Thursday, January 21, 2010

Helping Haiti on a Zero Dollar Budget

You can't turn on the tv and not see the horrible pictures of Haiti. I don't even have words. Technology only gets us so far on the ground. It doesn't matter how much you want to help when the roads are all covered in boulders. Mother nature sure knows how to slow us down when we most need to hurry up.

And the scams? The frauds? I'm sure there is a special place in hell for those people.

We don't have much to pull from with a zero dollar budget and a heavy debt load. That makes giving a little harder. Love the phone number you call to have the $10 added to your cell phone bill. More people than not have a cell here in the states. That's an easy one.

I did want to share two other charities that are working for me.

I had a couple of pair of new shoes that I really didn't need. One pair was given to me, and the other I bought as disposables for a trip out to a strip mine in the mud. It was too muddy to go while on our vacation so I had a pair of keds that I wont even wear.

Soles4Souls is a charity that will ship new and slightly used shoes to countries in need. Obviously Haiti is currently at the top of the list. They even have a list of local drop-off sites. We happen to have a Runners World in Dayton that has a drop box. So my next trip over to that part of town I have a few pairs of shoes to take.

The other site I can easily donate to is Clean The World. They take soap and shampoo and send it to areas in need...which right now happens to be Haiti. I heard about them from a post by Amy at Great Cakes Soapworks. They are trying to get the handmade soap makers to send their less than perfect bars. Most of their stuff comes from hotels.

Yes!!! You mean I can get rid of all those bars of soap Hubs brings home from his travels???? They are doing me a favor!!!! I'm so glad to learn about this site as we end up with bags of hotel stuff that I never know what to do with. I now have a new thing to do once every six months...send out a box to this organization!

I hope for others that are on a budget without much wiggle room, you too have been able to come up with one or two creative ways you can help out.

I'd love to hear about them if you have! Please share!

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for spreading the word! I'm sure lots of people have stashes of soaps and lotions that they aren't using. You would be surprised how much will fit in a flat rate USPS box!

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  3. Love these links... thanks for sharing them. I can't wait to check them out.

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  4. Thanks for sharing those awesome ideas. I will have to see who is doing things like that locally.

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