After a week (more like a month) of buying gifts for yourself and others, today is a day to think about a cause that is near to your heart or those less fortunate. It’s Giving Tuesday – a worldwide celebration! It is a day where we emphasize generosity and come together to by doing random acts of kindness, giving your time, giving your money, or advocating to support others. We wanted to take this opportunity to share with you a couple nonprofits that are near and dear to our hearts and to give you a couple idea that you could celebrate Giving Tuesday (either by yourself or with the whole family).
Operation Christmas Child
This is a project that the nonprofit Samaritan’s Purse heads up every year. The purpose of OCC is the show God’s love for children in a tangible way, through the gift of a shoebox that is packed with toys, school supplies, and hygiene products. Samaritan’s Purse makes it so easy to donate, you can build a shoe box online here. Every year we do this activity with the boys. They are able to pick out the age and gender of the child they are shopping for and (with some guidance) they pick out what they think the child would like. Throughout the process, this is such a great time to teach them about how blessed we are.
The Well Resource Center
This nonprofit is specific to the Chicagoland area. The Well exists to serve First Responders and their families. They provided counseling services for first responders to talk and process through things that have happened on (or off) the job. In addition to counseling, The Well hosts a number of different social programs to connect with First Responders – two of these weekly programs are a Bike Night and getting together to play basketball. If you would like to give to The Well, you can here! But there are many different ways that you can walk alongside this nonprofit that don’t include the giving of money. You could provide food for a local police department, provide a meal for a first responders family, write a note of encouragement to a First Responder, and more. To connect with one of those ways of giving back to The Well, click here.
CAST Water Safety Foundation
This is another local nonprofit that is near and dear to our hearts. CAST’s mission is to prevent childhood drowning and to create safer swimmers sooner. If you’ve been around here since the beginning, you know that we have the boys participate in ISR for swimming lessons. Since we started ISR we have been continuously amazed with the self-rescue swim lessons that the boys receive. Not only have the boys learned self-rescue skills but we as parents have learned so much about water safety (be on the lookout for more ISR updates as they are starting their refresher course this week!). We have personally benefited from CAST because of the scholarships they provide for those interested in lessons. They provide scholarships for military, nurses, teachers, & first responders families, for those with special needs or a disability (parent or child), or for those in need for financial assistance. If you want to donate to CAST click here, if you want to learn more about ISR click here!
The Meridian Bliss 