We stumbled upon this beautiful story of redemption and growth and had to share it with you! Treasures Ministry is a unique, faith-based outreach and support group for women in the sex industry. As the only organization of its kind based in the greater Los Angeles area, their mission is to encourage women through the discovery of their value and purpose by providing spiritual inspiration, resources and referrals to professional services.

Treasures Ministries received gift cards to body care and makeup stores to help them purchase cosmetics and toiletries for gift bags that they give to the women they are building relationships with.  Such a wonderful message of hope and love.

We are so pleased to have been able to recently partner with Cornerstone Community Ministries (CCM), located in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. CCM aims to provide a safe and fun environment where youth can form trusting relationships while having their spiritual, physical, and emotional needs met in partnership with local churches and the community. Currently CCM operates as a youth center, with after school programs, Friday night events, cooking classes, and a skatepark.

CCM hosted a Card Me event with the proceeds going towards one of their invaluable volunteers who needed a helping hand. We were able to provide grocery and house repair gift cards to assist . Keep up the great work CCM!

Card Me. The Story. from Gift Card Giver on Vimeo.

Think back to the last party that you attended. Hopefully you had great conversations with interesting people, good food, and had a fun time. Now, what could have made that party even more fun? Well, what if that party had all of the above and managed to raise money for a good cause? I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a pretty epic night.

In less than a month, Gift Card Giver will be sending its three interns – Russ, Leslie, and Summer – off on a grand adventure. Gift Card Giver will be driving up the East Coast to New York, then head west through the Great Lakes region, and finally drive back to Atlanta, Georgia, by way of Tennessee. The goal is 30 cities in 30 days, with as many Card Me parties possible along the way. Guests will be carded at the door. Each person will have to give a gift card to enter. We’ll take any gift card you’ve got – yes, even the one that’s been hiding away in your kitchen drawer for six months that only has five cents left on it. The funds raised at each party will benefit different charities chosen by the respective hosts. If you’ve got a gift card for us, we’ve got a night of fun planned for you. You’ll play card games like you’ve never played before, including the much loved and deceptively hard Founders’ Game. You could try and challenge Russ to a dance competition. You may even come away saying you’ve never been to a more fun party in your life.

Of course, if you’d really like to up the ante, you could be one of the party hosts. If you want to earn Gift Card Giver’s never ending appreciation and throw the party that everyone will be talking about for years to come, you should email us as soon as you finish reading this post. As a matter of fact, just go ahead and email right now: summer@plywoodpeople.com. We’re looking for party hosts of all kinds. If you’re interested in hosting and you live along our route, we will try our darndest to get you involved.

Now that you’ve put us on your calendar, start collecting those gift cards and planning your winning card game strategies. I look forward to seeing what you’ve got.

Discover The Journey is a team of journalists and story-tellers who expose injustices facing children in-crisis and advocate for intervention partners until change is realized. DTJ filmmakers, writers, photographers, artists, and designers create and use story, media and art to expose injustices facing children and to use that media to advocate for change. DTJ partners with viable and effective NGOs and organizations found within communities to channel human and financial resources to impact people facing injustice.

Discover The Journey’s media, story and artistic professionals have worked in over 60 nations to bring light and hope to some of the darkest situations and issues children in-crisis encounter and inspire others to take action for the sake of love for these children.

Discover The Journey exists to SPEAK UP for children in-crisis by exposing injustices affecting children around the world through story, media and art, and to ENSURE JUSTICE for children in-crisis by advocating for intervention across cultures in Love.

They had a tour where they shared about who they are and what they’re doing. Gift Card Giver was able to give gift cards to help with tour expenses using gas cards, and restaurant gift cards.

Nuru International equips the poor in remote, rural areas to end extreme poverty in their communities within 5 years.  They study both the social and private sectors to identify the most effective methods of fighting extreme poverty in our five areas of development: Agriculture, Clean Water, Healthcare, Education, and Community Economic Development. They are finding solutions to huge problems affecting the vulnerable around the world.

They have a large group of volunteers that help keep them going.  They host dinner parties, fundraising and grassroots events, they donate media expertise, they do research, and some give goods and resources.  They use all the money they raise to directly help with what they’re doing, so they have had no way to thank the people doing the hard work of answering the questions surrounding poverty.  We were able to give them gift cards that they can use to thank the people who help them.  It is fun for us to be able to indirectly say thank you to people working hard to make our world a better place!

Chad Miller contacted us a couple weeks ago letting us know that he works with homeless in his area of Raleigh North Carolina.  His organization is called Love Wins.  He needed gift cards to purchase shoes, toiletries, medicine and other personal hygiene items.  It just so happened we had a lot of CVS and Payless Shoe Source gift cards.  We were able to ship them off to him to help him in the good work he is doing there in Raleigh.  We hope the gift cards help him continue to meet the needs of his neighbors!

We have been doing a lot of traveling as of late, so we’re getting to know more people and organizations that we can help, and we’re also collected quite a few gift cards as well!  It’s been a really fun start to the year, being able to exceed our goals for giving!  We were able to send some gift cards to Sherry Lowry and Covenant Connection.  They serve the homeless and hungry in Gresham Oregon.  They needed gift cards for department stores so they could buy socks for their friends and neighbors!  It just so happened, that we had gift cards for socks, and we also had some gift cards for McDonalds and Burger King so they could give out gift cards for meals as were needed.

Shamean Trucks emailed us a few weeks ago and let us know that the Community Outreach Center in St. Antioch California works with people in their community who are at-risk, low-income and homeless.  Their youth program has been an unintentional byproduct for many years.  With the building of a dynamic youth staff, and development of an intentional youth program, they have been able to create a youth area with couches, bean bags, bright colors and hope.  They wanted to continue to develop the space to it felt safe for their students to come hang out.  We were able to provide gift cards for them to purchase slip covers for their couches to improve the look and feel of the space!