Aside from goals of raising awareness of extreme poverty, and my own personal goals with the challenge, I have a charitable impact goal. Upon reaching this goal together, we can all make a tangible, lasting difference.
So my charitable impact goal is to gather a team of 50 new "Sustainers" to help underwrite our orphan care and human trafficking rehabilitation programs. Sustainers are special donors who are willing to sponsor a "heart," turning it from black & white to red, by signing up to donate the amount shown on the heart, each month. Why monthly? Unlike my challenge here which only lasts one month, needs in our programs are ongoing, and budgets are set by monthly recurring expenses.
If we can fill up the next 50 hearts on our "heart-chart" (a meter of our love for these children!), it will equal almost $3,000 in monthly support for important programs that provide food, shelter, medical care, education, and skill training for orphans, child labor victims, and human trafficking survivors!
Why am I doing this? What motivates me to go to the trouble of racking my brain three times a day to figure out what in the world I'm going to make from these limited ingredients, deny myself of all of my favorite food cravings, and stay up late blogging for 30 days straight?
It's for these kids and young women—the most vulnerable of society: orphans, children trapped in hazardous child labor, and saddest of all, girls and young women recovering from the horrors of human trafficking.
These are some scenes I shot during my last visit to the slums of Kampala, Uganda, where the Peace Gospel Children's Hope Center is located. The living conditions there are unthinkable.
My work takes me to some of the worst slums on the planet, and I have seen how kids live in this deplorable conditions. Fundraising is the hardest work you can imagine, because you know the need, you know how bad the situation is, but it's very difficult to communicate to those who have not been there, those who are distracted with their own life-challenges (all of us), while struggling against the cycle of consumerism that just keeps us all wanting a little more, leaving us with having less to share.
These are some views from the Payatas Landfill Scavenger's Colony in Manila, Philippines, where children rummage through the landfill waste looking for recyclables that their parents can sell for $0.25-$0.50 per sack gathered and sorted.
Great news! Today we filled two more hearts for a total of $36 in new monthly support! That's $432 a year that will help these children in an empowering way— giving them a vastly greater chance to break out of the cycle of extreme poverty.
What's next? Would you consider helping me reach the next level of my goal? If I'm to reach 50 new hearts sponsored, I need to be on a pace of almost 2 hearts a day! ❤️ My next two hearts waiting to be filled are at the $22 and $23 level. Just go on over to the Wall of Hearts and "have a heart" of your choosing! Your small recurring gift, while a small sacrifice to you, will make a huge difference to these kids, giving them a fighting chance to overcome.
On to what I came up with today in my quest to make $1 stretch across three meals, and some snacks...
Breakfast. ▼
Snack. ▼
Lunch. ▼
Snack. ▼
Dinner. ▼
Juice. ▼
Take Action!
2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to the work of Peace Gospel's programs helping orphans, at-risk children of the slums, and human trafficking survivors.
3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.
4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!
Impressed by your meals ✨
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