What can you do to improve the future for yourself, girls and the world?

New Moon Girls know the importance of working hard to improve the future. Not only do they work to improve themselves, they also work hard to improve the lives of girls everywhere.

Have you ever thought about starting your own charity organization?

A lot of New Moon Girls have, or know someone who has started their own charity. India, 13, Connecticut helped her friend Olivia raise $1,000 for her charity Change for Change. Valorie, 13, Washington and her friend Arielle began their own candle-making business and used their profits to give to other charities!

Have you ever wanted to volunteer or donate to an empowering organization?

There are a lot of ways to help organizations that are working to make a better future for girls and the world. You can always find ways to help on NewMoon.com.

Raincloud, 8, Delaware shares her ideas on how to change the world by donating to charities. Girls have volunteered their time and talents to organizations like Ronald McDonald House and other charities. Read more about them here. New Moon Girls supports organizations that empower girls to create a better future, like Room to Read, who received many donations this year!

What else would you do to improve the world? According to Raincloud’s survey, most girls would like to donate to charity, fight hunger and reduce, reuse, recycle. To see what else you could do, take her quiz here.

If you are or would like ideas on fighting to improve the future for girls and the world, share your stories and experience on the Girls Can Save the World message board.

Every girl can make a difference in the world, no matter how small they think their contribution is!

What have you done to improve the future? What else could you do to improve the lives of girls everywhere? Share your awesome stories and ideas with us!

Emily

New Moon Intern

New Moon Girls is giving back this holiday season, and we asked you to choose which deserving organization to donate to. Well, you voted and we are donating 5% of every membership ordered until Dec. 29 to Room to Read!

Room to Read is an organization that works in developing countries such as Cambodia, Laos, India and South Africa among many others. Their mission is to create the opportunity for every child to get an education and make a difference in their community and world.

Room to Read works closely with communities and local governments to help children learn to read and write, and develop these and other life skills to girls. Room to Read works with both girls and boys, but has a special program just for girls called the Girls’ Education program.

Did you know that 42% of girls in developing countries do not attend school? Room to Read is working to change that. As of now, 234 girls have graduated from the program and over 10,000 are working hard to follow.

Check out the stories of  Dang from Vietnam, Anita from India and Aradhana from Nepal to see how their lives have changed after gaining an education. For more inspirational stories, check out the Girl Graduates 2010 yearbook!

Giving girls an education is one of the most powerful things that can be done to reduce poverty. It gives girls the skills to build healthy families, lower the rate of disease and earn higher wages. The cycle of poverty can be greatly reduced by educated girls and women who can make positive life decisions.

Help Room to Read get the most out of our donations. Here are some easy things you can do:

• Create a poster about how much you love New Moon. Get permission to hang them up around school, church or area businesses to spread the word!
• Host a New Moon holiday party for your family and friends. Check out these awesome tips on decorations, food, activities and more.
• Design your own New Moon t-shirt, give your old issues of New Moon to friends or host a “snowy day read.” See these and other ideas here.
• Donate to the New Moon Girls Scholarship fund.
• Order a membership for your school or local library.

By voting for Room to Read, you are helping girls worldwide by ordering or renewing your membership to New Moon Girls. Thanks to you, Room to Read can continue to help even more girls receive a quality education and reduce poverty!

What are some other ideas you have to help Room to Read? Share your ideas with us in the comments below!

Emily

New Moon Intern

Have you ever wanted to make a big difference in the world, like helping to stop world hunger? Even if it is something small, everyone can do their part to help this cause. The Gifts That Keep Giving campaign — a campaign held by the organization FreeRice — started October 3 and will run until December 12. Everyone is encouraged to participate!

FreeRice.com is a website run by the United Nations World Food Programme. They have two goals:

1. To provide education to everyone for free
2. To help world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

This is how FreeRice works:

Participants can answer questions from a variety of categories like English, math, science and languages. Everytime a question is answered correctly, 10 grains of rice are donated to someone in need. The more questions that are answered correctly, the more rice is donated.

So, if you answer five questions correctly, 50 grains of rice are donated. If you answer 10 questions, 100 grains are donated!

This is how the Gifts That Keep Giving Campaign works:

1. Search for and join the group that has been created on FreeRice.com for MIme Campaigns at http://freerice.com/users/simple-complexity

2. Action alerts will be sent out through our networks, seeking widespread participation. Reminder alerts will also be given for continued participation.

3. On December 12 at 7:59 p.m. EST, the campaign will end and two super givers will be selected. One for most questions answered and another for most rice donated.

4. Campaign awards will be sent by December 15:

• Super Giver 1, gets a $75 visa card
• Super Giver 2, gets a $50 visa card

Many New Moon Girls know and love the work of FreeRice. Abby, 13, North Carolina asked her New Moon sisters to help her end world hunger in her story Give Them Rice!

Dragonfly, 14, Minnesota began a Free rice new moon girls group to raise a lot of rice!

Megan, 13, Oregon urges others to check out FreeRice.com in her story, just like Hannah, 12, New Hampshire does in hers!

No matter who or where you are, you can make a difference in the fight to end world hunger. Have you participated on FreeRice.com? How much rice were you able to donate? In what other ways would you like to help fight world hunger? Let us know in your comments below!

Emily
New Moon Intern