Coming off the wonderful holiday season of receiving, we at Pink Chicken pledge to spend January thinking more about giving. When we take a minute to reflect we see that we live pretty amazing lives. We have strong families and friends, warm homes, opportunities to travel, modern conveniences, good health etc… I could go on and on. As a way of sharing our joy and expressing our gratitude, we do our best to give back to our community through charities that mean the most to us. We have long been supporters of Baby Buggy and Cookies for Kids Cancer, two organizations that stand out because of their commitment to helping mothers and children in need. Read more about at BabyBuggy.org and cookiesforkidscancer.org. Two more organizations that have piqued our interest lately are Every Mother Counts and the United Nations Girl Up campaign. Every Mother Counts, founded by our friend Christy Turlington Burns, is a non-profit organization working to reduce the number of women who die due to complications during pregnancy and childbirth. EMC does that by raising awareness about the fact that even in the 21st century, these deaths still take place and up to 98% of them are preventable. EMC currently supports programs in 7 countries around the world including the US that directly impact one of three critical barriers to maternal health around the world: lack of education, transportation and supplies.
www.everymothercounts.org highlights many ways in which you can help.
Girl Up is an innovative campaign of the United Nations Foundation. Girl Up strives to give American girls the opportunity to become global leaders and channel their energy and compassion to raise awareness and funds for United Nations programs that help some of the world’s hardest-to-reach adolescent girls. This past holiday season Girl Up ran a campaign called SchoolCycle where they successfully raised enough money to provide 550 girls in Malawi with bikes to help them travel the 10 miles to and from school quickly and safely. Breaking down the barriers to education faced by many girls worldwide is one of the biggest keys to women’s success. Go to
www.girlup.org to see how you and your family can become involved.
Hopefully one of these organizations will inspire you the way they have inspired us. It doesn’t matter how you volunteer, whether with your time, money, voice or supplies. Just do it, as they say.
