Five for Friday :: A Season of Giving Nourishment

{image credit :: opensourceway}

Nourishing the Soul is about exploring the ways in which we can nourish our minds, bodies, and souls. One means of doing so is to help others nourish themselves. In fact, a Harvard study showed that people who gave to charity were 43% more likely to say they were “very happy” about their lives.

So, this week’s Five for Friday is dedicated to creative ways of giving. With over 35 millions of Americans living in homes without enough food to eat, and hunger killing more people each year than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined (U.N. World Food Programme, 2011), we have a lot of work to do in making sure that no one goes hungry. And since food – in both the literal and figurative sense – is the most frequently discussed topic on this site, it’s only appropriate to focus these charitable giving ideas on my favorite subject.

So go on, dig in…

• With holiday parties, family gatherings, and date nights abounding, dining out is a regular event around the holidays. If you’re heading out for a meal someone else has to clean up, check out GoodDining.com first. The website works with over 10,000 restaurants to give up to 6% of you spend to a charity of your choice. The restaurants range from major chains to local mom and pop spots, and the charity list is impressive. I dare you not to find a good fit.
• If you’re looking to get your hands a bit more dirty, Feeding America offers lots of ways to support their mission of feeding the hungry in the United States. Through their nationwide network of food banks, the organization will feed over 25 million low-income Americans this year. And you can be a part of it. Find your local food bank here.
• Taking their mission outside of the U.S. borders, Food Not Bombs lives out the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” The organization provides free vegetarian meals with the hungry in over 1,000 cities around the world (including the U.S.)  to protest war, poverty and the destruction of the environment. Even if you cannot donate, you can stay informed by joining the listserv.
• Want to combine gift-giving with philanthropy – and throw a little chocolate on top? Dancing Deer offers a Sweet Home Medley of delectable cookies, cakes, brownies and more, and gives 35% of the cost to homeless mothers and their children fund education, find jobs, and move into homes of their own. Yet another good reason to eat chocolate!
• And if you want a little non-edible nourishment, pick up a copy (or several) of Aimee Liu’s Restoring Our Bodies, Reclaiming Our Lives, a book full of first-person accounts of recovery interwoven with a roadmap to healing. Aimee, a tireless advocate for those who struggle with eating disorders, is generously donating all of the royalties from the book to the Academy of Eating Disorders to support the organization’s pioneering research and educational efforts.

Now I’d love to hear if you do decide to support these causes, or if you have ones of your own to share. How will you give back this season?