July Jewelry For Charity Update & August Kick-Off

Sad to say, with all of the class-taking and summer activities, July was not the best sales month for me! But that's no reason for July's featured charity, Animal Place, to worry, since I pledged a flat amount this month. With your support, I was able to donate another $500.00 to this worthy cause to help with the purchase of their new property, bringing my total donations under my Jewelry for Charity program to a whopping $5,741.00! Thanks so much for helping me with this project; it means so much to me, and to others.

For the month of August, I've chosen to highlight Save A Child's Heart, an amazing group working to provide urgently needed pediatric heart surgery and follow-up care for children from third world and developing countries. I was inspired to choose this charity because of my Aunt Joelle's work for the American Heart Association in honor of the two husbands she lost to heart diesease. I was unable to sponsor my aunt recently in a fund raiser she participated in due to the fact that I don't support charities that test on animals (which includes the AHA). But because I love my aunt very much, and because her husband, Marvin, was my favorite uncle in the whole wide world, I set out to find a heart-related charity that doesn't test on animals. I didn't have to look far before I knew that Save A Child's Heart was a perfect match; not only could I honor the memory of my favorite uncle by focusing on helping cure heart disease, but I was thrilled to find a group that focused on children in developing countries (another pet cause of mine). Here's a bit more info about what they do, taken straight from their website...

The Save A Child's Heart Project

Our patients, ranging in age from infants to teenagers, receive various types of treatment that is necessary for their heart problems. The children come from all corners of the world, including China, Congo, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Ghana, Iraq, Jordan, Moldova, Nigeria, the Palestinian Authority, Russia, Srilanka, Ukraine, Vietnam, and the Island of Zanzibar (part of the Federation of Tanzania).

Save A Child's Heart has a full outreach program to train medical personnel in our partner countries. Our ultimate goal is to create centers of competence in these countries, enabling local medical personnel to provide needed treatment in their own environment. The program brings doctors and nurses to the Save A Child's Heart center for in-depth Post Graduate training in all facets of pediatric cardiology. In addition, our staff travels overseas to educate and to perform surgery in cooperation with local personnel. However, until our goal is achieved, children with congenital heart problems are brought to Israel for surgery and other cardiac care.

Save A Child's Heart provides all its services in cooperation with the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, a southern suburb of Tel Aviv, Israel's largest city.

I hope you will join me in supporting this important work. Remember, any time you make a purchase from either my jewelry shop or my bead shop during the month of August, 5% of that sale goes directly to this deserving charity. Happy shopping!