Law & Motherhood

It can be daunting to figure out how to make a difference in the world without greatly altering your life. Here are a few of the things I do to make the world a better place. I hope the links are helpful to you.

• The Hunger Site and it’s sister sites are great places to make a concrete difference in the world without having to spend any money or give up any habits. You can click on each of the sites each day, donating food to the hungry, mammograms to at risk women, health care for children, books for poverty stricken kids, food to homeless pets and saving the rainforest. The sites get money from their daily sponsors, whose ads you will see when you go to click. However, you don’t have to buy anything, or even do anything beyond hitting the “click here” button to make your difference.

• Gift giving can be a challenge. As I get older I accumulate more and more stuff. I am desperately trying to lower my footprint and clean out my house. Most of the people I know are trying to do the same thing. A few years ago I started looking around for gifts that didn’t take up space and helped put resources where they are most needed. Heifer International is a fantastic resource for gifts and charitable donations. Your gift will keep on giving here, as their recipients have to “pay it forward” in order to receive their gift.

• Feeling bad about your contribution to global warming? You can purchase credits through CarbonFund.org to lessen, or even zero out, your carbon footprint.

• FreeRice.com will not only help you feed the hungry without asking you to part with a penny, it will improve your vocabulary as well!! For each word you correctly define, FreeRice will donate rice to the hungry.

• Ecologue is a great place to find more information about the environment, eco-friendly shopping, and ways to improve the eco-friendly nature of your lifestyle.

• Global Girlfriend was created to help women worldwide gain economic security for themselves and their families by earning fair wages for their handiwork. Global Girlfriend sources women-made, fair-trade imported, eco-friendly products. By supporting long-term partnerships with the artisans, it fosters equal employment opportunities, healthy and safe working conditions, technical assistance, and development strategies to help reduce poverty, one community at a time. Become a “Global Girlfriend” and help build a brighter future for girlfriends around the globe!

• Avanoo is a social networking marketplace that promotes charitable giving through the use of badges. Users place badges on their sites (blogs, etc.) and the badges sponsor donates $.50 each time the badge is clicked. I chose the Cottonwood Institute. Check out Avanoo and get your badge today. (You can also register  your own charity.)

• Check out Click for Charity, a blog that collects the different places you can visit and donate just by the click of a button. It covers a wide range of charities.

• The premise of Care2 is simple: One person can make a difference. Whether you’re passionate about green living, health, human rights or protecting the environment, Care2 puts the tools for change in your hands. Over 8 million wonderful people discover, share and take action on Care2 and Care2’s The Petition Site. It’s the largest online community of people passionate about making a difference.

Do you know of a great way to make a difference? Enter it in the comments below!