Today is Blog Action Day – A day to take action against Poverty

Today is the 2nd annual Blog Action Day – a day for bloggers to help turn the billions of conversations going on online towards a good cause.  This year the cause is poverty.  All over the blogosphere you will be reading conversations related to the who, what, when, where and how’s of poverty, and I’ll bet some of the brilliant minds will come up with some solutions as well.

My personal experience with poverty is mostly from knowing quite a few single mothers over the course of my life who struggle to make ends meet every day.  I am so thankful that I had the resources that I had when I divorced, and was accustomed to working and coming up with innovative ways to make ends meet.  I wonder today how they are doing, with so many jobs being lost, and something as simple as getting to work can be a financial burden with the price of gas.  Our food bill has increased so much lately too.  Do they feel the burden of that?  Sure they do – we all are feeling it.   Since I moved away from my hometown almost 6 years ago, I have lost touch with, well, all of them, and that makes me sad.  I take it for granted, having so many easy relationships with so many people online that I forget those people in my life that are not “in my face” – in my email inbox, on my Skype contact list, on Twitter, calling me on the phone.  There is so much more life going on around me that I am sheltered from in such a huge way.  And over the last few years, having moved into hurricane territory, I have really seen poverty from a different point of view than ever before.  I have seen the newly homeless living in our local churches and in our schools after hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike.  Moving in and out with all of their belongings in a garbage bag.  It is heartbreaking to see, but so easy to watch from the outside and do nothing to help.

As I spend ridiculous amounts of money feeding my beauty and geek habits, today I am thinking about the needs of other people way less fortunate than I am.  You know, in order to keep a job, a person needs to keep themselves healthy and groomed, and Ill bet more than a few of them would make better use out of what I have than I do. 

So, what can I do about it?  What can you do?  We could donate money and/or time to one of the wonderful charities that work hard to end poverty.  I tend to believe that poverty is a local problem with local solutions.  For me, I feel like giving of myself is the most valuable and useful thing I can do.   There are numerous local food banks, soup kitchens, rescue missions and women’s shelters that all need help, and a human being to get in the trenches, rather than someone throwing money at the problem and calling it good.   I am grossly unfamiliar with what is going on in my community, other than the local rescue mission, and I vow today to find a place to help.  There is a lot I can personally do to help someone or many one’s, I just have to step away from the computer, and do it.  I have a sinful stash of personal care products around here that would be so appreciated in the right hands.

Here are some things you can do, right now (and an action list for me):

1.  Find out where the poor in your community are being helped.  Identify the rescue missions, soup kitchens, food banks, women’s shelters.  Look in the phone book, inquire at a church, even talk to folks at the hospital.  They can give you direction.

2.  Contact at least one of these places.  Find out what they need, and offer what you can do. 

3.  Make a time commitment to yourself.  It might be that you can only spare 1 hour a month – whatever it is, make a commitment that you can live with and follow through with.

4.  Clean out your closets and drawers regularly, and donate your used clothing.  Women, take your clothing to a women’s shelter – and they would love any personal care items that have gone unused as well.  It takes a little more than a shower and a shave to give a woman the confidence she needs to be successful – help a girl out.

My friends at Blog Talk Radio have a 12 hour Talkathon for Poverty Relief going on today from 12pm-12am EDT that I hope you will listen to and participate in.  Beautyfix has donated a few Beautyfix kits (and there are many other prizes as well) to give away through the course of the day, but that’s not the important part.   The important part is the call to action – getting out there and doing something physically to help these folks.  So listen up and get inspired, ok?  I would love to hear your ideas for helping the impoverished in your community – your collective minds are much better than just mine.  What can we do to help?