The Power of Three challenge was a success!
We challenged practitioners to select three changes they would make to their diet and keep it for 10 days.
Changes ranged from using smaller plates to applying the ½ rule (½ the plate for meats/carbs, ½ for vegetables/fruit) to putting your apples – or other healthier foods – on display.
These change ideas came from experiments conducted by Brian Wansink’s Cornell Food and Brand Lab, as documented both in his scientific publications and in his book, Mindless Eating.
We promised that if 2,500 practitioners signed up for the challenge, we would give $25,000 to famine relief in East Africa.
Did we get 2,500 sign ups?
No.
Actually, over 4,000 practitioners participated from across the US and around the globe, including such countries as Saint Kitts and Nevis, Ecuador, China, Slovenia, Thailand, Laos, Jordan, Kenya, Bulgaria, and Turkey.
In total, people from 50 countries took the challenge!
We have sent checks totaling $25,000 to Doctors without Borders and to Save the Children, where the money will be used for famine relief in the Horn of Africa.
These two organizations are consistently recognized by charity watchdog organizations like Charity Navigator as trust-worthy organizations, with no more than 15% of their funds going to cover administrative and fundraising costs.
And how could these two charities use the funds that we’re sending them?
Save the Children will use this money for things like feeding stations, water purification tablets, and mosquito netting, while Doctors Without Borders will use the money to pay for inoculations for communicable diseases like measles and TB, for feeding stations, and for the treatment of other medical conditions resulting from malnutrition.
Even though the money won’t entirely be used for food, we’re donating to Doctors Without Borders (DWB) because the medical needs of the famine victims are so numerous. Medical horror stories are common as a result of both the crowded conditions and the high rate of severe malnutrition experienced in the refugee camps.
As a practitioner, you know the ramifications of disease epidemics, especially when communicable diseases spread through camps of people already weakened from hunger.
Children are generally the first affected by food shortages and famines, but now DWB has started treated pregnant women and other adults for severe malnourishment, thus illustrating the worsening effects of the famine.
What did we learn from this challenge?
For one thing, one of our Power of Three participants commented that they would have donated to the famine relief if we had asked.
We realized that we hadn’t given you an option of participating in a direct donation, so wanted to rectify that now.
If you are interested in donating, you can do so by clicking on Save the Children or Doctors Without Borders.
Save the Children has also teamed up with Bob Marley’s family for the I’m Gonna Be Your Friend East Africa campaign.
I cried when I saw the campaign’s powerful video. If you haven’t yet seen it, you won’t want to miss it.
Whether it’s making a donation to end world hunger, providing life-saving medical attention, or being the best practitioner that your patients have ever had, we should all be proud of the part that we play in making this world a better place.
Please leave a comment below.
found your blog on yahoo and was just what i was looking for, keep it up 🙂
Thanks for all the great info here. I will be back to read some more soon.
I used a free self-help program i found on line and it took some practice, but it worked. The key for me was learning about the effects of adrenalin, and understanding that anxiety symptoms are caused by adrenalin, and that no matter how severe the symptoms might be, there is no actual risk. Fast heart beat, shallow breathing, light headedness, nausea, feeling shaky, and feeling woozy are normal responses to adrenalin. Most of my anxiety was caused by worrying about the effects of anxiety – a viscous circle, but one that was easy to break once i got the whole picture. . . Here’s the link:
Thank you, Ruth, and congratulations on the latest successful initiative.
Thank you Ruth! You are such an inspiration and so generous. Thank you for your intiative, generosity, and compassionate action.
Ruth
Great news re the donation
So rarely do we hear the end result of action after websites enlist support for this or that.SO great news!
Thank you, Ruth! The amount you sent is so very generous and NEEDED! So important for us to remember always that we do belong to each other (from a Mother Teresa quote that I love).
I tried to sign up bu the link didn’t work. I emailed to get help, and got no response. I will make changes anyway, even thought I am not listed in your numbers.