Have You Heard About Giving Tuesday?

I first heard about Giving Tuesday last year. It was the Monday after Thanksgiving and I was listening to NPR on my way to work. The next day I was posting about it on this blog, and talking to my friends about it on social media. Last year, I was a little late to the party. So this year I want to help build awareness early.

Giving Tuesday is a movement to create a National Day of Giving to kick off the holiday season. It happens the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, so after shopping on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the giving starts December 3^rd this year.

The movement was started by the 92^nd Street Y (92Y), a nonprofit community and cultural center in New York City. It has grown to include thousands of partners including the United Nations Foundation.

The idea behind Giving Tuesday is to encourage people to

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Thanksgiving Dinners

It’s November and time to think about what we will make for that important meal.  And for some families in Tulsa, we’re not just talking about the highly anticipated Thanksgiving Feast.  Set the Table Tulsa is challenging local families to sit down at the dinner table four times a week, every week, all month long.  In a busy and overly connected world, it seems like a radical idea: family bonding, without the television, the computer or the cell phone as the center of our attention.  However, when we are able to incorporate this simple form of family time into our routines, it should be a cause of ongoing thanksgiving.

And let’s face it, if finding time for a sit down dinner was easy, it wouldn’t be such a rare event.  It comes down to time, a precious commodity in our busy world, and if we want to spend time wisely we need to budget it just like we do our money. Set the Table Tulsa has provided a space for participants to blog about their experiences as they change the way they view mealtime.

Vanesa Mares is one of the writers documenting how this experience is impacting her life.  She is already keeping up with a busy schedule, between caring for her children, one of whom is enrolled in CAP’s early childhood program, and developing her own skills through CAP’s CareerAdvance® program.  Yet she and her family are making the time to eat together.  In her posts she discusses her family’s process of setting a meal plan and trying to disconnect from the cell phone, which is something to which we can all relate.  Turning the phone to silent and setting it aside during dinner is one suggestion I am challenging myself to adopt after reading her posts, and I suspect I’ll be thankful for thirty minutes of peace and quiet.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you all have a fantastic “t-gives” as a friend of mine likes to say. I personally love turkey, but if you do not – commisserate here.

Update: Also, a list of early-ed related reasons for thankfulness.

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