Every day, over 160 women die in India from pregnancy and complications of child birth – the country’s maternal mortality rate makes up over 20% of total global maternal and child deaths. Despite successful efforts to decrease this number, many rural areas continue to experience over 500 deaths for every 100,000 live births. Save a Mother is a project dedicated to working directly with local communities and districts in Uttar Pradesh, one of the most effected areas in India, to help decrease infant and maternal mortality rates. Any preventable death is one too many.

This Saturday, May 20th, we had a really great turn-out at the Habitat for Humanity Charlotte Young Professionals build event, allowing us to finish the dry-walling most of the house by 12PM – sincerest thanks to all who came (especially the RedBull marketing team for providing the drinks and support), and I hope to see you all at the next event! Home ownership is one of the most essential aspects of a successful and enduring community and volunteers just like you help make working families realize this dream – great job!

For nailing up sheets of drywall, a drywall hammer is a must. It has a convex head that creates a little dimple around the nail head without breaking the paper on the surface of the drywall. This will allow you to cover the nail head with drywall mud and get a perfectly smooth surface. Using drywall screws can go a lot faster, if you have the right tool. You want to use a special electric drywall screw gun that lets you adjust it to sink the screws a little below the surface, again, so you don’t break the paper. With a regular screw gun you don’t have this control.

Sexism stems from centuries upon centuries of tradition, entrenched in religion, education, and of course, basic physiology. Technically, the women’s rights and suffrage movement is a really new concept considering how long women occupied their inferior role throughout history. No wonder it has been met with resistance from both men and women since inception; we’re still in the very early stage of making gender equality a reality. Before we can really start making strides, I think we should all take a look at what’s out there and have a good laugh, think, and take action.

Bring your friends and join us for this month’s HYPC build day in Charlotte, NC! Habitat Young Professionals will be doing sheathing and 15-20 volunteer are needed. All photos will be posted on PledgeForMoms.org on Sunday evening after the event. Please check back or subscribe to the RSS feed for fast notification and cool site updates. Habitat for Humanity of Charlotte transforms lives by partnering with families and local communities to create and preserve affordable home ownership solutions. All help is welcome!

I am pleased to announce that the site has been updated with some great new features to help you keep up with news and artwork from PledgeForMoms.org. Check out the RSS button to subscrie via your favorite feed compiler, the RSS button to subscribe via email, and the the eMail link for any questions or comments. The tutorial on setting up these buttons on your own site will be coming up in May, 2009 – Stay Tuned! As a little bonus, I will also include info on how to add the glow :onhover effect ;)

This month’s Artists for Moms tags are dedicated to Sexual Assault Awareness (green/blue ribbon – President Obama Declares April to be Sexual Assault Awareness Month on April 8, 2009! See the official Presidential Proclamation here), Maternal Mortality awareness (white ribbon) , and the support of our troops (yellow ribbon). Do you have a tag request or need help with your own awareness campaign? Contact me for tips on how to get started with WordPress, Photoshop, Illustrator (and advice on CSS, HTML, MySQL, and Search Engine Optimization)!