Planting a New Seed

January 22nd, 2013

Athens Campus Lions Club is part of Lions Club International, the largest service organization in the world. It is run by UGA college students. To visit our website and learn more, click here -> http://aclionsclub.com

We constantly strive to improve the Athens area community. Although founded less than 2 years ago, we have grown to over 60 members, and achieved more than we thought possible. We have planted over 65 trees on our local campus, helped host an international art exhibit, participated in vision walks, pancake breakfasts, and donated to several charities. We have created an organization that will last far beyond the 4 year college experience, one that will continue to give.

Volunteering is not dead with the older generation. We represent a new seed, similarly to the trees we have planted. Any support is greatly appreciated.

If you are interested in reading more about us click the link provided at the top of this post for other press, our missions statement, donations page, and other great stuff. Thanks

Athen's Campus Lion's Club

Athen's Campus Lion's Club

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Children of Domestic Violence

October 29th, 2012

Our focus at the Children of Domestic Violence Foundation is on helping those who experience childhood domestic violence. http://cdv.org/

With 45 million children and adults affected in the U.S. alone, the need for effective solutions is urgent.

Children of Domestic Violence has a unique action plan, designed to build and apply the most effective strategies and tools for inspiring positive change in those affected by childhood domestic violence. Our action plan consists of five key components, introducing unique, innovative, and varied solutions to the problem of childhood domestic violence:

•Research
•Advocacy
•Intervention Programs
•Support Services
•Education

We have enlisted the help of leading scholars and experts in the fields of childhood domestic violence, neuroscience, violence, family counseling, and personal development to guide our action plan. We are achieving concrete goals in each of the five key areas and continually expanding our work, as we build awareness and cultivate support from other dedicated organizations in the corporate and not-for-profit arenas, as well as caring and committed volunteers across the country.

cdv.org

cdv.org

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Baltimore Charity Programs Affect Change

September 29th, 2012

Baltimore has undergone a bit of a renaissance in community cooperation over the past several years. Crime and poverty are decreasing while education and graduation rates are increasing. There are many reasons why this is occurring, improvements in the job market, stronger police and political efforts, but none more telling than the activity of private community programs. Programs like CHOICES, UNITE, and many others have had direct impact on the Baltimore community. People like Carl Valenti (Entrepreneur, Currently residing in Pittsburgh, Pa. formerly of Baltimore, Md.) & Carmelo Anthony (NBA Star, Currently residing in New York, NY. formerly of Baltimore, Md.) have been a driving force in the charitable fiber in the background of projects for years.

In recent years profits from Mosaic Nightlife and Valenti Capital Management have been dedicated entirely to non-profit efforts. Carl has used his influence and relationships with some of the area’s most notable celebrities to create events and programs dedicated to improving life for youth within the city of Baltimore and surrounding areas. Carmelo has also been among the most charitable athletes in the world.

Carl Valenti and Carmelo Anthony in particular have even teamed up in the goal of empowering and providing opportunities for underserved children and families. Programs like The “H.O.O.D. Movement”, playground reconstruction projects and other projects from basketball camps, to youth groups to mentoring programs and assisting in gang violence reduction are making great strides. These two men both overcame extreme adversity and made something great out of themselves.

Although Mr. Valenti chooses to shy from the spotlight and does not give interviews because he believes charity for recognition is not true charity. Those that have worked with him though have more than enough good things to say, like program director Erik Wright with the H.O.O.D. program who praises his efforts:  “Carl is a machine, he is so passionate about affecting change and ensuring the youth have greater opportunities. He will give his last to a child he never met. It’s a blessing to have people like him helping our community. ”. His belief in giving time and money is proven through his actions.

In 2006, The Giving Back Fund, the premier philanthropic resource for the sports and entertainment communities, named Melo eighth on a list of 30 celebrity philanthropists in America in their “The Giving Back 30” report. He was the only basketball player on this list, and was joined in the top tier by celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Tiger Woods. Melo was recognized for making charitable donations in excess of $4 million for projects in communities across the nation.

We think the tipping point grant  (tippingpointgrant.org/) motto is the best way to sum up all these program’s viewpoints. The majority of these programs were born to expand the idea that a few can create a huge impact on many. This spotlight is to thank the programs, charities, Carmelo Anthony, Carl Valenti & all those involved for all the great work that is creating a positive change for Baltimore.

Program directors have acknowledged there is a greater need for involvement than available funds. The core idea of these programs hold that change comes from within, and that a culture change needs to occur for a lasting impact to occur.

Guest post by: Jessica Rose

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Cultivating Peace

July 17th, 2012

Each of us tries, in some way, to be a peacebuilder. We aspire to be Gandhi but frequently forget that we can actually BE like them, each in our own unique way.

That’s why we’re sharing with you the opportunity to add to your library what Deepak Chopra is calling “a brilliant manifesto,” written by global peacebuilder and former Amnesty leader James O’Dea.

James is a wise and heartfelt guide who blends spirituality, science and social change into the definitive roadmap to peace – from inner to international. His philanthropic efforts led him to work with such charitable organizations as Focused Philanthropy, The World Wisdom Council, The Social Healing Project, the Seva Foundation and more.

Can we each learn to build inner peace, diffuse conflict, transform hatred, heal wounds, and create bridges of understanding? Absolutely – in fact, it’s essential.

James O’Dea is here to show us how with his fascinating new book. Cultivating Peace. Cultivating Peace has been called “one of the most important books of our time” for a reason; it makes the most advanced peacebuilding skills available to ALL of us in ways that we can apply in our day-to-day lives.

Learn practical insights in this book from a man who has championed prisoners of conscience, journeyed to the mountains of the Kogi people, learned from top scientists and created healing in places like Rwanda, Ireland, and the Middle East.

Cultivating Peace is a MUST HAVE book for anyone committed to birthing a new era and healing our past.

cultivating-peace

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Help Lily

July 6th, 2012

Guest post from Lily’s family:

Nearly six years ago, three perfect and beautiful babies were born to our family.

When the triplets were just four months old, Lily contracted a virus known as RSV. She was very fussy when we put her to bed on February 16th, 2006. We woke just a few hours later to a parent’s worst nightmare; we found Lily gray and limp, not breathing, and having seizures. She was rushed to the hospital where she spent the next nine days in a coma fighting for her life, unknown if she would ever breathe on her own again or even live.
Amazingly, Lily was a fighter and defied expectations. However, she suffered massive brain damage during the time she was not breathing. After three more weeks in the hospital, Lily was able to return home to our family and although she was still our precious Lily, she was not the same as before.

Lily has been diagnosed with severe brain damage, quadriplegic cerebral palsy, epilepsy, intestinal failure, cortical visual impairment, hip dysplasia, scoliosis, and severe osteoporosis. She is not able to move or support herself, talk, or eat. Because of her intestinal failure, she receives all her nutrition through an IV permanently placed in her chest.

She has had multiple surgeries in her short life including having feeding tubes placed, IV’s put in her heart, a device put in her chest to try to help her seizures, and two hip surgeries. The two hip surgeries were to hopefully try and fix her dislocated hips. Instead, the surgeries failed and have caused a significant amount of lasting pain for her.

Despite her many obstacles, Lily is an incredible little girl and it’s such a blessing to be her parents. Everyone that meets Lily knows the joy and happiness she brings to every situation; she can make anyone smile. Lily is always laughing, loves having her nails painted, listening to her favorite music, watching TV, and playing with her four siblings. Lily uses a computer with special switches that she activates with her head to communicate with us and tell us funny stories. She’s very excited to be able to go to school this fall, learn new things, and make lots of friends.

Lily is a growing girl, currently 43 pounds, but still very fragile. She has badly broken her femur simply from being lifted out of her wheelchair. For Lily to go anywhere, we have to lift her out of her wheelchair and into her car seat. The car seat hurts her legs and dislocated hips, making her cry and vomit, so she takes heavy medication just to make it through a trip without risking pneumonia or worse. Lily continually needs to see doctors and specialists, so she frequently has to be in the car.

Having a wheelchair van would change Lily’s life. She is a very outgoing and happy child and wants to go to school, be able to go to her siblings sports games and maybe even be able to play sports herself, go shopping with mom and dad, have fun as a family, go play at the park with other kids, just like her brother and sisters do. Just as any child should.

Her wheelchair seat was custom molded to her body to help with her hip and leg issues. It is very comfortable and decreases her pain substantially while she’s in it, so being able to keep her in it while in the car would be life-changing. Your gift will make a huge impact on her life.

Adapted wheelchair vans run between $40,000 and $60,000, depending on the age and mileage. We need something that will seat our whole family safely and reliable enough so that it will last Lily a very long time. Unfortunately, insurance does not cover or assist with adapted vehicles and she doesn’t qualify for the grants we have found.

Although we know that the costs will far exceed $10,000, we didn’t want to set an overwhelming goal and our hope is to actually surpass our goal significantly!

Even if you cannot personally contribute, you can help Lily out by spreading the word about her fundraiser. Post the link to your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media. Contact us with any ideas you may have to help raise funds for her or even just to tell her you’re rooting for her.

Lily

Lily

Your generous support is greatly appreciated.

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Donating to a charity – Animal charities

June 19th, 2012

Donating to a charity – Animal charities

There are many charity foundations all over the world. Some of the widely known charities are fighting for the environment, human diseases and animals. There is a great amount of animal charities all across the world and if you love animals there is a chance you’ll want to make a donation, if not now maybe in the future. Here are some tips that will help you choose the right animal charity to donate to.

Research a charity before making a donation

This is something many people know about. Researching something online became a part of our modern lives. However there are cases when you will be tempted to make a donation right away, for example an animal charity member approaches you when you exit the supermarket. You should remember that if they need your donation today, they will also accept it tomorrow. Even if it’s about a small donation, go home and do a proper online research about the charity and their works. If the information you find is satisfactory, pick up the phone and give them a call. Make sure you ask them all your unanswered questions. Only after this you can make your donation without any worries.

Look for past activity

Unfortunately there are many people out there who are only looking to get your money. They will usually tell you about cases of suffering animals to raise your sympathy. To avoid scams, ask them about their past projects and were can you find more information about their works. Whether you’ll find an article in a newspaper or an article online, searching for their past activity is a must. This way you’ll make sure your donation is in safe hands.

Donate your time

When thinking about donating to a charity, many have in mind big numbers. Many people think that a donation has to be significant, they think about thousands of dollars. However they are wrong, every donation is important to a charity, whether its ten dollars or five thousand, your donation matters. If you don’t have money to spend on donations at the moment, but you love animals and you want to do something to help them, think about donating your time. Many charities are always looking for more help. Search around your local charities and give them a call. Ask if they need some help with their cause. You will feel great volunteering for a cause you like.

Get more information about the cause

If talking about animal charities, there are a wide variety of causes they can fight for. It can be about saving endangered species, stopping animal cruelty cases, helping animals without a home and providing them with food and shelter. Before volunteering or donating money for a particular charity, you can do a little research about the charities cause. Even if many people look for charities fighting for a particular cause, there are cases when you find a good local charity and you want to know more about their cause. When looking for more information, you can visit their local office. Many charities usually have a great amount of information about the cause they are fighting for. After finding out more about a particular case, chance is, you will have the opportunity to help the charity with something else besides time and money.

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How to Start a Charity

May 13th, 2012

One of the main reasons for the establishment of charitable organizations is to support the needy and the less privileged in the society by according them care as well as helping them meet their basic needs namely food, shelter, clothing and education. It is because of these reasons that many countries have simplified the process of starting charities. Unfortunately, most of the people venture into this noble course without proper and adequate knowledge of what is expected of them thereby leading to a closure of many of these charities soon after they are registered.

Reasons for Starting a Charity

There are numerous reasons that lead many people to start a charity. These include;

• The desire to eradicate or offer a relief to poverty stricken members of the society
• Advancement of education and religion
• Provision of health services as well as saving lives
• Promote community development by ensuring that areas that are underserved in terms of development plans are reached
• Promoting human rights, reconciliation and conflict resolution
• Promote environmental awareness and animal welfare

Ways of Ensuring Helping People through a Charity

Charities should not create a culture of dependability rather; they should look into ways of promoting independence among the people targeted after solving the immediate problem. This is a sure way of reaching out to many people as well as creating tangible change. For instance, a charity that is aimed at poverty eradication may begin by offering immediate solutions such as providing food, shelter and clothing among other basic necessities. Even then, the long term plan that the charity should undertake is to initiate income generating activities or even educating some of those affected thereby giving them the will to not only support themselves but also others in the society as a way of giving back. Most importantly, ensure that the people who are targeted by the charity own the projects.

What you Need to Know before Starting a Charity

The question then is what does it take to start a charity? One of the key tenets of successfully beginning and running a charity is good planning and management. When these two aspects are not addressed well, your desire to run a charity that will bring about change in the society and transform lives could soon become a statistic of the many that have failed to sustain themselves. This means that a lot of time must be dedicated to researching as well as planning on how to raise funds to ensure sustainability of the charity upon its registration.

Having accomplished this, you can then proceed to start the charity. There are a number of steps that are involved when starting a charity. These steps are either set by the state, federal and local authorities that also allow you to first determine the organizational structure that you deem to be most appropriate. This information is often provided by relevant authorities. With all this accomplished, you will then move on to the process of how to start a charity. This is usually a simplified process with one step leading to the other until you successfully submit your application and await an approval from the relevant authority.

In summary, starting a charity is a noble idea that must be nurtured with the right information on how to manage it because poor management will either result in a closure or the inability to realize your goals thereby rendering the charity ineffective.

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Fairtrade Fortnight

March 15th, 2012

Fairtrade Fortnight? What is that?

Fairtrade Fortnight is February 27 to March 11th. Use the power of trade to bring hope to those in poverty. Fairtrade Fortnight 2012 works to establish better justice in trading systems.

Fairtrade Fortnight is a project of Traidcraft, the UK’s leading fair trade organization. Traidcraft fights poverty through trade, and promotion of approaches in trade that help those in developing countries change their lives.

Traidcraft helped establish the Fairtrade Mark guaranteeing a fair price for sustainable production, premiums to invest in communities projects, standards for health, social and economic producers and defined standards for environmental protection.

traidcraft

traidcraft

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Tiny Hands/ Enormous Effect

September 16th, 2011

Guest post by Dan Gilbert

Today, most parents find it extremely important to raise children who are compassionate and consider of other’s feelings. Unfortunately, many parents are finding it hard to know how to teach their children compassion and promote activities to help others, such as volunteering. Teaching children they can help save the world as early as preschool may seem like a hard task to accomplish, but it certainly is possible with these suggestions from Primrose Schools- the Leader in Educational Child Care.

Participating in volunteer activities can help children learn that they can help others and have a positive impact on their community, “Giving back is an important year-round habit to establish with young children,” stated Dr. Mary Zurn, vice president of education at Primrose Schools. “Volunteering plays an important role in the development of character. It teaches children that they can do things that positively impact the world around them. Even young children can learn to become active participants in their communities.”

Below are four helpful tips for parents who are interested in teaching their children the importance of volunteering:

1) Make personal goals and motives in regards to including your children in volunteer projects. Volunteering can be an excellent way to spend quality time with your kid. Choose a project that is significant to your family and get started!

2) It can help to explain to your child the reason that volunteering is so important. Keep it simple to help your child clearly understand and appreciate volunteering.

3) Be sure to pick volunteer activities that are appropriate for your child’s age. Most children can start volunteering as young as age 3 when they begin to be more social and capable of following instructions. When choosing an activity, try to keep it local so that your child will better understand its importance.

4) When looking for the right volunteer opportunity, be sure that the volunteer organization has experience with families and children and are open to allowing children to help. Additionally, be sure to make sure that your child can have a specific job when volunteering. Most importantly, find an organization that will set a good example of helping others so that your child can grasp the idea and importance of volunteer work.

In the long run, a compassionate child will mature into a caring and compassionate adult. Volunteering can be a wonderful way to teach your child the importance of positive behavior and helping others. With the above tips in mind, have a family meeting to make a plan to help out your community.

hands

hands

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Phillipines and WWF

August 2nd, 2011

People all over the world visit us here at OneClickataTime.org and we’re always pleased to bring you, our readers, news from outside the US. Especially when the news deals with a charity in some way.

We recently came across kw – wwf philippines. They seek to bring awareness to the advocacy that the World Wildlife Foundation promotes.

It’s sites like these that help more of the general public learn about how they too can help wildlife.

The Philippines is one of the hundreds of countries that support WWF and is the 26th national extension of the world renowned WWF.

WWF-Philippines has proven to be active in pursuing the goal of nature and animal preservation through the various successfully implemented projects.

We salute our neighbors as they strive to help animals too.

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