Conscious Mom

As other posts on this blog attest, Maia has been growing and thriving over the past year. We keep in touch with her birth family, sending them letters and photos letting them know how she is doing. We also sponsor her cousin to attend school. Adoption is an event of extremes: our joy was predicated on someone else's loss. I try never to forget that, never to forget her birth family and how had conditions been different, they would have been able to provide a loving home for her. So that fewer families ever have to experience the pain of loss and separation, there are many non-profits and NGO's working to improve conditions in Ethiopia and other countries so more ...

About the 'Kid Causes': It's so easy to get depressed and despondent over the state of the world. I won't elaborate; just watch the evening news for 20 minutes and you'll see what I mean. But there are some wonderful things going on that don't get the airtime or publicity they deserve. To counter the trend of reporting the bad more than the good, every week or so I feature a non-profit or charity that helps make the world a better place. I'm hoping that my postings are bringing in a little more money for these worthy causes. But I'm also aiming to brighten my readers' day a little by letting them know about some of the great things regular ...

A good friend has spent time working with Liberian refugees in Ghana. She's shared her experiences at developing-world.org. Developing-world.org also includes photos of the camps, stories of children living there, and links for making donations.

For the past three years I have sponsored a girl in Andra Pradesh, India through Plan USA. We pay $24 per month and get yearly updates about how she, her family, and village are doing. The money doesn't go directly to her; it would cause a lot of village conflict if one family received the Indian equivalent of $24 per month while the rest remained impoverished. Plan uses the money to improve education, providing books, teacher training, and health education programs for the village. My sponsor daughter, Balakoteswaramma, and I correspond. At first she couldn't write well so she drew me an elaborate picture of a face, possibly her own. As she's gotten older she has been writing letters ...

A friend recently returned from Ghana where she helped in a school for Liberian refugees. The school is funded by a charity called Unite for Sight, which also helps provide eye care for the refugees (and other people around the world). Here's the link to find out more or make a contribution,

I've started a new category: kid causes. Kid causes will feature small charities and non-profits that are doing good things for kids (and sometimes adults) around the world. The first to be featured is Ethiopia's Finest, a non-profit selling fair trade Ethiopian coffee. Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, so it is like a coffee drinker's Mecca. The coffee is delicious, and the coffee available here is purchased from farmers who are paid a living wage and use sustainable agricultural techniques. The proceeds from the sales are donated to orphanages in Addis Ababa, including the one Maia lived in for three months.