Give, Give,Give

Asalaam Alaikum to all, just wanted to ask all of you my sisters and brothers again to dig deep and give more than you think you can to all that are suffering in the world. Remember if you pass away tommorow your money will not bring you anything but your charity will. Some people that are really in need include, Sudan, Mali, Niger, Guatemala, Pakistan, India, Iraq, Afghanistan...Just to name some of the very needy. Some great charities are Unicef, Islamic relief, The international alliance of Red Cross, Red Crescent just to name a few. Finally I have some Ideas of things you can do to dig up extra cash.
1. Return any clothes or items that are new with the tags that you are not really sure you need and give the money to charity.
2. Go through your car and house every few months and cash in all of your spare change AND DONATE IT. This could easily be 30-50$ every 3 months.
3. Host a sisters or brothers party. If you are a sister plan an evening where your husband takes the kids to another friends house, Then with the help of maybe another sister, plan an evening in your home for other tired moms and sisters. Do a theme of food and some nice music and plan fun activities, with no kids allowed. This is a ladies only night. Ask everyone for a donation of say 25$ and you donate the food and fun. What a great way to collect money for charity.
4. Dig out all of your old stuff and sell it, through the paper, or friends ect. and donate the money. Or if you have the capacity have a garage sale and donate the proceeds.
5. Simply ask your friends or family to give money for a cause, make a personal appeal and explain the plight of a people to them and ask for thier help. This is very powerful.
6. If you don't have the capacity to give money you can allways give your time, help a refugee by offering to drive them places like the grocery store or doctors appointment and help them fill out forms. Or help an elderly person who does not have family close by. Check with your mosque or catholic community services who specialize in refugee settlement.
 I hope you all like my ideas and can pass this along to all that you know. And I hope all of you like me can plan your own sisters night for fun and charity!!! Peace Allah Hafez..

Bismillah,

I agree sisters that you have some great fundraising ideas here.

To Jenni's point of helping people out when you have no money:  There are many poor people who could use a ride to the store so that they don't have to carry heavy groceries a mile to their house, help cleaning their homes when they are sick; a newer jilbab because their old ones are tattered; an Islaamic story book for their children (those things are expensive for poor people!); an older person may just need company!

 great ideas. Insh'Allah this will help me and others

Thanks all sisters, I hope we can all focus on bringing positive change to the world and reach out to others and our non muslim friends and neighbors. One of the influences on me becoming Muslim were my muslim friends who included me in all festivities and threw me a baby shower BEFORE I was muslim. Thier acceptance and kindness and the love of my husbands mom and family made it much easier to convert knowing my family may be upset with me.
I hope we can all get more involved, and maybe for the next eid where we do Qourbani we can go to our local masjid and ask if there are some local families whos kids need some new clothes and toys and do some shopping for them. At the same time with Christmas coming up maybe we can get our masjid or just our friends to do a food drive and to collect toys or books for needy families. Peace