Brody
On Christmas Day, 2007, my wife and I were blessed with the arrival of our miracle baby, Brody. We’d tried for five long years with no success, and just when we agreed that being childless was okay, too, of course—we got pregnant. We figured his deciding to enter the world on Christmas sealed the “miracle” deal.
Brody was perfect. Beautiful, ruddy, healthy—he ate well, put on weight according to the charts, wowed the docs at all his appointments. On February 21st, 2008, at just shy of two months old, Brody died of SIDS. We lost our miracle boy, and it came out of NOWHERE.
A nonprofit organization in Colorado helped us through the first few weeks, and the difficult decisions that we had to make. On the other side of our crushing grief, we started to get involved in nonprofits—our intent, to do good things in the memory of our lost son.
Recently a friend’s son, Ben, who has Down Syndrome and autism, completed his first year at a wonderful institution here in Denver called The Joshua School. The public school system was not taking care of Ben’s needs; at The Joshua School, Ben began to thrive!
Ben
Our friends now have an annual fundraiser for Ben’s tuition costs, which are relatively high. I started thinking about an idea: Read a Book, Make a Difference. Why not donate half of my net writing proceeds to Ben, his tuition, and ultimately, to The Joshua School general operating fund (assuming sales ever got to the point of covering Ben’s tuition)?
People are going to buy a book—why not give them the opportunity to do some good at the same time?
I intend to do this with all my publications. I encourage any authors reading this to consider a similar situation with a nonprofit that means something to them!
What started as a concept has now blossomed into a website! Other writers are now joining the Read a Book, Make a Difference (RABMAD) campaign—choosing their own causes or simply continuing to support the cause(s) they always have.
Please visit us here to peruse the compassionate RABMAD authors, their causes, and their work!
If you are a writer, please think about joining us. If you are a reader, please check out our books and causes!
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The blank page is dead…long live the blank page.
