Make a New Year's Resolution Worth Keeping

A friend on Facebook recently posted: "What's your favorite New Year's resolution that you actually kept...and...GO!!..." Of course, the answers she got back ranged from the serious to the silly: 

• Drink more wine
• Setting up plans with people I said I'd make plans with the prior year
• Try to drive the speed limit (It seems this friend felt she drove too slowly)
• To get rid of toxic things in life
• To love more and judge less
• Never to make resolutions
• To fight poverty

I guess it comes as no surprise to anyone that the last one was my answer. That same poverty-fighting goal has been a Lenten promise, a New Year's resolution, and any number of self-improvement plans for me over the years. Sometimes my methods differ from year to year, but it's rooted in the same desire to put me on the track to end poverty and suffering in the world. The trick is always to keep the motivation up to make real change for such a big problem. I've written about that before...how it's hard to keep fighting the battles we need to fight continuously.

Here's my observation about resolutions and promises to oneself. They can be cyclical. They can be repetitive. It might take a while for them to stick or you might make the same promise in a different way. But the resolutions and promises should be absolutely worth doing. To me, what is more worthwhile than making systematic change to the world we live in to save lives? I plan to keep chipping away at the senseless deaths of children and mothers in poverty. I'll keep working to get more kids in school worldwide. I'll lift my voice to feed the hungry in my country and in others.

Whatever your goal is this year...make it a good one. Make a plan, find support, stay focused, seek inspiration, take action. Don't give up. And if you do? Make the promise again. 

So, I doubt that you are wondering, but in case you want to know my resolution for this year? To fight poverty...harder.

What is your resolution this year and - most importantly - how do you plan to keep it?

Need a Last Minute, Heartfelt Gift? Charities to the Rescue!

Help! You forgot someone on your Christmas gift list and it's the week of Christmas and you hate the mall parking situation and there is no time to mail anything and...ahhhhh!

Or maybe you just like giving thoughtful gifts that don't require using Earth's resources to pack and ship objects.

Is this you?

It's okay. Sit down. Have some tea. Or wine. Anti-Poverty Mom has got you covered. Here are some wonderful charities for international giving that will help you out by sending a holiday email notification that you made a donation in honor of your recipient. They are in no particular order because I love them all. You'll show how much you care about your loved ones and the world. Plus, it will make it look like you planned it all along!

Kiva
This is a neat charity gift because it's super interactive and really not a "charity" at all. Kiva leverages the internet and a worldwide network of microfinance institutions to let you lend as little as $25 directly to an individual in poverty to help them start a business. The recipient uses your money to earn more money, then pays you back, so you can loan it out again. 

Kiva electronic gift cards are a great way to introduce your friends and family to microlending, giving them the opportunity to choose borrowers to support. The best part is that when their loans are repaid, they can use those funds again and again to make even more loans on Kiva. It's really a gift that keeps on giving!

By the way, the digital Kiva card can even be scheduled to be sent in the future, so if you're like me and frequently miss birthdays, this might be a good opportunity to get all set for the next year as well! Woo-hoo!

Heifer International 
If you have heard people refer to giving or getting a "goat" for Christmas before, this is probably what folks were talking about. Heifer lets you sponsor livestock (everything from chickens to water buffalo) to be given to people in rural areas living in poverty. Rather than giving a food handout that lasts only a small amount of time, Heifer gives animals and husbandry training to not only help the recipient family in the long run, but hopefully the community around them. 

The core of the model is "passing on the gift." Families share the training they receive and pass on the first female offspring of their livestock to another family. It extends the impact of the original gift, allowing a once impoverished family to become donors and full participants in improving their community.

Now, down to the nitty gritty of gift giving. Giving with Heifer is also nice in that you can decide how to send the gift: email, Facebook message, text message, postal mail, or printing a card at home. Maximum flexibility of delivery. Cool!

Samaritan's Purse
You might know Samaritan's Purse from the famous "Operation Christmas Child" project they run where folks are invited to donate a shoebox full of useful items like toys, hygiene items, and school supplies for a child in need. But I learned during the Ebola crisis that they do so much more than that. They are also a skilled and competent organization of first responders in the face of disaster in developing nations. They have responded admirably to the Ebola crisis, the Nepalese Earthquake, human trafficking, and are currently responding to the refugee crisis in Europe. Samaritan's Purse is a Christian organization, so it seems to me that it is a perfect charity to support in celebration of the birth of Christ.

Samaritan's Purse lets you send an email card or download a card for face to face giving. 

Partners in Health

"We go. We make house calls. We build health systems. We stay."

What I love about Partners in Health is summed up in that one statement that ends with "we stay." Partners in Health is a organization of health care providers that truly treats communities as partners. While they do end up as first responders sometimes, as in the case with the 2010 Haitian earthquake, their model is to work with the people they are helping and not leave when an initial crisis has passed. 

Whether to Liberia, Rwanda, or any of the countries they work and live, they go where they’re needed most. They care for patients in their homes and communities. They work in close partnership with local government officials and the world’s leading medical and academic institutions to build capacity and strengthen health systems. And they stay, committed to accompanying the people and communities they serve for the long term.

Partners in Health will send an email to your gift recipient with a link to a lovely image like the one shown that I received from my dear friend and fellow RESULTS leader Richard Smiley.

Have you got a favorite charity that will do electronic cards? Do tell!!!

Share it with us in the comments!

My Letter to Santa This Year

My kids and I wrote letters to Santa this month. I know that seems like an odd activity for a household raising Jewish kids, but it was part of Macy's "Believe" campaign for the Make a Wish Foundation. For every letter to Santa that Macy's received, they donated a dollar to Make a Wish. They are still accepting letters online through Christmas Eve, so if you would like to participate, please do!

However, it got my older daughter and I thinking and we thought we could share the love even further. We wrote this letter to the editor together today and she is submitting it. Who can say whether it will actually be published, but I wanted to share it with all of you in case you'd like to use the idea with your own newspaper this week!

Dear Santa,  

I know you have a lot of toys and video games, but do you have any vaccines for polio and measles? Because so many kids need them. Only 1 in 5 children in the world get the immunizations they need for preventable diseases. Over 1.6 million kids will die before they are 5 years old from treatable and preventable illnesses. I work on these issues all year, asking Congresswoman Ann Wagner and Senators Blunt and McCaskill to sign onto legislation like the Reach Every Mother and Child Act (H.R. 3706 and S. 1911) and other bills that help babies and kids around the world, but I think they need a little help. You’re kind of an expert on overnight miracles, right? Could you deliver some of those medicines in your sleigh, too? That way we could skip all the hard work of distribution through the "cold chain," trying to keep the vaccines cold while delivering them on trucks and bicycles. Plus, you could give the day off to all the doctors and volunteers who give the vaccines!

No matter what religion you observe, I hope you consider writing your own letter to Santa, either to your newspaper or to Macy's, to help us spread the love for all children throughout the world.

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12/22/15  Happy to report that the St Louis Post-Dispatch printed the letter today. So, letters to Santa are now a legitimate tool for generating media!

P.S. Santa also reads my blog or his mail from Macy's! I did get that Dr. Who box set. I assume that children are also getting vaccines from him as well :)