Feel Good Friday - 9/11 Day

Today is the 25th anniversary of 9/11, marked nationwide as the September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance, and it felt like the moment to finally spotlight 9/11 Day.

Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Irvine, California, the mission of 9/11 Day is "to inspire millions of Americans and others to rekindle the remarkable spirit of unity and compassion that arose in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and to perform good deeds and other acts of service in tribute to the 9/11 victims, survivors, first responders, and members of our military who bravely rose in service in response to the attacks." Co-founders David Paine and Jay Winuk started the organization after Jay's brother Glenn, a volunteer firefighter, was killed at the World Trade Center.

A premier project is 9/11 Day's Meal Pack which mobilizes thousands of volunteers each September 11 to pack shelf-stable meals that are donated to local food banks for families facing hunger. Since 2016, volunteers have packed more than 20 million meals nationwide. The organization also provides free lesson plans to K-12 classrooms, helping teachers explain 9/11 in ways that emphasize the unity that followed, not just the history.

For this year's 25th anniversary, 9/11 Day awarded $3 million in grants to nearly 200 nonprofits, schools, and community groups across 40 states, with more than 70% going to youth organizations and K-12 schools. The anniversary also brought the UNIITE For Good campaign, an interactive pledge map where actor Pete Davidson, whose firefighter father was killed on 9/11, is helping rally one million pledged good deeds by today.

If you'd like to support 9/11 Day today, there are many ways to do so. You can pledge a good deed at 911day.org, sign up for a Meal Pack shift through their volunteer page, or make a donation. Just $25 funds 50 to 75 meals. You can also amplify their message on social media. Follow 9/11 Day on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or YouTube and share their stories of unity and healing with your network. Here's to turning today into something good.

Feel Good Friday - Ms. Foundation for Women

Oh no, I'm back with another post inspired by the passing of a prominent public figure. This time it's feminist trailblazer Gloria Steinem. Two weeks, two icons gone, which makes this a fitting day to talk about the organization she helped create more than 50 years ago, Ms. Foundation for Women.

Founded in 1973 by Gloria Steinem, Patricia Carbine, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Marlo Thomas, and headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, the mission of Ms. Foundation for Women is: “We build women's collective power in the U.S. by investing in, and strengthening, the capacity of women-led movements to advance meaningful social, cultural, and economic change.”

As the nation's oldest women's foundation, the Ms. Foundation doesn't run programs directly. Instead, they fund and strengthen grassroots, women-led organizations working on reproductive health and rights, economic justice, and safety from violence, with a particular focus on women and girls of color. Current grantmaking initiatives include the Birth Justice Initiative, which addresses maternal and infant health disparities, and the Girls of Color Initiative, which funds leadership development for adolescent girls and gender-expansive youth of color.

Their Take Our Daughters to Work Day, created in 1993, became a national institution that's now known to eight out of ten people across the country and involves 35 million participants each year. The Foundation also hosts the annual Women of Vision Awards, originally launched in 1988 as the Gloria Awards in Steinem's honor, celebrating women whose leadership is changing the world.

In the fiscal year ending June 2025, the Ms. Foundation distributed more than $7.6 million in direct grants to 194 grantee partners across 108 cities and towns in 38 states and territories! Over 98 percent of that portfolio is led by women and gender-expansive people of color.

If you'd like to honor and celebrate Gloria Steinem, you can do that by supporting Ms. Foundation for Women. Make a monetary donation, become a monthly giver, or shop their store, with proceeds going toward their grantmaking and advocacy work. You can also amplify their message on social media. Follow the Foundation on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or subscribe to their YouTube channel, and share their fight for equity and justice with your network.

Rest in power, Gloria. ✊ 

Feel Good Friday - Dolly Parton's Imagination Library

As you’ve likely seen by now, Dolly Parton passed away this past Tuesday at age 80, so we’re going to revisit a Feel Good Friday post I wrote in September 2021 about Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.

Founded in 1995 and headquartered in Sevierville, Tennessee,  Dolly Parton's Imagination Library is "a book gifting program that mails free, high-quality books to children from birth to age five, no matter their family's income." 

The idea was deeply personal. Dolly's father never learned to read or write, and she often said she wanted every child to have the chance he didn't. The Imagination Library became the flagship program of the Dollywood Foundation, the nonprofit Dolly started in 1988 to keep kids in her home county in school, and it's since grown from one Tennessee county into a global movement supported by local partners everywhere it operates.

Here's how it works if you haven't come across it before: once a child is registered, they receive one specially selected, age-appropriate book every month, personally addressed to them, all the way until their fifth birthday. The titles are chosen by a Blue Ribbon Selection Committee of early childhood literacy experts, and the whole thing is free to families, funded through Dolly herself and local community partners in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Republic of Ireland.

When I first wrote about this program, it had mailed just over 172 million books. By the end of 2025, that number had grown to more than 304 million books, with over 40 million going out in 2025 alone, a rate of roughly one book mailed every 0.78 seconds. The program is now celebrating 31 years of getting kids excited about reading, one mailbox at a time.

If you'd like to honor Dolly's memory, her family asked that donations be made to the Imagination Library to keep her promise of free books going to children who need them most. You can also check availability in your community to participate in the program. And while tributes are still coming in, take a moment to amplify this work on social media. Follow Imagination Library on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Rest in peace, Dolly.