Written by Maura Leaden, Staff Writer

With the season of Thanksgiving dawning upon us, we will start to see yellow boxes pop up around our schools, churches, and grocery stores. These yellow Brotherhood in Action boxes are there to collect non-perishable food items for those who cannot afford to enjoy a Thanksgiving meal on their own. Contributing to this organization is a great way to give back to your community, and express your thanks during this holiday season. After all, one of the best ways to give thanks is to give back.

However, if this does not satisfy your itch to give as the giving season approaches, there are some exciting things coming up in the world of philanthropy. If you want to take a more global approach with your donations, or if you have a secret desire to change the world, I suggest that you start by following @109world on Instagram. 109 World is a social mission organization that was founded by yoga instructor, Rachel Brathen (you may know her as Yoga Girl), and two of her friends. Brathen alone has gained 1,600,000 followers on Instagram where she posts vibrant, sun drenched images captioned with inspiring messages of love and happiness. Therefore, thousands of people began emailing and messaging her to ask for advice. As the questions piled up, she realized that she could not answer all of them, and also that the world is in extreme need of  healing. Therefore, she set off to create oneOeight, (an organization designed to be a portable healing community of sorts – a story for another article…), and 109 World. OneOeight is concerned with the individual, and 109 World is concerned with, of course, The World. The goal is to raise social awareness (via the power of social media), and organize mission trips to benefit the seven main problems that they have chosen to focus on, which they call passions. These are: water, children, education, animals, food security, women, and environment.

Currently, it is unclear whether or not high schoolers like us will be able to contribute to this organization. It was just launched on October 9 and the website is not completely functional yet. Therefore, we will have to wait and see how exactly we can get involved in this organization. However, even if it just manages to open our eyes to some of the issues that this world is faced with, it will be a success. It can act as inspiration for us to do what we can to change the world, or at least our small corner of the world: Bethel, CT. Overall, it is a unique and exciting organization – it is one to watch for sure!

Photo from: https://rachelbrathen.com/yoga-girl-book/