1. Room to Read – Because Female Literacy is NOT an Option. Give the priceless gift of education in the honor of your Valentine this February. Should you wish to send a card along with your donation, following your transaction you will be able to see options for sending a card via email or you can choose to print a PDF card yourself which you can personalize.
2. Support the United Nations World Food Programme to help a mother feed her child. Create an interactive card for your loved one on the U.N. World Food Programme’s Wall Against Hunger. When you click on the link, you will find a flash Wall of photos uploaded by supporters of the World Food Programme’s mission: delivering the world from hunger. Feed a child in honour of someone you love. Put their photo on the Wall – then send them an original email greeting. Get started here.
3. Sponsor a Women for Women International female survivors of war. Your Valentine will receive a a handmade card made by a woman in their program in Rwanda.
4. Don’t forget our planet, the mother of everything, by donating to Sierra Club to support wilderness areas like the Giant Sequoia National Monument, Grand Canyon National Park, Everglades National Park and the Arctic National Refuge.
5. Buy a real gift on behalf of your Valentine for women and children in need through Oxfam America Unwrapped and fund virtual gifts like a pair of school uniforms for $20, or planting 50 trees for $30.
6. Give to GlobalGiving’s “Mom Knows Best” projects like Education for 900 Rural Girls in Burkina Faso or Fast Tracking Education for Women and Older Girls in Afghanistan in the honor of your Valentine.
7. Purchase a Kiva.org gift certificate so your Valentine can choose a woman entrepreneur to whom she would like to give a loan.

Still looking for ideas? Habitat for Humanity in Charlotte, North Carolina, is offering to send your sweetheart a beautiful card with a donation given in his or her name. You can still order them here! Can you believe that you both can get fresh roses just for donating blood? American Red Cross is holding a promotion to trade clean blood for red roses – your blood can save the lives of women and children… find out more here. If all else fails, and you don’t think your Valentine will dig the above charities, you can buy a Good Card here, and your sweetheart will be able to donate to the charity of his or her choice.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day!

Hundreds of artists were interested in supporting PledgeForMoms.org, but I think the main road-block was trying to figure out how exactly I wanted to leverage a network of over 200 artists into a positive and relevant force to help make a difference for women. Pledge for Moms is not driven by donations, or even by actual pledges of service to the site or to anyone. No! The site was never a supposed to be a preachy blog based on widely-known, ambiguous statistics… but it is a call for compassion. No matter who you are, you came from a mother. Each of us had very distinct experiences with our mothers (some not at all), but if you cannot bring yourself to feel compassion for women in need, then pledge to make a difference just because you love the woman who gave you life (even if you never met her). Ultimately, we are all children of women, and we are all connected through this most basic association. With this in mind, I decided to allow Artists for Moms to become an open source project: open to any individual wishing to participate, and open to interpretation and discussion. I have made various galleries to accommodate different issues and views suggested by the members of the project; I have also been approached about doing auctions to benefit charities for cancer research, reducing maternal mortality, and other worthy causes.

The motivation behind the site was to raise awareness, and I achieved this to a certain extent by syndicating this blog on Yahoo and making it widely available via RSS and email subscriptions (in addition to starting Twitter and Facebook accounts, which have had some success as well). However, Artists for Moms has helped me gain a clear perspective and vision for the site – let’s come together to support and celebrate women, mothers, femininity, innocence, and wisdom.

I am proud to feature some of our new artists for January in this post!

Glazzdoll, Canada

Mshindo I. Kuumba, United States

Gonzalo Martínez, Spain

Anastasia Saidova, Malaysia

Hans Martin, Spain

Sumi, Italy

Tiffany Mills, United States

madmoiselleclau, Mexico

Abhimanyu Vyas, India

Kinsey Past, United States

Vassantha, France

titouri, Andorra

shera-li, Germany

Amy McDonald, United States