If you want to help the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and not just them but also the other tribes that came to support this action and other people from around the world here are ways to do it:

1. There is a crowdrise page made by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to help support the tribes in Dakota that plan on spending the winter there in order to protect their land and the river. If you can, please donate. Any amount helps!

Official Support for Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against DAPL

These donations will be used to buy:

- Food and meals
- Porta-johns
- Trash Collection
- Hand Washing Stations
- Community Shelters and Tents
- Emergency Management Team
- Firewood and Hauling
- Community Wellness Initiatives

and much more.

2. If you are able to help with material items like:

- Fire starter logs
- Extreme cold weather boots
- Extreme cold weather sleeping bags (to withstand up to -40)
- Extreme cold weather wool socks
- Hand and Foot Warmers Earmuffs and Gloves
- Engine warmers

Please send them to:
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe 
Attention: Donations 
PO Box D 
Building #1 
North Standing Rock Avenue 
Fort Yates, ND 58538 

Also needed are larger items like building materials: cinder blocks, plywood, rebar, 2x4s, firewood, and logs. Please contact: publicrelations@standingrock.org

3.

There are two petitions I would say are the most important ones out there. One is on the Friends of Earth site and the other from the ReZpect Our Water organization:

Tell President Obama: Say NO to the Dakota Access Pipeline!
Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline

4. Check out this article on how Banks and their investment affect the pipeline business:

A Strategy to Stop the Funding Behind the Dakota Access Pipeline

Also ways to contact the banks that fund the Pipeline project:

How to Contact the 17 Banks Funding the Dakota Access Pipeline

5. Tweet, retweet, post on Instagram, Facebook, any and every social media to spread the word. Use #NoDAPL and #WaterIsLife.

6. Follow the official page of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe on Facebook for news and updates and new ways to help:

https://www.facebook.com/Standing-Rock-Sioux-Tribe-402298239798452/

I stand with the Native Americans. Do you?


*Pictures made by Rob Wilson: https://www.facebook.com/RobWilsonFoto/*

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved the construction of a 1,172-mile Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL, which runs through North and South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois and has a capacity to transport more than 500,000 barrels of oil a day.

Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery where a perpetrator profits from the sexual exploitation and/or forced labor of a person by means including force, fraud, coercion, or deceit to engage in commercial sexual activity such as prostitution, exotic dancing, or pornography.

San Diego is one of the top 13 cities in the US for human trafficking, a hub for 3000 - 8,000 victims annually. Most victims are between 11-18 years old and often don't even see themselves as victims, because they've never been shown anything better. 26% of victims are children (under 18), 55% of victims are women and girls, and 68% of victims are in forced labor.

A team of 30 young professionals in San Diego have come together to fight human trafficking. The focus is providing awareness, resources, and aid to victims and survivors of Human Trafficking. They have identified three organizations on the West Coast to support with an emphasis on Awareness, Prevention, Restoration, and Advocacy.

Those three organizations are:

The STARS program at San Diego Youth Services (Surviving Together, Achieving and Reaching for Success) provides a program for teen girls and women between the ages of 12-24 involved with commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking to empower the youth to escape sexual exploitation by developing their inner strengths, building a sense of community and supporting their reintegration into mainstream society. Services include intensive case management, detention outreach, support groups, recreational activities, therapy and community trainings. SDYS STARS has been providing services in the community for over 8 years and over the last year served 91 girls and young women. Donations would be utilized to enhance our therapeutic services and move towards our capacity. The trauma associated with domestic sex trafficking often leads to chronic traumatic stress, low self-esteem and self-worth, and self-harm behaviors. Therapeutic services aim at supporting Survivors as they heal and gain empowerment to regain control over their future through a whole person approach that includes intensive therapy, expressive art, healthy eating, yoga, and self-care activities.

Generate Hope in San Diego provides safe housing and victim services including counseling, medical care, education, therapy, etc. for children between the ages of 8 and 24 who have been victimized. The funds will specifically go toward a new home for minors.

Saving Innocence in Los Angeles partners with local law enforcement to provide crisis response, rescue services, and immediate aftercare to child victims of domestic minor sex trafficking and provides long-term advocacy, case management, and mentoring relationships to survivors of exploitation by promoting worth and restoring innocence.

The goal is to raise at least $250,000 to these organizations that are directly involved in helping victims and survivors. There is no better time than NOW to take action! 

You can choose one of these organizations and donate. The minimum starting amount is 10$. The donation page is here: https://www.crowdrise.com/foundnotbound

I chose Saving Innocence, but any of these organizations is a good choice and helps. To think that this happens to girls and young women in the world is just... I guess whatever word i use would not be enough to describe and even imagine what kind of pain they go through. If you can, please donate and help.

Deadline for this action is August 28th!

Some Statistics about Human Trafficking:

- Sex trafficking is San Diego’s 2nd largest underground economy after drug trafficking. The underground sex economy represents an estimated $810 million in annual revenue. 

- Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego are 3 of the FBI’s 13 highest child sex trafficking areas in the nation.

- Approximately 27-30 million people around the world are in some form of slavery. 

- Each year about 17,500 individuals are brought into the United States and held against their will as victims of human trafficking. Conservative estimates say that 15,000 people are trafficked into the U.S. annually, while others guess the number is as high at 60,000.

Quite possibly the best maps to check for Lyme Disease is a canine map since dogs are frequently checked for Lyme disease. Here is one: http://www.dogsandticks.com/diseases_in_your_area.php

What can we do to protect ourselves?

1. Avoid tick habitat as much as possible. Ticks are usually near the ground or in leaf litter, grasses, bushes and fallen logs. Gathering firewood, leaning against tree trunks or playing in leaves are high risk activities. If you go hiking, you should stay on cleared paths.

2. Dress appropriately in order to protect yourself: Wear shoes, socks, long pants and long sleeves. Tie back long hair and wear a hat. You can wear light-colored clothing, so any tick could be spotted easily. Also, there is an option to buy clothing that has been pre-treated with the repellent permethrin at outdoor recreation stores. The protection lasts through 70 washings. You can also purchase permethrin yourself and spray clothing. It lasts 5-6 washings. Spray the inside and outside of clothes. Spraying footwear with permethrin will prevent ticks from crawling up your shoes.

3. Use repellent on exposed skin: Repellents with DEET, picaridin or lemon eucalyptus oil are the most effective.

4. Check for ticks often.  When outdoors, inspect your clothing and skin for ticks. Brush off those that aren't attached and remove any that are.

5. Shower immediately after spending time outdoors: Feel for bumps that might be embedded ticks. Pay careful attention to hidden places, including groin, armpits, back of knees, belly button and scalp. Parents should check their children. Also check your clothes again. Running your clothes in a hot dryer for 10 minutes before you wash them will kill any ticks that may be there.

6. Protect your pets: Ticks can infect dogs and cats, too. Also, ticks can get on their fur and they can carry them inside your home. Consult with your veterinarian about tick-protection for your pets.

For more information, like how is Lyme diagnosed, what are the available treatments or prevention methods like vaccines, visit: https://www.lymedisease.org/. Also LymeDisease.org has a Facebook page, Twitter and Youtube.

'663 million people in the world do not have access to safe water. This is roughly one in nine of the world's population.
Half of the world’s hospital beds are filled with people suffering from water related diseases. (UN)
The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns. (UN)
443 million school days are lost each year due to water related illness. (WHO/UNICEF)
Women and children collectively walk 200 million miles a day to collect, often dirty and unsafe, water.
1.5 million children die every year due to water related diseases.'

While i am writing this post i am drinking water. Clean and fresh water. To think that so many people do not have access to clean water is perplexing. Something so customary to us is a rarity to so many people.

22nd March was World Water Day. A day meant to raise awareness to the importance of water and help those who are in need of it.

DROP 4 DROP is an organization that does just that. They work in Africa, India and in emergency cases. They have helped out with water solutions in response to Hurricane Felix in Nicaragua, the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, the Pakistan floods, the 2011 East African drought and hurricane Haiyan in the Philippines. You can find out more about it here: http://drop4drop.org/projects/category/emergency/

There are many ways you can help too:

You can fund a dedicated well: http://drop4drop.org/get-involved/dig

Donate to a project: http://drop4drop.org/donate-dollars/

You can help by organizing fundraising: http://drop4drop.org/get-involved/fundraising

Spread the word: http://drop4drop.org/get-involved/donate-voice

If you want to find out more about their work or discuss a partnership to give clean water, you can contact them on this email: info@drop4drop.org or call: 08456345030.

This is an organization that was founded by Neferteri Plessy. Neferteri is a TV personality, model and a television producer and she herself is a single mom of two boys and knows first hand the struggles and challenges single moms have to face.

The goal of the organization is to empower single moms and through Life Classes help them strive in the five key areas: Self-Image, Relationships, Finances, Spirituality and Service.


They organize events, award ceremonies, have fun recipes and beauty tips and i think most importantly they have built a community where women can connect and build friendships with each other and in that process help themselves, which i think is a wonderful thing.

If you are a single mom, hopefully this organization will be helpful and informative to you or if you know someone that is a single mom, please share it with them. It might help.

Power to the badass single moms out there. You rock! :)