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At the Hope Shines summer camp, campers complete arts and crafts activities, practice dance routines, and play games. They get to know the other campers and camp mentors and laugh and build community with one another. They share meals, encourage each other, and gain confidence. All of this sounds like a typical summer camp, but the Hope Shines summer camp is so much more. Every summer, 36 Rwandan kids come together for a special fun-filled week where “imagination meets education.” In addition to the standard camp fare of games and crafts, the kids learn through an ever-changing curriculum that includes everything from Engineering to Global Geography to English speaking. And it always includes a strong focus on health and hygiene. Dan Gladden, Hope Shines’ Executive Director, explains what the health and hygiene curriculum entails, “This year’s curriculum includes oral hygiene, fluoride treatments, annual health checks by a doctor, a science and engineering curriculum, first-aid, a self-esteem workshop, malaria prevention, and HIV/AIDS prevention.” The children also receive nutritionally-fortified meals and clean water to drink throughout the camp. For the camp participants, whose families live on an average of $17 per month, access to healthy food and clean water is paramount. It helps relieve the financial burden on their families and of course, improves their health.  One way Hope Shines provides healthy meals is through their sustainable greenhouse project. Once crops are harvested from the greenhouse, they not only go toward the camps’ meals, but they are also sold to provide sustainable revenue. The See Beautiful Milestone Grant funding will help sustain the greenhouse project and will also offset the major cost of running the camp - transportation to and from the camp. Although the grant funding will support the summer camp operations, Hope Shines stays busy year round with their various programs. They provide basic needs for education, such as uniforms and school supplies and run an after-school program to keep students engaged and learning when they are not in school. And the focus on healthy children serves as a tenant of Hope Shines, empowering young people to understand and respect their bodies.  With values like healthy living, integrity, sustainability, commitment to children, and expanding impact, it’s safe to say that Hope Shines creates beautiful in the lives of the children and families they serve. And See Beautiful stands behind them every step of the way. AuthorJannan Poppen, Giving Coordinator
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With community at its core, Beloved Atlanta supports women on their path to overcome commercial sexual exploitation. Women complete three phases over the two-year commitment to the residential program. Through an individualized plan, which includes restoration, education, and employment, women are supported in healing past trauma in order to ultimately graduate from the program with a full-time job and three months of living expenses saved. Seeing the transformation in the lives of the women they serve inspires the BeLoved Atlanta staff. Amelia Quinn, the Founder of BeLoved, shares, “Last Monday we celebrated the college graduation of a BeLoved resident. When she came into the BeLoved Program, she had lost custody of her daughter and had been in and out of addiction for years. I sat in the school auditorium with her daughter, the BeLoved staff and volunteers as we watched her walk across the stage and all yelled and celebrated as loud as we could. The next day she went to her full time job and found out the company was giving her a car.” This kind of success begins with allowing the women to heal from past traumatic experiences. As BeLoved has supported more women, they have witnessed first-hand just how important this foundation of healing can be in each woman’s overall journey. The See Beautiful Milestone Grant funding will help to provide individual counseling to the women of BeLoved Atlanta. Big victories begin with small victories, and counseling helps women to begin building confidence in those small victories.  BeLoved Atlanta seeks to change the perception that women in prostitution are criminals. Rather, they are survivors and leaders. They are “gifted, strong, and trustworthy.” They are beautiful and capable of seeing and creating so much beautiful in themselves and their communities. See Beautiful is honored to support an organization so committed to community and empowering women. Thanks for letting us help celebrate those small victories. AuthorJannan Poppen, Giving Coordinator “I learned that your beauty is powerful & priceless... Each and every word is going to benefit me in life”. –Precious, age 14, former student of Realize Your Beauty  Powerful and priceless. That is the impact of promoting positive body image, self esteem, and kindness through the arts, and that’s exactly what Realize Your Beauty does. Through plays, workshops, and camps, Realize Your Beauty helps young people recognize their own unique gifts and the inner beauty they possess. As Stacey Merkl, Realize Your Beauty’s Founder and Executive Director, shares, students are taught to “put their energy into kindness, integrity, and respect toward themselves and others.” Realize Your Beauty’s lessons encourage self-confidence and an understanding that being oneself is the best way to be, and they do so in a fun, engaging, and memorable way. Kids may be told that it’s important to respect themselves and one another, but the way they learn through Realize Your Beauty is more likely to stick with them because they get to experience it for themselves and see it come to life through theatre arts. Currently, there are two different high school programs as well as a late elementary show. Realize Your Beauty carefully makes sure everything meets the level of the students the programs are designed for. Workshops for older students, for example, address issues such as eating disorders, always in an age-appropriate way. With the See Beautiful Milestone Grant, Stacey and the folks at Realize Your Beauty will finally get to create and implement a program for the lower elementary school age group. They often get asked to provide a show for this age, but haven’t had the resources to do so until now. With the $1000 grant funding, they will be able to realize their vision to develop a play and production full of magical realism, classic clowning techniques, and puppetry, suitable for the younger audience. Several hundred children each year have the potential to be reached once the program is developed. That’s several hundred children each year who will have the opportunity to hear that they are beautifully unique, from the inside out. This kind of creating beautiful with a sustainable impact and is exactly what See Beautiful was hoping to support when we dreamed up the Milestone Grant. AuthorJannan Poppen, Giving Coordinator There is so much beauty in the simple act of reading a book to a child. A book ignites imagination, encourages literacy, and creates a connection between the child and the reader. A book on its own cultivates beautiful. But, add meaningful lessons of friendship and unity while also funding causes for kids, and the beautiful multiplies. That’s what happens at The Joy Market. The Joy Market’s first published book, Animals of the Nativity, provided food for children in the West African country of Benin. Through their partnership with the non-profit Aide La Vie, special life-saving food was distributed to malnourished kids, such as Liana, who was unable to walk. Once she received the special food, Liana was walking again. Luckily, the Joy Market’s idea and impact have grown from that first book. They’ve since published two more books, with another on the way. Last year, the book, The Bear Hug, helped to fund a school of 150 refugee children in Syria. The book addresses the “us versus them” mentality, and kids in the US wrote cards to the Syrian children, who then in turn wrote cards back. As founder Erin Burchik wrote in her grant application, “It was so beautiful to hear them talk about their new, cross-cultural friends and to see this grassroots peacemaking shape the hearts of these precious children.”  The Joy Market is well on its way to fulfilling its mission of bringing joy to children through cultivating “compassion, creativity, and curiosity through a crazy love for books.” With the See Beautiful Milestone Grant funding, the Joy Market plans to expand programs in schools, introducing more children to the joyful and beautiful acts of reading and giving. AuthorJannan Poppen, Giving Coordinator “If we give girls and women the chance to change their lives, they can change the world.” -Frida Giannini  A wise and trusted teacher or counselor. A guide, adviser, influential supporter. Someone who helps a less experienced person. A mentor can be all of this and more. And for high school girls who are underserved in their communities, a mentor relationship can mean everything. The right mentor can help build confidence, skills, and self-worth and help open the space for girls to see and create more beautiful. Girls Grow Inc supports college women to serve as mentors to high school girls through weekly meetings. Through the Girls Grow curriculum, mentors lead activities and small group discussions “to help foster a sense of Growth, Openness, Respect, and Worth.” College women guide the high schoolers through defining their values, coping with negative emotions, and developing positive self-esteem. The curriculum also covers how to prepare for the future, create and maintain healthy relationships, and even how to develop mindfulness.  In addition to the amazing individual growth that occurs as a result of the mentorship, the group aspect of Girls Grow demonstrates something else transformational to the mentees: the realization that they are not alone. This core element of Girls Grow inspires Natalie, the founder, to keep building and growing the organization. In the two years since its inception, Girls Grow has supported 77 mentors who have empowered more than 230 high school girls. And the impact of Girls Grow is certainly not stopping there.  The $1000 See Beautiful Milestone Grant will allow Girls Grow to develop more training for the mentors. The skill-building that occurs through increased training not only strengthens the impact for the high schoolers, but the mentors carry with them lessons in leadership and relationship-building as well. Relationships and the deep connections formed through Girls Grow are beautiful, indeed, and we are honored be a small part of this uplifting community. AuthorJannan Poppen, Giving Coordinator Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference has never tried to fall asleep with a mosquito in the room. Just because kids are small does not mean they are not able to make a difference and create beautiful in the world. In fact, children see beautiful in their own unique way. By giving kids the chance to follow their own ideas about how to create beautiful, Kids Boost helps build confidence in kids and invests in their creative ideas to positively impact a cause they are passionate about. It works like this: A donation is made to Kids Boost (that’s where you come in!), and a child chooses a cause that is meaningful to him or her. With coaching provided by Kids Boost’s awesome coaches and some start up funds for the kids, the child is able to carry out their idea. The start-up funds are the launching point for the idea, which then earns more money and awareness for the charity or cause the child has chosen to support. Eighty percent of the child’s earnings go directly to the charity, while the remaining twenty percent go back to Kids Boost to help pay forward the good work they are doing.  In the words of Kristen Stock, Kids Boost founder, “I’ve learned that kids of all ages have the innate need and desire to do something great in the world. I’ve also learned that adults don’t always give kids enough credit. Kids are capable of so much; they just need the opportunity and the support.” With Kristen’s dedication and passionate spirit, Kids Boost has grown from supporting three kids to fifty, and has helped kids earn more than $50,000 for a host of deserving charities. Nudging forward with a big dream to encourage kindness, self-confidence, and generosity in kids, Kids Boost has already had a huge, multi-layered impact to those lucky enough to enjoy its successes.  With a waiting list of 75, the demand and interest from kids to create beautiful exceeds the current resources. As a See Beautiful Milestone Grant recipient, even more kids will be able to sign on with Kids Boost. We are thrilled to support Kids Boost and the wonderful kids who aren’t afraid to not only dream big, but to also take the action to help make others’ dreams come true, too. AuthorJannan Poppen, Giving Coordinator |
See beautiful in yourself.
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