Launching Tailored for Education

Hello Coffee, Tea and Thee readers!

I am not sure how I can follow up such a fabulous introduction by my amazing Fairy Godmother, but I am extremely honored to share my new venture with you today. Suzanne, my fairy godmother, has been right beside me (physically or virtually) for every important moment of my life (and some not so important fun ones as well) so it is very fitting that I am guest blogging on the same day I launch a project that is very near and dear to my heart, Tailored for Education.

After completing graduate school, lucky to have a job I love in a big city I love even more, I needed to do something to help someone other than myself. While discussing this feeling over dinner, my friend Elaine casually asked if I knew about the minimal cost ($16- $22) needed to provide a child in Tanzania with a school uniform. My mind raced the next day as I researched and learned that in a number of countries around the world children are required to wear a uniform to school and that it is one of the only things their family must pay for. I was shocked to learn such a small thing could keep a child from being able to attend school. I had certainly taken for granted the 12 years I spent putting on my plaid uniform each morning and going to school. After telling Jess, my close friend and colleague, we decided to see what we could do to fix this problem. We were about two weeks into our search for information and schools that might be in need when I read this post this post of Suzanne's. Instantly, I knew we were on the right track.

Now seven months, several IRS forms, hundreds of emails and conference calls later, here we are officially launching Tailored for Education. We are now a 5013c registered charity with a mission to provide children with uniforms in order to increase enrollment rates in schools globally. All of the uniforms we provide are made in the local country in an effort to increase jobs and vocational training. We have learned a lot, first and foremost that there are over 100 million children not enrolled in school worldwide, with a majority of the these children living in war- affected, poor countries. We have also learned that for a minimal cost we can change these statistics. We all know the impact education has had on our lives, but for a child in a poverty stricken area it might be their only hope at breaking the cycle of poverty. Studies have shown that women who receive an education are less likely to become mothers too early and more likely to prevent the transmission of HIV.


As a test run we funded our first school back in August and provided 200 children in La Vallee, Haiti with uniforms for this school year. As you can see in the picture, it was a success. Since then we have developed partnerships all over the world, working with other nonprofits to provide uniforms. At this time we have identified almost 30,000 children between Haiti, Cambodia, Rwanda, El Salvador, Congo, Lesotho and India that could benefit from Tailored for Education. Our goal is to provide at least half of these children with uniforms for the 2012 school year.

I can not tell you how excited I am about this project and the impact I know we can make on the lives of countless children. As you saw by yesterday's post the bond I have with my Fairy Godmother and her daughters is beyond wonderful and today like many other days, I have been carried by their love and support!

If you are still reading, thank you. You are all troopers! Feel free to take a look and see what we are up to. Please like us, follow us, blog about us! Anything to help us spread the word!

Suzanne, thanks for being the author of this fabulous blog which is a calm during many stormy days, thanks for inviting me to guest blog today and tell MY story and most of all thanks for loving me and being the BEST fairy godmother!

xo, Megan

Meet Megan Kelly

If you know me, you have heard about my precious God-daughter, Megan! And I do mean a gift from God! It all started fourscore and twenty years ago (just kidding) when my best-college-friend married Ben's best-college-friend. During our college freshman years, what we thought were crazy college days actually were the beginning of an incredible lifelong friendship. I hardly know where I leave off and the four of us begin.

We dreamt of alot, but never did we dream our girls would grow up to be such good friends, and our college-day foursome would turn into a now-day fivesome.

Molly, Megan & Sarah at Echo Lake, about 4 years old

Molly, Sarah, Anna & Megan in Oxford a year or so ago

the five of us in July at Sarah's wedding

now this is a good friend... Mike fixing Ben's tie before he walked Sarah down the aisle...
Just when I am sure we could not possibly grow any closer, Megan tells me of her new venture that connects so closely to my heart it can only be God's work. All this to say she will be my guest blogger in the next few days telling you her story.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. Ephesians 3: 20-21


the entire Kelly family at Thanksgiving still cheering us on!

Coffee Tea and Thee Studio

Am I living in a dream? Today I moved into my studio! A gorgeous day, shirt sleeves in December, Ben's truck loaded, my car full, a rickety freight elevator, new digs! We unloaded art supplies, books, easels, my mother's old couch, chair, and shelves to my new home away from home! Just a block or so from downtown, I now have a place to paint, write, and light.

The first thing I planned to do there was pray, but I kept getting interrupted by the man putting on a new lock and doorknob. So I cleaned and polished and febreezed. Plenty of time for prayer there.


108 Woodson, 2nd floor, in a room off the back hall in the architect offices of Matheny Goldmon...

Don't you love the awesome windows... and how my easel forms a cross...

Mom's old furniture never looked so inviting and certainly never smelled so good - orange oil!

The very first thing to grace the walls - not a painting of mine, but words from Joshua.

I'm so excited! After the first of the year I will establish office hours and I promise to invite you in for a visit!

River of Life

A friend of mine writes a blog titled River of Life. Her post yesterday made me want to say, Yes, sister! Finally somebody understands how I feel! And we are not supposed to feel this way at Christmastime. I hate feeling how we are 'supposed' to feel!

I have her permission to post it here, but check out her blog from time to time. She is real. And she has a way of mixing real life with a heart of praise to our God.

Wednesday, 7 December 2011
A saga followed by a litany of praise....

Last night the Christmas tree fell. I was in one of those deep sleep times that come only rarely. My heavy heart welcomed the rest. So, when I am awakened by a combination of water pouring all over the living room floor and the crash of the tree, my heart picks right back up on the sadness and feelings of despair.

I am only worried about the fragile hand painted egg ornament given to me by my bible study leader eleven years ago when Hannah was born as a baby gift. In the most delicate artistry, painted is a baby in a cradle with a beautiful array of color and the scripting from Matthew...let the little children come to me...Hannah's First Christmas 2000. It is the only ornament every year that gets its own special box and tissue paper. My prayer is that Hannah can always have her egg as a keepsake. Lawren, my 19 yr old, who has been awakened as well, finds the egg resting sweetly in a chair atop of a pile of unfolded laundry.

We have mice....and not Christmas mice...at least two of them...one that hangs out in the kitchen area and another that stays in the back of the house. It is so bad that the bedroom mouse made a nest in my son's dresser drawer and ate a hole in his Ocean City, Maryland lifeguard shirt. The critter had to pick a fave shirt:(

I pay Cooks $31 a month for pest control. That's $372 a year on a single mom's budget. I don't feel as though this fee should require I scout out mice poison from Wal-Mart and I do not care for cats. So today I will call Cooks AGAIN but I will most likely stop for pellets because I am feeling so desperate in general and need to be rid of the mice. The story about them being friends with Hannah's hamster Squirt just isn't washing anymore.

I had to work a twelve hour day yesterday after a ten hour day on Monday. I am tired.

Forgot to mention the dishwasher leaks...in a family of six that is crisis overload. We eat a lot and often. The struggle to be green sets in and I refuse to purchase paper plates but the kids are not stepping up to help wash dishes, saying, "that's not my chore". I try to talk to them about honor and consideration and they look at me like I am an alien. TODAY I FEEL LIKE AN ALIEN...A NON VISIBLE WOMAN who feels completely alone.

Oh yeah, and one of my closest friends has recently moved to Arizona...ARIZONA for goodness sake...across the country. She is the one whose shoulder I cry on over coffee, the one just one step ahead of me in parenting and grace who listens, cries too, and encourages me. AND NOW SHE IS NOT HERE.

I am sure these are issues that shepherd boy/King/man after God's own heart David never dealt with. He was too busy running from enemies, sleeping in fields, fighting his battles and leading his men.

Yet, the emotional gamut that runs through our souls as we walk through life parallel each other.

May I, like David, finish the day in praise:

Litany of Praise (based on David's Psalm 105)

How great is my God, and how I love to sing His praises.
Whereas I am often frightened when I think about my future, and confused and disturbed by the rapidly changing events about me,
My heart is secured and made glad when I remember how He has cared for me throughout the past.

When I was brought forth from my mother's womb,
God's hand was upon me.

Through parents and people who cared,
He loved me and sheltered me and set me upon His course for my life.

Through illness and accident
My God has sustained me.

Around pitfalls and precipices
He has safely led me.

When I became rebellious an struck out on my own,
He waited patiently for me to return.

When I fell on my face in weakness and failure,
He gently set me upon my feet again.

He did not always prevent me from hurting myself,
but He took me back to heal my wounds.

Even out of the broken pieces of my defeats,
He created a vessel of beauty and usefulness.

Through trials and errors, failures and successes, my God has cared for me.
From infancy to adulthood He has never let me go.

His love has led me, or followed me, through the valleys or sorrow and the highlands of joy,
Through times of want and years of abundance.

He has bridged impassable rivers and moved impossible mountains. Sometimes through me, sometimes in spite of me.
He seeks to accomplish His purpose in my life.

He has kept me through the stormy past.
He will secure and guide me through the perilous future.

I need never be afraid.
No matter how uncertain the months or years ahead of me.

How great is My God, and how I love to sing His praises!

The House that Built Me

For any of you who get nostalgic at Christmas... count me in. I miss everything. I have a crazy desire to go to Nashville and just drive around. I miss Mom, Dad, aunts, uncles and cousins, jam cake with caramel icing, going caroling on Christmas Eve, and my house. My cousin was recently sharing with me her same feelings and she told me about this song. Although I've yet to listen to it without crying, it makes me feel closer to home and very grateful for the home I had.
Lord, through all the generations you have been our home!
Psalm 90: 1

One Reason for This Season

I am usually so behind that I never make it to send Christmas cards, but this photo at Thanksgiving certainly prompted me to send them this year! Ben and me with our precious Anna and Caroline Turner (3 and 1), and Baby Benjamin Matthews (2 months).