Mother's Day Gifts That Give Back

The Hospital for Sick Kids

Mother’s Day is a time of year when we thank the mothers in our lives for all that they do. At The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), Mother’s Day takes on special challenges for those parents who are faced with soothing and comforting a sick child.

If you are looking for a meaningful way to say "Thank You" this Mother’s Day, consider supporting the SickKids Get Better Gifts program. Get Better Gifts offers an alternative to traditional gift-giving and a meaningful way of showing mom you care, while making a positive impact on children and families at SickKids.

When you give a Get Better Gift, you are honouring a special mom in your life while supporting sick children and their mothers. Gift ideas (all under $30!) include:

Glider Rocking Chairs: The therapeutic value rocking chairs have on the tiniest premature babies or on children recovering from heart surgery is irreplaceable. Your gift funds equipment like this time-tested remedy that can help allow a mother to soothe and comfort her sick child.
Books for the Children’s Library at the Family Centre: Children use reading to escape from their daily and sometimes difficult hospital routine. This gift allows for story-time and book delivery service right to the children’s hospital bed, and helps fund the Children’s Library.
Play medical equipment: One of the best ways for children to understand what's happening to them is to imitate what is around them through role-play. This gift gives a child the chance to explore the medical procedures they're going through, express what they are feeling in an imaginative environment, and help them to better understand, and deal with, their treatments.

This year is a special milestone – it’s the 140th birthday of the hospital, marking 140 years of healing and hope. While SickKids has grown from six iron cots in a rented 11-room house to become one of the top health-care institutions in the world, there is always room to improve our programs and services in terms of research, learning and care.

Did you know?

Established in 1875, The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) was the first paediatric hospital in Canada.
SickKids cares for more than 100,000 patients every year. There are 8,752 staff members at SickKids and 1,680 volunteers contribute their time and energy to SickKids.
SickKids is the referral site for Ontario’s most critically ill newborns, providing care to babies as young as 23 weeks who might weight less than one pound.
Our highly specialized, collaborative Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) treats highly vulnerable babies with brain injury, lung disease, infections, heart defects, metabolic and genetic disorders, surgical conditions and prematurity with complex illness.
Last year, the NICU at SickKids treated 683 patients.

Please visit our online gift catalogue for a full list of items available for giving.

Me to We

Me to We Artisans have beautifully designed, ethically produced gifts. Locally-sourced and lovingly handcrafted, Me to We Artisans accessories, necklaces, earrings and bracelets are a unique way to say “Happy Mother’s Day.” A stylish statement that makes a global impact. Click here for the Mother’s Day’s Collection.

With every purchase, you give a life-changing gift – clean water, food, clothing, medicine, school supplies – that makes a lasting impact on our world. All products are part of Me to We’s Track Your Impact program, whereby each item purchased gives a life-changing gift to a child or family in a Free The Children developing community overseas. You can track where your gift is making a difference.

Me to We is an innovative social enterprise that offers socially conscious products and services, including socially conscious and environmentally friendly clothes and accessories, as well as life-changing international volunteer trips, leadership training programs and materials, an inspirational speakers bureau, and books which address issues of positive social change. In addition, half of Me to We’s net profit is donated to Free The Children, while the other half is reinvested to grow the enterprise and its social mission. Visit www.metowe.com for more information.

Glamjulz - Dress for Success

This year, with every purchase of our 2015 Mother’s Day Bracelet, we will donate a piece of glamjulz to Dress for Success Toronto, so that these women have the opportunity to shine in the workplace. Each donation will vary from pieces such as Necklaces, Bracelets, Earrings and Rings in many different colours and styles, in hopes that each woman in the program will have plenty of glamjulz to choose from, and that every outfit will have the perfect piece of coordinating jewelry… and last year you helped us donate 100 pieces!!

Dress For Success Toronto has a clear mission… “To promote the economic independence of disadvantaged women by providing professional attire, a network of support and the career development tools to help women thrive in work and in life.” So for the second year in a row, glamjulz is working with them to help women feel good about themselves inside and out, and give them the confidence to put themselves out into the world, get great jobs and live better lives.

Shanti Ugandi

For many people, Mother’s Day is an opportunity to reflect on what their Mom means to them and a special time to acknowledge the incredible job they do. But for many women across the world, the prospect of becoming a mother can be a daunting and sometimes dangerous one. With 800 women dying from preventable birth complications every day, maternal health remains a major health issue.

This Mother’s Day, Shanti Uganda is calling on blog readers across the world to acknowledge not only their Mom, but all Moms across the world by helping provide safe and accessible facilities for Moms and their babies in Uganda. There is a beautiful selections of gifts which can be purchased anytime, or specifically for Mother's Day. Each Gift of Action purchase will directly fund the project outlined. In the situation where we have surpassed the amount necessary to fund a specific project, your contribution will be allocated to another similar initiative. All funds go towards our on-the-ground programs, improving the lives of the communities and families we support.

The Shanti Uganda Society improves infant and maternal health, provides safe women-centered care and supports the well-being of birthing mothers and women living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda. Shanti is declaring May a month for Mothers and wants you to help spread the word about becoming a Birth Partner with the Shanti Uganda Society. Through the monthly donations of the Birth Partner program, the Shanti maternity centre is able to ensure that women have access to a dedicated team of midwives, which improves birth outcomes and reduces maternal and infant mortality rates.

Becoming a Birth Partner is a great way of acknowledging how important Mothers are. From as little as $10CAD a month, you can help make the difference. Please help us create awareness about the challenges facing pregnant women in Uganda and use your voice to inspire others to work with us to create better birthing conditions and in turn, save lives.

To find out more, visit Shanti Ugandi's Birth Partner Donation Page.

Help make this May a Mother’s Month – because every Mom matters.

Another Mother

The goal of the Another Mother campaign is to raise donations for SOS Children’s Villages charity. SOS is the largest organization in the world working with orphaned and abandoned children. Earlier this year Canadian Latin singer-songwriter Amanda Martinez visited Namibia, South Africa to take on the role of an SOS Children’s Villages “mother,” spending a week caring for a family of eight children who had been abandoned or orphaned.

Amanda was so moved by the experience that she wrote a song to commemorate her time spent with the children in Namibia. ‘African Skies’ can be purchased on iTunes, with all proceeds donated to the SOS Children’s Villages charity.

On Mother's Day this year, why not share a free e-card and gift of donation to help mothers around the world, as a meaningful gift-giving idea.

Adopt-a-Mom

This Mother's Day, why not donate towards medical care for mother's and children in need? You can help a dedicated group of Toronto Dentists and Doctors who mount annual medical missions to Africa where, in two short weeks, they treat 18,000 people while training local medical professionals on new techniques and equipment that they leave behind. Learn more at bridgetohealth.ca.

One of their biggest areas of medical aid is pre and post-natal care for moms and their babies. The program ADOPT A MOM: Save 2 Lives allows you to help with donations as small as $2 for a supply of prenatal vitamins or $10 for a sterile birthing kit, to a bigger donation for an ultra-sound machine. Bridge to Health has many wonderful stories of moms and babies they’ve helped.

TOMS and Every Mother Counts

TOMS is launching a special TOMS x Every Mother Counts limited edition bag collection featuring two unisex bag styles - a tote ($64 CAD) and a backpack ($140 CAD) – this limited edition collection will be available for stylish, philanthropic Canadian moms at www.TOMS.ca.

With each TOMS x Every Mother Counts bag purchased a portion of the proceeds will go to support Every Mother Counts, as well as with every bag TOMS bag purchased, TOMS will help provide a safe birth for a mother and baby in need by providing training for local birth attendants and providing birth kits with vital materials to help a woman safely deliver her baby.

Every Mother Counts is a non-profit organization that works to improve maternal health & make pregnancy and childbirth safe for every mother around the globe; the organization’s founder is supermodel Christy Turlington Burns, who is also a global maternal health advocate.

Pre and Post- notal health is crucial to the well-being of families: Infection is a leading cause of death among mothers and newborns worldwide, and by providing clean birth conditions and skilled attendants, hundreds of thousands of lives can be saved (Source: World Health Organization & Blencowe et al. 2010). Today 40 million women around the world give birth each year without the help of a trained birth attendant (Source: Millennium Development Goals Report, 2014), and with the training and the materials to provide a safe birth, mothers are 80 per cent less likely to develop an infection and almost half of newborn deaths can be prevented (Source: Seward, 2012 & Jokhio 2005).