Thursday, October 15, 2009

Determining to Make a Difference


Every day I tell myself that I need to get on here and keep up this blog, and every day I fail to meet my goal. I'm always busy it seems-- chasing the kids, making a meal, packing a lunch, changing yet another diaper, making a sling or Mei Tai to fill an order, searching on line to figure out how to better market our beautiful products, teaching a babywearing class or answering emails about babywearing, shopping for fabrics, providing breastfeeding support-- the list never seems to end. And every day I find time to do all those things. I've also been failing in another major area.
The one thing I have been failing in lately is in-- giving. I grew up in a family of givers. My parents gave what little cold, hard cash they had to suppport so many great organizations, and they planted that seed in me. When I was in high school, I remember I began giving a portion of the money I earned-- a tithe--through various jobs to support a child through World Vision. It was exciting for me to know that I was helping a child somewhere around the world to live a slightly better life-- providing them with food, clothes, an education, medical care. And then my income increased a bit. So I began to sponsor another child, then another, and another. I think at one point I was sponsoring close to 10 children in various countries and then I began to find other awesome organizations to support as well. It was liberating for me. I loved it.

And when Adam and I got married in 2000, I realized I had married another "giver." We streamlined our giving, and soon were giving over 20% of our gross income to support several amazing organizations-- World Vision, Jews for Jesus, Arab World Ministries, Child Evangelism Fellowship, Mercy Ships, Samaritan's Purse-- just to name a few. And then Adam lost his job . . . a month after I had given birth to our oldest child. We tightened our belts and had to very reluctantly cut back on our giving. We thought that Adam would fairly quickly find another job and this "hiccup" in our lives would soon be in the past. Two years later, he was still without a job. We had used up all our savings, our retirements, we had stopped giving all together, and things never seemed to "go back to normal" for us.

Fastforward a few years. Adam never has found another job in his field. He finally took a job in a totally unrelated field and has been underemployed for over 5 years now. In those 5 years, we've added 3 more kids to our brood. We've never been able to loosen our belts, it seems. And we've never really gotten back on the "giving bandwagon", if you will.

Every month I tell myself that I am going to give, to tithe, out of my business earnings. I'm thrilled that Baby So Smart has grown so much over the last 5 years and is really doing well. Are we rolling in money? No. But there's no reason why I can't give. And so I've determined to make Baby So Smart make a difference in other people's lives.

Baby So Smart is now proud to announce that we are supporting another great program through World Vision, I've picked a program that provides women, mothers, with sewing machines so that they can then help support their families as seamstresses. Clearly close to my heart. Statistics show that if you help a woman by providing her with education and loans for microenterprise, that this actually significantly improves the entire community, not just the woman and her own family. Hence why I've chosen to support this awesome program by World Vision.

So 10% of every dollar that you spend at Baby So Smart will now go to supporting women around the world in a microenterprise. I encourage you to read more about this program, or other great programs that World Vision operates, and to give as you are able as well. Just click on the title of this blog post to be taken to the World Vision website.

"Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Luke 6:38