Gratitude is more than words...

I had the most wonderful weekend for 32 orphaned girls in Mtwapa, Kenya.

My birthday party for charity on Saturday evening at my friend Alex's house was a fantastic success.  It was a fun, happy and inspirational event attended by a diverse crowd of people who all care about things bigger than themselves.  They now, too, care about what is happening in Kenya.

I was delighted with the turnout, the money raised, and the awareness generated for my favorite charity, One Home Many Hopes, but these are just words and they cannot begin to express how I feel about what was and always will be a lovely moment in time.

Photo courtesy of Graham Marley, www.grahamwinslowphoto.com

My heart has expanded.

My hope has been affirmed.

My dreams have taken root.

My belief in humanity has strengthened.

And I've seen once again that something bigger than us 

brings us together in love.

As Thomas Keown, OHMH's founder, said to me as we slowly made our way to the door at the end of the evening, "the money raised is only a part of what is to come from this evening."  The seeds planted and the energy put into motion will surely bring us so much more - an immeasurable amount more.  This is the kind of hope that has led so many people to build OHMH into what it is today.  It is also exactly what I know and believe to be true and magical about the human spirit.  We dropped a pebble in the pond on Saturday night.  Now it's time to watch the fantastic journey of the ripples created by that pebble.

Just as there are not tools to measure the impact of my birthday fundraiser, there are not words for me to express my gratitude to all who were involved, all who gave, and all who will continue to give.

So for making my wish come true, I'll simply say

Thank you.

Girl Power, Women's Empowerment and the end of "the lesser sex"...

International Women's Day is 100 years old today...  How are we doing, humanity?  And what are YOU doing to change things?

Are we where we should be?  No.  We should be much further along on this journey.  I don't see one reason why not, either.  We've fought a long, hard battle.  Sure, my grandmother gained the right to vote (in the United States) in her lifetime and yes, it's illegal for someone to hire or fire on the basis of gender (in the United States) but tonight, in most of the world, such things are only dreams for women who can only focus survival and feeding their starving children.


Are more women empowered today than we were 100 years ago?  Some (in the United States and other developed countries) are, yes.  For for most women around the world, their great, great grandmothers' lives looked awfully similar to their own.  


Are women stronger and more powerful than they once were?  I don't know.  I believe that women contain an infinite source of strength and courage - and always have.  I also believe that 100 years has brought some of us closer to the freedom to USE that infinite source of strength and courage for more than just survival, therefore allowing us to tap into that source of power in new and more far-reaching ways.  But more powerful?  I don't think that's the right question to ask.  Perhaps the right question is, then, are we getting closer to the freedom to use our power?  Yes, I believe we are.  


The facts are terribly painful but I know that pain can be turned to passion to change the world.  From the horrific realities of the lives of young girls who suffer rape, torture and genital mutilation in third world countries to the sexism, oppression and gender bias that exists right here in the Land of the Free, women - and our collective feminine experience - contain enough suffering to motivate every single one of us to the kind of passion needed to change the world.  I believe that the call to action surrounding the rights of women is as great as the Earth itself - and the potential within womankind is the greatest untapped source of energy that this planet has ever had or will ever contain.


My life and my work is about doing what I can, as one woman, to empower and engage as many women and girls in the shift that I believe is happening on this planet.  From my work with One Home Many Hopes where we house, feed, love, and educate a group of orphaned and abandoned girls in Kenya, to my work as an urban teacher of business, creative expression and entrepreneurship, I do all that I can for every single girl who has entered my life.  The greatest thing I can do, in my opinion, is to remind each girl I know that she has a voice - a voice that must be used because only SHE can do what God sent her to this world to do.  Each girl, each woman, each human is here containing a gift of strength and a passion greater than she can imagine.  Once each girl, each woman and each human begins to realize this, and to see her own unique potential to do Good in the world, we will all be living in a world where the term "lesser sex" would never be used to describe a group of human beings who have suffered and survived atrocities such as these... (Source: dosomething.org)

1. Women perform 66% of the world’s work, but receive only 11% of the world’s income, and own only 1% of the world’s land.
2. Women make up 66% of the world’s illiterate adults.
3. Women head 83% of single-parent families. The number of families nurtured by women alone doubled from 1970 to 1995 (from 5.6 million to 12.2 million).
4. Women account for 55% of all college students, but even when women have equal years of education it does not translate into economic opportunities or political power.
5. There are six million more women than men in the world.
6. Two-thirds of the world’s children who receive less than four years of education are girls. Girls represent nearly 60% of the children not in school.
7. Parents in countries such as China and India sometimes use sex determination tests to find out if their fetus is a girl. Of 8,000 fetuses aborted at a Bombay clinic, 7,999 were female.
8. Wars today affect civilians most, since they are civil wars, guerrilla actions and ethnic disputes over territory or government. 3 out of 4 fatalities of war are women and children.
9. Rape is consciously used as a tool of genocide and weapon of war. Tens of thousands of women and girls have been subjected to rape and other sexual violence since the crisis erupted in Darfur in 2003. There is no evidence of anyone being convicted in Darfur for these atrocities.
10. About 75% of the refugees and internally displaced in the world are women who have lost their families and their homes.
11. Gender-based violence kills one in three women across the world and is the biggest cause of injury and death to women worldwide, causing more deaths and disability among women aged 15 to 44 than cancer, malaria, traffic accident, and war.

And to end on an optimistic note, consider what investing in a girl's life can create in return:

"Girls may be the answer to some of the world’s most challenging problems. Research shows effectively investing in girls in developing countries creates a virtuous circle that improves health and prosperity for entire communities.  Girls who are better-educated earn more money, get married later, are healthier, and have fewer children than their peers. As earners, they invest more of that money back into their families, which accelerates the benefits of the initial investment, improving the lives of a whole new generation." From an article called "Philanthro-teens" at http://doc.mediaplanet.com/all_projects/6574.pdf

Know a girl?  Love a woman?  Have a mother?  Then you need to ACT.  A lot of words can be written, holidays can be celebrated and blogged about but change only comes from action.  So mentor a girl.  Fund a woman's new business idea.  And help me to banish an oppressive term that should never have been uttered in the first place.

Now, I ask YOU, what are YOU doing to empower women and girls RIGHT NOW?

Loving someone you've never met...

No, I'm not talking about online dating.  I'm talking about a contagious Love that has caught me and so many others completely by surprise.  It is the Love for 32 orphaned girls in Mtwapa, Kenya that exists within a community of volunteers for an organization called One Home Many Hopes.  This is a community to which I happily belong.

I've worked with underprivileged children for as long as I can remember.  In many ways, I was one myself, receiving the support of kindhearted church-goers who funded summer camp for me and my sister, and the like. I have been working with, loving, and going out of my way to take care of children who need me since I became an adult and I don't see an end to that but I've found myself in a state of awe for the Love that exists in the One Home Many Hopes (OHMH) community.

When I attended an event in May of 2010 at the request of my friend and OHMH volunteer, Tracy, I was surprised to find well over 200 other people in attendance.  I wondered to myself if I had somehow missed the boat.  How had I not heard about an organization with this kind of following in my own town?  I brought my mom to the event which was a great experience because she was able to witness what turned out to be my Love at First Sight moment with the organization.  We sat in the front row, directly in front of the projection screen where I first saw the faces and voices of a group of girls I will now do anything I can to help.

By the time the time Anthony Mulongo (the Kenyan who rescued and housed each of these girls) was finished speaking, I was in tears and I had been changed for life.  I had fallen in Love.  I hugged the man I'd never before met and promised to do anything I could.  And I am.

I brought home magnets with the girls faces that night and put them on my refrigerator.  I now look at those beautiful girls each time I open the door.  I smile at them, talk to them and tell them I Love them.

To those who know me, this isn't much of a surprise - or very far out of the ordinary for me.  I care.  A LOT.  But there has been something special about the way I feel connected to OHMH and these girls that I can't quite explain.  And then, today happened.

Today I asked another volunteer, Cristina, to tell me her story about what drew her to OHMH.  Cristina sent me the link to her story on the organization's website, and I was amazed to learn that volunteering for OHMH is the reason she decided NOT to move out of the country.  I mean, people move for all sorts of reasons and they are typically not come upon lightly.  Some of us have even left behind relationships, families and best friends for the promise of something greater.  But to STAY for a nonprofit that can't pay you for your dedication?  That's unheard of!  I had a wonderful chat with Cristina who is equally in Love with the 32 girls who live in an orphanage in Kenya that she, too, has not met.  I thought this was a pretty incredible moment in my day.  After all, I'm giving my birthday this year to the girls, Cristina gave up an international relocation...  Really! What is in the OHMH water?

But Cristina's story was not the end of my amazement today.  My sister, Suzie, fell in Love with OHMH today, too.  Now, you should know that my sister is as about as opposite from me as she could be.  I'm a woman of words and emotion, she is a woman of images and thought.  I'm a teacher, a writer, and a motivator to causes.  My sister is a photographer with a dry wit who rarely shows the kind of gushy, mushiness that has long been part of my trademark.  Case in point:  She finally posted a response to her only sister's blog yesterday for the first time.  The entry she commented on was the deeply personal essay I wrote about Setting Boundaries.  What did she write, you might ask?  And I'm quoting her here:  "hey. that stop sign is in my neck of the woods."  Yup, she commented on the photograph I used to illustrate my deeply poignant message about boundaries. Oy.

Suzie and I have come to appreciate our differences and I love that my sister shows the world through her lens what is in her heart - and she's damn good at it!  She photographs the unique love of families, pregnant women in their most joyful moments, and babies who don't give a damn about the camera - and somehow each image manages to capture a moment in time that I'm pretty sure her subjects weren't even aware of.  You would understand, then, that I would never expected to get an email from my sister today with a two-page heart-felt letter written to every single one of her friends explaining her Love for the girls of Mudzini Kwetu. 

My sister told me that her letter, and her Love for OHMH, came to her this morning while she was at church.  The message of that sermon was simply that "faith always has a plan."  I wish I had heard the rest of that sermon but I'm pretty sure her minister was talking about the kind of plan that built OHMH and has brought so many of us to have the kind of faith that allows us to Fall in Love with the girls, the cause and the community it has created.  I'm pretty sure that faith's plan is to show us all this kind of Love - the kind of Love that allows you to devote yourself to someone you've never met - and the kind of Love is changing the world.  


Have a OHMH Love Story of your own to share?  Send it to OHMHLoveStories (at) g m a i l (dot) c o m!

Give Your Birthday for Your Birthday

I'm sure there's a movement or a website for this kind of thinking because I love it so much.  If not, then I hereby declare this the beginning of the Give Your Birthday for Your Birthday Movement.

It started as an off-handed idea.  I have a friend who said she was planning to do a service project for her birthday and it got me thinking about throwing a bash for my birthday that raised money for my favorite cause, One Home Many Hopes.  I put the idea out to the universe on the universe's favorite communication tool, Facebook, and everything fell into place.

Some of the girls laughing and playing at their new home in Kenya.

I'll be throwing a fabulous party with the help of some very generous friends and I ask only that folks come to learn about the organization's mission and what is happening half a world away in Kenya.  Oh yeah, and that they make a donation. One Home Many Hopes (OHMH) is an organization founded by two amazing human beings, Anthony Mulongo (a Kenyan) and Thomas Keown (an Irishman) who work tirelessly to house, love and educate abandoned, abused and orphaned girls in Mtwapa, Kenya.  It's a small movement with immeasurable impact on the lives of girls who are just like you and me:  full of hopes, dreams, talents and important contributions to give this world.  Girls who WILL change the world.

I've found that my birthday party fundraiser has attracted more people than I expected and it's brought people together in a way I hadn't imagined.  OHMH is run by volunteers and this has brought several new friends into my life which is a gift in and of itself, but the richness of this entire experience is even deeper because it has opened a part of my soul that I hadn't yet tapped into.  I HOPE you take a moment to learn about OHMH as well.  Watch this two minute video and you will see first hand that the girls HOPE you do, too.

I dare you to Give Your Birthday for Your Birthday and see just how giving this special day away to those in need can bring you far more in return than what you would otherwise bring to yourself.  It's all about giving, loving and opening your hearts, people.  This is a perfect way to begin giving and commit to giving for a lifetime.  After all, you're going to have a birthday each year, every year.

Need more reasons to do this?  I'm great with lists, so here you go.

1. There are countless children on our great Earth who do not know their birth dates, let alone celebrate them.
2. The money spent on celebrating YOU can feed, house or educate SOMEONE ELSE for far longer than you think else where in the world.
3. We are here on Earth to love, to give to and take care of one another.  There are nearly 7 billion of us - that's far more people than you know and who can come celebrate with you.  
4. There are countless children in the world living without parents, without shelter, without food and without anyone to love them tonight.
5. You'll never forget your birthday so you'll never forget to give.
6. You're living in a part of the world that allows you to read what I'm writing right now and while you are doing so, someone is providing light, electricity, and internet connection - and probably even a little heat or air conditioning to make this a comfortable experience for you.  Do you know how many people CANNOT do what you're doing right now and never will?
7. You could have just as easily been born somewhere in the world where you would never celebrate your birthday because survival would be the only priority you'd ever have.
8. There are so many organizations doing wonderful things to help the people I've made you think about here and they COUNT ON donations from people like me and YOU.
9. Your friends will inspired by you to give back as well.  They will love you a little more and will probably make your birthday an even more rewarding experience for you.
10. To give is to receive.  Love is all there is and I promise you that the more you give, the more you get in return.

Want to give to OHMH for my birthday?  I HOPE you will.  Click here.  And I thank you very, very much.