The children and their siblings work with professional singer/songwriters in an in-hospital recording studio to write and record songs within short sessions.

 

 

If you are interested in applying to the Purple Songs Can Fly 2018 summer internship program, please contact Anita Kruse at anita@purplesongscanfly.org.

 

 

 

 

 

Are you interested in helping a homebound senior with everyday tasks around his or her home? If so, you can join Chore Corps, a new program created by Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston.

Chore Corps volunteers help seniors with tasks such as lawn care, laundry, kitchen help, and/or food pantry shopping. You can decide which kind of service you want to provide. 

This opportunity is flexible and family friendly, and will directly help senior Meals on Wheels clients remain safely in their homes.

To start, you need to attend a one-hour training.  These are held about once a month (on Saturday and/or in the evening) at the Interfaith Ministries offices. If you have any questions about the program or upcoming trainings, please contact Melissa Ramsey at mramsey@imgh.org or at  713-533-4912.

More information is at www.imgh.org.

 

Box Tops for Education can be found on many cardboard food boxes, such as cereal boxes. If you bring these box tops to most public schools or to some private schools, the school receives a dime per box top.

Aluminum pop tops can be found on soda cans.

If you bring these pop tops to Ronald McDonald House, which provides a temporary home for families with ill children, the charity can sell the pop tops to fund its programs.

Note: Plastic bottle tops are not a legitimate collection item.

A common misconception is that if you collect over a thousand plastic bottle tops and bring them to a hospital, you can get a day of free chemotherapy. This is entirely false – plastic bottle tops have no value and hospitals do not collect them.  If you’d like to read more, visit this link.

 

On the bright morning of February 12, I drove with my church group to Houston’s first incorporated African American cemetery. We were excited to help clean up the area, called Olivewood Cemetery, which had suffered decades of neglect, for the non-profit organization Descendants of Olivewood, which works to clean, beautify, and revitalize the 6-acre grounds.

Upon reaching the grassy area dotted with trees, our team set to work. We scattered throughout the cemetery with lawn-mowers, tarps, weed-eaters, and other tools. There was debris everywhere: rusted wire, abandoned tile, dry foliage. Carrying all of these unwanted items could be a challenge, so we assembled piles of sticks on tarps and gathered up huge bundles of brush in our arms.

As we worked, the treasurer and maintenance coordinator of Descendants of Olivewood, Charles Cook, guided and encouraged us. Cook also shared bits of the cemetery’s history, as one of his descendants was buried here.

Slowly, the grassy cemetery began to clear, and the pile of collected debris in the Dumpster grew steadily higher. It felt great to care for a cemetery that had been so neglected for many years. Even now, with more volunteers helping at Olivewood, clean-up is a constant process as plants keep growing, tree branches fall down, and other debris gradually accumulates. At the end of our volunteer shift, my church group left tired and happy, knowing that we had filled an entire Dumpster with collected debris and made the cemetery look a bit better than before.

 

Thanks for reading! If you would like to help at Olivewood Cemetery or learn more about Descendants of Olivewood, please visit the charity profile page here.

PAIR (Partnership for the Advancement and Immersion of Refugees)

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Most people are aware that there is a global refugee crisis, with 65.6 million people being forcibly displaced from their homes. What many people do not understand is that we as individuals have the power to help refugees.

There are plenty of great ways to help, but one way is to volunteer through a local organization, such as PAIR (Partnership for the Advancement and Immersion of Refugees).

PAIR is a non-profit that improves the lives of young refugees as they face the great challenges of learning a new language and adapting to a new way of life.

In their own words, PAIR has programs that “assist youth in adjusting to American life, achieving academic success, and becoming self-sufficient and engaged members of our community.”

I started volunteering with PAIR during junior year, and I can attest that it is an amazing organization.

After class ended on Wednesday, I would drive to Paul Revere Middle School and serve as a mentor/tutor for young refugees that attended school there.

For many students, middle school is already a rough time. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be navigating middle school as a refugee, where academic and social pressures are combined with adjusting to a new country and a new language.

Knowing the difficulties these students face made it all the more gratifying to see them become more comfortable with English, learn new things, and just have fun at the end of the day.

For anyone seeking to make a difference in the lives of refugees, PAIR is an excellent organization and a great place to start.

If you would like more information about PAIR, please visit our profile page or the official charity website.

Thanks for reading,

Claire

 

Enjoy some pictures of volunteers and refugee students:

Here’s some more information from the UNHCR (The United Nations Refugee Agency) about the refugee crisis:

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You’ve probably never heard of a charity entirely focused on peanut butter before, but the LDS (Latter-Day Saints) Peanut Butter Cannery is just that! The factory produces more than 400,000 jars of fresh peanut butter each year, which it donates to the Houston Food Bank to feed hungry Houstonians. In return, the Food Bank provides the Cannery with raw peanuts and plenty of volunteers.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints leads this project, supervising volunteers who sort the nuts, place lids on jars, operate the labeling machines, and pack jars in boxes. In each 4 hour shift, volunteers at the Cannery produce 10,000 jars of fresh peanut butter! Volunteers must be 16 or older. If you are interested in volunteering, please visit the Peanut Butter Cannery profile page here or take a look at the charity’s official website here.

Enjoy some photos of volunteers at work in the Peanut Butter Cannery!

 

 

 

Still curious about the LDS Peanut Cannery? You can watch their official video here:

 

Thanks for reading!