10% of all profits I make are distributed to the following organizations. In other words, by doing business with me you are also helping support these outstanding institutions. These non-profit organizations were chosen because “they teach how to fish.” To learn more about these organizations I encourage you to take the time to read about each one and their individual missions for change.
What we do is empowerment
Through year-round sports training and competition, Special Olympics empowers individuals with intellectual disabilities in more than 180 countries. Special Olympics often is the only place where they have an opportunity to participate in their communities and develop belief in themselves. Many live lives of neglect and isolation, hidden away or socially excluded from full participation in schools or society. Transforming the athlete, Special Olympics sports are a gateway to empowerment, competence, acceptance and joy.
But we also transform their communities. When people see Special Olympics athletes in action, they see their humanity, their joy in competition, their pride and their potential, and they begin to believe in a different kind of world – a world in which everyone is respected and included.
Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.
Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.
The people you see on Kiva's site are real individuals in need of funding - not marketing material. When you browse entrepreneurs' profiles on the site, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else in need.
Kiva provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle, and what effect it has on the people and institutions lending it, borrowing it, and managing it along the way. To do this, we are using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Child sponsorship has always been a high overhead business. Kiva creates a similar interpersonal connection at much lower costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery. The individuals featured on our website are real people who need a loan and are waiting for socially-minded individuals like you to lend them money
JA Worldwide is the world’s largest organization dedicated to educating students about workforce readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy through experiential, hands-on programs.
Junior Achievement programs help prepare young people for the real world by showing them how to generate wealth and effectively manage it, how to create jobs which make their communities more robust, and how to apply entrepreneurial thinking to the workplace. Students put these lessons into action and learn the value of contributing to their communities.
JA’s unique approach allows volunteers from the community to deliver our curriculum while sharing their experiences with students. Embodying the heart of JA, our 384,925 classroom volunteers transform the key concepts of our lessons into a message that inspires and empowers students to believe in themselves, showing them they can make a difference in the world.
Read 2 Me came from the merging of two organizations: Werlin Reading Teams Foundation and Pierce County Reading Foundation. Together we have become a program which strives to enrich lives by inspiring people to volunteer and share in the joy of reading. We advocate for and create opportunities, beginning at birth, which nurture lifelong learners in the communities we serve.
Our vision is to create a literate world. One child at a time, we work within the community with parents, caregivers, and children to promote the message of reading success, and support the school systems efforts for every child to reach benchmark reading goals by the time they enter fourth grade.