October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and we are dedicating all of our GivStory posts to this cause throughout the entire  month.  WE NEED YOUR HELP! Throughout the next few weeks, we will be featuring the stories of hope, healing, and love of cancer fighters and survirvors.

Our vision is to create awareness through your stories – to shine light on this devastating disease and to give hope to the victims and their families. If you or someone you know has had breast cancer, has received guidance and hope from a breast cancer cause, or is involved with a breast cancer cause, we want to encourage you to submit your/their story and we will share it on our blog. Just click the “Submit Your GivStory” tab at the top of the page or click Here .

If we all continue to fight and learn together, then together we will find a cure. Choose to be a part of this story.

“5 October is a day to celebrate teachers and the central role they play in guiding children, youths & adults through the life-long learning process. This year, World Teachers’ Day will focus on the role of teachers within the context of the global financial and economic crisis and the need to invest in teachers now as a means to secure post-crisis regeneration.

It is critical, during these difficult times, to seek mechanisms that protect the teaching profession. It is also crucial, despite the crisis, to ensure that investment in teachers is sufficient and proportionate to the demands made upon them. It is the teaching force with its knowledge, experience and foresight which can bring new insights to global solutions. Join us in celebrating this!”  

From World Teachers’ Day 2009  http://www.5oct.org/

In honor of World Teachers’ Day:

A GivStory by Matthew Mandelbaum | Teacher and Founder of Jumping Joey’s Number Line

It began as a quest to help a small kindergarten girl, who they said could not learn math because she has too many severe learning disabilities. The quest was to prove them all wrong and give her a chance to have a strong mathematical foundation where she could love learning. 

On the streets on New York City’s Washington Square Park, I began teaching her in the method which would become JumpingJoey’s NumberLine and her passion and interest grew as would her success with numbers. This led its growth to helping summer school students and others until now the learning system can be found on www.jumpingjoeysnumberline.com.

In honor of those who have helped me, the children, I give back 5% of all home product sales to schools along with student certificates honoring their love of and commitment to learning so that each child has a chance to feel good about their process and path as a learner.

 A GivStory By Derri Smith | Not For Sale Tennessee

 Beyond my worst nightmares …

At 55, I am no stranger to suffering. I was regularly abused by my pastor father. I’ve walked intimately with loved ones through the trauma of rape, abuse, illness and divorce. But nothing in my past prepared me for what I encountered when I picked up a copy of  Not For Sale by David Batstone. I entered a world beyond my worst nightmares, where six year olds tout their sex trade skills to potential “customers”; thirteen year olds are sold in pairs to be raped at will and ten year old boys are made to club neighbors to death as initiation into forced “military” duty.

Only this wasn’t a nightmare, soon to be followed by a good morning. These stories are real and not just a few isolated cases of unspeakable horror; they are the plight of millions of children throughout the world. Commerce in human beings is, I learned, the second largest and fastest growing crime on the planet, affecting 27 million lives.

 In my own backyard?!

Desperation borne of such knowledge launched a quest to educate myself.  I was shocked to (continue reading…)