charity:water: Bringing awareness to the need for accessible water, charity: water’s mission is to bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Their solutions aren’t grand schemes, but rather small solutions with big impact, such as building freshwater wells, rainwater catchments, spring protections and sand filters.
By creating clean water projects, charity: water is impacting lives in many different ways, from building community around water projects to creating a healthier, more sustainable future. By partnering with organizations “on the ground” in areas that water projects are being completed, charity: water is able to better understand the needs of the community and their current water issues, allowing them to create better solutions.
Since charity: water’s operational costs are covered by private donors, 100% of public donations go directly towards water projects. With their solutions being cost effective, just a $20 donation can give one person clean drinking water. Website.
Oceana is the largest international organization working solely to protect the world’s oceans. Oceana wins policy victories for the oceans using science-based campaigns. Since 2001, they have protected over 1.2 million square miles of ocean and innumerable sea turtles, sharks, dolphins and other sea creatures. Global in scope, Oceana has offices in North, South and Central America and Europe to win policy goals to restore oceans.
Donations go towards funding all of Oceana’s work to protect our oceans. Advocates in Washington fight against offshore drilling and promote offshore wind, scientist in Alaska work with native communities to collect traditional knowledge of the environment and combine it with Western science to create maps of places needing protection, offices in Chile fight against dirty power plants in pristine Patagonia, and Spain offices work to document illegal fishing practices in Mediterranean. Website.
Books For Africa is a US-based NGO dedicated to helping end the book famine in Africa. It is the largest shipper of books to the African continent. They collect, sort, ship, and distribute books to children in Africa.
Since their founding in 1988, Books For Africa has distributed over 25 million books to children in 46 African nations. Books that they ship are new and previously owned books donated by individuals and organizations. The books are sent to primary and secondary schools, universities, and community libraries.
Donations will go toward the shipping of containers to schools that cannot afford their own shipping charges, and operational support for Books For Africa’s office and warehouses.
Milk + Bookies is a national nonprofit with a dual mission. They support service learning and literacy and are dedicated to inspiring children to give back by selecting, inscribing and donating books to other kids in their own town. The result: providing kids in need with new hand-chosen books.
Milk + Bookies is all about facilitating people to host their own “book-raising” event. Hosts vary from small kids to teenagers, parents and teachers. They are inspired by the great feeling that giving back brings and have created a framework for all children to be exposed to a service exercise. They deeply value the importance of a great story for ALL kids.
Donations help fund Milk + Bookies’ programming by connecting hosts with recipients, getting materials they’ll need, running their website, outreach and staff.
Humane Education Advocates Reaching Teachers (HEART) is a youth development organization that teaches kids about human rights, animal protection and environmental ethics. Thousands of students have gone through the HEART program to learn how to think critically about issues like child labor, bullying, dog fighting, factory farming, pollution, climate change and more. Once the kids understand the issues, they discover how they can take action to make a difference in the world.
HEART’s program creates better students, compassionate citizens and contributors to the greater community. They foster a sense of responsibility for children to act upon their personal beliefs; cultivate empathy for animals, and as a result, decrease animal abuse in our society; encourage students to strive for a sustainable society while protecting natural resources and the environment; and offer an effective way to reduce and prevent violence in school and at home.
Donations go towards bringing HEART’s in-school, after-school and summer programs to students in grades K - 12 in New York City and Chicago, as well as to their teacher training workshops. All of HEART’s programs are offered at no cost to public schools.
Prevent The Bite is a dog bite prevention educational program created by dog bite victim Kelly Voigt, her mother and a school psychologist. It is geared toward children ages 5-9, who are the most at risk for dog bites. Every 40 seconds someone is bitten by a dog in the U.S. The majority of victims are children, and most bites to children are on the face, head and neck. Prevent the Bite’s goal is to make their program available to all children, similar to Stop, Drop and Roll and Stranger Danger.
Prevent the Bite information has been sent to every post office in the U.S. every year since 2004 and to all 60,000 members of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Kelly and her mother are still giving presentations and providing support to dog bite victims and their families.
Donations currently go towards creating a video to help reinforce Prevent The Bite’s safety techniques. Donations are also used to create and distribute educational materials.
