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Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Blog Action Day - The Power of We and World Vision

I've been inspired by Edenland (once again) to make a post mean something rather than my usual ramblings and complaining and trying to motivate myself to do something.  So after registering with 'Blog Action Day' I realised I can do something meaningful with my blog.

Most of us feel a little inadequate when it comes to doing some good for the world (or is it that just me?), but after reading a few of the posts here, I realised I have maybe made a little difference to a few people less privileged than me over the years.  And then I thought if we all encouraged others to do just one thing to make someone else's life a bit more tolerable, it could snowball through the blogging community into a major difference.

I'm not very good at maths, but if you calculated how much money could be raised if only 10% of readers of the top 100 blogs donated only $10 to one charity, that would amount to about .... ALOT!  (If someone wants to calculate that and get back to me I would really appreciate it.)

As one of my favourite receivers of help is World Vision, I've been reading the posts promoting this great organisation and the many ways some wonderful bloggers have been raising awareness of them to their readers.

Through World Vision, we have been sponsoring a young girl, Mercy from Malawi, for almost nine years now.  We are able to send cards and letters to her and she sends us updates on her life but it would be wonderful if we could actually go and visit her family one day (my dream of travelling to Africa has not been realised yet).  My daughter is the same age and I imagine their lives are vastly different.  Hopefully over the years we have helped improve Mercy's life a little and maybe opened up opportunities that may have not necessarily been available to her if she hadn't been sponsored.

I've also heard through my place of work, experiences of those children who come here as refugees from countries at war and who have grown up in camps where they are forgotten.  I passionately believe that if good health and education was available to all children all over the globe, the future for them would be alot brighter and there may not be such a huge refugee issue.

I'm now planning to go back to what I did one Christmas a few years ago and do a major part of my gift shopping at World Vision.  This time I'll only be buying the goats and chickens for the members of my family and friends who will appreciate it (some relations did not see the value in the thought and may have been disappointed they didn't receive the same old crap).  I would rather give a donation on behalf of someone else instead of buying that someone a gift that they really don't need or want and which contributes to the consumerism rubbish and land fill that most Christmas gifts end up being.

My wish is that some of my readers may do the same.  Imagine if that carried on to their readers, then their readers' readers and so on and so on!


Let me know if you think you might be able do this too (you can download the gift order form here). Even a few gifts bought through World Vision instead of another department store voucher for Aunty Flo or a bottle of aftershave for your brother who is impossible to buy for, could make a huge difference to a family in Malawi that receives a pig or a young girl in Cambodia being immunised.  And I'm sure your brother or your Aunty would appreciate being the reason someone else's life has been made better because of their sacrifice (have you seen the rise in unwanted gifts on ebay after Christmas?).

I'm joining up with  Edenland for Power of We and also Jess for IBOT.  Who says you can't kill two birdy num nuns with one stone post?

5 comments:

  1. I do my christmas shopping every year on the world vision web site. I just posted about it earlier this week. Great minds think alike.

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  2. Yes you CAN kill two birdy num nuns with one post ... well done. And thanks for reminding me about the Christmas gift shopping with World Vision gifts. Absolutely PERFECT. Xxx

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  3. we do the same at xmas time! Last year all of our family got world vision gifts.
    Mind you we didnt explain it really well to our youngest son and he couldnt understand where his chicken was :)
    Its amazing how much the power of we can make a huge difference to the world.

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  4. Great idea, Becci! Off to download the gift order form now!
    Love your work x

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  5. I'm looking at some way we can give this Christmas, as a family. I think we really need to model that kind of action to our kids.

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