Hey friends, it’s Giving Tuesday! I wanted to pop in real quick and share several charities and causes that are near and dear to my heart. I know we all have to pick and choose where we spend our precious, finite resources — we can’t all do everything — but I humbly present here a few great ideas to choose from 

— The ongoing refugee crisis is overwhelming: people torn away from their homes and displaced, brutalized, buffeted about and living in limbo for years now, families separated, people drowning… but you CAN do two things right now:

– Immediate need: many refugees are literally living on the streets of Paris (the French government essentially has no strategy for them, in fact police routinely brutalize them). You can donate much-needed items as the nights get colder to Compassion Without Borders, an organization our TSOS team can personally vouch for.
AMAZON WISHLIST HERE: https://www.amazon.fr/…/…/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_ep_ws_2Yz.zb68EAXH5
(Excellente idée particulièrement pour mes amis français ou francophiles!)

– Ongoing need: change the dialogue. Their Story is Our Story – Giving Voice to Refugees aims to help people –and decision-makers — see the individual realities of refugees. Looking into a person’s eyes (digitally) and hearing their story from their mouth makes the global crisis real and personal. Please, help us tell their stories and Turn Up the Volume on those stories instead of the propaganda you hear from pundits & politicians all the time.
DONATE HERE: https://tsosrefugees.org/get-in…/turn-up-the-volume-campaign

— Shriners Hospitals for Children. We directly benefit from a Shriners program at the SLC hospital which pays for Jonas’ braces. Those things are NOT cheap and he needs to change them out every time he grows a shoe size. Not to mention the excellent medical care we got there to treat his feet and correct them over this past year, which could easily have been MUCH more expensive. You can watch the video below to see how we’ve personally benefited from their work 

More on our clubfoot story
DONATE HERE: https://shrinerswyo.wildapricot.org/Donate

— MiracleFeet provides that same standard of care to children in the developing world: $250 is enough to treat one child for clubfoot start to finish — incredible, right?! Children who aren’t treated have difficulty and pain walking: they’re crippled for life. The deformity can also cause other serious problems, for example they can end up begging for food on the streets or be abused, their families even abandon them in extreme cases. It’s a small sum to change a life.
DONATE HERE:
https://secure3.convio.net/mfeet/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app360b?df_id=1503&mfc_pref=T&1503.donation=form1&NONCE_TOKEN=C5DB946ADD282E953EA89BE85F7F2E2D

— And last but not least, there’s The Mormon Women Project, for which I helped compile stories for several years. Most recently the editors published an excellent series on the End of the Childbearing Years — highly recommended reading! The project aims to tell the stories of Mormon Women in all their beautiful diversity:

“The Mormon Women Project intends to give voice to those thousands of women who have diverse cultural backgrounds, have overcome personal challenges, magnify their roles at home, or who represent us to the world in their jobs. To an audience inside the Church, these stories support the idea that we can make personal choices with God’s help that often stand apart from the pressures of Mormon culture. To an audience outside the Church, the stories show the immense strength and wisdom of our people.”
DONATE HERE: https://www.mormonwomen.com/

— ALSO: consider becoming a paid subscriber or donor to trustworthy journalistic organizations (NYT, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, BBC, NPR in your state, etc). There are also some excellent nonprofit journalistic organizations like ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity, or OpenSecrets.org. We need good journalism now more than ever! Maybe a good Christmas gift or New Year’s resolution? Food for thought!

 Have a beautiful day friends, and happy giving!