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Wednesday, November 02, 2005

A New Blog to Check Out - at least to me

Jen on Blogging Baby has a neat post today about Christmas giving and referenced the following:

http://daycaredaze.blogspot.com/

This lady goes by the name of Mary P. (guess what the P. stands for). She's a caregiver in Ontario, Canada who talks a lot about love and compassion with much humor mixed in.

I read the last four or five of her posts. I think she's the first caregiver (as opposed to parent) I've stumbled across online. She brings a different perspective.

Her latest post discussed ways we can help the less fortunate among us at Christmas (or any other time for that matter). She listed some organizations and her commenters had other suggestions. I added the following:

http://www.heifer.org/

For any who might not know, Heifer Int'l provides animals (not just heifers although that's how they started) to communities in poverty stricken areas. Two goats, properly cared for, can provide revenue for a community to survive. They also produce more goats. A flock of chickens can produce food and revenue for generations. Pigs, cows, and seed crops can turn a starving village around. Heifer, Int'l provides training as well. The link gives details. My church has supported them for years. The old cliche about teaching a person to fish isn't any less true because it's a cliche.

So many of wonder what we can do to help. Many of these organizations are totally legitimate, run on a shoestring with low administrative costs, and make good use of every $ they receive.

I spend a lot of time ranting about "conditions". This is a more positive approach. It's called "putting my money (or time or whatever I can contribute) where my mouth is".

While I'm being thankful in this holiday season for my family and relative good fortune, I must remember that not everyone enjoys the blessings I have received.

3 comments:

Nicole said...

Hi Ann,

Isn't Mary wonderful? She did a post about a week ago about how she maintains a (separate, password-protected, updated daily) blog for the parents of the children she cares for, full of what they did during the day, cute anecdotes, etc., and how only a few of them bother to look. How bizarre.

For an easy way to help good causes with no cost to you, I recommend www.grid.org. If you have a PC, you can download this little doodad that uses the energy your computer isn't currently using to do work for cancer researchers and others. Very cool.

Granny said...

I was replying to her post the apathy from parents when your comment showed up here. Told her if I still had kids in daycare with a way to read about their day as it happened, I'd probably never get any work done for obsessively checking the blog every few minutes.

I have Windows XP so I'm sure www.grid.org will work. I'll post it as well since links don't want to come through as links here but they usualy will on the post. Strange.

Thanks

Gawdessness said...

Now I have to check her out too!
We are going to be helping to buy a goat this Christmas and in years past we have bought chickens and put money towards a llama.
Heifer int'l. is great.