✨ A round-up of highlights from 2023 ✨

2023 was a year of events for The Life You Can Save in Australia!

As 2023 comes to a close, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you, our supporters, and highlight some of the exciting events and initiatives that brought our community of supporters in Australia and beyond together this year.

HELP WOMEN AND GIRLS: In honour of International Women’s Day on 1 March, we hosted an online briefing to highlight our Help Women & Girls Fund, featuring our Research Director Katie Stanford, along with Winnie Auma, Program Director from Village Enterprise. I’m especially excited for the focus on this cause area given how women and girls are disproportionately impacted by poverty. Plus, towards the end of the year, The Life You Can Save added new recommended nonprofits with a focus on preventing gender-based violence, reinforcing our commitment to addressing poverty in all its forms.

PRACTICAL ETHICS AND GLOBAL POVERTY: March was busy indeed! Peter Singer visited my home-town of Adelaide, ostensibly for the Adelaide Writers’ Festival. But he couldn’t pass up an opportunity to connect with a small group of supporters at our event, “Practical Ethics and Global Poverty - An evening with Peter Singer.” Watch the highlights, or imagine you too were there and watch the entire conversation unfold here.

INNOVATION, IMAGINATION AND IMPACT: Later in March, Peter presented at Southstart — an annual festival of innovation, imagination and impact — where he joined a panel focused on philanthropy and how founders, employers, and decision-makers can give back to social causes in a number of ways including employee giving programs, volunteering, and pledging. The tech-focused, entrepreneurial guests are a good fit to spread the message about The Life You Can Save, given our accessible approach to how people can think about and then give to help others. The event was held out at Langhorne Creek, on the beautiful Fleurieu Peninsula, and the photo booth Peter and I jumped into was something else - check out the lighthearted moment.

In mid-June, The Life You Can Save hosted an online fundraising event, (that included an in-person watch party in Melbourne) to raise funds for three of our recommended nonprofits: Educate Girls, Fistula Foundation and Living Goods. Here’s a short teaser, or relive the entire night, where we raised a total of A$219,110 — exceeding our target of A$100,000. The feedback from our supporters on this style of crowd-funding has been overwhelmingly positive, but we would love to know your thoughts so drop us a line!

HIDDEN HUNGER: On November 2nd, The Life You Can Save hosted its first in-person event in Sydney to premiere the short documentary "Hidden Hunger” directed by Orit Novak. Novak’s powerful documentary exposes the silent crisis of malnutrition in East African communities and highlights the work that our recommended non-profit Sanku: Project Healthy Children has done to address this crisis and empower Tanzanian and Kenyan locals to combat diseases and improve their lives.

The event raised a total of $57,777 in support, well exceeding our $50,000 goal, and featured a stimulating Q&A session that fostered new connections among social justice advocates. With matched funds granted by a generous Australian supporter, the event generated a total of $107,777 in support for Sanku that will achieve the following:

Nutritious flour for 24,788 families for a year,

35 dosifiers, sustaining 5000 people daily for 7 years each, and

10.7 metric tons of nutrient premix, providing 134 million nutritious meals.

Read more about the event on my LinkedIn post here.

As we bid farewell to an incredible year, we're grateful for the shared moments of inspiration, generosity, and commitment to making a positive impact. Your support has fueled our mission, and we're eager to continue this journey with you into 2024. Together, let's amplify our efforts and create even more meaningful change.

Thank you for being a crucial part of The Life You Can Save community. Wishing you a joyful holiday season and a new year filled with compassion and purpose.