Charity & Volunteering 01 (Jun 08 - Mar 11)

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Stress Relief Though Charity by Erica Brooks

One of the best ways to relieve yourself from the stresses in life is by giving to others. When you help others it takes the focus off of you and your problems and shifts the focus to the needs of others. Helping others brings about change in the community and a peace to you and someone in need.

Below are 10 ways to volunteer and give the gift of yourself to others:

1.Walkathons-
Walkathons are charity walks. The only thing required is desire, determination and some good walking shoes. To participate contact the charity of your choice who is hosting the walk to register. Once you register you will be asked to get sponsors to donate money on behalf of you walking. Sponsors can be anyone- your family members, co-workers, church members, local businesses etc. Donations can be anywhere from $1.00 to as much as your sponsor is willing to donate.

2.Local Nursing Home-Many residents of nursing homes don't have anyone to visit them and would love a visit from a warm and friendly person. It would only require an hour or two of your time a week and it would really make a difference to an elderly resident who does not have family or someone to look after them. Check with you local nursing home to find out how to volunteer at their center.

3.Boys and Girls Club-Many of the youth today are in need of activities to keep them out of trouble and someone to guide them so that they stay grounded and out of harms way. Your local boys and girls club does just that by providing sports and fun activities for children in the area. The club is always in need of responsible, patient adults who are willing to help. Check your local yellow pages to find the center near you and give them a call to find out how to volunteer.

4.Local Church Ministries-The church is a place where people can go to find help in a variety of areas. Put your spiritual gifts to good use at your local church by joining a church ministry. There are many areas that you can be of help in- youth ministry, usher board ministry, missions ministry, prison ministry, music ministry, just to name a few. Check with your local church to see where you can be of the most help.

5.Local Food Bank-This is a wonderful charity where you can help those in your community get the food they need. All it takes is a phone call to your local food bank to get started.

6.Homeless Shelter-Help those who need shelter to get the food and shelter they need. Think of the difference you will make to those in your community by devoting a couple of hours a week of your time to this charity.

7.Girls and Boy Scouts of America-What a fun charity. Responsible and patient volunteers are always appreciated. It requires only a few hours of your time a week meeting with the children. You would play games, participate in badge earning activities, go on local outings and more. Check with your local Boys Scouts or Girls Scouts office to find out about the volunteer opportunities in your area.

8.Domestic Violence Centers-There is a great need in our country to protect those suffering from physical abuse. Volunteer opportunities are available in the shelters and to answer domestic violence hotlines. Contact your local shelter today to find out how you can help.

9.Rape Crisis Center- Rape is a serious crime and rape victims need all the help and support that they can get to recover from this form of abuse. Volunteers are needed to work in local crisis centers and on crisis hotlines. There may be special training that is needed for this type of charity due to the circumstances of the service. Check with your local rape crisis center to find out how you can help.

10.Pet Shelters-Pets need love too! There are many pet shelters that are in need of volunteers to care for sick and homeless pets and to help them to find good homes. If you love pets and enjoy working with them this is a great charity for you.
The opportunities to volunteer in your community are endless.

Still not sure where you can volunteer? Visit www.volunteermatch.org to match your skills with one of the many charities in your area. Giving of yourself to others in such a positive way is one of the bests gifts you can give to yourself and others.

Author's Bio
Erica Brooks operates ww.richlyscentedsoycandles.comw and www.gourmetsoycandlefundraiser.com which helps groups and organizations to raise money for special causes.

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Lend a hand to charity without forking out a cent
By Tan Yew Guan, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 24 April 2009 2237 hrs

SINGAPORE: The charity arm of NTUC FairPrice has launched a project to help needy workers. The FairPrice Foundation is willing to fork out up to S$3 million if shoppers play their part.

Over this weekend, members of the public can lend a hand to charity without spending an extra cent.

All they need to do is sign their name on a handprint on the Pledge Wall at FairPrice Xtra outlets in Tampines Mall, Ang Mo Kio Hub and Jurong Point.

For each handprint signed, the FairPrice Foundation will donate S$100 to the NTUC U Care fund.

The U Care fund was set up last month to help lower income union workers hit by the recession. It aims to raise S$20 million by June.

NTUC Secretary-General Lim Swee Say said: "I am happy to say that up to now, we have met half of the target, we have raised S$10 million.

"Through this project supported by the FairPrice Foundation, we hope to receive the support from another 30,000 shoppers, so we can raise another S$3 million."

Pledges can also be made at the FairPrice Foundation's website till Sunday.


- CNA/so

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Sex slaves' crusader battles pimps, credit crisis

By Candida Ng SINGAPORE, May 26 (Reuters Life!) - Somaly Mam has been held at gunpoint, her daughter has been kidnapped and her house burned down. Now, the Cambodian former sex worker turned activist is battling the global financial crisis.

One of the most pressing concerns Mam, who crusades against forced prostitution, is facing is scarce funding for the shelter she helped start for women and girls who are abused and coerced into the sex trade in Cambodia and neighbouring countries.

The current credit crunch also has had a effect on the number of women and children turning to prostitution to survive and the ability of Mam to care for her more than 200 charges in shelters.

"Since we opened the shelter, I always face this problem.

Like the last five months, no rice, we cannot feed the children," Mam, of Agir pour les Femmes En Situation Precaire (AFESIP or Acting for Women in Distressing Situations), told Reuters.

AFESIP, a largely Spanish-funded grass-roots group, requires about $1.5 million annually to fund its efforts in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos, Mam said. She also travels around the world to raise money for the Somaly Mam Foundation that puts a spotlight on forced prostitution.

Earlier this month, Cambodia said it expects an increase in prostitution and human trafficking as the unemployment rate climbs during the economic downturn.

The poor Southeast Asian nation has been trying hard in recent years to rid itself of its reputation as a haven for perverts and paedophiles, but with limited success.

Mam, in Singapore to raise funds for the group, said it was culturally acceptable to keep a girl for a week and rape her to improve one's health and luck in Cambodia, or to cure HIV. Some of the victims she has seen are only a few months old.

The U.N. estimates that out of the two million women and children trafficked every year, 30 percent are in Asia.

At the AFESIP shelters, the women and girls, some as young as four, receive medical and psychological treatment. They are also taught English, French and vocational skills such as weaving and hairdressing so they can fit back into society.

One batch is heading to a university in the United States this year.

"The children in the shelter, they keep me going. They are my everything, my light, my love - they are my heroes," said Mam, who traced her dramatic journey from sex slave to crusader against prostitution in a memoir, "The Road of Lost Innocence".

The Cambodian activist also faces threats, occasionally veiled but always frightening, from pimps and organised crime syndicates on a daily basis in her struggle to eradicate sexual slavery and human trafficking.

"If they want to kill, they kill," Mam said. "Organised crime, they are all very organised. But the people who are against organised crime, no one is well organised. So now they have to stop talking and start working." (www.afesip.org and www.somaly.org)

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Service is prescribed as one of the nine steps to realize the Divine. You must therefore be earnest and welcome all chances to serve the sick, disabled, diseased and the distressed. Holding a fruit in the hand is just a preliminary step.

Without eating and digesting, you cannot he healthy and happy. Similarly, unless you serve, you will not attain joy and bliss.

Your acts of service will be judged based on your mental attitude that is accompanying them. So, whatever work is allocated to you, do it with fervor, understanding of its importance and developing reverence towards it. In service, there can be no high or low, for the Divine is in all.

- Divine Discourse, Nov 14, 1975

Source: radiosai.org

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You must make service a part and parcel of your life.

Youth is an important stage when self-control, self-examination and self-effort are most needed. Channelize the courage, optimism and strength in constructive channels.

You must act what you speak and speak what you think. That will give you inner joy and contentment.

You have to dedicate yourself to service, that is saturated in selfless love. The service you render must give satisfaction and relief of those you serve. The joy of the recipient must be your sole objective.

- Divine Discourse, Nov 14, 1975

Source: radiosai.org

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Through selfless service you realise that all beings are waves of the Ocean of Divinity.

No other spiritual practice can bring you into the incessant contemplation of the Oneness of all living beings. You feel another's pain as your own; you share another's success as your own.

To see every one else as yourself and yourself in every one, that is the core of selfless service. Again, it makes the ego languish for want of food. It makes you humble before the suffering of others, and when you rush to render help, you do not calculate how high or low his social or economic status is.

The hardest heart is slowly softened into the softness of butter by the opportunities that it offers.

-Divine Discourse, November 14, 1975.

Source: radiosai.org

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To remove the evil of egoism, service is the most efficient instrument.

Service will also impress on the person doing the service, the Unity of all mankind. One who dedicates his/her time, skill and strength to service can never meet defeat, distress or disappointment, for service is its own reward.

His words will be ever sweet and soft, his gestures ever revered and humble. He will have no foe, fatigue, or fear.

- Divine Discourse, Aug 28, 1976.

Source: radiosai.org

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World's hungry top one billion, says UN food agency

ROME: A record one billion people are undernourished around the world, the UN food agency said Friday, blaming the global financial crisis for a surge of more than 100 million hungry since last year.

Deploring "the biggest ever year-on-year increase" in world hunger, Jacques Diouf, the head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), told a news conference: "One in six human beings does not have access to food."

The FAO chief called for a "new world food order" enshrining the "right to food and thus the right to exist," urging stepped-up investment in agriculture.

Some three weeks ahead of the Group of Eight wealthy nations' summit in Italy, Diouf said: "The problem of food security is a political one. It's a question of priorities on the world agenda."

Josette Sheeran, head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), recalled food riots in several developing countries in the past two years and warned at the same news conference: "A hungry world is a dangerous world."

"With the right support, smallholder farmers can double or triple their yields," Sheeran said, adding: "Food has to be addressed as one of the pillar challenges that the world is facing."

Diouf said in a statement earlier: "A dangerous mix of the global economic slowdown combined with stubbornly high food prices in many countries has pushed some 100 million more people than last year into chronic hunger and poverty."

An FAO statement said 1.02 billion people do not get enough to eat and predicted an 11 per cent increase for all of 2009.

An estimated 642 million of the total are in the Asia-Pacific region, the agency said in a statement. Some 265 million are in sub-Saharan Africa, 53 million in Latin America and the Caribbean and 52 million in the Middle East and north Africa.

Some 15 million are hungry in developed countries, the FAO said.

"The most recent increase in hunger is not the consequence of poor global harvests but is caused by the world economic crisis that has resulted in lower incomes and increased unemployment," the statement said.

The FAO had initially revised downward its estimate of hungry people from 963 million to 915 million because of a "better-than-expected global food supply," the agency said.

"Whereas good progress was made in reducing chronic hunger in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, hunger has been slowly but steadily on the rise for the past decade," the FAO said.

"This year, mainly due to the shocks of the economic crisis combined with often high national food prices, the number of hungry people is expected to grow overall by about 11 per cent," the agency projects.

"The silent hunger crisis... poses a serious risk for world peace and security," the statement warned. "We urgently need to forge a broad consensus on the total and rapid eradication of hunger in the world and to take the necessary actions."

It noted that poor consumers spend up to 60 per cent of their incomes on staple foods.

The agency will release its annual State of Food Insecurity in the World report in October.

During a Rome summit one year ago, FAO member states reaffirmed their commitment to halve world hunger by 2015, a Millennium Development Goal set in 2000 by the United Nations.

Diouf said last year that "with current trends, that goal will be attained in 2150, rather than 2015."

The food agency warned that "the urban poor will probably face the most severe problems in coping with the global recession, because lower export demand and reduced foreign direct investment are more likely to hit urban jobs harder."

However, it said, "rural areas will not be spared. Millions of urban migrants will have to return to the countryside, forcing the rural poor to share the burden in many cases."

- AFP/yb

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On Action:-

Paul: We should help people whenever we can.

Galatians 6:10

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The Divine Call is not to deceive or mislead. It is to transform, reconstruct, and reform.

It is to make the person useful and serviceable for the society; to affirm in the individual the unity of all beings in the Divine. The person who has undergone this Refinement becomes a humble servant of those in need of help.

This is the stage of Selfless Service. Service done with this kind of reverence and selflessness prepares man to realize the One that pervades the Many.

- Divine Discourse, 23 Nov 1976

Source: radiosai.org