one small thing

“one small thing” – available for purchase in my etsy shop

Ever since I wrote a Love Letter to Mother Earth last week, I’ve been trying to figure out what else I could do. Saying nice things about the planet is one thing, but I’m feeling the need to DO something. But what?

I see the images of birds covered in oil and my heart breaks. Those are only the birds they were able to catch. Imagine all of the other birds they haven’t caught (and fish and whales and sharks and shrimp and and and..)

I don’t want to get into the political side of this oil spill. What I do know is that it’s a disaster, that the animals and people of our planet are suffering, and I want to help.

Now, I don’t have much money. And I can’t hop a plane to the Gulf Coast and pick up tar balls myself. But what I can do is share my art, in the hopes that it can help.

So here’s what I’m going to do. For the month of July, I will be donating $5 of every photo I sell from my Etsy shop to a charity that is helping in the effort to restore the Gulf Coast. After doing some research, I have decided to donate to Audubon. I like how specific they are on their website about how our donations will help. Here’s just an excerpt:

Your support will help fund Audubon’s work to aid birds already suffering the oil’s deadly effects; to protect now-unharmed wildlife in the path of spill, and to meet the long-term challenge of restoring a devastated Gulf of Mexico ecosystem.

At the end of the month, I will total up all of the $5 contributions and make a donation to Audubon. I’ve never done anything like this before, so I have no idea how much I’ll raise, but every bit counts. Every bit is appreciated.

So here’s the thing. I know this is a small contribution to an astronomically huge problem. But what if we all made a small effort? What if we all did one small thing to help? What if we all did one small thing to show our gratitude?

If you would like to do something similar, please tell us about it! Write a blog post and share exactly what you are doing to help the effort in the Gulf Coast. Please make sure your heart is in the right place. This is not about promoting your work or your website. This is about helping.

If you would like some suggestions of how you can help, Shutter Sisters shared some links and ideas.

So let’s do this! Please help me spread the word about this project and if you are doing something too, leave a direct link to your blog post (not to your website) in the form below. If you are on Twitter, you can use the hashtag #onesmallthing to help spread the word about this project.

Thank you in advance for supporting this project. Remember, together we can do so much more than we can do alone.

“We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
~ Benjamin Franklin