10 Bite-Size Ways to Help by Talking

1. Call a grandparent to say “I love you.”
2. Call (don’t text, DM, tweet, etc.) a friend you haven’t talked to in a week or more to see how they’re doing.
3. Write one Facebook post about an accomplishment or positive trait of your husband. Better yet, tell him directly.
4. Write a letter to yourself, as if you were someone else, expressing your love and appreciation.
5. Write your own obituary. Pretend you’ve lived a long, full life, and write down the qualities and accomplishments you hope people you will remember you for. Make a goal to do the kind of actions that demonstrate those qualities once a day every day starting today.
6. Write your own family manifesto. Check out Isabel Kallman’s for an example.
7. Visit an organization that serves children removed from the custody of one or more of their parents, like The Christmas Box House, a group home, or a women’s shelter. See if you can spend one hour with a few of the kids, hear their stories, and share some encouraging words.
8. Ask a question like, “If you could be any character on TV, who would it be?” at the dinner table, and see what conversation ensues. See this post about conversation jars for more question ideas.
9. Strike up a conversation with at least two people you haven’t met before at your next church or school meeting.
10. Ask your cashier at the grocery store how they’re doing next time you go grocery shopping, and listen to their answer.

How Will You Give to Others This Week?

• Have you ever done any of these things? How did it go?
• What other acts of service have inspired you?
• How have others given to you this week and what difference has that made in your life?

How Else Can You Make a Difference This Season?

• Commit to do one act of kindness/service based on the week’s challenge.
• Leave a comment with ideas relating to the week’s challenge as well as your experience(s) performing it.

You see, fourteen years ago, Lee was raising her three small children and beginning a seven-year battle with a rare form of lung cancer. According to Wikipedia, she had previously given her then husband, Emery Rhodes, glass blowing lessons, and in them he created small glass cups, or “baby glasses,” which she would light with tea light candles to find solace during the difficult cancer treatments. Her friends started asking for them, so she hired local glassblowers in 1998 to produce more “glassybaby,” and began selling them out of her garage. In 2001, the Glassybaby company was officially formed, with the small, but durable, and colorful glass votives as their sole product.

Four years later, Martha Stewart received some glassybaby as a gift, and decided to have Lee appear on her show, and sales increased dramatically. In 2007, glassybaby moved to a studio and retail shop in Seattle’s Madrona neighborhood. In 2009, they opened two more stores in Seattle and a store in New York, and Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos purchased a large stake in the company because he was so passionate about the product. By 2010, sales hit $4 million and were up 50% from the year before. Sales grew more than 30% in 2011, despite the fact that naysayers said a company with a handmade product and goodwill mission would fail. Earlier this year, 2012, Lee was named Entrepreneur of 2011 by Entrepreneur magazine, the first woman to have won that award.

Needless to say, meteoric success has played an important role in this story. But what is more fundamental to its meaning, is the fact that, since its beginning, part of Lee’s vision has been for glassybaby to bring peace to others, not only through the warm light the candles emanate when lit from within, but also through actual donations made by the company to various nonprofits related to health, healing, and quality of life. They make those donations in three ways: 1) giving 10% of the gross sales of certain glassybaby directly to charities or organizations chosen each year, 2) donating the use of their studio and “hot shop” to nonprofits, and 3) donating glassybaby to different charitable organizations to both decorate their fundraising events and to auction off the glassybaby to support their cause.

The ultimate motivation behind all of this is that, during her cancer treatments, Lee met many other patients who could not afford even daily needs such as bus fare, childcare, or groceries. Today, most of the money donated by glassybaby goes directly toward meeting those basic needs. To date, Lee’s company has donated more than $900,000. The more glassybaby sold, the more money is given away to charity, with the eventual goal being to give away 10% of all revenue (as opposed to profits) to charities.

Like Megan Faulkner Brown, who we talked about recently, Lee has tasted not only the sweetness of success but of service. She says, “The reason I do this is to give back. We believe that if you commit to your mission, people will commit to you. Our mission is to help people find what they need to heal. We have built a community that loves and shares our mission.” And as she’s done so, she’s built a life that bespeaks triumph over the challenges that used to beleaguer her: summiting Mount Kilamanjaro last year after surviving cancer, and building a successful, charitable company despite the odds.

Did you know as recently as the 1970s, the average American belonged to half-dozen or more civic organizations that did volunteer work in their communities? Lions Clubs, the Masons, Rotaries, Chambers of Commerce, etc. Today, we’re lucky to be involved with even one. It’s no wonder everyone joins social media sites like crazy; we miss that connection, not to mention the opportunities for doing social good.

I’m one of those people who doesn’t have much outside organizational involvement, I admit. But when choosing a church for my family, one of the conditions for me was that the church “walked the walk,” instead of just talking the talk. My church does many outreach activities, including a monthly dinner at a homeless shelter. This outreach is particularly dear to me. As a recovering alcoholic, I know that the ranks of the homeless are filled with addicts who haven’t been able to find recovery, and reaching out to them with this dinner has helped me connect with them and serve as proof that recovery is possible. Helping the homeless has actually become a family issue; my husband does outreach and photography of the homeless here in Philadelphia as well.

But I haven’t stopped there. Because of my large social media footprint, I try to use that for social good as well. I help promote a variety of women and children related non-profit organizations, particularly those that focus on women’s health. It’s not the same as being hands-on, I realize that, but sometimes it’s better than nothing.

I want to instill social responsibility in my daughter; I’ve considered taking her to the homeless dinner but, unfortunately, the facility isn’t zoned for children. But I talk with her about helping people, about how important it is to reach out a hand and help whenever you can. One of the (very small) things I’ve done is helping her pick out (gently used) clothes and toys to give to our local battered women and children’s shelter. She loves knowing that her “stuff” is going to other kids in need. I’m not sure you can teach generosity, but I’m going to give it a shot.

I wish I could do more; as is typical today, time is at a premium. I work hard, and make my family a priority, and it can be hard to remember that there are plenty of families in need out there, too. One of the ways that I’ve managed to free up my time has been to make sure I keep myself focused and organized; it’s one of the great gifts that working with a startup (that happens to focus on organization!) has given me.

What are you doing to teach your children about social responsibility?

Featured image courtesy of Flickr.

Cecily Kellogg is the mom of near six-year-old daughter, a wife, and the social media strategist for AboutOne, an online family organizer that turns your phone into a remote control for your life, working with your existing calendar and contact tools so you can automatically organize, store, and share family memories and household paperwork. Through web and mobile apps, AboutOne guides you along the path to organization, rewarding you along the way for meeting your organizational goals.

Ten Bite-Size Alternatives to the Traditional Bake Sale

1. Ask your favorite bakery what they do with their day-old cookies. If they tend to have a lot of leftovers, give them the phone number of your favorite children’s charity to facilitate a donation of the cookies by the bakery to the charity. This makes a win-win-win situation for all: the bakery doesn’t waste all those cookies, the children get cookies, and you get an easy opportunity to serve.
2. Send some cookies or brownies to someone who needs a pick-me-up, in an Imperial Sugar Bake-It-Forward tin.
3. Buy something at a Great American Bake Sale near you.
4. Sign up to host a Great American Bake Sale.
5. Call your nearest assisted living center, and see if they would be okay with you bringing a plate of cookies in for their residents.
6. Use Facebook or Twitter to get a few friends to do a virtual/IRL “bake-off” with you, where you each make some sweet treats, take them to a neighbor or friend in need, and then “meet” together after to see how many people your positive actions affected.
7. Offer a giveaway on your blog to the person who bakes the most yummy or unique things for others.
8. Buy a special cupcake from the Sweet Tooth Fairy, to help prevent bullying.
9. Bake some brownies and leave a couple on a coworker’s desk, perhaps anonymously.
10. Like five food blogs today.

How Will You Give to Others This Week?

• Have you ever done any of these things? How did it go?
• What other acts of service have inspired you?
• How have others given to you this week and what difference has that made in your life?

How Else Can You Make a Difference This Season?

• Commit to do one act of kindness/service based on the week’s challenge.
• Leave a comment with ideas relating to the week’s challenge as well as your experience(s) performing it.

Sophia is a wife and mother of three boys, the oldest of whom passed away in 2002 from heart disease and idic-15 at the ripe old age of eight. She says, “This loss and its effects on our family ignited a passion in us to inspire others with the courage and love that our son lived out on a daily basis. We committed to making proactive choices to fully celebrate this awesome life, our daily miracles, and the incredible opportunities we have, right where we are, to impact others for greatness.” To do that, she took up painting again, something she’d gotten a degree and ran a business in, and began teaching and speaking, with the Stonecroft Women’s Connections. Because she was still raising two young boys, she decided to also get certified as a corporate wellness coach so that she could help others through speaking, but stay local.

As a speaker, she says, “[I] discovered our story gave [me] a better understanding of others, and the damage that stress and loss can have on our physical health and energy.” So, in 2006, she launched YourDaringLife “to empower others [to make] positive choices, preventive choices to grab the reins and take charge of their own physical health, and lifestyle choices to celebrate life, taking time for what’s really important,” and tapping in to what makes each person unique. She has also published five books and one e-book, some about life with boys, some about loss, and others about living life to its fullest potential. All of them incorporate her own artwork.

It is true that most of us tend to go through life focusing on getting through, or raising the kids, or paying the bills, and glimpsing our true potentials. Our true potentials are the way life would be if we used all of our brain cells, fully realized and cultivated all of our talents, and not only felt proud of, but acted upon, the things that make us unique. It’s difficult to truly try to reach our true potential. It can take a lot of time and introspection. But the beauty of the life that can be lived on the other side, doing those things, is so worth it. That is obviously something Sophia knows, because she expresses it repeatedly in her posts. She must be content in life. She is, after all, a creative blogger.

Ruby’s birth describes her wild-haired ways perfectly, and it also cemented my love for mothers; moms who struggle, not just with birth, but with life. Moms are the glue of most families; the sticky part that holds everything together. Moms, those people who in just a few short days have an entire Sunday created to celebrate their special ways.

Typically, Mother’s Day brings in homemade cards, candles, and maybe even an extra nap. But last year, I decided to ask for (and give!) the moms in my life something different. I decided to celebrate women by giving a gift that helps others.

See, even during my roadside delivery, I had access to more resources than many women in different parts of the world. In the United States, a clean and sterile place to have a baby is expected. However, in Papua New Guinea, this isn’t so. In fact, in Papua New Guinea, the maternal death rate is 1 out of 7.

This statistic demanded blogger Adriel Booker’s attention, and quickly Adriel hatched a plan to start the Bloggers for Birth Kits initiative.

Bloggers for Birth Kits encourages bloggers all over the world to unite and spread the word about an easy way to get involved and help moms of Papua New Guinea. Clean Birth Kits contain simple items that can be purchased at a local pharmacy, or for $10.00, five complete Birth Kits can be donated in honor of the special mother in your life.

What’s in these Birth Kits? Take a peek.

So, if you are looking for an original way to celebrate motherhood, click here and read about inexpensive kits that change lives.

Does anyone else have a crazy birth story to share?

Featured image courtesy of Flickr.

Can one beyond blessed family move from addicted to themselves to devoted to others? The author of this post shares honestly at Amy L. Sullivan about her family’s attempt to become less me, me, me focused and more others centered. Amy writes for print and online publications and is also writing a nonfiction book about serving others as a family.

10 Bite-Size Ideas for Helping Through Reading

1. Ask your child’s teacher if, during Teacher Appreciation Week, your child and his or her classmates can do one 30-minute to 1-hour long service project for the teacher, whether it be cleaning the classroom windows and desktops, organizing files, or taking out the recycling bin. It is often through bits of service, done as a team, that the kids better understand their teachers and the work they do. Consider reading to the class as they work, or hiding large word strips around the classroom for the kids to find by cleaning/organizing and can put together to read a rewarding message.
2. Contact your schools’ PTA representative and volunteer to help out for an hour or two on Field Day.
3. Find out when and where the next Taste of the Nation Culinary Event is taking place (they take place all over the country), and attend one, making sure to read the menu.
4. Go to Scholastic or Amazon right now, and let each of your kids choose two new books that they’d like to read. Choice is often a strong motivating factor in getting kids to read.
5. Visit your local library with your kids, or if you don’t like your local library, find out if there is a better one from which you can purchase a library card. Consider spicing your families’ visit up by thinking of several book titles beforehand that they can locate, and then solve a puzzle by rearranging the words of the titles or find a few words in each book to put together and make a fun message.
6. Read these tips on how to monitor your teen’s online activities.
7. “Like” your favorite author’s Facebook page.
8. Tweet or write a blog or Facebook post about how reading or literacy has blessed your life.
9. Donate $10 through DonorsChoose.org to help purchase some Sammy Keyes books for Ms. Chamberlain’s fifth-grade Florida classroom, to help them get up to grade-level reading skills.
10. Have every member of your family write up a “job description” listing what they have to do every day. Your tween’s list might have items like: “getting dressed for school on time,” “making my bed,” and “getting my homework done.” Your three-year-old’s might list “going pee on the potty,” and “putting on my shoes.” This is their opportunity to list as much as they want, in either pictures or words. Write up one of your own for yourself if you want to. Then, around the dinner table, have everyone swap and read each other’s lists.

How Will You Give to Others This Week?

• Have you ever done any of these things? How did it go?
• What other acts of service have inspired you?
• How have others given to you this week and what difference has that made in your life?

How Else Can You Make a Difference This Season?

• Commit to do one act of kindness/service based on the week’s challenge.
• Leave a comment with ideas relating to the week’s challenge as well as your experience(s) performing it.

Julee Mobley, of AutismMomma.com, provides witty insight into her life with three kids, the oldest with PDD-NOS, and two step-kids. She supplies unique tips on helping an autistic child, a reading list for parents, and a document cache where parents of autistic children can buy or post specific documents that help them deal better with medical professionals, etc. When asked If there was one thing she would most like to see parents of “neurotypical,” non-autistic children do to help the autism community, in general or an autistic child specifically, she said, “When you see a child who is acting ”out of the norm,” stop and think about what might be causing that behavior. If my child is doing something weird, go ahead and ask me about it. Most parents of autism kids would love the support of other parents, and I’m not usually going to start the conversation, saying: “Hey, my kid has autism. That’s why he’s 11 years-old and swinging in the baby swing. . .cute, huh?”

Sabrina Freeman, Ph.D. is the AutismPundit. She is mother to an autistic child, a Stanford graduate, a 14-year advocate for the rights of children with autism to be included in the government-funded health-care system of British Columbia, Canada, and a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth’s 50th Golden Jubilee Medal for advocacy work done on behalf of children afflicted with autism. Her advocacy was instrumental in a famous Supreme Court of Canada ruling Auton (Guardian ad litem of) v. British Columbia in 2004. She has also published four books on autism-related topics, the latest of which is an up-to-date evaluation on the various treatment options. On her blog, she provides reviews of autism books and other media, as well as links to other helpful sites and blogs. When asked how parents of neurotypical children to help, she says, “I’d like those parents to say: ‘We very much want to see the child with autism integrated with our children in school. How can we make this work?’”

Emily Vanek, is the owner and editor-in-chief of ColoradoMoms.com. Her family consists of a husband and three sons, with their youngest child on the Autism Spectrum. Her site facilitates a support network of not only moms with autistic children, but also moms with special-needs children, and moms with “neurotypical” children, providing recipes, craft ideas, etc. In ColoradoMom’s Special Needs section, Emily talks openly about books, products, and apps that are particularly helpful for parents of autistic children. When she was asked about how others can help, she said, “Help end the “r” word. Teens and tweens use it as slang and it’s just unnecessary and hurtful.”

If you are the parent of an autistic child, these are great resources. If you are not, these are still good ways to familiarize yourself with the types of struggles that they go through, so that you can sympathize and help. There are many more helpful blogs out there than we could list. If you know of a good one, please let us know.

Feature photo courtesy of Flickr.

Daisy was, by all accounts, an imaginative, resourceful, somewhat eccentric woman. She was from an affluent, Savannahian family. She married William Mackay Low in 1886, but they had no children even after 15 years of marriage, and the relationship dissolved when her husband began drinking and openly carrying on an affair. During this time, she became partially deaf due to a grain of rice becoming lodged in her ear at her wedding, and a botched ear operation. She and her husband divorced in 1905, but he passed away shortly before it was finalized. She found herself alone in an era when society didn’t know what to do with women like her, and neither did she. But she frequently attended teas, balls, and other social gatherings, and it was at one of those gatherings that she met Sir Robert Bayden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts of America. It was in him that she gained a life-long friend, the inspiration and wherewithal to start the Girl Scouts of America, and a direction for her life.

Shannon’s book, On My Honor: Real Life Lessons from America’s First Girl Scout, while thorough enough to relate the above details about Daisy’s life, along with related stories and information found during Shannon’s research, is not an extensive biography; many of those have already been published. Instead, it loosely relates the story of her life with different aspects of the Girl Scout program, and then relates those aspects to important life lessons the girls of today are able to learn in Girl Scouts. Each of the book’s 10 chapters starts with an anecdote from Daisy’s life, beginning with her early youth, continuing more or less chronologically until her death, then discusses what life lesson her actions demonstrated, and then ends with Shannon sharing specific ways in which those life lessons are being taught or learned by the girls in her Madison, Wisconsin troop. In Chapter Seven, for example, we hear this example of Daisy’s resilience and spirit despite her hearing loss:

“One…time she was walking in Scotland near an overflowing stream. She had stopped along the way at a log she would need to use to cross over. Just then, a peddler came up, and she instantly prevailed upon him to help her across as she could not hear well. She insisted he start ahead of her with her following and holding onto his shoulder. The peddler tried to object, but Daisy would not respond to his pleas. When they had crossed to the other side, she thanked him and asked finally what he was trying to sell her. He replied that he was simply attempting to say…he was blind.”

Her physical challenges gave Daisy a good position to argue for equality and inclusivity among the Girl Scouts. Of course, this lesson is still very relevant today, as are the other lessons shared in Shannon’s valuable book. It is a book told in an occasionally casual but genuinely passionate voice, and it is in that voice that the book gains its uniqueness. And it is in using Daisy as the “main character,” with the current-day Girl Scouts of Shannon’s troop as “supporting characters,” that the book gains its compelling nature. Just as Shannon writes she didn’t want Daisy to die, I found that neither did I, nor did I want Shannon’s book to end.

Featured image courtesy of Flickr.

10 Bite-Size Ways to Give This Week

1. Give Scholarships Inc. a hand by looking at their website and suggesting five simple ways in which it can be improved. This opportunity is available through Sparked.com for four more days.
2. Give clothes or shoes you no longer wear to someone else via Freecycle.org, a nonprofit network that works to keep stuff out of landfills.
3. Give Leading Ladies of Legacy some of your expertise by designing a new ad for their Leadership Academy for Teen Girls. This opportunity is available through Sparked.com for one more week.
4. Give any unused or expired coupons you might have to the Overseas Coupon Program, which sends them to overseas military bases, where they can be used for up to six months past their expiration date to help military families save money.
5. Give extra thank-you cards to parents of your kids’ classmates so they can more easily prepare a Teacher Appreciation Week gift.
6. Give Dance Daze a minute by reading their annual fundraising letter and suggesting ways to make it more impactful. This opportunity is available through Sparked.com for one more week.
7. Give a Mothers’ Day or Fathers’ Day gift purchased on EarthFashions.com. All of the garments, blankets and accessories manufactured by this company are made with eco-yarns, which is a fabric produced with 100% environmentally friendly pre-consumer recycled fibers.
8. Give each of your children 15 minutes of your undivided attention.
9. Give some of your time, or your kids’, to play the Cerberus Mars game and help further scientific research into serious gaming.
10. Give a moment of your time to read a domestic abuse survivors’ story on Violence Unsilenced.

How Will You Give to Others This Week?

• Have you ever done any of these things? How did it go?
• What other acts of service have inspired you?
• How have others given to you this week and what difference has that made in your life?

How Else Can You Make a Difference This Season?

• Commit to do one act of kindness/service based on the week’s challenge.
• Leave a comment with ideas relating to the week’s challenge as well as your experience(s) performing it.