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.  After losing my daughter to a terminal illness, photos were one thing I could turn to that provided deep comfort. If I sat with them and ugly-cried, I didn't have to worry about any judgement for the snot pouring out of my nose. They gave me freedom and space to grieve however I needed to in that moment. The tangible prints allowed me to hold my little girl when she was no longer here to hold. Recognizing the power photos have to bring comfort and healing, I wanted to give that gift to others and started Love Not Lost. We photograph people facing a terminal diagnosis and provide a free portrait session as well as a beautiful hand-crafted album. We're on a mission to celebrate life, preserve memories, and support people in grief. The driving question of Love Not Lost is "How can we love people better?"  Since our first grant with See Beautiful, we've grown tremendously! We've added photographer volunteers in Atlanta, partnered with local hospices, partnered with Northside Hospital's oncology centers across the state of GA, and we have plans to keep growing. A grant from See Beautiful would continue to allow us to serve people facing a terminal diagnosis, as well as refine our systems in our photographer program in Atlanta that we will take to cities across the US. In addition to our photographer program, we've added a grief support program that naturally came when we asked the question "How can we love people better?" It's one thing for us to show up for these families to preserve their memories and support them, but we recognize it's even more powerful when friends and family show up to support them too. Often times, people don't know what to say or what to do to help people so they don't do anything, leaving their loved one feeling alone and abandoned in times of need.  We want to change that, so we've created grief and empathy tools you can request on our website to equip you with ways to tangibly show up for the people you love when you don't have the words. We're developing a grief support library and resource page to support our greater community in addition to the people we serve directly. Our hope is that we can see beautiful, even in the midst of grief and suffering, so that we can be a people who show up to support others when they need it most. There is so much more work to be done, but the grants from See Beautiful and support from generous donors have allowed us to make an incredible impact in 2017. This year, we're growing exponentially and are so excited to bring Love Not Lost to a new city in 2019. If you want to request resources, make a donation, or learn more about Love Not Lost, please visit our website at www.lovenotlost.org and follow us @lovenotlostorg. Thank you! Written by Ashley Jones, Founder of Love Not LostEdited by Rachel McLeroy for See Beautiful
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The feature below is brought to you by YFC Maine, 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. There is a lot of "ugly" in our community of Howland, Maine, and well, in our world, really. Did you know our small city’s hospital is the leading hospital in the United States for delivering drug addicted babies? Or that over half of our town’s school population goes hungry for meals each and every day? Did you know that on average our community’s prison holds a minimum of over 50 more inmates than it is designed to hold? Or that our EMT’s administer more Narcan (a heroin overdose reversal drug) on average more each day than previous years combined? There is a lot of "ugly" in our community. Sometimes it’s easy to get distracted, caught up, if you will, in all of the ugly. But there is beautiful... A whole lot of beautiful... Our aim is to help bring light to that beautiful. Rather than getting lost in the statistics and all of the ugly, we hope to walk through the ugly and fix our eyes to the beautiful. My husband and I spent five years working for a local high school. A baby brought about a job change and we found ourselves running a restaurant in our community. We began to see life from both sides, first our students’ and then what these students were aspiring to do after high school. This dishearteningly opened our eyes to the drug epidemic’s full force. It knows no bounds or social status. Young lives are being ripped apart in an ever increasing force. On more than one occasion, I cried with our community members as they chose to spend their last dollars to feed their drug addiction, instead of their children. It’s not just a statistic to say over half of our students are going hungry everyday. It’s real lives, real children, right here. It was through having our eyes really opened to all of the ugly around us, that we knew we needed to strive to create beauty in the midst. Through law enforcement friends and area organizations, we began to see the generational issues that were at hand. It wasn't just young people, but young and old alike. A sheriff patrolling our town once told me that in the same day he had arrested a grandmother, father, and son all in the same family, for separate crimes. That's when we began to think, “What if we created an avenue were we could reach students before they became a statistic? What if every student we came into contact with knew they were loved, pursued (we were around for the long haul), and that they were beautiful?” We teamed up with YfC a nationally recognized after school program, to create an avenue, an escape for students in need. Our aim is to be there, to place caring adults into the lives of students for genuine relationships, no strings attached - just purely loving on the hurt and broken (and who isn't hurt and broken?) helping them see the beauty in their own lives. We do this through Campus Life nights, which are high energy, everyone come-as-you-are evenings. Where we create a family-like atmosphere, we discuss things like making the right choices and how to navigate hurdles life undoubtedly throws at us. We also hold regular events which are just different ways we have fun with each other! Most recently we teamed up with our local high school to provide much needed meals for our students. While the school works tremendously hard to see that no student goes hungry during the school year, they are left with a loss over the summer months. That's where we were able to step in and continue their food program all summer long ensuring that no child goes hungry in our community. We recently applied for a grant through an amazing organization called See Beautiful. If chosen, this grant will help further our program, help us finalize our building, replenish our food supply, and ensure that our program continues to run. See Beautiful's mission is to help create more beautiful in the world, and they do just that through a tremendous history of giving to nonprofits. You may also purchase clothing, jewelry and more from their site to help them continue their beautiful work. I wanted to paint a picture of our community, how our students are living, what it is like day-to-day to be a student in the Howland area. Although it may seem like the odds are stacked against these students, they are beginning to see the beauty in our community around them, and they are beginning to learn that they have people in their corner. A small town carpenter has donated countless hours to help us prepare our building for the upcoming food program, because he sees beautiful in these kids... The town unanimously voted to sell us the building at a ridiculously low price, even when they could get more, simply because they see beautiful in what we are doing together... A family of 8 living in one small trailer handed me what could possibly have been their last $10 bill to further help those students who are hungry. We see beautiful in their sacrifice. A man whose name I don’t even know backed his truck up to mine and said, “The back end is full of food. Get it to families that need it.” He left without another word, because his thanks was in seeing the beautiful of giving. We are seeing beautiful. Written by Kayla Thompson for YFC MaineEdited by Jannan Poppen for See Beautiful The feature below is brought to you by Georgia Steppers League, 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 Georgia Steppers League Creates More Beautiful Youth Step League Highlights Individualism Through Creative Expression The world is just a bit more beautiful when it is colored with the creativity and comradery displayed by the members of the Georgia Steppers League. The Metro Atlanta-based league, now entering its tenth year, has served as the umbrella organization for more than 1,000 male and female step team performers ranging in age from kindergarten to college freshmen. Since its inception, the league has taken pride in providing leadership training, character building workshops, college scholarships and local competitions awarding cash prizes to winning teams from Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida. The Georgia Steppers League’s 2018-2019 initiative, “Bring Back Our Boys,” is in final grant review with See Beautiful and the league hopes to use the funding award to recruit and support more male participants during this year’s competitive season. With the funding, the league will continue its impact in area schools by developing student ambassadors who will provide leadership in their local communities. Any young man receiving funding through this source will be charged to conduct one culminating team event inspiring league members to see what beautiful in themselves and one another. The league’s goal is to provide a lens for students to use to see themselves as the beautiful individuals they are. In addition to serving area young men, the league provides ten months of services to any student wanting to be a part of a step team program. The league has been home to over fourteen teams who hold national titles as the best of the best in the country. As the league continues its mission and vision to Empower, Expose and Elevate is members, it is evident that a partnership with See Beautiful is a perfect, beautiful combination. Written by Clarisse Frazier of Georgia Steppers LeagueEdited by Rachel McLeroy for See Beautiful The feature below is brought to you by CARE for AIDS, 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. CARE for AIDS exists to empower people in East Africa to live a life beyond AIDS. We do this through a nine-month program that is focused on counseling and holistic care. We seek to facilitate transformation for our clients in five main areas of their lives: physically, spiritually, socially, economically, and emotionally. David’s story is one of my favorite examples of the holistic transformation that happens in a client’s life.  David, a CARE for AIDS clientWhen David came to the CARE for AIDS program in January this year he was completely blind. He’s 47 years old and he barely weighed 100 pounds when he joined the program. In addition to his sight loss and overall declining health, he was experiencing kidney failure. David has known his HIV+ status since 2012, and unfortunately his family abandoned him because of the stigma associated with HIV in Kenya. With no one to take care of him, and without being able to see, he felt completely helpless and hopeless. This wasn’t the first time David had felt this way in the last few years, but this time, CARE for AIDS was there to intervene. Back in 2013, election-related violence in Kenya was rampant. Tension was especially high in the slum regions where armed criminal gangs were fighting. David remembers it as a time of chaos and war in the slum where he lives. Theft and looting was common and David was the victim of a gang that wanted to steal from him. They severely beat him, hitting him hard over the head and damaging his legs so they could take what they wanted and he couldn’t chase after them. Unfortunately the worst was still yet to come for David. One day, on the way to work, his eyes started watering profusely. He had to leave work that day because he couldn’t see. Shortly after that, his eyes started swelling and his vision quickly got worse. One day everything went completely black while he was at work. David had become totally blind. David spent the next two years at home unable to work, unable to pay rent, and unable to buy food. His friends would occasionally show up at his house and buy him food for the week, but he hated feeling like he was a burden to others. Twice during this time David made an attempt to take his own life and twice God intervened so that he didn’t go through with it. During the first attempt, David found a mosquito net to tie around his neck and hang himself from the ceiling banister in his home. He knelt down to pray one final time just before hanging himself and said to God, “I want to come home. I’m about to show up there, so please don’t be mad at me…” While he was praying, a friend knocked on his door and prevented David from going through with his plan. A few weeks later he planned to swallow termite poison before bed so he would die in his sleep. Not long after making this new plan, David's friends miraculously intervened again. They found him a new place to live, bought him food and paid for his first few months rent in his new home. A CARE for AIDS graduate lived nearby this new home and had heard about David’s situation. She took Rose, the Health Counselor at the CARE for AIDS center in Githurai, to meet him. Rose recruited David into the CARE for AIDS program and quickly realized he needed immediate emotional and medical intervention. His face was swollen and he was incontinent and malnourished. Rose immediately accompanied David to the hospital. The doctor drained fluids from David’s head and face to reduce his swelling and prescribed medicine to treat David's kidney failure. He also began treatment for David’s eyes and, after doing a chest x-ray, prescribed medicine for pneumonia. Blood work was drawn and David’s viral load was over 2 million copies. It became clear that David had defaulted on his medication and his strain of HIV was now resistant to the medication he had been taking. The doctor prescribed a new regimen of medication for David to begin taking immediately to get the HIV virus under control and boost his immune system. David also started one-on-one counseling and group therapy at the CARE for AIDS center after joining the program. He has found solace in knowing others who are HIV-positive, and he has worked with the CARE for AIDS counselors to get rid of his suicidal thoughts. Since being on his new medical treatment for over 5 months now, David is seeing great improvement. His weight is up to 135 pounds and he has regained control of his bladder. His stress has decreased and his viral load has also decreased. Wanjiku, a neighbor who often helps to take care of David, makes sure that the food he gets from CARE for AIDS is prepared for him and she ensures that he takes his medicine daily. David's greatest improvement, though, has been in his eyesight. While he still cannot see well, his left eye is seeing shapes, figures, and colors. His right eye has difficulty in the light, but can also see better than before when he is indoors. David told us that he is no longer weak. He has more strength than he’s experienced in a long time. He boasted that he is now able to walk all the way to the market without anyone even holding his hand. David admits that he still has challenges because he can’t work and has to be given everything he needs, but he’s happy that he is making progress and has new hope that he will become self-sufficient in the months to come. David attended his first economic empowerment seminar at the CARE for AIDS center this month. He sat up front so that he could see the instructor and told us in detail all the practical information he learned that day. So far, CARE for AIDS has spent a total of $120 on David’s medical care. As you can see, a small gift to CARE for AIDS can go a very long way in the life of an HIV+ client in East Africa. If we were to receive a grant from See Beautiful, we would be able to reach hundreds of more clients like David and create more beautiful in the lives of our clients in East Africa. Funding from See Beautiful will provide practical medical care and invaluable hope for the future for our clients! Written by Holly Heacock, COO of CARE for AIDSEdited by Rachel McLeroy for See Beautiful  In 2016 Terence Lester, co-founder of Love Beyond Walls, walked 648 miles from Atlanta, Georgia to Washington D.C. to be a voice for people living in poverty. Beyond a voice, the goal was to lift them above the status of poverty and bring together a community of you and I to become part of the story of empowerment, light and love.
This year, Love Beyond Walls Documentary, Voiceless, will be released and we are honored that the $1000 See Beautiful Milestone Grant will be used to create a workbook used alongside the film to deepen conversation, move to action, and create more beautiful in the lives of those experiencing poverty. People experiencing poverty are often some of the most vulnerable, yet most worthy of love and kindness - two things that we are ever-free to give and cost nothing. Together we can use our voices and we are honored walk alongside you, Love Beyond Walls. If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one. — Mother Teresa Luckily for the children and families in the Casper, Wyoming area, Wyoming Food for Thought feeds more than one. As one of our Humanitarian Giving Initiatives, they were able to provide food bags to hungry children. With every purchase you made through See Beautiful that supported WFFT, you helped to feed a child for a weekend. That may not sound like a lot, but for children who don’t have enough to eat, it is everything. Here’s a great shot of the food bags ready to be delivered.  We are so pleased to share these kind words from our friends at Wyoming Food for Thought: Wyoming Food for Thought Project exists, first and foremost, to feed our children. But equally as important as nourishing little bodies, our food bags serve as a reminder that these children have not been forgotten. And what more powerful way to show them they are valued than a project supported by strangers across the country through partnership in See Beautiful's Giving Initiatives? The food funded by the See Beautiful Giving Initiative creates real change in our students' lives, allowing them to reach milestones in school, and in their personal lives. Thank you to everyone who supported WFFT, and of course, thank you to Wyoming Food for Thought Project for all of their hard work. For an added dose of inspiration, read more testimonials from our funded partners. AuthorJannan Poppen, Giving Coordinator Giving is so much at the heart of See Beautiful, and it truly depends on you. So, we’re excited to share more Giving in Action with you guys. Once a Giving Initiative is funded, good stuff happens, and we want you to be a part of the celebration! Forever We encourages generosity through purposeful play. By providing dolls to children with cancer, Forever We gives those children and their families a way to communicate about what they are going through. The dolls inspire compassion, story sharing, and a spirit of playfulness that is so important for these kids. Here’s a word from Chantel and the team at Forever We about the funded See Beautiful Giving Initiative: Thank you, See Beautiful, for sending so much love our way! We were able to send 50 Forever We huggable companions to kids with cancer at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. There's nothing we love more than connecting kids with cancer and families who care through purposeful play. Our dolls and books represent their experience and engage the community at large in a conversation about kindness and friendship. Despite cancer stories of devastation and loss, we also hear touching stories of beauty in the midst of all that pain. Working with See Beautiful to see more beautiful in the children we serve is the hallmark of our work this year. Thank you for your investment. Forever We See Beautiful.   This act of joy and kindness during what can be such a dark time for families is what See Beautiful is all about. Want to hear from more of our Giving Initiative partners? Check out these amazing testimonials. AuthorJannan Poppen, Giving Coordinator See Beautiful is honored have the opportunity to cross the paths of our amazing partners through our Humanitarian Giving Initiatives. When you purchase through See Beautiful, not only do you get your ethically-sourced, high quality, and great looking product, but you can also rest assured knowing that $5 of that purchase goes directly to organizations or families that are creating more beautiful in the world. And, you get to pick which organization or family that donation goes to. So, what happens once the Giving Initiative is funded? Well, the work certainly doesn’t end there. Our partners are out there living their missions. Every. Single. Day. From supporting the education of schoolchildren, to protecting animals, to caring for a family member, to bringing a smile to the faces of the elderly (and way, way more), the See Beautiful Giving Initiative recipients truly make a difference in the lives of those they touch. The See Beautiful team gets to celebrate the impact of your generosity, but you don’t always see the end result. So, we’ll be sharing more of this Giving in Action with you, so that you can celebrate along with us. To get us started, you might remember Jacob from Love for the Elderly. At age 14, Jacob started Love for the Elderly to bring generations together, and to show our elderly friends and family that folks out there care for them. The See Beautiful Giving Initiative helped launch the Sunshine Box program, and each purchase you made to support Love for the Elderly’s Giving Initiative funded a Sunshine Box for an elderly person. Well, here it is, guys! Watch the joy as Jacob distributes a box. Don’t you love her reaction? Her future's so bright, she’s gotta wear shades, right? Thanks, Jacob and Love for the Elderly, for spreading beautiful and sunshine, and for becoming a part of the See Beautiful family. Here’s what Jacob had to say about the experience of working with See Beautiful through the Giving Initiative: See Beautiful was absolutely amazing in every way! We worked with See Beautiful to raise funds for our Sunshine Box program, which distributes little boxes filled with fun, cute goodies for seniors who deserve a bit of extra sunshine in their day. We're so thrilled that we now have $1500 to use to help build and expand this program. It wouldn't have been possible without the incredible support from the See Beautiful team, who always helped if we had any questions or concerns. Want to hear from more of our Giving Initiative partners? Check out these amazing testimonials. AuthorJannan Poppen, Giving Coordinator The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you." ~ B.B. King Join us in celebrating our newest giving initiative with the Kutemwa Foundation. The Kutemwa Foundation, alleviates the cost of schooling for young children in Lusaka, Zambia, by providing funding for required school supplies. Additionally, many children with whom they support are vulnerable to not being able to continue education or are orphans and must receive supplemental financial support to attend school. Since schools in Zambia work on a trimester schedule, there are three points during the year they look provide funding for school supplies including books, pencils, paper and more to the tune of $6-7 per child. Additionally, when the school year starts many children do not have the means to pay for tuition or school uniforms. And while this is only Kutemwa Foundation's first year of operation, they are working to collect livelihood gifts to bless children with for the coming year (i.e., soap, toothbrushes, etc). How your purchase helps: Your purchase provides a child with required school supplies for an entire trimester. Additional funding from this Giving Initiative will provide tuition for students who need the supplemental support. Connect with Kutemwa Foundation directly here, Facebook, & Instagram.
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