Today I saved a life

Hey guys, today I decided to make an entry that's a little more personal.
Last monday I was out of school and I was waiting for the bus and suddenly I saw a baby cat. I don't know why but something told me that I had to grab him and take him home. Knowing that I already have two cats and this little kitten could be sick I could be taking a huge risk, so my aunt decided we should go to the shelter I volunteer at and try to leave him there. I didn't agree but I could do nothing, and besided I knew that there he was going to be taken good care of. When we arrived the people responsible for the shelter weren't there, so I had to talk to another volunteer who was extremely rude. I started to be worried because I didn't know what I could do so I took him to the vet. On my way there I called my mum and she said she could have the cat for a few days untill we found someone who could keep him. When we arrived he was instantly seen by a doctor who was so lovely and nice. His condition was not the best! He only had a few inches of tail, and it had no hair and was bleeding. Someone had cut his tail. He was full of fleas, had eye diseases and so many other things. The doctor said he was 4 months old and then asked what I was going to do with him. I instantly said I was going to keep him at my mum's house and she was very happy. At the end of the appointement we had to go pay. He had so many meds, so many stuff it got very expensive. The receptionist knowing that I was going to stay with the cat made me a huge disccount as a way to thank me. I started crying because I could not believe someone could be that good to me.
I got in the car and then arrived to my mum's. She doesn't like cats but when she saw him she fell in love despite his terrible look and condition. She said she was going to keep him, she didn't want to give it someone else and she said he would be named Nick, after Nick Jonas. I was so happy that I could keep him. We went quickly to do everything the vet had said. I could see he was scared but he behaved very well.
He is now very well and always playing and running around. I am very proud to say that I saved him from the street. He gives us joy and happiness and so do we to him. I need to thank God for putting the little kitten in my way that day and giving me the chance of saving him.
I want to ask you all to look and not ignore this situations and that way you can help healing the world.
Be good and be happy!

New goals!

Hey everyone. Sorry I haven't updated in a while but I haven't had internet. Now I finally do, so I come with a new challenge for you. Every week we have to establish a goal. This week's goal is to do something nice for someone else everyday. It doens't have to be something hard, sometimes small gestures mean a lot. This idea was originally started by Oprah at her show so now let's follow her example, and remember, a small gesture can make someone else's day!
Ok, so now are some ideas:

• Give an honest compliment to 5 people you meet today.
• Every night, for a week, write down 10 things that you are thankful for that happened during the day. Photocopy this list and give to random people at the mall. Inspire gratitude :)
  
• Share a book.
• Make encouraging bookmarks and leave them inside books of a public library.
• Email someone you admire and tell him/her why.
• Write a letter to your public official and express your suggestions for the community.
• Write little notes of thanks and give them to waiters at random fast food chains.
• Cook a meal for your family.
• Make a really good sandwich and give it to a street vendor.
• Buy flowers for your mom.
• Buy flowers for your dad.

These ideas were taken from HERE

"Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day." H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Be selfless, above all.

Hello everyone. Today I will leave you with a very important thought. This is my favourite sentence of all:



"Who is more important, you or others? The conclusion is clear; even if minor suffering happens to all others, its range is infinite, whereas when something happens to me, it is limited to just one person. When we look at others in this way, oneself is not so important."

Dalai Lama

The great humanitarians of our World!

Princess Diana

Starting in the mid- to late 1980s, the Princess of Wales became increasingly known for her support of numerous charities. This stemmed naturally from her role as Princess of Wales—she was expected to visit hospitals and other state agencies in the 20th century model of royal patronage. Diana, however, developed an interest in serious illnesses and health-related matters outside the purview of traditional royal involvement, including AIDS and leprosy. In addition, the Princess patronised charities and organisations working with the homeless, youth, drug addicts and the elderly. From 1989, she was President of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. Diana was most famously, in the last year of her life, the most visible supporter of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a campaign that went on to win thw Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 after her death, which many believed was a posthumous tribute to the Princess.

AIDS awareness

In April 1987, the Princess of Wales was one of the first public figures to be photographed touching a person infected with HIV. She contributed to changing the public opinion of AIDS sufferers during the subsequent years, as her involvement with a variety of AIDS charities, not only in the United Kingdom but in North America, Africa and Asia as well, was a consistent public role she embraced.

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson wrote “We Are The World” with Lionel Richie in 1985 and performed it as part of an all-star single to raise money for Africa in 1985.

The Millennium-Issue of the “Guinness Book Of Records” names Michael as the “Pop Star who supports the most charity organizations”, according to JacksonAction.com, which has an extensive timeline of Jackson’s charity work.

In 1984, Jackson equiped a 19-bed-unit at Mount Senai New York Medical Center. This center is part of the T.J. Martell-Foundation for leukemia and cancer research. Later in the year, he visited the Brotman Memorial Hospital, where he had been treated whe

n he was burned very badly during the producing of a Pepsi commercial. He donated all the

money he received from Pepsi, $1.5 million, to the Michael Jackson Burn Center for Children.

In 1986, he set up the “Michael Jackson United Negro College Fund Endowed Scholarship Fund”. This $1.5 million fund is aimed towards students majoring in performance art and communications, with money given each year to students attending a UNCF member college or

university.

He donated the proceeds from the sales of The Man In The Mirror to Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times, a camp for children who suffer from cancer.

Jackson donated tickets to shows in is 1989 Bad Tour to underprivileged children. The proceeds from one of his shows in Los Angeles were donated to Childhelp USA, the biggest charity-organization against child-abuse. Childhelp of Southern California then established the “Michael Jackson International Institute for Research On Child Abuse”.

In 1992, he established the Heal The World Foundation, whose work has included airlifting 6 tons of supplies to Sarajevo, instituting drug and alcohol abuse education and donating millions of dollars to less fortunate children.

Mother Teresa

On September 10, 1946, Teresa experienced what she later described as "the call within the call" while traveling to the Loreto convent in Darjeeling from Calcutta for her annual retreat. "I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith." She began her missionary work with the poor in 1948, replacing her traditional Loreto habit with a simple white cotton sari decorated with a blue border, adopted Indian citizenship, and ventured out into the slums. Initially she started a school in Motijhil; soon she started tending to the needs of the destitute and starving. Her efforts quickly caught the attention of Indian officials, including the Prime Minister, who expressed his appreciation.

Teresa wrote in her diary that her first year was fraught with difficulties. She had no income and had to resort to begging for food and supplies. Teresa experienced doubt, loneliness and the temptation to return to the comfort of convent life during these early months. She wrote in her diary:

“

Our Lord wants me to be a free nun cov ered with the poverty of the cross. Today I learned a good lesson. The poverty of the poor must be so hard for them. While looking for a home I walked and walked till my arms and legs ached. I thought how much they must ache in body and soul, looking for a home, food and health. Then the comfort of Loreto [her former order] came to tempt me. 'You have only to say the word and all that will be yours again,' the Tempter kept on saying ... Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I desire to remain and do whatever be your Holy will in my regard. I did not let a single tear come.

”

Teresa received Vatican permission on October.

7, 1950 to start the diocesan congregation that would become the Missionaries of Charity. Its mission was to care for, in her own words, "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone." It began as a small order with 13 members in Calcutta; today it has more than 4,000 nuns running orphanages, AIDS hospices, and charity centers worldwide, and caring for refugees, the blind, disabled, aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless, and victims of floods, epidemics, and famine.

In 1952 Mother Teresa opened the first Home for the Dying in space made available by the City of Calcutta. With the help of Indian officials she converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, a free hospice for the poor. She renamed it Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday). Those brought to the home received medical attention and were afforded the opportunity to die with dignity, according to the rituals of their faith; Muslims were read the Quran, Hindus received water from the Ganges, and Catholics received the Last Rites. "A beautiful death," she said, "is for people who lived like animals to die like angels—loved and wanted." Mother Teresa soon opened a home for those suffering from Hansen's disease, commonly known as leprosy, and called the hospice Shanti Nagar (City of Peace) .The Missionaries of Charity also established several leprosy outreach clinics throughout Calcutta, providing medication, bandages and food.

As the Missionaries of Charity took in increasing numbers of lost children, Mother Teresa felt the need to create a home for them. In 1955 she opened the Nirmala Shishu Bhavan, the Children's Home of the Immaculate Heart, as a haven for orphans and homeless youth.

The order soon began to attract both recruits and charitable donations, and by the 1960s had opened hospices, orphanages, and leper houses all over India. Mother Teresa then expanded the order throughout the globe. Its first house outside India opened in Venezuela in 1965 with five sisters. Others followed in Rome, Tanzania, and Austria in 1968; during the 1970s the order opened houses and foundations in dozens of countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and the United States.

Her philosophy and implementation have faced some criticism. David Scott wrote that Mother Teresa limited herself to keeping people alive rather than tackling poverty itself. She has also been criticized for her view on suffering: according to an article in the Alberta Report, she felt that suffering would bring people closer to Jesus. The quality of care offered toterminally ill patients in the Homes for the Dying has been criticised in the medical press, notably The Lancet and the British Medical Journal, which reported the reuse of hypodermic needles, poor living

conditions, including the use of cold baths for all patients, and an approach to illness and suffering that precluded the use of many elements of modern medical care, such as systematic diagnosis. Dr. Robin Fox, editor of The Lancet, described the medical care as "haphazard", as volunteers without medical knowledge had to take decisions about patient care, because of the lack of doctors. He observed that her order did not distinguish between curable and incurable patients, so that people who could otherwise survive would be at risk of dying from infections and lack of treatment.

The Missionaries of Charity Brothers was founded in 1963, and a contemplative branch of the Sisters followed in 1976. Lay Catholics and non-Catholics were enrolled in the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, and the Lay Missionaries of Charity. In answer to the requests of many priests, in 1981 Mother Teresa also began the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests, and in 1984 founded with Fr. Joseph Langford the Missionaries of Charity Fathers to combine the vocational aims of the Missionaries of Charity with theresources of the ministerial priesthood. By 2007 the Missionaries of Charity numbered approximately 450 brothers and 5,000 nuns worldwide, operating 600 missions, schools and shelters in 120 countries.

Angelina Jolie

Goodwill Ambassador fof UNHCR.

Jolie is on the board of advisors for the Yéle Haiti Foundation, and with Brad

Pitt took time to help Wycleaf Jean with his Clean Streets project. Jolie also arranged a deal with People Magazine allowing them to print the first picture showing her visibly pregnant in exchange for a $500,

000 donation to the charity.

Angelina has been travelling to refugee camps around the world since filming Tomb Raider. During her missions she has visited places including Sudan’s war-torn Darfur, Sierra Leone, Cambodia and Tanzania. She also visited Afghan refugees in Pakistan and donated $1 million to help.

Jolie is known to cover all of her costs while on missions, and shares the working and living conditions as the UNHCR field staff.

Jolie published Notes From My Travels, a collection of journal entries that chronicle her early field missions (2001-2002) with proceeds benefitting UNHCR.

According to tax records, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt donated more than $8 million to charity in 2006 alone.

In January, 2008, Jolie and her brother, James Haven, marked the first anniversary of their mother’s death from ovarian cancer by making an undisclosed donation to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

For further information on Angelina's charity work click HERE.

Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor says she wants to be remebered for her work in the fight against AIDS. The postal address for the charity is:

The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation
P.O. Box 55995
Sherman Oaks, CA. 91413

Elizabeth Taylor has supported the following charities:

• American Foundation for AIDS Research
• Dogs Deserve Better
• Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation

• New Orleans AIDS Task Force
• Project Angel Food

Sources:
http://www.looktothestars.org/celebrity/45-elizabeth-taylor
http://www.looktothestars.org/celebrity/113-michael-jackson
http://www.looktothestars.org/celebrity/2-angelina-jolie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa

Animals have feelings too

Hey guys, this is just a small post for awareness.

• Now that everyone is on vacation, please DO NOT leave your pets alone and please DO NOT abandon them on the streets.

• Before getting a pet see if you have the right conditions to do it, if not, don't do it.

• Adopt rather than buy!

• Treat your pets well. They also have feelings. They like being spoiled and getting atention. Make sure they always have food, clean water and a comfortable place to sleep in. Don't lock them in a house division. Let them sleep wherever they feel most comfortable.

• DO NOT EVER FOR ANY REASON leave your pets locked somewhere. They need space to be happy.

• If they do something bad, don't spank them EVER! Simply yell at them to let them now they did something bad.

• And last but not least: Never run over an animal with your car. By this I mean cats, dogs, birds, any animal!

If you see an animal is not being treated correctly let an animal shelter know. They will try to solve the situation. Follow this tips and make the difference!

Ban Cluster Bombs

DID YOU KNOW THAT A HAPPY EVENT TOOK PLACE ON JUNE 25TH, 2009?

Read this...

Millions of Cluster Bomb Submunitions Ready for Destruction

(Berlin 24th June 2009) – The new international convention banning cluster bombs is already delivering results as signatories plan the destruction of these indiscriminate weapons even before it has entered into force. On June 25th and 26th, delegations from more than 80 countries will meet in the German capital to discuss plans for stockpile destruction.

Since the Convention on Cluster Munitions opened for signature in December 2008 in, 98 countries have already signed and 10 have ratified it. The treaty will enter into force 6 months after the 30th ratification is deposited at the United Nations in New York. Early initiatives on the implementation of the treaty are very encouraging.

“As representatives from civil society, we are thrilled to witness the continued momentum behind the ban and the desire from many countries to relegate cluster bombs to history,” said Thomas Nash, Coordinator of the CMC. “This meeting in Berlin and the attendance of so many countries show that the treaty is more than words on paper. Signatories are determined to implement it.”

Read more... http://www.clusterbombs.us/latest-news/

The banning of cluster bombs all around the world is an issue I've been following for years and that became really important to me. I signed the petition years ago, and spread the word countless times to convince more and more people to sign it too.

I thought if the world managed to get together to ban antipersonnel mines in the past, there was a hope we could ban cluster bombs too.

In December of last year, we could really start to hope when nearly a hundred countries gathered in Oslo, Norway, to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions, to permanently prohibit the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions.

But many countries, including the USA and Russia, didn't sign it, so there's still a lot to do to raise awareness on cluster bombs so that people of these countries can convince their governments to sign the Convention too.

(Click here to find out if your country has signed and ratified the Convention.)

More than 800,000 people around the world signed petitions, and the governments of 98 countries heard them. But in the USA, for example, less than 2,000 people signed the two biggest petitions to ask for the banning of cluster bombs.

Yet, I believe there's a hope American people can convince President Barack Obama to stop the use of cluster bombs if they raise their voice and let him know they are against this!

But it will take much more than a couple hundreds people to reach that goal! We need you to sign the petitions and spread the word, whether you are American or not, you can make a difference.

What are cluster bombs?

Cluster munitions are large weapons which are deployed from the air and from the ground and release dozens or hundreds of smaller submunitions. Submunitions released by air-dropped cluster bombs are most often called “bomblets,” while those delivered from the ground by artillery or rockets are usually referred to as “grenades.”

Air-dropped or ground-launched, they cause two major humanitarian problems and risks to civilians. First, their widespread dispersal means they cannot distinguish between military targets and civilians so the humanitarian impact can be extreme, especially when the weapon is used in or near populated areas.

Many submunitions fail to detonate on impact and become de facto antipersonnel mines killing and maiming people long after the conflict has ended. These duds are more lethal than antipersonnel mines; incidents involving submunition duds are much more likely to cause death than injury.

The weapon caused more civilian casualties in Iraq in 2003 and Kosovo in 1999 than any other weapon system.

Cluster munitions stand out as the weapon that poses the gravest dangers to civilians since antipersonnel mines, which were banned in 1997.

98% of known victims are civilians.

Children represent 27% of the victims of non-exploded submunition bombs. Attracted by their bright colors, children sometimes mistake them for food rations or toys.

Sign the petitions NOW and Make it happen!

ENGLISH
http://www.clusterbombs.us/sign-the-petition/
http://www.stopclustermunitions.org/peoplestreaty/

FRENCH
http://www.sousmunitions.org/je-signe/
http://www.minesactioncanada.org/peoples_treaty/index.cfm?lang=fr

ESPAÑOL
http://www.minesactioncanada.org/peoples_treaty/index.cfm?lang=es

ARABIC العربية
http://www.minesactioncanada.org/peoples_treaty/index.cfm?lang=ar

DEUTSCH
http://www.streubomben.de/aktiv-werden/petition-unterzeichnen/petition.html

GREEK, PORTUGUESE, ROMANIAN, TURKISH
http://www.minesactioncanada.org/peoples_treaty/index.cfm?lang=en


What more can you do?

First of all... SPREAD THE WORD and convince more people to sign the petitions.

You can use social networking sites to do so and reach your friends and followers.

Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=37244892264
Twitter: http://twitter.com/banclusterbombs

TAKE ACTION and help bring the Convention into force:

Remember the victims of the cluster bomb attacks in Georgia and Lebanon

Mid-August is a time to remember of the victims of cluster bomb strikes by Georgia and Russia one year ago and by Israel and Hezbollah in South Lebanon three years ago.

Take action on or around the 12 August to remember the victims of the cluster bomb attacks in Georgia and Lebanon and to urge all governments to prevent future casualties by signing and ratifying the Convention on Cluster Munitions:

1. Write letters to Georgia, Israel, and Russia urging signature of the Convention;

2. Issue a press release urging action by these states and/or your own government;

3. Take a creative action to remember the victims. For example, light a candle, plant a tree, hold a minute’s silence, sign the People’s Treaty - http://www.stopclustermunitions.org/peoplestreaty/

Other actions: http://www.stopclustermunitions.org/take-action/

Thank you...

How 5 minutes of your life make the difference to others

Hello again everyone! I decided to make a post about one of the 5 ways to "heal the world": volunteering. Today when I woke up I just thought "oh no, not again, just 5 more minutes". But I had to get up. I volunteer every saturday and every other tuesday at an animal shelter where many cats and dogs can find a home. Our job is to make sure they have food, water, clean beds and some human company to play with. Everyone that volunteers there must have a huge heart in order to give animals what they need. I am with the cats. To me, they mean the world. Of course I get to play with the dogs a little too. Cleaning the beds, giving food and playing with like 100 cats at the same time is not easy, I must tell you! But the happiness...oh my God...the happiness in their eyes is just what counts. What if I had stayed those 5 more minutes in bed? It would be 5 minutes without making others happy! 5 more minutes not giving them a safe home. 5 more minutes not giving them love. To be completly honest, volunteering isn't easy. At the shelter I work 3 hours non-stop. It is hard, but let me tell you, there is no happier moment in your life than seeing sparkling eyes of the ones you help. So, just use those 5 minutes when you have nothing to do and go put a smile on someone else's face and at the end of the day your heart will happily say "I made the difference."