I love hearing about Mormons who have felt inspired to create non-profit organizations, humanitarian or advocacy efforts and I’ve been collecting stories where a member of the church sees a problem in the world, decides she or he can do something to fix it and goes about doing it. I find a great deal of inspiration in that. My guess is that these members of the church take seriously the baptismal covenant to “comfort those who stand in need of comfort” as well as the injunction to be “anxiously engaged in a good cause.”
In this post, I’ll be listing a few of the Mormons I know of who are making a difference in the world. I hope you will share me with other stories you are aware of.
Just this week, two bloggernacle blogs posted about such church members:
Mmiles at By Common Consent highlighted Liahona Children’s Foundation founded by Brad Walker.
At Times and Seasons, Adam Greenwood encouraged Mormons to support efforts to block pornography.
Here on WAVE, you have heard about Judith Dushku and THARCE-Gulu, a community center in Uganda to assist women in healing from the ravages of war and enslavement.
At Mormon Women Project, Vicky Dalia was interviewed about her family operated orphanage in Guatemala.
At Tiny Peaces, a group of Mormon women and men traveled to Central Asia to assist women and girls in obtaining education and becoming self- sufficient.
Women Doing More provides “opportunities for busy women to help the world in small and simple ways.”
In my ward, I have been impressed and inspired by one sister who coordinated a clothing drive after a natural disaster in the Philippines. Another ward member just moved to Kyrgyzstan as her husband studies Central Asian law. And a neighbor is the founder of a non-profit organization providing maternal child health services in Kenya.
On the LDS WAVE board, we have Jessica who is on the board of her local hemophilia chapter, myself a co-founder of the international non-profit Solace for Mothers, Tresa and Elisabeth working with THARCE-Gulu.
Will WAVE readers be able to add themselves to this list? I hope so. Courtney is working on her idea to create a crafter’s guild of LDS women that will raise money to send to humanitarian efforts across the globe.
Tell me more. Do you know of other Mormons who are anxiously engaged in advocacy, humanitarian or volunteer work that is working to make the world a better place foe God’s children?
Yay! I went to the Women for Decency meeting last night in Sandy, Utah — which I assume is led by LDS women promoting decency and all that is good in our communities. I love it when people make a difference!
Some of us Mormon women are involved in advocacy efforts in behalf of women in DR Congo, where the deadliest conflict of our generation has killed nearly 7 million people in the past 2 decades. Rape is used as a weapon of war more or less with impunity, and new figures coming out suggest that nearly 3 million people (including infants and the elderly) have been brutally raped during this conflict. Our new blog, utahforcongo.blogspot.com, will highlight upcoming opportunities to help us with fundraising and advocacy work–including, on February 26, Yoga for Congo Women events in Murray and Logan. You can also find Utah for Congo on facebook.
Emily, I am so excited to learn about Women for Decency. A professor of mine from BYU encouraged his students to do precisely what Women for Decency is working towards. I hope its grows larger than Utah and spreads across the country. Most certainly, the organizations goals are an example of heeding the prophets as we have been counseled to work in our communities to uphold the standards of decency. Please keep us updated here by submitting guest posts and announcements here as well.
Missy, I hope that you too will write and submitted a post on the story behind Utah for Congo, how the idea came out, who is involved, etc. Also please feel free to send announcements to be posted here. Anything you want to send me, you can email to service@ldswave.org.
Here are a few more for you:
Unitus
Peery Foundation
Academy for Creating Enterprise
Deseret international
Yehu Microfinance/Coast Coconuts
Choice Humanitarian
Rescue a Million
Rising Star Outreach
Singular Humanitarian
Forever Young Foundation
“I Won’t Cheat” Foundation
Huntsman Gay Capital Impact
Single Mom Foundation
Saint to Saint
Mentors International
Then it’s hard not to mention the impact of Jon and Karen Huntsman or the Sorenson family.