Category Archives: Blogging

Apr4

ONEMoms and FashionABLE Mother’s Day Scarf

Posted on by
ONEMoms and FashionABLE Mother’s Day Scarf

I’m sure that you remember the gorgeous fashionABLE scarves in the Documama holiday gifts that give back guide.  Each style is more beautiful than the next, but the best part is that each scarf also helps to employ a woman working towards a better life for herself and her family in Ethiopia.  A few months ago in December and January there was a ONE | fashionABLE | ALT challenge / contest held where the Alt community was challenged to design a scarf to be voted on by conference attendees.  The scarf was then handmade in Ethiopia for an exclusive ONE | fashionABLE Mother’s Day Scarf.  The Altitude Summit Community meets up for an annual conference in Utah geared towards design-oriented bloggers, lifestyle brands and companies that want to connect with them to discuss theory, and the love of all things design.  More than 60 designs were submitted to the contest, 12 of which were produced by FashionABLE in Ethiopia.  Four of the twelve were voted on by the ALT community, and the winning scarf is being produced now and will be available on April 15.

As a ONEMoms community partner, today, Thursday, April 4 we are able to offer our documama readers a pre-sale of the chosen design and both ONE.org and FashionABLE are offering two full days of free shipping.  After April 5th the pre-sale will continue with regular shipping. All scarves ordered will be shipped on April 17 in time for Mother’s Day. The scarf is gorgeous, and each handmade scarf takes three days to make.  The chosen scarf is named The Genet,  after one of the amazing women who helped produce it, and is available for purchase through the ONE Store  and fashionABLE websites.

Read Genet’s story to get an idea for the opportunities you are supporting by purchasing a FashionABLE scarf:

Photo of Genet and her daughter provided by ONE.org

“I don’t remember my birth mother, and I don’t know my birthday or actual age, so the timeline of my story is based on my best guess . I was brought from the countryside into the city of Addis at age 3 by an aunt who promised my family I would be sent to school and have a “better life .” Instead, I was groomed to be a housemaid and given so many responsibilities that the load of work become impossible and overwhelming . By age 12, I ran away and began living on  the street . I felt lost and I was continually raped . Eventually, I became pregnant . With a baby at 15, I learned to have sex for money so I could support her. I coped with life through drinking, drugs and smoking . I recently learned about this program and am enrolled in counseling to work through my addictions, my childhood trauma, and learn ways to reconnect with my now 6-year-old daughter.  I am also working at fashionABLE and grateful  to have a job that provides dignity. “

 

This scarf  is definitely on my Mother’s Day wish list!

 

Mar8

International Women’s Day

Posted on by
International Women’s Day

Empower Women, Empower The World

Today is International Women’s Day  and to honor this day I wanted to share some of my photographs of women that I have taken from around the world.  Today the United Nations Foundation , Johnson & Johnson, The Huffington Post, BabyCenter, and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are connecting women globally to help support women’s initiatives by kicking off the Global Mom Relay.

“From now until May 8, moms are powering an online conversation about motherhood to unlock donations. Every time you share a relay post on Facebook, Twitter, or email or donate $5 or more as part of the relay, a $5 donation (up to $8,000 per day) will be donated by Johnson & Johnson and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to one of four initiatives that are helping women and children lead healthy and happy lives – Girl Up, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA), and the Shot@Life campaign. The Global Mom Relay is in support of Every Woman Every Child, a movement launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to save the lives of 16 million women and children by 2015.”– United Nations Foundation

Photo By Elizabeth Atalay 

 It always amazed me in my travels how we were able to communicate even though often we did not share a common verbal language. Somehow stories were still told and questions still asked.  The first question women everywhere always asked me was if I had children or a husband. They were often fascinated that at that time in my life, my early twenties, which was considered an old maid in many of the places I visited, that I did not yet.  Often they were truly concerned for me on this matter, which I found touching. The women I met were strangers who frequently ended up housing me, hosting me for a visit, or feeding me, and I am eternally grateful for their global sisterhood.

Photo By Elizabeth Atalay

Much has changed in the decades since my extensive travels, and in many places the quality of life for women around the world has improved.  Women are generally marrying and having children later in life allowing them to stay in school longer, and have better economic opportunities in general. Increasing numbers of girls are receiving education, and increased access to vaccines has prevented millions of deaths from preventable diseases.   There is still so far to go, the problems of violence and  inequality for women remain.  Countries around the world need to realize that they have the opportunity to tap into a large source of economic growth in the women, whoever figures that out has the potential to double their National output.

Photo By Elizabeth Atalay

Things have changed  for me as well since those wanderlust days of travel, I am now a wife and a Mother, which I think those women would be glad to know.  Motherhood is a universal language and women can learn so much from each other.  I look forward to the wisdom from around the world in the Global Mom Relay!

 

Photo by Elizabeth Atalay

I wrote this post as part of The Global Team of 200, a highly specialized group of members of Mom Bloggers for Social Good that concentrates on issues involving women and girls, children, world hunger and maternal health.

Our Motto: Individually we are all powerful. Together we can change the world. We believe in the power of collective action to help others and believe in ourselves to make this world a better place for our children and the world’s children.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feb22

A Healthy Way To Give; Run, Walk or Bike With The Charity Miles App

Posted on by
A Healthy Way To Give; Run, Walk or Bike With The Charity Miles App

 

The Charity Miles App is a great way to combine personal health with your values of giving back to society.  Usually as I run with my dog I am reminding him to heal, but these days as we round the corner and head up the hill to our home I am begging him to pull me.  The truth is we are both a bit out of shape and equally in need of this exercise, so he looks back at me with those dewy eyes as if to say, “Must I?”.  My Charity Miles App is the inspiration to keep going on my run at this point because I set the personal goal not of distance, but to provide one child with a vaccine with my run.  O.K., also I will need to post my distance on social media to get the funds to go to the charity I have selected, so yes, my pride is involved as well.

My Charity Miles Running & Walking Partner

I was so excited to learn that the United Nations Foundation, with whom I am a Shot@Life Champion, was teaming up with my favorite iphone app Charity Miles. Read the rest of this entry →

Feb16

The Accidental Advocate; My Trip With The United Nations Foundation To The Shot@Life Summit 2013

Posted on by
The Accidental Advocate; My Trip With The United Nations Foundation To The Shot@Life Summit 2013

They warned me about the shoes, but I didn’t listen.  We had been advised to wear comfortable shoes for our day of advocating on the hill, but having never advocated on Capitol Hill, nor even imagined myself advocating on Capitol Hill, I could not see the harm in sporting a little heel with my business suit.  I practically had to vacuum the dust off the one business suit I own as it was, after being a stay at home mom for thirteen years, and I did not realize that I would log nearly two miles in those shoes by the end of our day. (I know it was two miles because I used my Charity Miles app on my phone that tracks mileage on walks, runs, and bike rides so sponsors donate money to the charity I choose for the distance completed.)  In any case, being a mom is exactly what brought me to the point of hobbling around crisscrossing our nation’s capitol. Read the rest of this entry →

Feb2

#26Acts Of Kindness, Remembering Rachel D’Avino

Posted on by
#26Acts Of Kindness, Remembering Rachel D’Avino

This post is extremely difficult for me to write.  Nothing we do will ever bring back any of the victims of the December 14th 2012 shooting in Newtown, CT. Just to think of that day, and those lives lost, washes me in a feeling of sadness, and despair.  The world continues to turn,  we all go on, we went back to routines like putting our kids on the bus to school, and going to work. But we are changed. In an attempt to counterbalance the horror with some good,  members of the Global Team of 200, including myself, are joining Ann Curry’s  #26Acts of Kindness movement by participating in a blog relay and link-up of  26 Act of Kindness.  We have committed to remembering the victims of the Newtown shooting with 26 bloggers posting for 26 days, each day highlighting one individual victim, and promoting the idea, initiated by Ann Curry, of 26 act of kindness.

“After the experience in Newtown. I thought, “What if? Imagine if everyone could commit to doing one act of kindness for every one of those children killed in Newtown.” So that’s what I tweeted. And guess what? People committed. I said in my tweet, “I’m in. RT if you’re in.” Not only did they commit to 20 acts of kindness, they wanted to up it to 26 acts of kindness for every child and adult who was lost at the school.”- Ann Curry

 

#26Acts of kindness will hopefully inspire ongoing, simple, daily acts that touch each other’s lives.  Kindness to your loved ones or strangers, acts large or small. Acts of kindness towards each other to perhaps make this world a better place.

Nothing we do can bring Rachel D’Avino back to her family, to her boyfriend, soon to be fiancé, or to all of the possibilities her young life still held. Read the rest of this entry →