Care to help?

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=6&link=ctg_lit_home_from_ths_home_sitenav

My friend Bob sent me the link to a website that you can "click" (no money or info required) to donate to various causes. It has one for each of the following:

• Hunger
• Breast Cancer
• Child Health
  
• Literacy
• Rainforest
• Animal Rescue

(Tabs are at the very top of the website for each issue).

By clicking each day, sponsors give money to these programs (and of course you can buy products from their online stores as well) but otherwise all you have to do is click. I've seen and done this for the breast cancer site before but never noticed the others.

Some cool things that you can learn though are:

- what your environmental footprint is
- literacy issues in the world and U.S.
- animal rescue stories and wildfacts,
- teacher resources
- and many, many more...

I've copied and pasted some of the facts from the literacy site, but please check the site if any of these issues are ones that you are interested in.
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World Literacy Facts*:

• Over 780 million adults in the world are illiterate.
• 64% of the world's illiterate are women.
• Nearly 60 per cent of the estimated 113 million children who do not attend primary school worldwide are girls.
• On average, nearly one in three children does not complete 5 years of primary education, the minimum required for acquiring basic literacy.

U.S. Literacy Facts**:

• A recent study (included in the Handbook of Early Literacy Research, Vol. 2, edited by Susan Neuman and David Dickinson) shows that while in middle income neighborhoods the ratio of books per child is 13 to 1, in low-income neighborhoods the ratio is 1 age-appropriate book for every 300 children.

• Over 80% of preschool and after-school programs serving children from low-income families have no age-appropriate books for their children.

• Children from low-income families have been exposed to an average of only 25 hours of one-on-one reading time compared to an average of 1,000 to 1,700 hours for children from middle-class families.

• The National Center for Education Statistics' evaluation of No Child Left Behind reading proficiency scores in 2005 found that 36% of all 4th graders scored in the "Below Basic" proficiency level, and 54% of 4th graders eligible for school lunch program scored in the "Below Basic" proficiency level.

• According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, reading skills among middle school students have remained virtually unchanged for 15 years, improving by only two points between 1992 and 2005.

*World literacy statistics from UNESCO
**U.S. literacy statistics from First Book http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/aboutthecause.faces?siteId=6&link=ctg_lit_aboutthecause_from_home_sidetabs

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"Every year, more than nine million children in the developing world die before they reach the age of five."
http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/survivetofive.faces?siteId=5&link=ctg_chs_survivetofive_from_home_sidetabs

Thanks to all of you for everything you do every day!
Love and hugs