It’s my birthday — Help me celebrate!

Today I turn 32!

As I get older, I keep thinking about how much I already have and how little I really need. Birthdays always bring up these mixed feelings, as people lavish lovely gifts on you.

Not that there is anything wrong with luxuries. They can definitely enrich my life. For example, I think sewing for pleasure and fun is very much a luxury, and one that I value.

But at the same time, I think it’s important to sometimes recognize how incredibly, unbelievably lucky most of us are. And that forgoing just a few miniscule nice-to-haves (like a few yards of fabric) can actually save someone else’s life. So for my birthday, I want to turn the focus from luxuries to necessities.

What kind of necessities?

There are millions of people in our world right now who lack one of life’s absolute most basic necessities: clean drinking water. There are people (often women) who must spend hours each day collecting water, and this water is often not suitable for consumption. It makes them sick. It makes their families sick. It kills children, it kills adults.

But those of us born into more fortunate circumstances can help. We can give up just a tiny bit of our money and seriously impact this dreadful situation. That’s why, for my birthday, I’m asking everyone I know to donate my age in dollars to Charity:water.

{photo by Esther Havens for Charity:water}

Here’s the deal: I need 100 people to donate 32 bucks.

My goal for my birthday is to reach $3,200 USD. That means I need just 100 people to donate! There are thousands of you reading this, so I’m hopeful we can get there. And if even more donate, maybe we can reach $5,000 — the average cost of an entire clean water project in a developing nation!

And there’s one more really cool thing. Charity:water is an outstanding organization, and they will give 100% of your donation directly to these projects. None of it goes to overhead. And in several months, they will even update us with information on the specific projects our money funds. Pretty cool, huh?

Please consider joining me. Be one of the 100 people to help celebrate my birthday with a small donation:

Click here to join my campaign and donate!

PS: You can also help by blogging, tweeting, or posting on facebook and linking to my donation page.