Tag: outreach

60 years of Trick or Treat for UNICEF

In high school, I would annually carry around my little orange box for Trick or Treat for UNICEF (at school mostly) and feel it slowly but surely fill up with spare change that would get donated to the organization. A few times, I actually went door-to-door as well.

UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund) is a global organization that saves kids’ lives in over 150 countries by providing clean water, nutrition, medicines, education and aid in emergencies (taken word-for-word from the UNICEF website). I found out that in 2005 kids set a record by collecting $18.25 MILLION in order to help kids affected by Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami (stat from here).  That’s a lot of donations!

Image from the UNICEF e-newsletter

Evidently, this year marks 60 years of the tradition. I found this out in my UNICEF e-mail newsletter today. This is remarkable! A small gesture that was started 60 years ago is continued even now by elementary, middle, and high schoolers, and of course adults.

I’ll be taking my 2 (very heavy) jars of change over to the Coin Star soon to donate them… Did you know that when you choose to donate it to charity Coin Star doesn’t take a percentage like they do when you just do it for yourself?

Get involved!

Monday Good Reads

I’m going to try to do a new thing here, and on Mondays recommend a book for all those keeping an eye out for a good read… something of substance.

My first Good Read has got to be a book that I was assigned for class last fall semester. It has recently come out in paperback and has also reached a spot on the NYT bestseller list, which means you can probably get a copy online for a good price :-D

Half the Sky is a compilation of true stories authors Nicholas D Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn have gathered in their years of world travel and investigation of the status of women worldwide. I follow Kristof’s blog on the New York Times and he has thought-provoking articles on all subjects, but women and poverty is one that he clearly takes to heart.

Half the Sky
Click the image to be taken to Amazon.com

Many have said that this book is difficult to get through–due to the subject matter, shocking at times. However, I found it inspiring in many cases and it gives me some direction when it comes to the big question– “what can I do to help in this world?” The answer I have found is aid my fellow women around the world. In addition to sponsoring a teenaged girl in Bangladesh, I am volunteering at a home for single mothers in my hometown (beginning soon).

Perhaps you will find some inspiration in this book? If you need a little more help, feel free to check out http://www.halftheskymovement.org/.

To the Nations

Over the past three weeks I have opened the heavy doors in the back of my mind and dusted off my web design boots. I haven’t worked on web sites since, oh, probably 2005 and boy am I rusty!  Anyway, back then I was totally an elitist and only designed sites in HTML and CSS. I am so humbled now that I have a hard time remembering things that used to come second nature to me. So I’m using the WYSIWYG site builder that comes with our web package.

That said, as part of my internship with the Missions director at my church, I have pieced together little by little a missions section for our church website. Every week I add new pages and new links to it and I’m actually becoming rather pleased with it. The first week was a struggle but now when I work on it every couple days I keep getting inspired and adding new things.

The main page is found here at Gateway Missions. We have a team going to Haiti (that I was on at one point until I realized I couldn’t realistically miss that much school) so I made a team HQ page here. Today I made this unimpressive little number–not so exciting on its own but I am enjoying adding more and more layers to this growing section of the site.

That, and I get to put some knowledge from my International Studies classes to work! Yay for real-life application of school idas!