Is it just me, or do you also wake up in the middle of the night worrying about the state of our country and the world?

Do you also experience an ache in the pit of your stomach when you imagine the pain and suffering resulting from shutting down USAID payments?

Does it bring tears to your eyes when you read about children going hungry in Columbia, families in Africa dying from discontinued AIDS medications, and displaced civilians in Ukraine having no shelters to offer food and trauma care?

The cruelty and heartlessness of our government leaders (elected and non-elected) is staggering.

Screaming at the radio hasn’t helped.

Neither has slamming my laptop closed when I simply can’t read any more news.

So let’s do this. 

Let’s share ideas.  

What are you doing to respond?

What ideas – big or little or even merely symbolic – do you have to combat the tide of callous indifference that is washing over our country?

This is what I am doing so far: 

• I installed the app “Five Calls” on my phone.  It provides phone numbers for my senators and state representatives and makes it easy for me to call them to express my outrage and to encourage them to speak up. Phone calls matter.  Five Calls offers sample scripts that I find very useful when I feel under pressure to be eloquent (or at least clear). My experience so far is that the people answering the phones are unfailingly polite, professional, and helpful.  I’m using my voice in this small way and hoping that it will make a difference.  

• I added my pronouns to the signature of my email.  This is merely symbolic, I know, but I want to stand in solidarity with federal employees who have been forbidden to express their pronouns or to even acknowledge that a spectrum of gender identities exist.

• I’m supporting organizations doing important work.

My small donations won’t make up for the billions of dollars halted from USAID but I want to do what I can. I’m supporting (among others):

• Doctors without Borders. 
• UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund): “UNICEF” is on the ground in 190 countries and territories to save and protect children. Let’s keep this critical work going. 
• Church World Service is a faith-based organization that works in the United States and across the globe to combat hunger, poverty, displacement and disaster.

• I also increased my donations to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) because I rely on their truthful and non-hyperbolic reporting.

What are you doing?

What are your suggestions about how to help?

Share your ideas in the comments and I will pass them on in a future blog.

It’s important for us to remember that we are not powerless.  

We may not be able to tackle all of the problems but each of us can do something.

Don’t give up!