Wednesday, April 27, 2011

4/27/11: Make Mother's Day Moms4Moms Day

The Moms4Moms movement uses social media to support moms around the world this Mother’s Day, and I couldn’t be prouder or more happy to be part of this important campaign with all these other amazing bloggers.

Did you know?...
-  One mom dies (maternal death) every 90 seconds!
-  15% of all pregnancies result in complications during labor and delivery and sometimes are fatal.
-  Pregnancy is the biggest killer of girls ages 15-19.
-  For every woman who dies in childbirth, 20 more suffer from debilitating complications.
****We have the knowledge to prevent 90% of all maternal deaths.***
These numbers are truly shocking to me and it breaks my heart to think of children growing up without their mothers because something happened to them during childbirth.

Despite Mother’s Day celebration of motherhood, hundreds of thousands of women worldwide die during pregnancy and childbirth. The US ranks 50th in terms of maternal health care, meaning that 49 other countries provide better care! Moms4Moms’s goal is to “really make Mother’s Day about moms” by promoting the allocation of at least some of the money spent on gifts to mothers in need.
Leveraging the power of social media, Moms4Moms plans to raise awareness and funds for Christy Turlington Burns’ organization Every Mother Counts.
The Facebook page “Moms4MomsDay” focuses on two initiatives: micro-donating, which encourages everyone to give as little as $5, and old cell-phone donation through the group Hope Phones, which refurbishes old phones and donates the proceeds.

What if we each donated just a little bit of what’s spent every year on Mother’s Day? What if we asked for handmade cards and a donation to everymothercounts.org instead? Instead of a dozen roses from well-intentioned but completely unoriginal hubby, a life could be saved.  Moms4Moms is a movement started by Holly Pavlika, founder of the blog Mom-entum.  She partnered with the following twelve influential moms and bloggers to create Moms 4 Moms Day: Erica Diamond womenonthefence.com, Audrey McClelland momgenerations.com, Molly Gold gomominc.com, Beth Feldman rolemommy.com, Niri Jaganath mommyniri.com (I happen to know Niri personally and used to go to Gymboree classes with her), Katja Presnal skimbacolifestyle.com, Kelly Loubet everydaychildhood.com, Julie Cole mabelslabels.com, Linda Grant nycsinglemom.com, Katrina Carefoot ficklefeline.ca, Dagmar Bleasdale Dagmar’s momsense and Sherry Aikens babypop.com

We need you....
We are all reaching out to our large social media following to enlist other women to post about Moms4Moms to raise awareness and ask for donations on a singular day, April 27, hopefully across the U.S and globally.
There was also a huge #moms4moms Twitter party and since the project started, that hashtag was mentioned almost 21 million times on Twitter. Amazing!
Every Mother Counts is Christy Turlington Burns’ campaign to increase education and support for maternal and child health. The keystone of the campaign is http://www.everymothercounts.org/, an interactive platform providing the tools to raise awareness, education and action.

Want to help? Easy: spread the word by stumbling and tweeting this post, or share it via Facebook or e-mail. Ask people to donate a part of their Mother’s Day gifts. Or feel free to take any facts from this post and write your own post about Moms4Moms, even after today. We can all make a big difference in raising awareness — and donations – for maternal health.

Moms, did you have the birth experience you hoped for? Why or why not?
Were you confident in your own abilities to labor and deliver?
Whether your birth experience was empowering or left you feeling powerless, we have the power to make a difference. YOU have the power now to make a real difference.
Do something today.

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