on a sliding scale, based on financial need.

How is THAT for perspective?? On further reading about Locks of Love, I discovered this story about a teenager who was growing his hair to donate it to Locks of Love. Click here to sign a petition to support his cause!

You can also help by:

·      Donating hair (please check the guidelines before cutting your hair!)

·      Making a financial contribution

·      Volunteer

·      Read about even more ways of helping

Blessings!

Ronell x

“ The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries or the way she combs her hair.” {Audrey Hepburn}

Sign a Hungersite petition: empower women to eradicate world hunger

Today, I am asking you to help empower women to eradicate world hunger! Charity can be challenging.. people don’t always want a handout and sometimes handouts are not effective in the long term. That is why, in my opinion, it makes a greater impact when you empower people to do what is needed to solve a problem, rather than doing to them what you think they might need.

So I am directing you to a way to help make this happen: signing an online petition by the Hunger Site. 

President Obama has made combating world hunger one of his many goals during his administration. In order to do this, he must come up with innovative and extraordinary tactics to accomplish this lofty goal.

Empowering women with education and resources is one of the most effective ways to ensure that more children are being cared for properly and more mouths are being fed. Since it is common in many societies for women to be the caretakers of the children and the household, we need to provide them with the knowledge and education that will allow them to pursue better opportunities for themselves and their families.

Sign the petition asking President Obama to take a step toward eradicating world hunger by empowering women worldwide with better education and resources for life.

Blessings!

Ronell x

“We must go, live to feed the hungry.. Stand beside the broken, we must go.. Stepping forward, keep us from just singing.. Move us into action, we must go” {Tim Hughes, God of Justice}

Support the Greater Good Network

I have written many posts about the various sites, online shops and causes supported or owned by the Greater Good network. Today’s post is supporting this network as a whole, rather than posting on a specific aspect or cause that they support. GreaterGood.org is an independent charitable organisation devoted to improving the health and well-being of people, animals, and the planet. They achieve this by providing funding to other registered charitable organisations that focus on core areas including:

•               Alleviating and addressing the root causes of world hunger and food insecurity, and promoting peaceful co-existence;

•               Early detection and treatment of breast cancer and other widespread health concerns, particularly in women;

•               Preventing and treating childhood illness, disease and other children's health and well-being concerns;

•               Promoting children's literacy and education;

•               Protecting and restoring the environment; and

•               Providing care and feeding of rescued animals in shelters and sanctuaries and addressing the root causes of their conditions.

GreaterGood.org grants funds generated through its Gifts That Give More™ program and the GreaterGood Network family of websites to the nonprofit partners and charities responsible for implementing and sustaining the programs described on the GreaterGood Network websites. GreaterGood.org also provides grants directly to worthwhile organisations dedicated to the welfare of the global community.

You can donate to the Greater Good Network online. If you are unable to donate financially, you can go to the following of the Greater Good Network sites to make a free click, which then prompts the online sponsors to donate to that cause:

The Hunger Site: Your click gives the value of 1.1 cups of food to the hungry.

The Breast Cancer Site: Your click helps a woman in need get a free mammogram.

The Animal Rescue Site: Your click gives the value of 0.6 bowls of food for rescued animals.

The Veteran Site: Your click helps a homeless and hungry veteran get a free meal.

The Autism Site: Your click helps provide therapy for children living with autism and their families.

The Child Health Site: Your click helps provide a child 
with lifesaving health care.

The Literacy Site: Your click helps give a child in need 
a book to read and treasure.

The Rainforest Site: Your click helps protect 
11.4 square feet of rainforest habitat for wildlife.

Blessings!

Ronell x

“The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball - the further I am rolled the more I gain.” {Susan B. Anthony}

Send a FREE e-card to promote awareness and generate funding

So in the spirit of Christmas, I would like to recommend sending a free e-card (instead of paper Christmas cards) to your friends and family. These cards can both promote and raise awareness for a cause that you are passionate about, and are often sponsored, which means that it does not cost you anything to send them, but the sponsor donates to the related cause on your behalf!

The e-cards that I am suggesting are The Hunger Site e-cards. You can send cards from: The Hunger Site, The Breast Cancer Site, The Animal Rescue Site, The Veterans Site, The Autism Awareness Site, The Child Health Site, The Literacy Site or The Rainforest Site, dependent on the cause that you are passionate about promoting and supporting.

The categories you can choose from include:

·      Christmas

·      Animals

·      Favourites

·      Inspirational

·      Thinking Of You

·      Special Occasions

·      Blank

·      Promote The Cause

·      E-Cards That Give

So send an e-card to your friends and family today to support the work of The Greater Good Network.

Blessings!

Ronell x

“Awareness without action is worthless.” {Phil McGraw}

Gifts that keep giving: The Hunger Site Store

One of the first organisations I blogged about was The Greater Good Network’s The Hunger Site: free clicks for food! Today, I am posting about The Hunger Site Store for gifts that keep giving.

Each of the items that you buy on this site funds at least 25 cups of food to feed the hungry. So far, 824,909,397 cups of food have been been given to feed the hungry! They do absolutely gorgeous jewellery and other gifts that I can highly recommend. I own a lot of their jewellery and particularly love the jewellery with inspirational messages on (Christian and otherwise). I have also bought many gifts from this site.

You can even buy Christmas decorations or lovely stocking fillers from this site!

Also check out their Daily Deal for great offers!

Make a difference this Christmas by buying ethically sourced gifts that keep giving!

Blessings!

Ronell x

“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” {James 2:14-18 }

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}

The Animal Rescue Site: Adopt a Shelter Dog Month!

Linking to yesterday's post about providing free care and food for shelter animals (http://365days2changetheworld.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-animal-rescue-site-free-clicks-to.html?m=1), today's post (also from The Animal Rescue Site) is about giving a 'forever home' to a lonely shelter pet!
So The Animal Rescue Site has declared October to be 'Adopt a Shelter Dog Month' this year! So what better time to head down to your local shelter and adopt a rescued dog (or cat!) to add to your family! (Obviously check with your parents/spouse/partner/house mates before doing this- I wouldn't want to cause any disturbances with my suggestions!)

Adding a dog to your household has plenty of benefits for you too!
- helps you to get outside and get some exercise
- provides companionship for you and your family
- can provide protection from intruders (I guess it depends on the breed of dog!)
- can alleviate stress and improve your mood
- can provide assistance for people with disabilities
(just to mention a few)

Don't worry if you can't adopt a pet this month (or at all), you can still help! You could foster animals while they are waiting for their 'forever home'; volunteer at a local rescue centre or shelter; make a donation to a shelter, kennel or animal care organization. In whatever way you can, pledge to help The Animal Rescue Site to promote their 'Adopt a Shelter Dog Month'! For more details or to pledge, go to: http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/campaign.faces?siteId=3&campaign=AdoptAShelterDogMonth

Some websites to look at for rescue shelters in the UK are:
www.battersea.org.uk
www.dogstrust.org.uk
www.rspca.org.uk
www.pets4homes.co.uk/adoption/
www.bluecross.org.uk

Thank you for helping homeless dogs in whatever way you can! Remember to click on The Animal Rescue Site's 'Click Here to Give - it's FREE' button (http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=2&link=ctg_bcs_home_from_ths_home_sitenav
), 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 Animal Rescue 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 feeding rescued animals! The Animal Rescue Site has given over 564,256,462 bowls of food since 2002 (figure updated monthly)!

Blessings!

Ronell x

"Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the ocean depths. You care for people and animals alike, O Lord" {Psalm 36v6}

The Animal Rescue site: Free clicks to Feed Animals in Shelters!

This is another site run by The GreaterGood Network. It is pretty much the same principle as The Hunger Site and The Breast Cancer Site free clicks, except that it supports centers that rescue abused and abandoned animals by giving them free food.

‘The Animal Rescue Site’ is a charitable site that sells a whole host of items that donate to supporting the centers for abandoned and abused rescue animals. It also has a lot of excellent information on different causes that need supporting and how we can help.

According to the RSPCA’s latest figures, "130,033 animals were rescued, seized or signed over to the RSPCA" in the UK in 2010 (http://www.politicalanimal.org.uk/faqs/faq-category-3/how-many-animals-do-the-rspca-rescue-or-seize-last-year).

M.A.D. (an American charity: http://www.makeadifferencerescue.org/tag/animal-rescue-statistics/)  released the following statistics for America on their site: “6 to 8 million lost and unwanted animals enter animal shelters nationwide annually... 3 to 4 million animals are euthanized in shelters every year, well over 250,000 per month… the leading cause of death of healthy dogs and cats is euthanasia”. As you can see, there are a lot of vulnerable animals that need to be fed and cared for! You can help with this for free!

One of my favourite features (which I use every day that I log onto the internet using my laptop) is ‘daily free clicks’. Basically, you visit http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=2&link=ctg_bcs_home_from_ths_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 Animal Rescue 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 feeding rescued animals! The Animal Rescue Site has given over 564,256,462 bowls of food since 2002 (figure updated monthly)!

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 Animal Rescue Site (http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=3&link=ctg_ars_home_from_bcs_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 Animal Rescue Site), they will make an extra donation to the cause when you sign up.

Thank you click sponsors!

Blessings!

Ronell x

“Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.” {Proverbs 12:10}

The Hunger Site: Free Clicks for Free Food!

**Remember Sainsbury’s Million Meal Appeal today and tomorrow** (http://365days2changetheworld.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/fareshare-sainsbury-meal-appeal.html)

**Remember The Awake Arise conference today** (http://365days2changetheworld.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/awake-arise-conference-preston-6th.html)

In the past few years I stumbled upon a fantastic site called ‘The Hunger Site’. It is a charitable site that sells a whole host of items that donate to good causes. It also has a lot of excellent information on causes that need supporting and how we can help.

One of my favourite features (which I use every day that I log onto the internet using my laptop) is ‘daily free clicks’. Basically, you visit http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=1 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!Hungersite gives 100% of sponsor advertising fees to their charitable partners. The Hunger Site has given over 846,104,458 cups of food since June 1999 (figure updated monthly).

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 www.hungersite.com 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 Hunger Site), they will make an extra donation to the cause when you sign up.

Over the next few days, I will be promoting the different ‘Click Here to Give - it's FREE’ buttons for the hunger site to increase the chances of people finding this amazing site! For those of you reading regularly, I apologise for the repetition!

Thank you click sponsors!

Blessings!

Ronell x

“Whoever gives to the poor will not want, but he who hides his eyes will get many a curse.” {Proverbs 28v27}