Change by Doing Explore the world of volunteering and service

In this age of immediacy in communication with Tweets and status updates, texts and IMs, seldom is our communication particularly considered or planned. Dashing off a missive is easy, putting pen to paper takes effort and heart. Traveling Postcards is a grassroots organization founded by a particularly inspired artist, to reach out and touch women facing oppression around the world. The power of personal art and expression can chip away at walls literal and metaphorical for program recipients facing violence against women, inadequate health care, poverty, lack of educational opportunities, repression, isolation, and AIDS.

The program is far-reaching because it can be manifested online, but the actual tactile cards, created by you, are what make the difference. Women in refugee camps or hospitals or other places where isolation makes even the most intrepid of us disappear, are spoken to via original artwork and encouraging words, all on a 4×6 card. Every lovingly created work, made by volunteers around the world, is digitally archived for what will later be a massive library of expressed hearts. Cads have been delivered to individual women in Malawi, Ethiopia, Ghana, Costa Rica, Namibia, California, West Virginia, and Niger. Currently cards are being collected for a new outreach program in the Congo.

It is easy and free to create an expression of attention and concern–what we really all want is to be seen, and heard. How simple to make that a two-way street and connect across the world.