“Fourteen hundred women around the world die every day in pregnancy and childbirth due to lack of basic health care.”

That’s right. Millions of women around the globe are still do not have access to the midwives, maternity wards and medicines they need for a safe pregnancy and delivery. This greatly increases the risk of maternal and child death and disability. Oxfam is fighting to get free public health care and education to all people. Oxfam is a global movement of dedicated people fighting poverty, from saving lives and developing projects that put poor people in charge of their lives and livelihoods, to campaigning for change that lasts.

How can you help bridge the gap between pregnant woman and they so badly need? Join Oxfam by pledging to your support of its “6 Million More” movement to demand health and education for all. And help give all women a fighting chance for a healthy baby.

To join, go to www.oxfam.org.uk/grooveyourbump. And help all women groove their bumps.

Video, YouTube, OxfamGreatBritain

Post from: Blisstree

Pregnant Women Break Dancing for Good Cause

London Tube Station

The research showed that although 90% of the population was cutting back on spending in general, only 45% were cutting back on holidays, breaks, or day trips.  Instead, spending was reduced on items such as food (80%), fuel (74%), clothes (67%) and entertainment or other little luxuries (67%).  Vacations, so often viewed here in the US as something easily eliminated, are a viewed as a very high priority elsewhere.

Another interesting tidbit from the research is that only 20% of those taking an international holiday last year are choosing to stay in the UK this year, and that the only international trips that are being eliminated are the short getaways.

Brits are still vacationing within the UK, as well as abroad, and aren’t yet willing to put “stay” and “vacation” together.  To which I say, good on them!

Why are Americans so willing to cut out vacations when residents of other countries are not?  Why is travel such a low priority for us?

Photo credit: SXC

Post from: Blisstree

Britons Travel, Why Don’t We?

IMG: Zuma Press

Normally when a child gets sick and stays home that’s it, but that was not the case for this little girl. The classmates found out and realized she had it and she soon got text messages telling her they hated her, she’d die and a bunch of other things. They didn’t stop there though she also got phone calls, emails and messages on her facebook page. The threats even went to Phoebe’s three other sisters that weren’t yet sick, threats they’d be next and would get sick and die too.

According to  The Daily Mail, her father she was very upset after getting those first few texts stating she’d die from this virus. Thankfully they’ve talked her through it, she’s feeling fine now and is waiting to go back to school. However, if this was your daughter how would you feel? What about the text messages? Would you ignore them or be writing back to some parents?

The bigger question is, what would you do if you found out you were a parent of one of these abusers? You know the ones leaving this little girl threatening emails/facebook messages?

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12-Year-Old Blamed for the Swine Flu

Jade was laid to rest today in England. She died March 22 at the very young age of 27 from cervical cancer. She was the subject of scrutiny and fascination for her often outrageous views. But in the last months of her life, she choose to have her private battle with cervical cancer filmed to help “raise money for the education of her two young sons.” In doing so she also educated the rest of us about the nastiness of cervical cancer.

Images: splashnewsonline.com.

Post from: Blisstree

Jade Goody Laid to Rest

I’m going to try to illustrate that there are times in every relationship, during which small gaps occur: gaps in expectations, gaps in promises, responsibilities, trust and perhaps a gap in adoration. It is also intended to demonstrate that sometimes we have to put our ambitions aside for the sake of our partners.

“Mind The Gap”, is also used on the London underground transit system, to remind riders to be cautious of the gap between the train and the platform. How prosaic, right?

Several years ago, my husband’s firm, a large New York based financial services corporation, offered him a temporary position in London. I was invited to join him. I recognized this to be an extremely important opportunitiy and insisted that he had to take the position. We convinced each other that it could only be helpful for his career moving forward and that it would be great for me as well.

At that time, I was an up-and-comer at an ad agency in New York and loving every minute of it. The job, the fancy restaurants, the attention, I was like Carrie Bradshaw of the ’80’s…only not as cool. Because I was so impressed with myself and my career and the big city…I wasn’t the most attentive wife on the planet. Stayed out late, worked late, got home late: not fun for him.

I knew in my core that I’d owed it to my husband to shift the focus from my career priorities to his. My own guilt forced me to make a decision.

And so, after all the farewell parties and mementos of New York from well-wishers, we packed everything up, rented our home to a stranger, and moved and cross the pond.

We were both petrified, we had to find a place to live (with cable hopefully) and he had to get up that Monday and go to work. I had to go to my…go to the…go nowhere! I was alone in a strange city, no friends or colleagues, surrounded by people who don’t really like Americans all that much (or at least that’s the feeling I’d gotten).

Don’t get me wrong, we travelled all over the place, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Spain…attended the best British shows ate at some of the finest restaurants …it was the opportunity of a lifetime, with lots of fun times. But every Monday morning I faced an entire week of solitude. And my intense obsession with British History wasn’t helping all that much.

I walked every street in London, went to every museum, shopped at the most famous department stores in the world. But I was deeply and profoundly unhappy. I had been working for so many years, I didn’t know what to do with myself–I felt useless…so I, did what every young woman would do who is fortunate enough to live in an exciting city, in the best part of town, with the potential to do anything she wanted — I found a job!

I thought that would make us feel normal, back to the two job household: goodbyes in the morning, cocktails in the evening. It didn’t. Nearly the end of our trip and I couldn’t take it anymore, I had to come home, I missed New York — I arranged to rent a small studio apartment in NYC, got back to my agency job, and corresponded with my husband long distance. What a horrible, selfish wife I was, I’d left the sweetest, most generous guy all alone. I felt so guilty.

I do recognize the irony….it was guilt that sent me to England and guilt that traveled with me on that plane ride back to NYC.

This long, long story reminds us that the “…for better or worse…”, can sometimes mean sacrifice and minding the gaps…what is your story?

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Mind The Gap