Actress, Amanda Peet, with World Moms Blog Founder, Jennifer Burden, in Times Square in NYC advocating for Shot@Life, life-saving vaccines for children in developing countries.
In January, World Mom’s Blog’s advocacy for global health and children began offline at the pilot grass-roots party thrown at my house for the UN Foundation’s new Shot@Life campaign.
For the first time, at that party, I talked candidly in front of my friends and my mom about why the movement for life-saving vaccines for children in the developing world resonated with me.
It was a difficult, personal story for me about my many pregnancy losses, how desperate I felt and how I want to prevent mothers around the globe from ever having to feel that desperate, tragic feeling. There are mothers in the world losing their children to diseases that we have the know-how to prevent. And I want to help.
I have since shared my story at a UN Foundation Volunteer Summit in Washington, D.C. and at my friend Jodi’s grass-roots Shot@Life Party in New Jersey. But, this past Friday was, well, a little different…
I accepted an invitation from the UN Foundation to open my heart and speak for a larger audience in NYC at the launch of the Shot@Life Public Service Announcement (PSA) on the big Toshiba Screen in Times Square. Read more…
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We were expecting a miracle. We wanted her babies to live, grow up and be healthy.
She was one of our own.
We were mad at her doctors. We were mad at the hospital.
We cried often. We forgave.
We watched and shared videos of babies who had defied the odds among each other.
We hoped Diana’s babies would make it, all because Diana decided to take a chance.
When you take a chance, you open the door for the possibility of defying the odds and for it going in your direction. It could have happened.
Diana Stone is a friend I had met at the BlogHer conference last year in San Diego. Read more…
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On World Moms Blog we try to make every day International Women’s Day! But, today is really THE day! If you’ve been reading us, you know that we champion life-saving vaccinations for children in developing nations through the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life campaign and the GAVI Alliance.
However, on this day for women, we want to tell you about how the GAVI Alliance is also working to save the lives of many women in the developing world.
Every two minutes, statistically, a woman dies of cervical cancer. And now GAVI financing and programs have paved the way to offer life-saving HPV vaccinations to help prevent these deaths in places where it’s not so easy or affordable or possible to keep up with regular pap smears.
At World Moms Blog we value our children, and we know that every child deserves a mom.
To read more about GAVI’s program and see how they are making a difference, please visit the GAVI site.
This is an original post to World Moms Blog. Jennifer Burden is the founder and an editor of World Moms Blog. She can be reached at worldmomsblog@gmail.com or on Twitter @WorldMomsBlog and @JenniferBurden.
Photo credit to Koshyk. This photo has a creative commons attribution license.
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I recently drove past a sign that read, “Children are great imitators. So give them something good to imitate.” And it got me thinking…
I’m a mother, maybe just like you, who is navigating.
I often feel that everyone always thinks I have my act together. I may run a mom-blog that writes from 22 countries and has an editing staff but I don’t always know what I’m doing in the driver’s seat of my own mom-mobile.
I think the key is redirecting when I gain new, useful information. I’m always actively reading, thinking, trying, asking and watching, like so many of us are.
The questions that I’ve recently been repetitively savoring in my head are:
Why am I saving my own passions for later? When is later? Will I still have the spark for them later? Read more…
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On Monday, we start off the week in Japan with Melanie Oda (hamakkomommy) who tells us a tale about how the beautiful paper theater is kept alive for future generations. An interesting cultural read! Here’s an excerpt:
“Before the children he spreads out four boxes, each containing a different story. These are all old stories. Some are about mythical creatures, others about one (or several) of the myriad Shinto gods that many mistake for folklore. There is even a story about a Buddhist saint. He asks for a show of hands, and allows the children to choose the story.”
On Tuesday, did you know that poetry used to account for half of the fourth grade reading in school in the US 70 years ago, but now only accounts for a very small 3 percent? Read more…
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World Moms Bloggers, Dee Harlow, Kyla P'an, Jennifer Burden and Nicole Melancon met up for the first time in Washington, DC for a UN Foundation Summit for Shot@Life!
What better way for World Moms Blog writers to meet up than at a UN Foundation Volunteer Summit?
Recently, I headed to Washington, DC by invitation from the UN Foundation to speak at a summit to help fire start a grass-roots movement across the United States in support of their Shot@Life campaign. This campaign supports vaccinations to save the lives of children in developing nations.
The foundation gave me the opportunity to invite a few fellow Americans who I thought would be interested in championing the Shot@Life cause. World Moms Blog editors, Kyla P’an in Massachusetts, USA, who had done previous service work in India, and Nicole Melancon in Minnesota, USA, who had raised money to build a school in Nepal singlehandedly, answered the call. And I’m so glad they did! Read more…
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