Brown Bagging Save Lives!

It’s noon and you’re heading out of the office for a much needed break from the computer and to grab a little lunch. Nothin’ fancy, just a sandwich and a soda or maybe some good ethnic food that feeds the soul. Either way, you spend about $10.

Or, Monday night you pack a lunch. Nothin’ fancy, just a sandwich or left over ethnic food from the night before. You save about $10.

Imagine what that $10 can do.

It can’t really do much for you. Maybe buy a movie ticket or half a dinner out. Allow you to grab a couple of beers after work. Whatever you do it’s all spent in a couple of hours. That's because it’s not a lot of money.

Unless it is. Collectively your $10 has the potential to help generations of people. Seriously, generations. That’s a pretty amazing investment for $10.

The Ugly Truth

A woman in sub-Saharan Africa has a 1 in 16 chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth, compared to a 1 in 4,000 chance in a developed country – the risk is SO small in developed countries compared to sub-Saharan Africa that you can barely see it on the chart.

Let’s think about that in another way, imagine you and six of your friends. If you lived in Africa, it would be very likely that one of your mothers would have died in childbirth. Imagine how your life would be different without the love and protection of your mother.

A Solution by the numbers

Training midwives is one of the MOST effective ways to reduce the risk of a mom dying in pregnancy or childbirth. The training is so effective it’s sort of like a video going viral on YouTube. Here’s the way it works:

• A midwife gets a two week training led by a US physician on safe birthing practices

• She attends about 10 births a year – so in the first year that’s 10 moms and 10 babies helped

• She probably has at least a 20 year career – so that’s 200 moms and 200 babied helped over her lifetime

• She attends the training with about 23 other midwifes – so that’s almost 10,000 individuals helped by one training.

10,000 Lives for $10

Here’s where you come in. On Tuesday, May 24th the TARA Project is partnering with Groupon for a $10 campaign to fund our midwife training.

Please brown bag it on Tuesday and use your saved $10 to support our campaign.  Ask your coworkers to do the same -- challenge your office to tip the campaign. 

We only get the money if the campaign tips which means that we need at least 50 folks to support us. Please don’t miss this opportunity thinking someone else will do it. We need everyone’s help. Please don’t opt out because you’re busy – it’s an online donation and takes less than 10 minutes. It’s so easy. So cheap. So impactful. Consider it your good deed for the day. Please, please.

The How To

• Go to Groupon before the campaign starts and sign up: http://www.groupon.com/

• On Tuesday, May 24th we will post the link on our FaceBook page and on Twitter

• Follow the link

• Pledge $10

• Share with your friends

• Let the good karma follow you for the day

$10 and 10 minutes = 10,000 lives. We hope you’ll think of your mother and decide to be part of making that equation a reality.

Thank you VERY, VERY much.