Last year for her birthday Alyssa Milano gave up presents and donated money to mycharitywater.org instead, and asked her fans if they could do the same. Well they did and she raised approx $75000 USD. I donated a little too. I was so inspired that I created a campaign too. It is free and very easy. You have 90 days to try to raise $5000 USD. $5000 USD will help supply water for an entire village. I have 5 days of my campaign left and I have only raised $10. $5.00 of that from myself and $5 from my mum. $20 is the minimum that will help someone; $20 gives one person clean water for 20 years.
http://mycharitywater.org/DorisDuckitt
I created my campaign to honour my grandma's memory. I had hoped some of my family would donate a little something (at least enough to make the $20) but as I said only my Mum did. I loved my Grandma a lot. She was born and died in the month of February and so February is often sad for me. I say often because February is also the month that my daughter was born in. My Grandma died the day before my daughter's 1st birthday.
My Grandma was a wonderful woman and I miss her tremendously. She was the one person in this world that never judged me, and while she didn't know all of my secrets she knew a lot about me. She had 10 children and with 9 of them she travelled from England to Australia along with my Granddad.
I never tool Grandma for granted and I always tried to visit her when I could or at least ring her. She watched with pride when I graduated from Uni (along with my parents). I was pregnant and single and she never cast judgement (though she gave me advice). She was very proud of my for graduating Uni and up until recently, when my Mum graduated, I was the first one in my family to do so. Before that she was at my theatre debut and tried to see me in as many plays as possible even when I only had a walk on roll.
I am not christian but my Grandma was (she was a Baptist). I was there when she was baptised. I wasn't going to have my son christened as I don't believe in it; I was going to have a naming ceremony instead. She asked if for her I would have him dedicated in her church. I didn't have to join, neither did Brandon, He wasn't baptised ... he was introduced to god I guess. As I didn't have to do anything that I didn't believe in I was happy to do this. And when my daughter came along I also had her dedicated. My younger two sons have had anything similar as she passed away and I lost the connection with her church.
My Grandma was there for a lot of important events and for many regular events. I miss her all the time. We would talk and we would just sit and be silent. And I thought she would be around forever as she was so healthy. We talked about me recording her stories (and she had a lot) but we both thought we would have plenty of time. But we didn't.
I gave her Eulogy. I only asked to have the time to say a couple of words and in the end i was asked to give the Eulogy. I wasn't sure I wanted to do that as she had a big family (at one stage we counted over 50 grandkids & greatgrandkids both blood and non-blood; she didn't like the term "step"). I'm glad I did.
I had no real regrets though when she died; I could have spent a tiny little more time with her perhaps but I'm happy to say that she knew how much I loved her.
So with all of this in mind I thought I would create the water campaign in her honour. My timing was bad though as I was launching a new business and also because I began to help out a couple of other people with their causes. I also didn't want to spam anyone. Now I just would like to raise enough money to give one person clean water for 20 years. I could add that other $10 myself and I will if I have too, but I'd like it if a few people could spare $1.00 usd. People can trace their donation the entire way. I can start a new campaign later but this was for my Grandma. I know she would have loved the idea and she would have been the second person to donate if she was alive.
I am lucky to have 4 children and I know that many people consider that greedy. I try to limit our carbon footprint, and watch our consumption of resources. We sponsor a little girl too. But making sure other children in the world had clean drinking water was a perfect way to say thank you for my beautiful children. My kids all adore water (I have a love/hate relationship with drinking water especially now where we live) but my kids all adore it. A lot of people have been helping to rebuild Haiti; some of the money from this charity will go to Haiti. One in 8 people in the world do not have clean drinking water, and many women and children have to walk miles to get drinking water every day which is limiting their freedom.
thank you and I miss you Grandma.
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