I am very happy & honored to be participating in this special giveaway, just in time for Valentine’s Day! The Orphaned Earring is run by a sweet blogger friend of mine named Denisse, she uses all the money she makes selling her bracelets to help children in orphanages! This past Christmas, she loaded up her car with items she bought for the children and drove down to Mexico to play Santa to all the kids. Some of us bloggers contributed items to help her out. I was overjoyed to be able to help her -help others.
The Orphaned Earring is a charity that collects orphaned earrings and unwanted fashion jewelry to make bracelets which are then sold at only $7 each. One-hundred percent of the funds are used to bring monthly arts & crafts as well as other festivities to children in four different orphanages in: Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mexico and Colombia; allowing these precious children to artistically express themselves, let their imagination run wild and just be kids.
As Denisse helped these orphanages, she found there are urgent needs in the surrounding communities. For that reason, she’s created the “For the Love of Life” campaign focusing on providing aid to families that are in desperate need of help. #4LoveForLife
The Situation: “For the Love of Life” will benefit an indigenous community near the Guatemalan orphanage. Since the forcible eviction of 13 indigenous communities in 2011, many families are desperately looking for shelter, food and jobs at the local coffee farms. If they are lucky, the men get hired but only for the short period of three months, after the three months they must leave with their families and a new wave of people get hired. Their daily payment is a ration of beans and tortillas but this ration is shared with his ENTIRE family and obviously this is NOT enough. The families are allowed to stay at the finca for the 3 months where they build shacks as homes, sleep on dirt floors, have no running water and build stone fire pits for heat.
Denisse discovered that the children living in these conditions are the most affected and suffering from malnutrition and ultimately dying of starvation. You see, when the families have to divide the food, a bigger portion goes to the father who needs the energy to work the land, the mother eats second largest portion since most of the time she is breastfeeding and needs to give nutrients to her babies. This means that the rest of their children end up with little to no food, suffering malnutrition and ultimately dying of starvation. Today, “Guatemala is the only country in Central America labeled “serious.” Other countries in the region are categorized as only being ‘low’ or ‘moderate’ regarding hunger.”
The Solution: After some research and interviewing a few locals, The Orphaned Earring learned that a bit of oatmeal can be the difference between life and death for children and breast-feeding moms.
The Orphaned Earring is committing to bringing oatmeal to each new wave of families that come through the coffee farms. Depending on how much money we can raise every three months we would also like to provide powdered milk and sugar. But for the moment, we will focus on providing oatmeal and do it just FOR THE LOVE OF LIFE! How can You help? You can help by donating your earrings to Denisse at:
The Orphaned Earring -P.O. Box 1565 -Hawthorne, CA 90251
- Buy Orphaned Earring bracelets that can be ordered through the blog
- Donate any monetary help through Paypal
**Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post- I was NOT paid to write it. All opinions are my own & The Orphaned Earring Rocks!**
Update: Winner was notified.
