Shop for Charity This Holiday Season

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If you’ve been reading my posts from the past couple of weeks, you may have noticed that there is sort of a theme developing. This theme is, of course, charity, and with the Christmas season rapidly approaching, there is probably no better time to explore a sense of giving than now. In fact, with all of the events happening in the world around us, there is certainly no shortage of individuals who could use a hand. Fortunately, if you would like to try to alleviate some of the “darkness” around you, there are a number of ways that you can lend a hand to your friends, families, and communities this holiday season.

One of the easiest ways that you can help others this season, however, is to shop. Yes, you read that right. Shop. You see, there are a number of vendors who will actually donate some of their sales to various charities in order to not only help others but also to encourage you to buy more products from them. As a result, you may be able to support your favorite charity and get your holiday shopping done at the same time by using sites like Amazon Smile, which will give the charity of your choice 0.5% of everything you spend on Amazon. This means that you can actually help a local, national, or international charity without spending anything more than what you would normally spend on gifts this year anyway.

Some of the other major retailers that give a portion of your purchase to charity include Target (5% of their profits are donated to charitable organizations), Macy’s (approximately 7 – 8% of their profits are donated to charitable organizations each year), Walmart (they give hundreds of millions of dollars to charitable organizations each year in the form of grants), and a number of other companies that try to give back each time you make a purchase through their brick and mortar stores, their own websites, and/or websites like Shop2Care.

Photo credit: FutUndBeidl via Visual Hunt / CC BY

Help Your Community on Family Volunteer Day

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Are you looking for a way to teach your kids to help others? Would you like to find a way that you and your family can get involved in your community? Well, if you answered yes to either of these questions, you may be in luck because it just so happens that tomorrow (Saturday, November 19, 2016) is Family Volunteer Day. Family Volunteer Day is a nationwide event, designed by Points of Light and sponsored by the Walt Disney Company, that encourages families across the country to carry out acts of kindness and/or volunteer to complete projects for their local communities and neighborhoods.

In fact, if you’re in the Boston area, there is a local Family Volunteer Day event in Dorchester from 10:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M. on Saturday (November 19, 2016.) This event, which is run by Boston Cares, will allow you and your family members ages 5 and up to help create basic engineering kits, make-your-own robot kits, and other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) kits for students in the Boston Public School System. For more information and/or to register for the event (registration is required), please visit the Family Volunteer Day page on the Boston Cares website.

And, if you are not in the Boston area, you can still find opportunities to volunteer in your local area by using the search feature on the Points of Light website.

Photo credit: byzantiumbooks via Visual hunt / CC BY

Veteran’s Day: A Great Time to Support Our Troops

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The presidential election has finally come to an end, and all of the mudslinging, politics, and rhetoric that came with it has begun to dissipate (at least temporarily.) Unfortunately, the results of the election and the protests that have followed it (whether you believe they are justified or not) have only demonstrated just how divided a nation we truly are. In fact, the only similarity between the parties at the moment appears to be the universal shock that almost everyone is experiencing after the election’s outcome.

However, even though it may seem like the only thing we share is the disbelief that our candidate won or lost, there is actually one other thing that almost everyone can agree on. We need to support our troops. And, there is no better time to give back to the men and women who have risked their lives or lost their lives to give us the freedom to love or loathe our new president than Veteran’s Day. As a result, if you are looking for a way that you can help the members of our armed forces and their families today, you may want to consider donating to one of the charities listed below:

Air Force Aid Society

Fisher House Foundation

Hire Heroes USA

Hope for the Warriors

The Mission Continues

The Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society (NMCRS)

Operation Support Our Troops – America

Our Military Kids

United Service Organizations (USO)

Wounded Warriors Family Support

And, if you are a member of the armed services who is trying to figure out how to handle all of your expenses while you’re deployed or how you’re going to handle your expenses while you’re transitioning back into the workforce after your deployment, you may want to check out Bankrate’s guide on “Managing Your Finances Before and After Deployment“.  This guide is designed to help service members and their families plan out ways to use service-related benefits such as savings deposit programs, tax-free pay, and thrift savings plans to handle the costs that service members may have to face both while they’re on duty and after they’ve returned.

Photo credit: Anthony Quintano via VisualHunt / CC BY

STEM Activities for Kids: Girls Day and the Mini Maker Faire

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The ghouls, goblins, and ghosts have all returned to whence they came but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the fun has to end. In fact, if you’re looking for a way that your kids can have some fun and learn something too, there are two events in the Boston area this weekend that will definitely help.

First, if you have a young woman in your family who loves science and engineering or you would really like to get your daughter interested in science and engineering, there’s probably no better event to spark a young girl’s interest in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) than Girls Day at the MIT Museum. This is because this biannual event, which is scheduled to take place from 11:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. on Saturday (November 5, 2016), will give your daughter the opportunity to meet women engineers, learn about robotics and coding, and even try building and programming some robots herself. For more information on Girls Day at the MIT Museum, which is included in the admission fee for the museum and open to all girls ages 10 and up, please visit the MIT Museum’s Engage page.

However, if you have a young boy, a group of children of different genders, or you just don’t want to pay to get into the Museum, you can always head over to a local Barnes and Noble this weekend. This is because Barnes and Noble is hosting their second annual Mini Maker Faire from 11:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. on Saturday and Sunday (November 5th and 6th, 2016). This event, which is free and open to the public, will allow you and your children ages 6 and up to meet designers, engineers, and teachers who will demonstrate their skills with coding, programmable music, robots, virtual reality, and a whole lot more. Best of all, the events at each store will feature games and other activities that will allow your children to create and experience the wonders of science firsthand. For more information on the Barnes and Noble Mini Maker Faire and/or to find a list of events for each store, please visit Barnes and Noble’s Mini Maker Faire page.

Photo credit: roboticage® via Visualhunt / CC BY