Tag Archives: World Food Programme

Day 1164: 5 Organizations I Want to Give to This Christmas

“Christmas is most truly Christmas when we celebrate it by giving the light of love to those who need it most.” – Ruth Carter Stapleton

 

It’s 12  : 28 PM on day 1164 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to  pray,  brush my teeth, feed myself  All Bran Flakes and boiled egg for breakfast,  read  2 Kings 22,  publish my Disability of the Day feature,  stretch my hamstrings,         practice sitting up straight to strengthen my core muscles, stretch my hamstrings and hang out with my sister and brother.

 

As you may know I love giving and since Christmas is the season of giving I made a list of all the organizations I want to give to this Christmas. Take a look:

5 Organizations I Want to Give to This Christmas

  1. United Nations World Food Programme – the UN World Food Programme feeds hungry people all over the world
  2. Heal Africa – Heal Africa provides  holistic care; including physical, spiritual and social healing for the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo (I want to give to Heal Africa because they give dignity back to the women of the DRC by repairing fistulas caused by brutal rapes and difficult births)
  3. Random Kid – Random Kid loans money to kids who want to raise money for their favourite causes ten percent of whatever every kid raises is ploughed back into Random Kid and used to help another kid raise money for his or her favourite organization
  4. Kids Caring 4 Kids – Kids Caring 4 Kids aims to raise awareness and money for AIDS orphans and other highly venerable kids in Africa and to inspire kids to care for others in need
  5. iTaalk Autism Foundation – iTaalk Autism Foundation provides IPads for kids who have Autism.

 

Day 839

The only way to know how far you’ve come is to look back– that’s what I keep learning 🙂

It’s  4 : 35 PM on day 839 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth ,feed myself an egg sandwich for breakfast, take off my shirt by myself, go to pick up my cousin at the airport,    stretch my hamstrings,   publish my Disability of the Day feature,  publish my Kid of the Week feature, feed myself rice and curry for lunch and play board games with family.

With 2012 coming to an end I thought I would share with you highlights of my year. Take a look:

My Year in Review

  1. Finally after two years I finished raising money to build a well – the well was completed on 21 June 2012 and now serves approximately 550 people in the Chemoset community in Kenya.
  2. Raised $252 for the World Food Programme through my 21 For 21 Campaign – I basically asked everyone I “knew” on Twitter to donate $21 in honour of my 21st birthday, they did and as a result the WFP had 1 008 more cups of food that they use to feed people.
  3. Raised $100 for Nothing But Nets as part of my  Mandela Day initiative – $100 = 10 bed nets that protect against Malaria again I asked people on Twitter to donate $10 or more.
  4. Completed my two years of blogging on 1 August 2012.
  5. Held down a full-job as a Social Media Manager for five months – I quit partly because I need more time to learn how to do things by myself so that I could be as independent possible.
  6. With the help of my online friends I got my life story featured in the October issue  of Longevity magazine – me being featured in a magazine was only a highlight of my year because I think it did quite a lot to raise Cerebral Palsy awareness.
  7. Learned to take off and put on a t-shirt by myself.
  8. Conceived and executed my Chain of Good competition idea – Catherine (@catvoncat) won the competition and I donated to her favourite charity, the 50/50 Project, just as I promised I would.
  9. Bought Christmas gifts for the kids in housekeeper’s neighbourhood with the money I earned while working – it felt so good to use the money I earned to buy Christmas gifts for kids who might not have had any.
  10. Made sandwiches for the people in our housekeeper’s neighbourhood as part of Virginia’s Sandwich Run.

I LOVE hearing from you feel free to leave a comment below.

Day 527

There comes a time in every life where you have to forget about what everybody else may think and do the right thing – that’s what I learned today 🙂

It’s 8 : 39 PM on day 527 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, prepare and publish my Disability of the Day feature, work,    drink tea by myself,   feed myself a banana for breakfast, work some more, feed myself a carrot for lunch, continue working, feed myself rice and curry for dinner and brush my teeth once more.

Today I was debating with myself as to whether I should give up meat and meat products for lent raising money for the World Food Programme in the process I was on the fence about it because I didn’t want people to think I was sucking them dry considering my Clean Water For All Campaign wasn’t even over yet but now I realize that I wouldn’t be sucking anybody dry because nobody would be obligated to do anything they didn’t want to do (Note: If you want to donate click Donate, on the donation form you will be asked if you want to make the donation in honour/memoriam of someone click in honour of someone special and fill in my name and email address nishavarghese_1991@hotmail.com – where required so I can keep track of all the money raised). Do you not do the right thing because you’re afraid of what people may think?

Are we connecting on Twitter? If not, say hi at http://twitter.com/Nisha360

If you’ve given to my cause or you can’t give now, please help me by sharing my cause with others. You can tweet about it like my friend Stan Faryna. This is the tweet he uses: @Nisha360 is a brave, smart young woman trying to make a better world for us all. Please help her do an amazing thing. http://bit.ly/hC7vOu

Stan’s very sweet for saying so, but feel free to write what reflects you best.

Thanks to all my friends out there who are helping me make my dream come true: to make a better world for all of us!

Day 409

It’s okay to sound like a broken record if you’re saying something important – that’s what I learned today 🙂

It’s 7: 48 PM on day 409 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, feed myself bread and scrambled eggs for breakfast, chat to Ramon Thomas over at Ramon Thomas: Pychology of Technology via Skype–we’re working together on something stay tuned to see what it is–  prepare and publish my Disability of the Day feature,   feed myself Chapati and  chicken curry for lunch,  watch TV, feed myself a mixed chicken and vagetable wrap for dinner  brush my teeth once more and tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign –no luck.

A few months ago I donated $6.50 to the United Nations World Food Programme and ever since then they have been emailing me article, pictures and videos which I have been ignoring for fear that if I saw faces of suffering children I would be compelled to give but today I realized that other people ignore the problem and walk away not me so I bit the bullet and watched the videos I had been sent and this is what I saw:

Are we connecting on Twitter? If not, say hi at http://twitter.com/Nisha360

If you’ve given to my cause or you can’t give now, please help me by sharing my cause with others. You can tweet about it like my friend Stan Faryna. This is the tweet he uses: @Nisha360 is a brave, smart young woman trying to make a better world for us all. Please help her do an amazing thing. http://bit.ly/hC7vOu

Stan’s very sweet for saying so, but feel free to write what reflects you best.

Thanks to all my friends out there who are helping me make my dream come true: to make a better world for all of us!

Day 332

It is not good to know more unless we do more with what we already know. – Bergethon, R. K

It’s 7: 49 PM on day 332 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, watch and donate to the telethon held to raise money for the people of Somalia – I already made my donation to the World Food Programme but I didn’t tell my father that and coaxed him into making anotther donation because I wanted to teach my sister the joy of giving anyway coming back to the telethon 1.2 million rand was raised I am SO proud to be South African today 🙂 – feed myself banana for breakfast, tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign – no luck – visit my favourite blogs Love That Max, Chasing Rainbows and Bird on the Street,  feed myself rice and fried fish for lunch, watch TV, feed myself pasta and fried chicken for dinner, brush my teeth once more and help my brother act out the play that he wrote.

Yesterday as I was writing a post publicizing the telethon that took place this morning (if you have no idea what I’m talking about refer to Day 331) I realized that the SABC – South African Broadcasting Corporation – although had the best intentions in wanting to raise money for the people of Somalia were a bit lacking in the knowledge of how to use the internet to publicize the upcoming telethon – I spent hours online looking for the telethon phone number eventually giving up and deciding to wait until the telethon was going on to add the number to my post – so today I am going to give you some tips on how to make the internet work for the philanthropist in you because I believe that knowledge is most powerful when it is shared. Take a look:

How to use the internet to raise awareness and money for your favorite charity: Things I wish someone had told me before I entered the world of philanthropy

  • Make sure that the charity you support is registered – most charities will display a tax/EIN number on their respective websites if they don’t email them and ask for it
  • Find out whether your charity is linked to a fundraising website e.g. Firstgiving, Justgiving, My Charity Page – the advantage of using a fundraising page to raise money for charity is that you as the fundraiser don’t have to do anything – it’s fully automated – and there’s the added benefit of being able to receive donations from all over the world twenty-four hours a day with the only disadvantage being that the fundraising website gets to keep a small percentage of whatever you raise
  • Set up social media accounts e.g. Twitter, Facebook and connect with people who can identify with you – you will often find me asking people who have been affected by disability to make donations to my campaign because I know that they know how hard my life is.
  • Create a chain – mingle with the people that your donors interact with and tell them about what your trying to do chances are that they will donate too and when that happens you have to start the process up again and so on and so on
  • Don’t pester people – if someone says that they can’t donate to your cause for whatever reason accept that with grace and move on don’t keep sending them Facebook messages/tweets they will get very irritated with you and unfriend/unfollow you

Are we connecting on Twitter? If not, say hi at http://twitter.com/Nisha360

If you’ve given to my cause or you can’t give now, please help me by sharing my cause with others. You can tweet about it like my friend Stan Faryna. This is the tweet he uses: @Nisha360 is a brave, smart young woman trying to make a better world for us all. Please help her do an amazing thing. http://bit.ly/hC7vOu

Stan’s very sweet for saying so, but feel free to write what reflects you best.

Thanks to all my friends out there who are helping me make my dream come true: to make a better world for all of us!