A Little Goes A Long Way

Over the weekend, I had a good read about an article about how an individual or average human being empowers him or herself to make a change for the wellbeing of others. Basically, this article comes under the interactive platform called Make Your Mark which is under the Reader's Digest online website. In RD.com - Make Your Mark, it contains many articles written about the heroic acts of the everyday person like teacher Patti Hall, who together with her students raised a large sum of $12,000 for the building of a dam for villagers in Kenya.

Another favourite article I read was about a little old lady who at 77 had already been spending more than 2 decades of her time helping out a poverty-stricken Caribbean in her 42nd trip. Helen's first trip to Haiti was an eye opener. Seeing naked boys roaming the streets and families that lived in poor conditions, she decided to do her best to help them in fund raising ways, writing for financial assistance from major businesses and scavenging for old clothes or hand me downs to bring to the people in Haiti. She also made sure that education is provided for and spend much time for funding and recruitment matters so the poor kids could go to school. After more than 20 years, much of her efforts have shown improvement and the place have spruced up, and there is more awareness about education and the need to change for the better.

I really take my hats of to Helen for her noble ways and how she had not used age as a barrier to helping out. Now when I am out shopping for things, I think twice about how lucky and blessed I am to be able to have my three meals compared about those who would think when their next meal may be. You can read more about Make Your Mark stories from Reader's Digest Homepage

There is also a weekly challenge section in the Reader's Digest website. It has pledges that allows you to take, which contributes to the betterment of society in more ways than one. Take the pledge and give hope to someone else in the world. Every little step is a step nearer to someone else's hope.

Here is an example of Pledge for Week of April 28 - May 4

Help End Hunger

Step: Build your vocabulary and feed the hungry. Go to freerice.com and see how many words you can define. For each right answer, 20 grains of rice go to the United Nations World Food Program.

Stretch: Watch the video at storyofstuff.com. It clearly and succinctly ties together consumerism, politics, health, economics, and the environment -- in just 20 minutes.

Leap: Give a gift that keeps on giving and help people feed themselves. Donate the equivalent of a heifer ($500), a llama ($150), a pig ($120), a flock of chicks ($20), or a share of these and any number of other animals at heifer.org.

You can make the difference too.