Drishtikone
An intriguing story of a mother sending off her extra .. breast milk (a common occurring with many mothers) to the hungry kids in Africa!
My friend Jill Youse puts a modern spin on the question of what to do with leftovers. Jill’s problem isn’t food, it is breast milk. After her baby Stella was born, she produced huge amounts of breast milk – far more than baby Stella wanted. She thought about throwing it out, but then she thought about those babies in Africa. She took the step my mother never would: she actually began shipping the milk to Africa. You can read all about her efforts on the International Breast Milk Project in a Time magazine article.
Looking for ways to fund her charity, Jill’s latest idea is to write a fun, smart book on baby names. Towards that end, she has posted a short baby names survey that she is hoping people will fill out. If you are interested, please take the survey and also spread the word.
This seems to be a good idea for donation – specifically for premature babies or those who cannot be fed by their mothers.. the only catch your donation to a Non-profit “Milk Bank” that routes the milk to the needy babies …. is not tax deductible!! That’s kind of crazy because if you donated your car for the hospital that would be tax deductible.. but not milk!?
My wife recently donated over 200 oz. of breastmilk to a milk bank here in California. The milk bank, a Section 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, sells the milk to hospitals, which then fortify the milk and administer it to at-risk very premature infants.
My wife feels good about her donation, but the situation lead me to wonder: is it good policy for the government to not allow us a deduction against our income taxes for the value of the milk we donated?
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