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The feature below is brought to you by the Forrest Spence Fund, 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 Forrest Spence Fund, please visit their website: here. Wrapping Families in Care. The Forrest Spence Fund is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, founded in 2007 in honor of Robert Forrest Spence. The mission of the Forrest Spence Fund is to assist with the non-medical needs of critically or chronically ill children and their families throughout the Mid-South. Inspired by the compassion they received and the families they met during the hospitalization of their own son Forrest, Brittany and David Spence felt compelled to give back to families going through similar circumstances and to the institutions who care for them. The Forrest Spence Fund is unique in that it does not follow a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Representatives seek to truly know families in their care, understand their unique circumstances, and meet their non-medical needs accordingly. The Fund functions under four main areas: Individual Needs, Institutional Support, Counseling, and Grants. With the understanding that each family’s journey is unique, we offer numerous services to assist with the individual needs of families. The Forrest Spence Fund got its start 11 years ago by providing Care Bags filled with items to help families navigate the hospital environment. These bags are filled with toiletries, quarters for the vending machine, note pads, snacks and gender and age specific comfort items for the hospitalized child. These Care Bags give us the ability to reach families and walk alongside them during their journey. Ways that we help individual families include paying individual bills such as mortgage/rent, utility bills and phone bills. We also assist with transportation needs, provide meal vouchers for the hospital cafeteria and purchase non-medical necessities such as cribs, bouncy seats, pumping bras for nursing mothers, etc. to help caregivers provide long term care for their child. We know that the recovery of the hospitalized child encompasses the wellbeing of the entire family. To accomplish this, we partner with the institutions to broaden our reach and help more families. We do this by purchasing non-medical items from the institutions’ wishlist, sponsoring Comfort Carts that are stocked with essential items and are pushed from room to room each week to give caregivers the items they need to care for themselves. We also fund and fully stock rooms inside the institutions such as the Forrest Sibling Playroom, a safe space inside Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital for healthy siblings to play in a normalized setting. Each month, we host a Family Dinner to feed a complimentary meal to anyone with a loved one hospitalized at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital. We are in constant communication with the institutions to assess family needs and create new ways to help families cope with childhood illness. On top of these services and programs that we already provide, we are looking forward to implementing new projects in 2019 that will continue to meet the needs of families. The Forrest Spence Bereavement Cart is one of these projects. The Bereavement Carts are filled with items that offer comfort, rejuvenation, relaxation and memory making for families with a child facing an end of life circumstance. This allows us to wrap our arms around families during their darkest days. While we offer support and compassion to families facing the end of life, we also celebrate new life with multiple programs that benefit babies in the NICU. In 2019, we are thrilled to introduce the Forrest Spence NICU Development Center at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital. The NICU Development Center is stocked with items we have purchased from a wishlist created by NICU therapists to aid in the recovery and development of NICU babies. We recently covered the cost to update the Forrest Spence Family Kitchen inside Children’s Hospital at Erlanger in Chattanooga. This is a space for families to relax, reflect and replenish. In addition to providing spaces and programs for families of hospitalized children, we provide items such as our Unit Appreciation Bags to hospital staff each month to show our appreciation for the work they do. The life-altering illness or loss of a child is one of the most unimaginable experiences that any family can face. We understand the importance of healthy processing and healing following a devastating circumstance. When counseling is needed, we connect families with a professional counselor and pay 100% of the cost for up to 12 counseling sessions for grieving families. Finally, we know the financial strain that accompanies childhood illness. For families who are struggling to make ends meet, we provide a grant in the form of a personal check for up to $5,000.00 for families who can demonstrate a need. These grants help sustain families and get them back on their feet during a time of crisis. Throughout our tenure, we have seen amazing growth. We began at one hospital in Memphis, where we steadily expanded our services to other area hospitals including Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Germantown Methodist NICU and Baptist Children’s Hospital. In 2017, we expanded our reach across Tennessee to Nashville and Chattanooga. To date, over 64,000 families have been impacted by Forrest Spence Fund, and we are constantly looking for new opportunities to reach more families and institutions dealing with childhood illness. We are driven by our mission, and our work to assist with non-medical needs of critically and chronically ill children and their families will never be finished. Written by: Abby Cooley, Program Director, Forrest Spence Fund
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The feature below is brought to you by The Fashion Foundation, 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 Fashion Foundation, please visit their website: here. Fashion Beyond Beautiful Design. Remember when you were back in school and you got excited about shopping for a first day of school outfit and new school supplies to start the year? To me that was one of the best parts of attending school, but for many students in the U.S. that's not the case. The Fashion Foundation has two parts, the fashion side and the education side. We work with the fashion industry to eliminate product waste by having designers donate any merchandise they no longer need. Many fashion companies have product lying around their showrooms or warehouse that they don't know what to do with, and we've become the nonprofit to collect those pieces to put to good use! We have saved over 10,000 pounds of merchandise from going into landfills and those pieces of merchandise are now funding children's education. Funds from merchandise sales, donations, fundraisers and grants help us raise money to provide school supplies, art supplies, gym equipment and more to local underprivileged students who can't afford something as simple as a notebook or clean uniform to start their school day. To date we have impacted over 6,000 students providing them with pencils, notebooks, uniforms, holiday gifts, gym equipment, books, art supplies and so much more. We have helped 14 schools throughout New York and work very closely with the school's staff to figure out what their students need before buying the supplies or tools. For the past 5 years we have been providing students with the learning tools they need to succeed in their education but most recently we have taken on two very big projects. Last year we helped build a school library for a school in Brooklyn that didn't have a library filling it with over 800 brand new books. When we hand a student a pencil, that's when we see beautiful. Now, we're working on building a playground for a preschool in Harlem, New York. Right now this school playground is nothing but an outside concrete floor and brick wall. When the project is complete, it will have age-appropriate toys, picnic tables, slides, playhouses. The best part of all will be the giant hand-painted mural to take this from a drab, empty space to a beautiful, colorful playground. We can already envision the hand-painted mural wrapped around the playground covering the red brick, toy houses lined up to create a mini village and picnic tables for the students to eat lunch, do art projects, or take a minute to rest from all the running around. Isn't it a beautiful memory of yours running around the school playground with your friends? Happiness comes from within and when you're happy, aren't you more likely to see beautiful on the inside and outside? When we hand a student a new pencil that's when we see beautiful. A $.07 pencil can make a student's face light up and make their day brighter and maybe their entire school year brighter. Can you imagine the smiles and laughter from student's for decades to come who will use this playground? We know this playground will put a smile on our student's faces and not only brighten up their play time, but also their beautiful life-long memories. Written by: Amanda Munz, Founder and President of the Fashion Foundation The feature below is brought to you by Freedom Elementary School, 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 Freedom Elementary School, please visit their website: here. Reading Together at Freedom School We see beauty every day in the faces of our students and their families at Freedom School! Watching our students learn and grow is a great source of pride for our staff and our families. Freedom Elementary School in Freedom, CA is a K-5 public school with 652 students. 95% of our students are Latino and 64% are classified as English Language learners. 91% of our students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Our staff, students and their families are our greatest strength. The students know that they are valued and are active participants in their learning. To help students succeed, we need to have families involved in the culture of literacy. In general the younger students are asked to read with a family member for 15-20 minutes per night. Reading with a family member can encourage a love of reading and increases reading frequency. Most of our families do not have many books at home, so the teachers send home books for the children to borrow. Getting appropriate books to students and their families is a crucial step in promoting literacy. To this end, we have installed a little free library in front of our school to provide free access to books for our students even when the school is closed. Letting the students choose the books they take also helps to cultivate a joy of reading. It is truly a beautiful sight to see children rushing to the little library to get new books! While the library has been a huge success, we lack books that reflect our students’ primary language (Spanish) and have culturally appropriate characters. High quality Spanish books are expensive and difficult to find. We want to provide more high quality books in Spanish so that students can develop their primary language and be able to see themselves reflected in the books they read.
To promote early oral language and literacy development, we are also starting a family literacy project called Freedom Families Read Together. The students will learn how to read books aloud with their younger siblings and help them develop vocabulary and comprehension. Each week the students in the program will take home a bag of books in their primary language and read them with their younger siblings or other family members. Our families are our first teachers, and this will allow the school aged students to share what they have already learned with their younger relatives. This family reading project will help the students to build their own fluency and confidence and promote oral language development in their younger siblings which is a critical foundation for literacy. Giving students a chance to share stories in their primary language helps them to see themselves as readers and writers. Representation matters to students and we want to celebrate our community’s culture in our school. We have just begun the process to become a dual language school which has been shown to be beneficial academically and culturally. We are optimistic that by embracing our students’ primary language we can help develop a truly bilingual and biliterate school culture. There is a saying that those who know two languages are doubly valuable and that is truly beautiful! Written by: Julie Hitchcock The feature below is brought to you by The Smile Project, 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 Smile Project, please visit their website: here. The [Story of the Smile] Project. Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 was just like any other day in Western Pennsylvania. I was 17 years old and driving home from my high school, down the same back country roads I had ridden my entire life. It was unseasonably warm for November and I had my windows down and my radio up. I can tell you the exact curve on the exact street where I had the most crystal-clear thought of my entire life: Day 1: Happiness is.. those perfect car rides where the radio just plays all the right songs. I was about to return to my radio sing-a-long when I realized what had just happened. It wasn’t a simple moment of thinking that it was a nice day. It was something telling me that this was Day 1, that Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 was about to be the start of something beautiful. Like all 17-year-olds in 2011 when they think they have an idea to change the world, I logged onto Facebook and posted the status. That was over 2,600 days ago. I have shared a single “Happiness is” status on Facebook every single day since. Those early Facebook statuses – though I wouldn’t realize what was brewing at the time – grew into The Smile Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to spreading Happiness through random acts of kindness. Happiness is.. those perfect car rides where the radio just plays all the right songs. The Smile Project exists to encourage people of all ages to share kindness in their communities. One way this is implemented is through SPARK clubs. SPARK stands for “Strengthening Positivity and Reinforcing Kindness.” These random acts of kindness clubs are operated by young people in middle school, high school, and college. Since the launch of the SPARK initiative in 2016, students have partnered with local businesses and charities to create ripples of change in their communities. There are currently five active SPARK clubs. With support from The Smile Project, they band together to share Happiness and find beauty in their communities and in each other. One college SPARK club hosts a free “Glow Yoga” class to help students destress. Another high school SPARK club is using social media for good – highlighting members of their school who are caught doing kind things for others. By being a member of SPARK, these young people gain valuable leadership skills while also learning about the power of joy. By showing that no one is is ever too young to make a difference, we are empowering the next generation of leaders. In the summer of 2018, The Smile Project embarked on a 56-day cross country tour, spreading joy around America. The working hypothesis was that no matter what we look like, what we believe in, where we live, or who we voted for, human kindness is something that runs through each of us. The trip was designed as a giant “pay it forward” project, with one group gifting something to the next. For example, when we brought animal shelter donations to the Arizona Animal Welfare League in Phoenix, the staff handed us handwritten cards to bring to the veterans of the Travis Manion Foundation at our next stop in San Diego. Those same veterans collected school supplies which were given to the Skid Row Learning Center in Los Angeles. The #SmileProjectRoadTrip highlighted the best of America and the best of humanity. We worked with over 30 organizations in 28 states, bought meals for over 35 people, delivered hundreds of animal supplies, donated over 200 articles of clothing, and even helped a lost dog get back to its owners. The Smile Project has been featured in the Huffington Post as well as on news stations in Los Angeles, Portland, San Diego, and Omaha. The Smile Project chooses to “see beautiful” in every day and in every person we meet. While every day may not be perfect, we choose to believe that every day affords us the opportunity to find an inkling of joy. To learn more about The Smile Project, visit: www.the-smile-project.com. Written by: Liz Buechele, Founder of The Smile Project .The feature below is brought to you by HIVE, Inc, 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 HIVE, Inc, please visit their website: here. Welcome to the hive. The clubhouse at HIVE, Inc. (“the hive”) is a beautiful place. It is beautiful not because it is a newly renovated space with huge windows, lots of light, peaceful gray walls, and shelves full of art supplies, games, and interesting artifacts, but rather, any beauty you see at “the hive” comes from the people inside its walls. Membership at “the hive” includes boys and girls, men and women from all walks of life. Some of them are teenagers in their last years of high school. Others are navigating through their 20s, gathering together for laughter and conversation around video games and pizza, still trying to figure out how these last few steps into adulthood are going to be taken. Others are older, turning their attention to developing skills they need for careers, gathering with their peers around warm cups of coffee and card games. All these people have bright smiles, infectious laughter. They share their joys and commiserate on struggles. The stories they tell each other and lessons they teach clubhouse visitors are about perseverance, defying odds, and keeping the right positive perspective on life. The time they spend at HIVE, Inc. centers around attending educational workshops on a variety of topics, exploring hobbies and interests, maintaining friendships, developing vocational skills and contributing to the community through volunteerism and service projects. HIVE, Inc. is an organization that functions like a community center, serving teens and adults with disabilities in South Central Kentucky. “The hive” creates opportunities in the areas of habilitation, information, vocational skills, volunteerism, and education. There are weekly and monthly classes in yoga, music, gardening, soap & candle making, art, and woodworking; educational workshops in disability rights and laws, advocacy, nutrition & healthy living, community safety, prevention of abuse & exploitation; vocational skill development through a vendor booth at a local market selling the handmade soaps and candles HIVE members make, and also through a vending machine business operated by HIVE members. Volunteer opportunities are coordinated through partnerships with other local organizations and agencies. Skills needed for living independently are practiced by HIVE members as they perform the maintenance on the clubhouse (cleaning, landscaping, changing light bulbs, etc.). “The Hive” is not diagnosis specific, and does not bill insurance for services, so the clubhouse is available to ANY teen or adult with ANY physical, developmental, or intellectual disability, regardless of background, economic status, insurance provider, or status for state waiver services or government funding. This is particularly important because many waiver services and government programs/funding are exhausted or have long “wait lists,” and there are few options available for continuing education beyond high school for people with disabilities. This lack of services and resources leaves individuals with disabilities and their families isolated and without supports needed for future success. HIVE, Inc. founder, Laura Orsland, experienced this first hand, when her son, Taylor, who has a disability, graduated high school. In looking for ways for him to keep learning after high school, to work on skills he hadn’t quite mastered, to meet new people and be able to socialize with friends, Laura realized that there weren’t any real options available to Taylor or their family. Adult daycare wasn’t really a good fit for him, and he wasn’t a candidate for traditional postsecondary education. Laura described Taylor’s high school graduation as “similar to walking off a cliff…For his nondisabled peers, it’s a step out into this journey of college or jobs and learning and growing…moving onto bigger things. But for Tay, and kids like him, graduating high school meant the end of services he’d been getting for years. The end of seeing his friends every day. The end of learning.” ...for Tay, and kids like him, graduating high school meant the end of services he’d been getting for years. The end of seeing his friends every day. The end of learning.” -Laura Orsland This is the case for many, many people with disabilities. Unemployment rates are higher among individuals with disabilities than any other group, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, and 63% of people with disabilities will NOT enroll in post-secondary education. They face barriers like accessibility issues, costs of adaptive technology, lack of training for teachers and staff, and lack of moderate or high level collaboration between higher learning institutions and state vocational rehabilitation offices. Additionally, only 25% of youth with disabilities report being engaged in some type of volunteerism or community service that connects them to the community. After much research and discussion with other parents and professionals, Laura determined to create a place of learning and friendship for people with disabilities. Her vision was innovative. The idea was to create an organization that would address needs and “fill in the gaps” in opportunities. A place for higher learning, but also a high level of creativity and fun, not an “institution.” And that’s how “the hive” was born. HIVE, Inc. opened its clubhouse doors in January 2017, serving a few individuals with disabilities and their families across 3 counties in Kentucky. Currently, “the hive” serves 46 individuals and their families, 4 professional service provider agencies and 3 school systems across 6 counties in Kentucky, and membership is growing rapidly! HIVE, Inc. exists to break down barriers. THE MISSION: to empower individuals to lead fulfilling, self-determined lives by providing the needed supports to make informed choices, build relationships, experience respect, and make contributions as fully participating citizens. THE VISION: A barrier-free community in which all individuals may live, work, and enjoy access to limitless opportunities as valued citizens. Want to See Beautiful? Help HIVE, Inc. create opportunities for people with disabilities to grow in relationships with others, to have options and make informed choices, to experience respect and be valued and contributing members of their communities, and to live with purpose according to interests and abilities… Want to See Beautiful? Check out the opportunities given at HIVE, Inc. that allow strong, inspiring women and men to lead fulfilling, beautiful lives. You can catch a glimpse at http://thehivebg.org, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/thehivebg, or Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/h.i.v.e.inc. Article Submitted by: Jessica Wilson, Program Coordinator at HIVE, Inc. The feature below is brought to you by Global Conservation Corps, 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. The Future of African Conservation The shrill cry of an African Fish Eagle pierces the peaceful morning silence, and a group of unseen birds begins chattering noisily. The sun has just risen, and the temperature increases with it, but there still remains a faint pink glow on the horizon, with a waterbuck grazing not far into the bush. This is the setting at the Timbavati Foundation, which has joined forces with the Global Conservation Corps, to develop the Future Rangers Program. Set just outside Kruger National Park in South Africa, the center is teeming with wildlife and it is impossible not to feel the wonder of nature here. This is truly a place to build a connection with the natural world, and that’s what the children have come here to do. We sit in the classroom before the children arrive. It’s bright, well lit and clean, and covered from wall to wall with stuffed and mounted South African wildlife, along with detailed descriptions of the natural history of their live counterparts. For a child who has never seen their native wildlife, alive or dead, this classroom is a learning paradise. When you look out one sliding glass door, there’s a beautiful garden and reflective pool leading to a widely branching Amarula tree, an icon of Africa. Behind that, there’s a waterhole that regularly attracts wildlife. Look out the other side of the building, and you see a garden with displayed skulls, the most prominent being a massive rhino skull, a stark reminder of what’s a stake. The facilitators, bright eyed and smiling, tell us their favorite part of environmental education. Karen tells stories of growing up with animals, and following his father, a ranger, through the bush looking for tracks. He says what drives him in this field is the opportunity “to have an imprint on someone’s life”. Chico tells of how she grew up with no connection to nature, following the example of many and throwing trash on the ground. Once she connected with the natural world at the Southern African Wildlife College, it changed her life. She doesn’t want the students to miss out of the love she feels for nature, that she discovered later in life (and is also adamant to her students about throwing trash in the appropriate bins). The passion of the people positioned to change these children’s lives is overwhelming and contagious. If you don’t love something, you won’t work to save it. That’s the underlying message of the Future Rangers Program, and one that is increasingly urgent and important in our current time. The children in the communities surrounding the national parks often never see the wildlife that their continent is known for. It is many times too expensive and unobtainable to go into the national parks. Growing up without this connection, there is no investment to protect the wildlife, and why should there be? The Future Rangers Program is working to fix this problem at its root. Using an environmental curriculum that builds over a young person’s lifetime, the program helps to build passionate leaders in conservation, from the ground up. If a child shows the initiative, Future Rangers has the potential to lead to internships and jobs in the environmental sector, letting them pursue their passion while supporting themselves or their family. Even if the student decides to pursue a different career path, that love of wildlife and nature that was instilled early on is potentially with them forever. Ask any career conservationist. It all started when we were kids. With wildlife rapidly declining and many species, such as the iconic African rhino, disappearing due to human greed, there is no better time to invest in people to save wildlife. Without the inclusion and involvement of the communities who surround conservation areas, there will be no wildlife left to speak of. Children possess an inquisitive demeanor and an open mind, and are fascinated by the natural world. There is no better place to start building a passion for wildlife and nature than during childhood, and this is what Future Rangers aims to do. Written by Matt Lindenberg, President and Founder of Global Conservation CorpThe feature below is brought to you by HOW Global, 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. See Beautiful in a world of those shunned  I have worked hard as the Founder of the Non-profit HOW Global Inc. to establish myself as a small organization with heart and passion that gets things done. I also learned, in doing this since 2006, that there must be a strong business plan for my mission. Along with that there needs to be true partnerships with others who are not just seeking handouts but, like me, want to see real change in the world- a true solution that can end poverty and lend a hand to peace on earth. I see providing clean water as the answer to that problem. I also see bringing water as a tool to encourage peace, love beauty and new life. Every week I get a new request from those living outside of our developed world; the basic needs of life come easily for many of us. In some developing countries, people live each day with the sole purpose of just trying to survive without the basic needs of life. They are out of our sight and reach, yet my calling to do this work keeps them right here in my mind as if they are next door. With each request to become one of HOW Global’s new Green Hubs of sustainability, I read the words begging me to bring water to a new country I have never visited and put water into their community school. I often wonder, how do I begin to choose? Everyone deserves to have water and the basic needs of life. We try to put on our list those rural communities in far out places in the world where roads are unpaved and a family of 6 lives in a mud hut without water or electric. They are the forgotten people in our world, living without a voice. Our model picks a school, orphanage or community center that will act as the model of sustainability for that entire community. It takes special leaders who live on the property to want to head such project. Our goal is to have the next water well ignite hope and motivation with lots of action from the place where water will act as a bridge to many more phases of development. So, we assess our yearly water well projects by seeking out on the ground leadership within that small village and we form relationships to find a school village that will have a huge impact on the entire surrounding community. The strategy is that this new model will spread information and knowledge to others. Word of mouth spreads like wildfire in extremely rural areas of the world. They have little entertainment and media and spend most of their time with eye to eye contact, chatting to each other. Most of my success of expansion of projects in South Africa, Ghana, Kenya and Haiti came this way. We would bring water and food sustainability to a school village and before you knew it, ten other school principals were reaching out to me asking how they could become a Green Hub school and become a more sustainable force in their village community. Our newest request came from Tanzania. We were told the story of children born with Albinism and how they are hunted down and killed in many parts of Africa. As I started my research, my heart sank as I read and saw photos of what was done to those with this genetic mutation all because of them looking so differently with their pure white skin, no eyebrows, white hair. This stands out even more within a black skinned community. The body parts are also seen as something special and so it is not safe to have to have a child with Albinism in these places in the world because they will be dismembered. Many are hunted down and killed as they are viewed as evil. People fear the unknown. Lack of education and information causes people to create their own reality of what a person with Albinism is about. The issue of them being different is what is causing them to be shunned and even killed. I formed a relationship with the leaders of this mission. I spent many months getting to know about the land, the people, the drilling that needed to be done in Shinyanga, Tanzania. I collected reports, I made calls, I brought on college interns to inspire them to learn more about this potential project where we can bring water to change lives or, even better, change the idea of what beauty is all about. We included USA primary schools with a presentation on how we need to accept people for their difference and help those who need us the most in this world. They helped us raise funds for the new well. In the meantime, in Tanzania, the government that once housed this group of people, has now closed all programs of the preschool and teens. This means that they are not being housed anymore or protected. They are sent home to their own villages until the new purchased property now owned by the founders is built and ready for them. There is now an emergency need. The newly created village will hold these outcasted souls from birth to adult while working to integrate them into the community. There is agriculture in place for a huge garden where they will sell crops. There will be family-like homes on the property instead of an orphanage. A school, a training center and more is all in the plans and is being funded by a large group of individuals who have taken on this cause My organization, HOW Global was asked to bring our most magical gift of bringing water to this property. Water that I see as a clean start to wash away the ugly thoughts and actions done to these unique humans. We will visit the property in August and start our engagement of the surrounding community to try and create a relationship with the new neighboring villages preparing them for the arrival of these angels on earth. Bringing water that can be shared by expanding pipes will open the gates of ignorance allowing them to learn more about these people that look so different yet are just the same as all of us. This is our chosen project of 2018 and we will bring a water well followed by a solar pump to this group of people in waiting so they are safe and loved and seen as beautiful. Written by Rachael Paulson, Founder of HOW GlobalEdited by Rachel McLeroy for See Beautiful The feature below is brought to you by Lead to Life, 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. We live in a time of intense social and environmental injustice, and these issues are not separate. We are re-membering that the interconnectedness of social and environmental destruction are rooted in the same cultural underpinnings: from deforestation to the prison-industrial complex. We dwell in a myth of separation, separation from each other and separation from the Earth. This is how some can kill so easily, consume so mindlessly, and how life can be paved over on the planet. Systems of oppression interrupt our possibility to grieve and honor those we have lost to violence - we find ourselves in the wake of violence fighting for freedom - in resistance, in protest, in the courthouse, on the news. Our collective, Lead to Life was born to embody that freedom, that breath - inviting communities together in ceremony to grieve, to heal, to restore, to repair, to reconnect, to be. We are transforming weapons into shovels and holding ceremonial tree plantings at sacred sites and sites impacted by violence. We accompany our plantings with offerings for popular education centered in disrupting environmental racism, reimagining violence and inspiring radical imagination. This past April, in Atlanta, GA, we held our first ceremonies in honor of the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination; our work will continue into the fall of 2018 in Oakland, CA with a similar arc of gatherings rooted in healing justice. In Atlanta we held a public alchemy ceremony where we transformed weapons into 50 shovels with families directly impacted by gun violence. And over the next two days, we planted 50 trees around Atlanta at sites impacted by violence and sacred sites - the trees were planted with soil collected from the lynching site of Mack Brown in GA in service to the National Lynching Memorial work by Equal Justice Initiative. You can read about some of the stories that came out about our work on Upworthy, HuffPost, and Truthout. Lead to Life’s ceremonies are committed to radical aesthetic - beauty that brings us towards justice. When we utilize radical and aesthetic in their etymologies, we engage our senses at the root or root our senses. This rooting our senses brings us into a deeper attunement to repairing our relationship to environments impacted by persistent-traumatic stress. Making healing work a visible intervention grounds us in Cornel West’s prayer that “justice is what love looks like in public.” Through intergenerational ceremony, we live into the declaration by Mark-Anthony Johnson that “black wellness is the antithesis to state violence.” By centering the wellness of the most marginalized and weaving together activists, community leaders, faith groups, farmers, scientists, healers, environmentalists and artists we witness the ways repairing relationship and connection invokes liberation for both the human and more-than-human world. Our physical act of "turning swords into plowshares," creatively fulfills the prophecy Dr. King invoked throughout his speeches— gun metal is liberated from their histories of murder and the soil & air where violence took place is remediated by the trees. Following February’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida followed by the shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas, millions in despair are empowered to continue their commitment to nonviolence at the personal, community, and systemic level. After our April gatherings, we have been met by a plethora of folks asking us how they can liberate themselves from their weapons who previously did not know what to do with them. They are able to connect to a direct channel to transform a material of violence into a material of life! And now we are gearing up for another momentous gathering - A Time for Healing Justice in Oakland this November - mobilizing hundreds of people to wield shovels made from melted down guns to plant trees and other food-producing plants at sites impacted by violence and colonization, as well as black-led urban farms and community gardens across the city. We invite you to join us to co-liberate in Oakland or from afar! Check out our website and sign up for our newsletter and see how you can get involved! Written by Brontë Velez, Co-Founder and Creative Director of Lead to LifeThe feature below is brought to you by Oasis Center for Hope, 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.   Daring to Own Your Story™ Retreats There is such beauty and connection in coming together and knowing you are not alone. These retreats bring 10-15 women who are blind, visually impaired, or newly diagnosed with a degenerative eye condition together from across the country to explore their shame, vulnerability, and strengths through activities and group discussions. The group is kept small with three facilitators (two licensed therapists, one like myself who is blind, and a student who is also blind completing her master's in social work). Through these retreats, a beautiful sisterhood is formed of shared understanding, connection, laughter, stories and tools of empowerment. They leave with the desire to show up in their lives in new ways. This beautiful empowerment felt inside is taken back to their families and communities. In the past two years, we have conducted four retreats- each with ten blind women. These women have stayed in touch - through email, phone calls, WhatsApp, and even reunions. These women have helped one another in the transitions of blindness. They truly have helped one another See Beautiful in themselves and others and in their unique struggles and triumphs. Our goal of these retreats is increased empowerment, connection, and sisterhood. When we know we are not alone in our struggles, we feel empowered to help each other and show up with empathy and courage in our lives. We achieve this goal through activities like hiking, ropes course, foot soaks, yoga, tandem cycling, and thoughtful, research-based processes identifying where we want to show up in our life and what is holding us back. Time each day is spent on exploring courage, vulnerability, shame and worthiness. As we say, if I can climb that beautiful mountain, what else can I do in my life? 2018 RETREAT WILL BE SEPTEMBER 20-23, 2018 AT THE NATIONAL ABILITY CENTER IN PARK CITY, UTAH. THE COST FOR THE RETREAT IS $595 (SHARING A ROOM) AND $695 (SINGLE) AND INCLUDES ACTIVITIES LISTED ABOVE, LODGING, AND FOOD AND TRANSPORTATION TO AND FROM THE SLC AIRPORT!WHAT PARTICIPANTS OF THE 2016/2017 RETREATS ARE SAYING: “I really treasured everything about this experience more than I ever imagined. I will definitely recommend this program!” – J “I felt such a sense of renewal after the retreat. The facilitators were fantastic. Felt like you kept things safe and compassionate for everyone. Really appreciate all the details and planning.” –S "I continually feel like I dare show up in my life after coming to the retreat. When I am scared I have a tribe to turn to for support. Shame is not in the driver's seat any more in my life." -- Ann “Location was perfect, liked the variety too. It was awesome to walk about in two cities using my cane skills with visually impaired ladies. Made me feel like a warrior at times! The food was amazing!” – K "Not only was the program excellent. I learned so many practical tips and tools from the other attendees. Forever grateful." -- K “I learned a lot from the curriculum. It helped me understand myself better. I can now talk about being in the arena of life and really living wholeheartedly. Blog posts of women who have attended: https://adventuresinlowvision.wordpress.com/2016/06/16/truth-and-daring/ https://adventuresinlowvision.wordpress.com/2017/07/11/on-the-boat-again/ http://doublevisionblog.com/2018/05/16/now-is-the-time/ Tag us! Instagram: @becky__andrews Facebook: Oasis Center for Hope & Becky Andrews, Resilient Vision Blog: [email protected] Written by Becky Andrews, President of Oasis Center for HopeEdited by Rachel McLeroy for See Beautiful The feature below is brought to you by Heart of Courage, 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. Uniting Families. Changing Futures. Heart of Courage focuses on mentoring and advocating for women who have had their children placed in Child Protective Services and wish to be reunited with their children and create better lives for themselves. Since our inception, we have been able to extend our reach to working with mothers who have aged out of foster care and whose children are either in foster care, or have a strong possibility of being placed in foster care themselves. The overall purpose of our program is to help the mothers in our program become self-sufficient both mentally, emotionally and physically so that they can become better individuals and better mothers to their children. The end result being children united with their mothers into loving and sustainable environments . Our original goal was to help with the large number of placements in foster care. We believed that if possible, children should be with their mothers if their mothers are willing to work hard to make the changes in their lives to create positive and sustainable futures for their children. What we begin to learn, and continue to learn, is that these mothers need a voice. That many of them have a story and their story deserves to be told. We learned that these mothers have incredible strengths, strengths they don’t realize that they have until you as their mentor point it out to them. These mothers have fought abuse of all kinds, teen parents at 12 and 13, addictions, homelessness, abandonment, mental health... and yet they continue to fight for their children. They continue to desire to provide a better life for their children than they had. They just need the support and encouragement- encouragement that they may have never had. We try to offer that to them. Heart of Courage is completely volunteer based. We know that the women in our program, genuinely want to benefit from our array of services, such as education and advocacy, one on one mentoring, parent support groups, job readiness, educational services and community outreach. When we mentor these mothers, they become so excited to have our support because many feel alone. But it is a reward for all of us. The joy we feel when we see a mother, 9 months clean from meth, and know that her child will be coming home to live with her next month is amazing. When we witnessed first-hand the sacrifices she made by making the decision to not go back to the friends and family that she knew would try to keep her in that negative environment. Or the excitement as a few of our mothers enrolled in school, and you watch tears in their eyes because people in their past had told them they weren’t smart. We have one mom, whose goal is to get her GED before she turns 30, which is later this year. She is now in a GED program! We work with each mother to see how she can become self-sufficient and come up with her own set of goals. Each week we work on those goals as well as talk about other things going on in her life. Sometimes it is just listening to her, sometimes it is encouraging her, and sometimes it delivering her tough support and telling her she has to be patient. Telling her to be patient is probably the most difficult because she can easily get disappointed or discouraged. Sometime she gets tired of fighting because she feels like she has been fighting most of her life. It’s during those times that we show her how special she really is and that she has to ignore people’s misjudgments of her and that negative voice inside her head. Instead we tell her to look at how far she has come and to remember that child who she is fighting to make a difference for. That child just sees her as his or her beautiful mommy. We want her to see that same beautiful inside herself and see beautiful in the world. Instead of just living each day as it comes, we see her now living for the future. To get further insight into Heart of Courage and meet one of the mothers we are helping you can watch us on Plugged Into DFW: https://dfw.cbslocal.com/show/plugged-into-dfw/video-3804719-heart-of-courage-3-4/ Written by Dania Carter, Founder/ CEO of Heart of CourageEdited by Rachel McLeroy for See Beautiful |
See beautiful in yourself.
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