Give The Gift of Hope

After the mass killings last week, I had so much to say, so much feeling, that I had intended to write it all down but honestly, there are much better writers out there than me, and I doubt I could say saything that has not already been said so many times. I also think the sooner we stop paying attention to this as a nation the sooner these poor families can begin the long road down recovery from grief.

Having said that, I would like to offer a little different approach. Each Christmas I make it a point to "nag" all of you to take a minute to look at this wonderful site and this year, hopefully our hearts are feeling particularly generous.

It is The Hunger Site. This is a unique organization that allows you to give, over the course of time, large amounts of charity to those in need without costing you a dime, simply less than a minute of your time each day, a little bit at a time.

Organizations like World Wildlife Fund, Novica, ASPCA, booksfirst.org, and many more are all involved in this one site, which is set up to make it easy for all of us. I will probably over explain this (as I am known to do) but it really is quite simple.

If you sign up, no cost, no email selling, they send you a reminder email daily, with a link, to their site.  The link takes you to the main site where you see a button that says "click to give food". Immediately after you click you are taken to the sponsor page which is a simple page with a list of sponsors on it. If you choose to ignore it fine, if not and you buy something from the sponsors your donation is doubled, tripled, or whatever they donate. Then you go to the top of the page and you will see tabs for sites including hunger, breast cancer, animals, veterans, autism, child health, literacy and rainforest. You then click a tab and go through the same process. Personally, I can click each tab, hit the donate button and get through all of them in less than one minute. After you click they tell you at the top what your click gave. Today I gave 1.1 cups of food to the hungry, helped a woman pay for a momogram, fed one animal and one veteran a meal, gave a few minutes of therapy to an autistic child, helpd buy a child a book and saved 11 square feet of rainforest.

Here is the catch; there is none. You click and at the end of each month the sponsors see how many clicks there were and pay the site per click so the more people do this the more is given. (you can only click once a day so you don't have to feel bad for not doing this multiple times) If you buy from their store or a sponor it can be a lot more but you don't have to do a thing but click to give.

Now one cup of food doesn't seem like a lot, but I do this ever day so that is 365 cups of food I have given this year for doing basically nothing, and if you multiply that by the several people I have convinced this year to do the same, the next thing you know there is  a village of children with food I their bellies each day, or several women being screened for breast cancer, or even several acres of rainforest that is now protected. And it takes less than a minute a day. Oh and each tabbed site has petitions you can sign, anonomously, to further a cause.

I was skeptical when I saw this so I did a boatload of research on the company and the places the money goes to and found that not only is this site ranked on of the best charities in the US, but 100% of the donated funds from the sponsors goes to charity...all of it. Then I looked into the charities and found they are the best and the most efficient around. If you want more info just dig around the site, there are vertical tabs with all the info you need but you can believe me this is a heck of a way to give something daily with minimal effort and no cost to you.

So this Christmas, give the world a gift. Sign up here to be added to the reminder list and take 60 seconds a day to click click click to givebooks, food, education, medicine shelter to animals, children, women and veterans...just give.

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and Namaste to everyone, our beliefs vary, but we all have the same goal; peace, love and happiness for all.