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The feature below is brought to you by Paint Love, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about Paint Love, please visit their website page: here.  It's not just art.Paint Love works with young people across the Metro Atlanta area who are in the midst of facing some unimaginably tough circumstances. Our programs help them not only see beautiful in the art they create, and experience beautiful in the process of creation, but also acknowledge the beautiful in themselves and in those around them, and create more beautiful in their communities. Paint Love’s mission is to bring extraordinary arts programming to youth facing poverty and trauma. We envision a world where all young people have access to creative expression that empowers them to imagine a future not limited by adverse experiences. One way our programs are unique is that each of our projects is intentional and individualized. Projects can last from 1-100 hours and are custom crafted to engage youth in seeing, experiencing, acknowledging, and creating beautiful in the ways that will best serve their unique circumstances. Another way Paint Love’s programming is unique is that our projects are trauma-informed. This is a new, buzzy phrase, but to us, it means maintaining a deeper understanding of all the ways experiencing trauma can impact kids, their behavior, development, and even creativity. It means meeting kids where they are and inviting them into the creative process so they can have a positive, fun, and meaningful experience. We have a Paint Love staff person as well as a lead artist and extra volunteers at every project, and we strive to provide our team of both staff and volunteers with knowledge and training to set them up for success when working with kids who have experienced trauma. To try to get across this depth, we sometimes say, “it’s not just art…” Art is important and wonderful all on its own, but Paint Love is not just an after-school art program- we go so far beyond that. Our team is built of top-tier artists, makers, and creators; community advocates; and trauma professionals; who expertly craft projects specific to the needs of each of our partners. I think the soul of our mission is best conveyed by sharing a story: One of our partner nonprofits, Kate’s Club, empowers children facing life after the death of a parent or sibling. They do not charge families and provide a safe place for kids to express and manage grief. To go along with their recent theme “If my tears could talk,” a Paint Love artist who is also a professional sculpture and master’s in social work candidate, collaborated with Paint Love and Kate’s Club leadership to create a project helping kids identify their emotions and think about how their grief expresses itself: is it small and quiet like a mouse? Does it roar like a lion, get angry like a rhinoceros, or snap like a crocodile? Kids used air-dry clay and shiny, sparkly gold and silver spray paint to create elaborate, beautiful animal masks to give their grief a voice and a beautiful, physical representation. This is just one example of how we are investing in the creative and mental health of the kids we serve. By bringing extraordinary arts programming to youth facing poverty and trauma, Paint Love’s projects are creating opportunities to experience all the ways art and the lessons it brings can make our lives more beautiful and more meaningful, and sharing that beauty with the kids who need it most in our community. Written by: Laura ShawExecutive Director, Paint Love
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The feature below is brought to you by Project I Am, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about Project I Am, please visit their website page: here.  Seeing beautiful in young people's impactThe way I see beautiful is in the eyes of humans. I see beautiful in youth. Sometimes I sit and wonder how in the world did I end up here at just 11 years old? When I nagged my parents over and over again for countless months about helping people living on the street, I never thought my idea of putting together bags of basic essentials would lead me to being in the same room with President Obama where he named me one of 2017’s most influential people! After helping my aunt pass out hot food one bitter cold evening in Chicago when I was 5 years old, I knew immediately that I wanted to do something and 3 years later, Project I Am was born to help build awareness to the injustices on the streets throughout cities across the world. Blessing Bags filled by the hands of countless volunteers across the country include a variety of products including hygiene wipes, hand sanitizer, Band-Aids, antiseptic, soap, socks, bottled water, toothbrushes, toothpaste, bottled water, and a nonperishable snack. The bags are small and easily transportable. To date, with the help of family and friends, I have been able to impact over 25,000 men, women, and children across the world! The Blessing Bags have been given to people in places of hurricane and volcano devastations like Houston, Florida, Guatemala, and Puerto Rico, and have even been distributed to orphans in Africa. To help with the financial assistance needed to purchase contents for the Blessing Bags, I have successfully created fundraisers, securing donations. My call for help has been heard by the media. Shows like Windy City Live in Chicago and The Steve Harvey Show have even made generous contributions. I have also been blessed to receive praise for what I have accomplished so far by several notables such as the NBA, Nike, Disney and LeBron James who invited me to participate in his #AlwaysBelieve campaign. The way I see beautiful is in the eyes of humans. It doesn't matter if you are black, white, male or female, at some point in life everyone will need help. Project I Am gives to the homeless without any judgment of race or character. The only thing we see is the need to make someone’s day better by helping them along in their current situation. It is so important to me that we all understand that homeless people are people too. It could be you! I see beautiful in youth. Young people are people too. Too often, we are told to be quiet and to be still. We are pretty amazing! Don’t Wait To Be Great is my motto! Another part of the Project I Am mission is to create youth change-makers. I encourage youth from all different backgrounds and cultures to help make their communities better by doing good in their neighborhood. If awarded the opportunity, funding will be used to help maintain daily operations of the organization. Additionally, Project I Am would choose 2 youth to mentor on an innovative social entrepreneurship project. Through the years, it has become increasingly clear that so many young people have so many ideas but don’t have the resources to get started. I would love to be that bridge for young people and to continue being a blessing to all! Written by: J. Na-Tae' Thompson Director, Project I Am The feature below is brought to you by Realize Your Beauty, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about Realize Your Beauty, please visit their website page: here.  Fostering beauty from within"After Camp RYB she has more confidence. Typically, she is very shy but she was so confident at the end of camp presentation. She really shocked me. We played games they learned and listened to camp songs almost all the way home!" -Camp Parent Realize Your Beauty is so grateful for the opportunity to share our work with the See Beautiful community! To begin, we’d like to share our mission statement: Realize Your Beauty promotes positive body image to youth through theatre arts. We bring plays, workshops & summer camps to youth to promote self-esteem & kindness. Our workshops focus on fostering inner beauty- taking the focus away from societal standards and the pressure to be 'pretty'. We encourage students to put their energy into kindness, integrity, and respect towards themselves & others and to focus on developing their own unique inner qualities. For our older students, we also teach eating disorder awareness. Teaching them the signs & symptoms of an eating disorder, and how to reach out for help if they or a friend need support. RYB is a 501c3 based in NYC, with program offerings in New York and Colorado. Our website can be found here: http://realizeyourbeauty.org “I learned that the beauty is from withIN. I feel the workshop was beneficial because it changed my views on myself.” – Jasemin, age 13, 8th grade And now for more about our project: Realize Your Beauty is very excited to be preparing for our annual summer camp! Each summer, we hold Camp Realize Your Beauty- a 5-night summer sleepaway camp at the base of Rocky Mountain National Park in Estes Park, Colorado. "I loved it! It was the best camp ever!" - Hailey, Camper The summer camp teaches classic theatre techniques, while also including ‘empowerment’ workshops throughout the day. Our campers learn acting, playwriting & directing skills, with a special emphasis placed on developing a positive sense of self. We cover the following topics of ‘empowerment’: self-esteem, kindness (towards self and others) and anti-bullying. We also have all the fun of a traditional summer camp: drum circles, campfires, swimming, archery, nature walks, crafts, and of course – s’mores! Throughout the week, the campers use their new knowledge and skills to create their own theatre piece, to be performed for parents on the final day of camp. The pieces they create develop from the conversations we have in the empowerment workshops. The ability to express their feelings with this creative outlet has proven to be a very effective tool for these young people. To watch a segment from last year’s performance, please follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNGS2_1V9Ec&t=74s It is extremely important to us that camp remains affordable and accessible to children of all backgrounds. To that end, we keep our tuition as low as we can, and we have a very extensive scholarship program that provides reduced or free camp tuition for those in need. This summer, 1/2 of our campers will attend on financial assistance. We believe that we are creating beautiful through our summer camp program by helping our campers fully discover the incredible gifts they have to offer to this world, while at the same time encouraging them to embrace the differences and gifts that others have to offer. We create beautiful by allowing young people to express themselves and their creativity fully and freely. Nurturing this creative energy, kindness and self-respect in our campers allows them to grow and create their own beautiful in this world! "Lindsay attended last year and absolutely loved Camp RYB! She struggles with self-confidence and fitting in and when she came home last year, she felt like she actually had somewhere she could fit in with a group of girls that weren’t as judgmental and made her feel good about herself. I was so happily surprised by how much Lindsay grew that week of camp and can’t wait to see more growth and confidence after this year. She literally asks all the time if it’s almost time for RYB Camp.” – Camp Parent Written by: Stacey Lorin MerklFounder + Executive Director, Realize Your Beauty The feature below is brought to you by R&P Coffee Co., an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about R&P Coffee Co., please visit their website page: here.  More than a cup of coffeeR&P Coffee Co. is on a mission to make the Shannock Valley Region a better place to live, work, and play. We want people to feel a sense of pride and see beautiful in our little corner of the world. How will we do that? Through the art of Restoration & Placemaking (R&P). By restoring community and making a place for authentic relationships to happen, we can increase social connections, improve health & the economy, decrease drug & suicide rates, and so much more! A thriving community hub where people spend time together is just the spark our community needs to get this old coal valley burning once again. Coal will probably never make a come back. If our region is to have any kind of a future, it starts with community. Why Coffee? Coffee shops provide the informal, neutral space, needed for authentic relationships to naturally thrive. You're primarily there for conversation, you can become a regular, there's no real structure or time constraints to what is happening. A local coffee shop becomes the living room of the community as authentic relationships begin, grow, and thrive. We believe that a cup of coffee (or tea, juice, *insert your choice of beverage here*) can lead to conversation, that conversation can lead to commonality, and that commonality can lead to civic responsibility, justice, peace, and harmony within our community. It’s About More than Just Coffee The coffeehouse will be designed to attract a diverse range of individuals with events, classes, & activities for all ages. Any profit goes right back into the community. We want to support local business, restore broken spaces, and bring the community together. Ultimately, restoration & placemaking means serving - serving coffee and serving you. If there's a need in the community, we want to meet it. But Why is it Needed? Ultimately, because society has forgotten the art of neighboring and community, “It occurs to me that this is not a neighborhood; it is only a collection of unconnected individuals” (Philip Langdon). 1 in 4 Americans (or 25%) say they have no one to talk to (compared to just 8% in 1985). If you don’t count family, that number drops to 1 in 2, or 50% of Americans that don’t have someone to depend on. That disconnect, the isolation that has overwhelmingly invaded American culture has led to many devastating issues (according to a study done in the UK, loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day!). Locally, our county ranks 4th in our state for overdoses per 1,000 citizens. Within the nation, our state also ranks 4th, placing us in one of the worst drug ravaged areas in our country. The township we reside in also has a higher than usual suicide rate. With much of the county being rural, this doesn’t come as a surprise, as rural areas usually have higher rates of suicide and abuse. We are not the exception. It’s time for a change. It’s time to reconnect. It’s time to BE a community once again. Fun Fact In an effort to connect the past and present, to span the interest of all generations, and build a sense of pride for the area – history will also be a focus. By partnering with the up and coming historical society, we hope to display historical pictures throughout the shop. But the neat part iis that even our name pays homage to our past. Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal and Coke Company (R&P) is the mining organization that built many of the towns locally. Without their presence here, our area wouldn’t have been the booming mining town it once was. We are here today because of the coal industry. But we will be here tomorrow because of community, because of restoration and placemaking (R&P). Written by: Bri ShermanBoard President, R&P Coffee Co. The feature below is brought to you by drawchange, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about drawchange, please visit their website page: here.  Empowering kids through artDrawchange is a nonprofit organization that conducts art therapy-based programming with homeless children in Atlanta and around the world. Our founder and CEO, Jennie Lobato, established drawchange in 2009 from her passion for art, children, and helping others. Those passions inspire our mission to end the cycle of poverty through the life-changing beauty of creating art. After 10 years in operation, we have programs in Atlanta, Orlando, Kentucky, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, and more! We have served over 10,000 children and continue to multiply that reach each year with the drawchange Blueprint. The Blueprint is a comprehensive online tool that grants individuals the ability to adopt and implement the drawchange curriculum in their very own communities. These extensions of drawchange ensure our organization’s reach is not limited by physical location and is sustainable for years to come. We are dedicated to opening young minds to their true potential so they can see the beautiful they can become. Drawchange creates ongoing programs in homeless shelters to conduct breathing exercises, imagination sessions, and art-therapy based projects primarily with children ages 5-10. We see beautiful as we watch art ignite a passion for learning and living within homeless children. Through each and every smile, we witness children in extreme situations expand and learn to envision a better world for themselves and their community. Children leave our programs inspired to become who they want to be in life, with pride, boosted self-esteem and a deeper connection to their emotions and the world around them. Everyday we strive to achieve our ultimate goal: to instill confidence and build self-esteem in children through art therapy-based programming at local homeless shelters and in communities abroad. A drawchange participant is simply always a member of the drawchange family. We all share a common commitment to the “drawchange way of living”--a way of knowing we can be anything we want to be in life and of being empowered to become a leader within our own community. And most importantly we all share a knowledge that no one is a victim of their current circumstances and can always rise from anything! Studies show that exposing children to art helps increase test scores and provides a zest for learning. Homeless children are at great risk of missing school and achieving lower scores in comparison to their peers. When we enter the homeless shelters we create an environment that enables the children to feel safe while expressing themselves and feeling valued. Our programs allow children a place to freely explore their emotions and process everything that is going on instead of feeling like a victim of their circumstance. Programs of therapeutic value are often not an option to children experiencing homelessness and drawchange makes that option available. Through self-empowerment and self-confidence provided by drawchange, children improve their emotional intelligence and learn that even when they cannot control the world around them, they can control their actions. We are breaking the cycle of poverty as we work on seeing beautiful together as a global community. Submitted by: Jennie LobatoCEO and Founder, drawchange The feature below is brought to you by The Chain Collaborative, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about The Chain Collaborative, please visit their website page: here.  Investing in leaders to build a futureMy first passion was literature. Words. The stories that we tell each other and the stories that we tell ourselves. The stories that we live and that we endure. The stories that come to life before us and the ones that give us life. The Chain Collaborative (TCC), while a development organization, is like literature and like putting words on a page, in that through our efforts, we allow stories to come to life. In the development world as in the world of literature, words are cavernous. They are deep and can be filled with meaning, or they can be empty, hollow. They are at once eternal, known for centuries, and also just waiting to be discovered—as words are written and not only spoken, or as sounds in new languages. Words can be mapped. You may be familiar with these words and may have visited them in different contexts: empowerment, capacity-building, sustainability. And now, more than ever, development programs must build resilience, peace, and justice. They must promote equity, diversity, and inclusion. In this context, words cease to be caverns, tombs, or labyrinths. Suddenly they are like objects, they have weight. The words that I’ll share in this blog post will tell one story, one of the many that I could share about The Chain Collaborative. Nine years ago, I traveled to Siem Reap, Cambodia to volunteer and experience a second passion of mine: international development. When I began this journey, I’d no idea of the stories I’d be able to tell. I only knew I wanted them to be beautiful, full of light, bursting with brilliance and meaning. While in Cambodia, I discovered that people had many notions of beauty and brilliance. Some folks around me described the children, the people, of Cambodia, as beautiful—in a way that meant their conditions of life seemed so unfathomable. How could someone so beautiful be experiencing something so ugly: poverty. But poverty has its own story, with characters called Power, Politics, and Marginalization, to name just a few, and this story can tell you why poverty lives among the beautiful. It is also this story that has led revolutionary thinkers to claim that we must act “from each according to his [or their] ability, to each according to his [or their] needs.” TCC’s story begins when I did just that when I met Sokha Khoun as she was forced to leave her foster home in Siem Reap, despite having received a scholarship to attend university. She asked if I would provide her a monthly stipend to live in town during her studies so that she could take advantage of her scholarship. Without a home, she’d have to forfeit the opportunity. I agreed. Sokha is now thriving, working for a non-profit organization in Cambodia where she is able to pay on the accompaniment that I offered, allowing other girls to take advantage of the opportunities in front of them and write their own stories. When I think about Sokha, I know she is the reason I began TCC years later. She is the mission of The Chain Collaborative: to invest in Change Leaders as they build a future according to their own visions. Though at TCC we do provide according to our abilities, it is not really according to need. Julia Kramer, in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, wrote, the “need-help model of development is closely linked to a problematic deficit model, where we recognize those ‘in-need’ for what they lack, rather than value them for what they have.” When you give according to need, you do not recognize what people have. At TCC, we pay forward that moment of recognizing Sokha for what she had, and nurturing it: the tenacity to seek her own future, to gain scholarship, to ask for support. She was brave, humble, she had vision. When you invest in the visions of people and in their existing capacities to be brave and humble, you invest in future leaders, you reinstate dignity in development, and you allow people to plot their own story step by step, to define their own meaning. As a development organization now working with coffee farmers, we aim to do exactly that through our Investment Partnership Program, in which we collaborate with local leaders, invest in their capacities, and ask them to design their own futures. In the past year, we’ve also co-authored an online curriculum in sustainability, where we teach the meaning of sustainability, its history, and its interaction with the coffee industry. Erika Koss (AWorldinYourCup.com), my curriculum co-creator and coffee sister, mapped the meaning of sustainability. The root of the word, she found, was first used by Chaucer, in a poem, where he admits that he cannot sustain the beauty of another’s eyes. It reminds me that the root of everything we do at TCC is beauty. Sustainability itself comes from too much beauty. Sustainable development is the process of creating so much beautiful, and so much light, that you literally cannot manage its brilliance. Finally, when I think about how TCC sees beautiful, I am reminded that our real work is to create beauty that is no longer ours to manage. Through TCC, I strive to pay on Sokha’s story and experience. Yes, I accompanied her journey in a small way, but my job was never to witness and behold the beauty that ensued. I was to fade away. Everything she creates, the stories she now helps other girls to write, is not for me to experience, to behold and to have. At TCC, we are merely a part of other people’s journeys, a stepping stone and a resource they can use to lift themselves up toward their own stories and toward their own beauty. And once they take that step, like someone we love and cherish, our Change Leaders are only ours to let go, to let live, to let create. To let beauty. Written by: Nora BurkeyFounder and Executive Director, The Chain Collaborative The feature below is brought to you by The Diversity Gap - A Project of Plywood People, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about The Diversity Gap, please visit their website page: here.  Plywood Leaders of Color Gathering Cultivating beautiful across all lines of difference We all arrive at our “diversity” work from different places. We carry with us critical moments that open our eyes and invite us to see the world in new ways. When I say “diversity work,” I’m referring to the intentional, ongoing process of celebrating the undeniable presence of difference in us and among us. When I say “diversity work,” I’m thinking of our responses to racial injustice and our efforts to build cultures where all people can thrive. When I say “diversity work,” I am thinking about what it takes to see the beautiful in every person we meet. I’m imagining what it looks like to commit our energies to the flourishing of others just as much as we are committed to our own. My arrival at this work began when I was a child growing up in rural Georgia. There were many things I loved about my childhood. I loved my small town; I loved the ten minute walk to the grocery store or to the library. I loved knowing everyone, and I loved feeling so known. However, there was also a cloud of racism that hung over our little slice of heaven. In true Southern fashion, there was a celebration of the confederacy that made me feel like my liberated black body was somehow in the wrong place. There was the fact that our town was divided by the railroad tracks: black people here; white people there. Rich people here; poor people there. There was the fact that our classrooms and football stadiums were also marked by a segregation that confused me. Those facts, and my confusion about them, journeyed with me as I moved through college and beyond. I eventually entered the working world in the big city and was struck by how these schools, neighborhoods and churches seemed just as segregated as my hometown, despite everyone’s belief in being so progressive. This challenged me to consider: why can’t we do life better together? What will it take? Then 2014 came and went, as did 2015 and 2016. The Movement for Black Lives took the nation by storm, and our social feeds were flooded with hurt and heartbreak. It’s as if bandages were ripped off of age-old wounds and we could all feel it. With our souls bare and our fears exacerbated, I watched communities fracture and fumble through it all. It was painful to say the least. But it was also a critical moment for many, inviting more people into the arena of diversity work. It was around this time various organizations began inviting me to consult or train their communities in the work of anti-racism. Questions about the state of race in America quickly gave way to questions like, “How do we diversify our team?” or “How do we diversify our community?” I would find myself in conversation with the few people of color on a majority white staff, and they would confess, “I love being a part of this organization, but I feel like I can’t be myself here,” or “When I try to speak up about the racism I see, white people push back and can’t understand; it makes me feel powerless.” Most often, I’ve heard from all sides, “We value diversity and being a multicultural organization, but it’s not happening. What are we doing wrong?” The value doesn’t match the reality. There is distance between what we want and what is required to attain it. Good intentions fall short of good impact. In my own life and story, these tensions revealed the next level of my diversity work: doing research to discover the cultural habits and practices of truly diverse and inclusive teams. My thinking is, if I can figure out what is working for some, then perhaps I can share findings that will work for many. This name of this research project is The Diversity Gap. Over the course of the next couple of years, I will be interviewing over 100 underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities in majority white organizations to learn more about their experiences of inclusion and exclusion. As I find organizations were diversity work is going comparatively well, I will complete deep-dive case studies to understand what is working and why. Alongside this research, I am creating a podcast series to share my findings and to learn from industry experts as it relates to organizational culture, diversity and change management. I also hope to launch a live event and write a book. I have big dreams. At the end of the day, I’m finding that it’s the work that matters most. It’s the intentional and ongoing choice to show up for the messy and clumsy conversations. It’s the courage it takes to look honestly at our racially broken past and present, and to consider what sacrifices will be required to create a new future. It’s the tenacity to take responsibility for our lives and our families and to decide that racial segregation ends with us. This is the work that matters most. My dream for this project, for The Diversity Gap, is to support leaders and communities on their journey to not only see more beautiful, but to leverage their influence to cultivate beautiful across all lines of difference. This is the invitation. I hope you will join me in this work. Written by: Bethaney WilkinsonDirector of Programming, The Diversity Gap - A Project of Plywood People The feature below is brought to you by Lantern House, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about Lantern House, please visit their website page: here.  Homeless Court, a Funeral, and Stolen Sausages: My first two weeks at Lantern HouseAt Lantern House, northern Utah’s largest homeless shelter, there is a large community room which serves many purposes. Last week, I sat in the front row of a courtroom and watched a patient judge, in his formal robe and black Nikes, negotiate community service hours with numerous Lantern House residents. Two clerks took notes, a public attorney counseled clients, and Lantern House case managers took the stand to verify their client’s valiant efforts. After an individual had successfully completed their community service obligations, I felt the urge to belt out an excited “whoop whoop” and was beyond happy when the judge asked us to give the individual a round of applause. I could have clapped for hours for the young man, who couldn’t have been more than thirty, as he sauntered out of the makeshift courtroom. The beaming smile on his face made me wonder if he had ever been clapped for in such a way, and I thought about all the cheering and support, literal and otherwise, I’d received in the course of my life, and how unfair the moments in a life can shake out to be in comparison to another. The week prior I watched an adorable little dog (yes, we take all kinds of animals at our shelter) sleep peacefully on the community room floor, it’s wave-like breath giving life to a somber room as we honored two individuals who had recently passed away. Residents from the shelter filed in quietly, lighting candles and laying flowers on a small memorial table. A pastor shared her thoughts, and although I’ve never been particularly keen on religious ceremony, it felt essential to be there. It was a rough initiation to a new job; two people passing away, thankfully peacefully, in my first two weeks at the shelter, but I was grateful for our Executive Director who, having many years on me, seemed more acquainted and skilled in honoring death. It made me proud to know that we were all there, albeit just a few minutes, to recognize their lives in the best way we knew how. This past Thursday I sat in the community room for our weekly staff meeting; an all hands-on-deck discussion of everything and anything that’s going on at the shelter. Since I’m new, I still feel like I’m a fly on the wall as security, kitchen staff, case managers, medical personnel, and supervisors start hashing out protocols and various responsibilities. I enjoy these meetings because I feel like I’m watching a collective group of people who constantly put the needs of others before themselves. Every breath and word they give is in concern for our clients, and I must believe that prior to birth, they were all cut from some insanely altruistic cloth. I’m crossing my fingers they all wear off on me. Near the end of the meeting, someone from the kitchen brought up a concern with one of the resident volunteers (a client who has been given additional tasks and privileges at the shelter), who happens to be visually impaired, and who happened to be cooking a large amount of sausage that particular morning. The concern primarily existed around him having enlisted other clients at the shelter to help him cook the sausage, how that number of clients who were “lending a hand” had ballooned to an outrageous figure, and by the end of the sausage frying festivities, the client was left with a small fraction of the sausage he had started with, which we believe he stuffed into a water bottle and stored somewhere. The sausage is just one example, I’ll admit a funny one, of the profound thoughtfulness our staff has for the clients they serve. Maybe to some it doesn’t seem so beautiful to talk about a misdemeanor community service sentence, a double funeral, or a sausage theft, but I guess I don’t see it that way anymore. I see the beauty in all of it; the tragedy, sorrow, pride, humor, absurdity, grace, and messiness of us all being alive. I see the beauty in the people who work at Lantern House, who are committed to giving our homeless clients as many chances as they need to get back on their feet. I see the beauty in people who are willing to bring the court system to Lantern House, so clients don’t miss appointments. I see the beauty in the clients that call Lantern House home. Most surprisingly, I’ve found that seeing beautiful in others helps me see myself in a softer light, and I think, or at the very least hope, it will allow me to give more beauty, acknowledgment, empathy, and time to those I see so much beauty in. Written by: Hannah BowcuttDevelopment Director, Lantern House The feature below is brought to you by Birthright of Memphis, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about Love Not Lost, please visit their website page: here.  The Beauty of BirthrightIn many ways, the things we experience in our lives can alter our perceptions and leave physical and mental scars. They can cause real damage to our hearts, our minds, and our souls, leaving us searching for hope. We may never be the same again after walking through life-changing events. We’re different. We can’t go back. But what if these wounds can become something beautiful? What if our life story is transformed into a masterpiece more beautiful than we could have ever imagined? From the moment a woman makes the first phone call or enters our center, she is greeted with genuine interest, heartfelt compassion, and caring guidance. Our volunteers and staff have quietly served women facing unplanned pregnancies for almost 50 years in the MidSouth, and have offered workable options to overcome hardships. Last year, the Memphis office provided free help to about 1500 women; administering pregnancy tests, offering one-on-one counseling, and access to a maternity closet and baby items. Birthright cares about the mother and the baby. We want to walk this journey of life with her and help her through these difficult situations so that she may have a better life for her and her child. You never know what impact you’ll have in someone’s life just by caring and learning about what’s going on in her life. We’ve learned that courage and compassion go hand in hand. A woman having the courage to ask for help often leads to an opportunity for others to show compassion. Here, we ask them where they’ve been, truly seeing them, and seeking to know them and their need. We listen and make room for the unheard to be heard, even when it feels uncomfortable - holding space for people to be loved and valued. LaShonda,* a Birthright mom, was terrified to find herself pregnant and alone and was surrounded by negativity and limited resources. She wanted desperately to be on her own while still supporting her baby but didn’t know where to go or who to whom she would turn. Seeing a Birthright sign on a bus bench, she timidly walked through our doors and shared her story. She learned valuable lessons about healthy relationships and boundaries through educational classes and support counseling at Birthright. “Birthright has taught me mindfulness, how to stay positive, how to combat frustration and grounding exercises. What I’ve learned is I can do anything I put my mind to.” She adds that the staff and volunteers are always interested in her, how she’s feeling, and helping her move forward. She says Birthright of Memphis has also taught her how to budget and save money, offered classes in breastfeeding, and infant safety as well as instilled the feeling that “all will be okay and they will always be here, and they support my dream of graduating college.” As for the baby girl on the way, “I was really scared when I found out. But now I have the motivation and the knowledge to care for an infant.” The strength we see each and every day continues to amaze us. As volunteers and employees, many of us came to Birthright to help the moms, never realizing how much they would influence our own lives. Personally, I know I’m not the same person I was when I arrived in November. I learn even more from my bird’s eye view of others’ difficulties, as I witness both the beauty and challenge of loving another well in the face of life’s greatest difficulties. Reaching out to help others in their hardest circumstances is more than just “doing the right thing.” It’s our mission. Stories weave a beautiful tapestry of beauty from ashes and it’s an honor to walk alongside women when their lives are forever changed. We truly get to be the hands and feet of care and compassion in our community. For Life is beautiful. *name has been changed for privacy. Written by: Wendy NationsDirector of Development, Birthright of Memphis The feature below is brought to you by Love Not Lost, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about Love Not Lost, please visit their website page: here.  Celebrating life and preserving memoriesLove Not Lost sees beautiful in our world of suffering and grief because we see the love, life, and joy in every person. We're on a mission to revolutionize the way we grieve, making sure everyone feels loved and supported in their pain. We do this through three major programs: photography, grief support, and corporate care. In the past, See Beautiful has helped us grow our photography program, which provides free portrait sessions to those facing a terminal diagnosis to celebrate life and preserve memories. After the sessions, we provide beautiful hand-crafted albums to pass along to loved ones throughout the generations at no cost to the families we serve. These albums not only serve as a tool that supports loved ones in grief, but they can also be a source of peace and joy in the years to come. In 2018, we partnered with Northside Hospital to start serving their stage 4 cancer patients across the state. We've added photographer volunteers in the greater Atlanta area and will continue to grow our base of talented, caring people to serve with us. Our vision is to continue expanding our photographer program to take it to new cities as early as next year as we work to serve people across the entire nation. Through our photography program, we learned that sometimes we were the only ones showing up for the families we served. We saw there was a need to help people in the community move through the awkwardness and fear of reaching out to offer support and show up too. As a result, our grief support program was born. Through this program, we have launched empathy cards, care cards, gift-a-session certificates, and other tools to help people have a well-designed, tangible way to engage someone they care about who is hurting. Our most recent tool is actually a website, www.HowCanILoveYouBetter.com, which is our care card in a digital form that is available to everyone. And it's not just about supporting people only through death, but any hard life situation like a job loss, divorce, family transition, diagnosis, required move, etc. As we work to empower the community through these tools and resources, we realized there's a difference between being supported at work versus being supported at home. People tend to spend half (or even more than half) of their lives at the office. Supporting a coworker can look very different than supporting a neighbor or a close friend. We want to make sure people are supported in ALL areas of their lives, which is what led us to create our new Corporate Care Program. Any time we bring on a new photographer, we take them through a retreat where we teach self-awareness, self-care, empathy, and grief support training. With the help of a C-level executive coach and a certified therapist, we have taken that photography training and made some adjustments to bring it to the workplace. We are excited to be able to offer this training to C-level execs, upper management, and entire teams. Not only will this equip management and colleagues to support people at work, but it will radically improve company cultures, especially around grief. As we carry out our mission to celebrate life, preserve memories, and support people in grief, we would love to have you join us to revolutionize the way we grieve and support others in grief. Visit www.lovenotlost.org to share, donate, volunteer, or meet us at one of our upcoming events. Thank you! Written by: Ashley JonesFounder/Executive Director, Love Not Lost |
See beautiful in yourself.
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