Tuesday Tribute: Joyful Heart Foundation

I don't have any idea where the idea for "Tuesday Tribute" came from (if someone does...please inform me), but I love the idea. I've done it a couple times before, but still don't know where it came from.

Tuesday Tribute is a day when you make a post for someone or something greater than yourself: basically, it's a way to highlight a problem or organization (or both) and show what you stand for. I've decided to start doing these again, at least once a month.

As a disclaimer, I will tell you that I will never blog about something I don't care about. However, I care about a lot of things, so these ones are the things I care about most.

Today, my Tuesday Tribute is for A Joyful Heart Foundation.



There are other organizations like this with the same purpose, but for today it's just JHF.

This Foundation was started by Mariska Hargitay (I may or may not like SVU, but I didn't really care about who the actors were until I found this out) a few years after she started working on SVU. JHF is basically a foundation that helps all survivors of any kind of abuse: childhood, sexual, and domestic.

According to the site:

"The vision of the Joyful Heart Foundation is a community that:
1. is empowered with knowledge, courage and compassion to help survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse heal mind, body and spirit;
2. values and dedicates resources to individuals and families that have been impacted by these issues; and
3. seeks to ignite and foster an open dialogue about how to collaboratively end the cycle of violence and abuse."

They have a multitude of programs to "heal," "educate," and "empower," including week long retreats, local and urban retreats, and community events. And the site itself offers many online and phone resources for survivors.

In the US, every 2 minutes a woman is sexually assaulted, every 15 seconds a woman is battered, and everyday 4 children are killed as a result of child abuse. About 17.9% of women have or will survive a rape or attempted rape in their lifetime, that's 1 in 6 women. It's a great cause, and it's really important to people who have lived through things like this--many times it's easier to fly halfway across the world for a week retreat with total strangers than discuss things with those closest to you.

Check it out and pass it on. You can even buy things at their shop to help support--boxes of chocolates, necklaces, lotion, a really fuzzy blanket.

Plus, Joyful Heart Foundation is in the running for a funding of $250,000 from the Pepsi Refresh project. And you should go vote for it right quick here.

I love when celebrities have heart!