While we get ready for the holidays, it’s always good to remember that people need to look out for each other more than ever. These five organizations help mothers and families around the world. From local efforts to collect diapers and get homeless families into more permanent housing and work to effort to help families in Niger and refugees from Darfur feed their families, we can all lend a helping hand in out own communities and a to families across the globe.
The Solar Cooker Project from Jewish World Watch help the women of Darfur safely cook for their families in the refugee camps. This program has developed a sustainable project to give refugees from Darfur a safe way to cook for their families. When women and children leave the camps to gather firewood for cooking they are often victims terrible violence. The Solar Cooker Project provides 2 cookers for each family and training and jobs for women to learn to manufacture the cookers. A $30 donate provides two cookers for a mother to harness the power of the sunlight to safely provide nourishment for her family.
Help a Mother Out (HAMO) provides a very basic necessity, diapers for mothers on food stamps. The idea of getting through a day without enough diapers sounds horrible. HAMO collects diapers and gets them to the mothers and babies that need them. HAMO began in the spring of 2009 in SF, launched in LA this holiday season and hopes to expand across the country.
Imagine LA pairs religous organization with homeless families to help them get work and back into safe housing with more long lasting permanent solutions. The founders of Imagine LA discovered that the number of religious institutions in LA equals the number of homeless families. If each church, synagogue and other places of worship sponsored one homeless family they would take the step to helping the homeless population on Souther California get into more permanent housing with the resources for them to go to work and their children to go to school. The next goal is to help this model for communities taking meaningful action to end homelessness would be replicated across the country.
Help a child be successful in the classroom and you will help their future and the future for their family. Donors Choose is a simple idea, let teachers make request for what they need for their students and let donors pick which projects they want to support. One of the best perks of these donations is getting a personal note from the teachers and the kids about how the donations helped their class. One friend helped buy a set of books for a class to do a project called Mousing Around with “The Tale Of Despereaux”. The teacher wrote to say that the donation helped her class have a greater interest in reading.
Photo of the Solar Cooker Project by Barbara Grover for Jewish World Watch
Sponsored Links
