Magazines are a one time read. It’s not like your favorite book where you can read it again when you’re in the mood. So what do you do with them? Do you toss them in the recycling bin? Pass them off to a friend? Build the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the bathroom?
I’ve recently been receiving my subscriptions to National Geographic and National Geographic Traveler. I read them once and that’s it. I toss them aside and they just wait to be recycled. What a waste, right? All those beautiful pictures and fantastic travel articles. Gone. So I thought, what if I shared them you?
The idea sounds good in my head but let me write it all out because not everything that sound good in my head actually goes according to plan. At the end of each week, I will pick one person who has left a comment on my blog for every magazine I have available. That’s it! Well, that was easy. Oh, and the person who receives the magazine will have to be located in the US. Sorry guys, I only have so much money.
Please let me know what you guys think. You can vote on the poll below or RT this blog post and I’ll take that as a yes.
Great books are books that take me out of my element. Books that make me miss my stop. Books that make me wish my 1+ hour commute was just a little bit longer. Books like John Wood’s “Leaving Microsoft To Change The World.” I’ve been reading it every morning for the past 2 weeks and I wait a dreadfully long 10 hours before I can immerse myself in it again.
John writes about his transition from a six-figure Microsoft exec to an unpaid non-profit entrepreneur. Well…it was more of a dive than a transition and all he needed to take that dive was a little dose of reality – in Nepal. But that’s the beauty of traveling and it’s what traveling is. It’s reality. His book is not so much about his travels around the world but about his travels through life.
Here’s the synopsis:
In 1998, John Wood was a rising executive at Microsoft when he took a vacation that changed his life. What started as a trekking holiday in Nepal became a spiritual journey and then a mission: to change the world one book and one child at a time by setting up libraries in the developing world. He was soon driven to leave his career with only a loose vision of the change he wanted to bring to the world.
John made the unlikely marriage between Microsoft business practices and the world of non-profits to create Room to Read, an organization that has created a network of over 7,500 libraries and 830 schools throughout rural and poor communities in Asia and Africa.
The organization is now one of the fastest growing, most effective, and award-winning non-profits of the last decade. John has been recognized in the worldwide media as a “21st century Andrew Carnegie,” building a public library infrastructure to help the developing world break the cycle of poverty through the lifelong gift of education.
I use to want the corner office. Now, I want the world. I can only assume John use to want the corner office too. He worked in the corporate world for almost 10 years before pursuing his passion in philanthropy. I just wish I don’t have to wait that long before I pursue mine. Reading his story encouraged me to tough it out.
It’s difficult to have ambitions and not be able to execute them. Most of the time, I have scenarios in my head of what I could be doing instead. Since reading John’s book, I’ve decided that I’m going to raise money to build at least 6 schools in rural China. Each school will be in honor of my grandparents and parents because education has always been so deeply ingrained in my family. My maternal grandparents are retired educators. Unfortunately, Room To Read is currently not operating in China. Hopefully by the time I’ve raised enough funds to start building my first school, Room To Read would have expanded into China.
Have you read anything inspirational lately? Please recommend it. I’m always looking for some mental stimulation.
Chinese New Year is on a different day every year because the holiday is based on the lunar calendar. Learning about my own traditions has always been a hands-on, and sometimes painful, experience. When I was 5, I stuck my chopsticks upright in my bowl of white rice and got whacked. I later learned you only do that when making offerings to the deceased. Oops!
Chinese New Year celebrations began with the legend of a wild beast called Nian. “Nian” in Chinese means year. Nian appeared at the end of every year to cause ruckus in villages and terrorizing villagers. Loud noises and bright lights were used to scare away the wild beast and that’s how Chinese Year celebrations were born. This time of year brings about the strangest superstitions.
On the eve of Chinese New Year, children should sleep after midnight to ensure their parents will live a long life. I’m not sure if the later you sleep, the longer your parents will live. That might be important. I’m usually out by 12:01 AM.
Clean the house spotless before the first day of Chinese New Year. This is a must because…
During Chinese New Year, sweeping and cleaning is a no-no. (I’m all for that.) If you do, you’re sweeping all the good luck out of the door.
Don’t buy books. In Chinese, the word “book” is a homonym for ‘lose.’ You don’t want a sucky year.
Don’t buy shoes. In Chinese, the word “shoes” is a homonym for ‘rough.’ You don’t want a hard year either. Unless, you like to hustle.
Pay off your debts. If you start the new year in the red, you’ll finish the same way. Ahem – Dad (You owe me money.)
No talks of ghost or death. It’s an extremely bad omen. Boogie Monster? Psh…I’ve seen bigger boogers.
Wear red – my favorite color and the ultimate bringer of good luck.
Eat sweets, as in candy, so you’ll have a “sweet” year. Heellllooo, chocolate.
Open your windows and doors to let in good luck. And the Arctic breeze.
Put away scissors and knives. Sharp objects cut away your good luck.
Don’t get a haircut, or you’ll have your good luck chopped off. And trust me, the “barbers” around my way like to chop.
Don’t wash your hair, or you’ll wash away good luck. Good thing Chinese people don’t have nappy hair.
Set off firecrackers to welcome the new year and chase away evil spirits. Or if you just like blowing things up.
Thanks @darrickjlee for contributing. I think I’ve got most of it. Right?
Welcome, all, to my new home! To my current readers, thank you for taking the time to read about my travels and thoughts. To my new readers, hello! Allow me to introduce myself here and let’s get to know each other better.
I’ve been wanting to get my own domain since I first started writing about my travels back in August 2009. This place is going to be a little different. I don’t want this place to be about me. I don’t want it to be about where I go or what I do. It’s not about what I’ve accomplished or what I want. It’s not about how many readers I attract, the amount of comments I receive or even the number of tweets I get.
I want my new home to be more than just about my travels around the world. I also want it to be about my travels through life. I want this place to be my blank slate. A place where I can share my thoughts. A place where my readers can make me think. A place that can challenge me as a writer, inspire me as a traveler and motivate me to become a better person.
That’s why you’ll see two sections on the homepage, each featuring the latest post about my travels around the world and the other about my travels through life. To read more just click on the “Latest Travels” link or the “Latest Posts” link. I know these should be made into buttons. Adam from @travelsofadam has been extremely gracious in offering me his time to help tweak a few things on this site. HTML and CSS is like Arabic to me. I can’t decipher it for the life of me.
There is plenty that is wrong with this site. It’s a work in progress but it’s been almost 6 months since my friend, Curtis at @cdotdawson, started helping me build this place and I just can’t wait any longer. I have so many thoughts I’ve been wanting to share. I know it might be a bad idea to launch this site before it’s complete but rawness is what’s real. And that’s how I intend to keep this site. Raw.
So browse around! Explore! I’m sure you’ll come across bugs but please don’t leave. Let me know so I can fix them. And if you have suggestions on how I can make my new home better place, feel free to offer your suggestions and advice.
Thanks for sticking around!
P.S. Some of my recent blog posts haven’t been moved to this site but I’m working on getting that done. Promise.
The effect of the earthquake in Haiti has rippled through countless countries & ignited a storm of action from aid agencies, relief organizations, charities and everyday people like you and I who are scrambling to deliver much needed resources to the poorest country in the western hemisphere.
Hands For Haiti is not asking for donations. Hands For Haiti is not asking for clothes. Hands For Haiti is asking the world not to forget that Haiti has been for a long time in dire need of our love and attention. This earthquake has brought Haiti to the front pages but every day prior to this earthquake, the people of Haiti suffer with treatable diseases, struggle with poverty and spend their lives fighting to live.
Hands For Haiti is dedicated to bringing you updates about New York City’s on-going events that aid in the rebuilding of Haiti so that we, as New Yorkers, can contribute what we can. Please visit www.handsforhaiti.us for a short, but growing, list of events that are occurring in the New York City area. These events are aimed at raising aid and resources for the people of Haiti.
If you have an event or know of one, please leave the information below and it will be added to the listing.
Looking out the window, I feel like I’m watching the snow fly by like time – fleeting flakes in abundance. Isn’t that how time kind of works? Sometimes it flies by and sometimes it just drags. Inside, work is in slow motion. Outside, the snowflakes pulse from a cascading white canvas to light delicate drifts. The snowflakes are memories of moments. Moments that passed too quickly. Moments I couldn’t catch. Moments I couldn’t get back and moments I wish I indulged in a little more.
Even when I was little, I understood that what is here today might not be here tomorrow. And when it snowed, I was afraid it was going to go away. I use to waddle outside to the backyard my grandparents tended to and I would squat and scoop tiny handfuls of snow into a red bucket. I’d bring it back in the house and shove it in the freezer. I wanted to save it for tomorrow. I wanted to save it for as long as I could. Because I knew the snow outside would melt one day. And just like time, moments will melt into memories.
Her eyes scanned from left to right. She missed me but I certainly didn’t miss her. She sat directly in front of me and she was digging. She was really digging. She was digging like there was gold. I cringed as she pulled out a yellowish-green gunk sitting on the underside of her long, narrow pinky fingernail. She rolled it into a ball and flicked it, shamelessly. Then she snorted.
As I watched, I thought, “Should I tell her politely that it’s not appropriate to be doing that in public? Should I hand her a tissue and maybe she’d get the point? Or should I continue to give this look of disgust for her to see?” In the end, I did nothing. I turned away when she looked at me. I wasn’t sure if she was embarrassed but I was. We both had the same face – yellow skin, almond eyes. This is how stereotypes are born.
But who am I to tell her what and what not to do? It’s an American taboo to pick your nose in public but maybe it’s a norm in China, just like how it’s perfectly normal to hock a loogie in the hutongs of Beijing. Cultural norms in America are no superior to norms in China. However, if I were living in a Muslim country where the cultural norm is for women to dress conservatively, I wouldn’t walk out of the house in a tank top. I understand there’s a difference between religion and hygiene, but if you willingly choose to live in a foreign culture you should at least respect its cultural norms. Right?
Sitting across from me was a Hasidic Jew typing away simultaneously on his two Blackberries, a light skinned lady on the phone with her mom, a Chinese woman with her fifty thousand bags of groceries and a Mexican construction worker in bootleg Timbs, a hoodie and a NY cap covered in white dust.
The light skinned lady questioned her mom, in English, over the phone why she didn’t forward her any messages. Then she switches to Spanish and speaks fluently. Immediately, the drowsy-eyed Mexican construction worker perks up and turns his head towards her, looking over the Chinese woman who was napping, and stares shamelessly.
The light skinned lady switched back to English and said loudly, “Jeffrey is wanted by the FBI for tax evasion?!” The Hasidic Jew juggling his two Blackberries looked up with an,” Oh shit!” expression on his face and leans in to eavesdrop.
The light skinned lady gets off the train. The Hasidic Jew resumes thumbing on his Blackberries. The Chinese woman napping snorts herself awake, grabs her fifty thousand bags of groceries and gets off the next stop along with the Hasidic Jew, leaving the Mexican construction worker with a bench to himself. He and I got off at the last stop and carried on with our lives.
Interview with Kate Harris, Operations Director of One Day’s Wages
“If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.” – Mother Teresa
Nicholas Kristof, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The New York Times, created a documentary about the Congo called “The Reporter.” In it he cited research which reveals that people are more inclined to donate money to a single child than to 20 million people in poverty. Psychology professor Paul Slovic, from the University of Oregon, calls it “psychic numbing” – the tendency to care less about global atrocities when people are bombarded with statistics.
So what does that mean for non-profits? It means that they have to get personal. Donors want visual proof, not just pie charts. Therefore, a growing number of grassroot organizations are utilizing Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and various social media platforms to provide transparency and one-to-one dialog with current and potential donors. Among them is One Day’s Wages, an international grassroot movement dedicated to eliminating extreme global poverty. The idea isn’t too far of a stretched. Jeffrey Sachs, American economist and author of “The End of Poverty,” argues that global povertycan beeliminated by 2025.
The founders of One Day’s Wages, Eugene and Minhee Cho, were inspired after traveling and witnessing first hand the disparity in the world. Their vision for ODW is to inspire others to donate one day of their wages (0.4% of their annual income) to people in need. ODW promotes awareness, invites giving and supports sustainable relief through partnerships; especially with smaller organizations in developing regions. 100% of the donations (minus transactions) go to projects and causes. Donors select the project or organization they want to invest in and ODW will show how these funds are used via reports, photos and videos.
Kate Harris, Operations Director at One Day's Wages
Kate Harris, Operations Director at One Day’s Wages, graciously granted me some of her time for this exclusive interview.
About Kate:
How did your career path lead you to One Day’s Wages?
Prior to coming on staff with ODW, I worked for a Seattle-based non-profit that focuses on sustainable development in Africa and India. There, I trained and managed volunteers who were traveling abroad to work alongside local organizations on a variety of community development projects. For the past few years, I’ve also served as a co-founder and board member for an organization that focuses on community development and education access for children in Southeastern Uganda. Both of these positions, combined with time spent volunteering abroad and studying theory and practice of international development during college rounded out my journey prior to coming on staff here at ODW.
What did you learn about yourself and about the world from your experiences working in East Africa?
The most impactful lesson from my time abroad has been to learn that the West has many lessons to learn from countries that we often see as ‘poor.’ They are incredibly rich in culture, practices of hospitality, joy, faith, and much else. Both developed and developing nations have issues that we need to come together as a global community to address – the most significant, in my opinion, being the overconsumption of many Western countries, and subsequent under-consumption and lack of access to basic resources of developing countries.
There are resources and protections such as clean water, education, healthcare, the right to work in fair conditions, and more – which every citizen of the world deserves, no matter where they happen to be born. As an international community, we agreed that everyone deserved access to those through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights back in 1948. Sadly, we have yet to come close to actually achieving the rights set forth in that declaration.
Can you describe one life changing moment you had while working in third world countries?
I got to know to a beautiful baby boy named Sam during my first trip to Uganda. Sam’s mother had died shortly after his birth from a similar complication – excessive bleeding – that my own mother had when I was born. However, in the U.S., it’s a highly treatable complication, so my mother lived. Sam’s mother didn’t have access to the medical care or medication needed to treat it, and so she died at the age of 18.
Sam was suffering from severe malnutrition when we met, as his extended family didn’t have enough money to buy milk for him. After spending weeks with Sam in the local hospital, some days watching children in his ward being carried to the morgue literally every hour, it finally hit me: that watching children die of diseases such as malnutrition, malaria, HIV/AIDS, and other diseases was a complete normality in this hospital, and for the local community. Sam wasn’t able to recover from the malnutrition, and died at the age of 4 months.
Further than that, if we look at statistics from UNICEF and other aid organizations, we see that Sam’s story is happening all over the world, to somewhere around 25,000 children every day. It’s nothing short of heartbreaking.
About One Day’s Wages:
What distinguishes ODW from other NPOs that raise funds to allocate to various projects?
Amongst a culture that constantly elevates the new and the better, I think one of the most unique things about ODW is that we’re not claiming to be either of those. We’re new as an organization, but there are many other great organizations that have done similar work for decades. We hope to work alongside other NPO’s that are doing great work in the fight against global poverty, learn from them – and hopefully, they from us.
What is the most valuable aspect of the organization?
I think that the most valuable aspect of ODW is the accessibility. It doesn’t matter your income level – everyone can make a significant impact in the fight against global poverty by donating 0.4% of their annual income.
What are some of the obstacles that inhibit fundraising? How has ODW overcome them?
We definitely didn’t originally plan to launch the organization in the midst of a severe economic downturn. I think that has been a huge struggle for all NPO’s right now. An encouragement for me personally is to see the smaller donations – $5, $10, that arrive in our mailbox with notes of well wishes. We hang them up in our office to remind us of the growing community of support that has come in from around the world. We’ll continue to invite folks to join in the fight against poverty in whatever way they’re able.
What are some of the 2010 goals for ODW?
One of our main goals for 2010 is to continue to build our presence as an organization. We’re barely 2 months old, and have been fortunate to receive some great support and media attention thus far. We’re hoping to continue building on that, as well as complete the 3 $25,000 grants that we’re currently raising funds for. We’ll work towards being able to regularly award grants to smaller and lesser-known NGO’s and CBO’s around the world. We’re looking forward to highlighting some great work being done around the world that those in the ODW community may not have heard of before.
About ODW in Social Media:
As more and more NPOs migrant to various social media platforms, how is ODW staying ahead of the curve?
I think it’s important to note that we aren’t looking to compete with anyone. The more NPOs that choose to utilize social media, the better. Increased awareness and support for the important work that non-profits are doing is vital to the entire NPO community. That said, I think ODW is actually relying, in part, on the social media users through the community we’ve already built to help connect us with new and innovative ways to get the word out about how truly simple it can be to get involved in global issues of injustice.
What has ODW implemented on Facebook and Twitter to help raise donations? How successful have they been?
A commonality between FB and Twitter is that we’re utilizing both to share stories. Stories of injustice, stories of hope, stories surrounding issues of extreme global poverty. It’s in sharing those stories through both mediums that donors are able to journey alongside ODW by making a donation, reposting a blog entry, or sharing their own stories of fighting poverty. Success can be difficult to define in the world of social media, but I’d say that we’re seeing increasing website traffic and numbers of donations, which are good indicators that FB and twitter are continuing to grow the community of supporters.
What mistakes and best practices has ODW learned working with social media platforms?
I think a best practice for us has been to simply keep the conversation going. To keep sharing our journey and continually inviting others to join us will be a vital component to the long-term mission of ODW. I think a difficulty in social media usage is that it has a steep learning curve for NPOs who haven’t integrated it into their normal marketing strategies. With that, I think it’s easy to make the mistake of not investing the amount of time and resources into utilizing social media well. We’re still learning.
===
For additional information about One Day’s Wages, check out the following:
Videos: ODW Launch Video can be found on both Vimeo and YouTube
To imbed the video, you can simply go to the respective links above to copy/paste the code. You can also use these formulas to put in the videos on your blog:
I’m not high-maintenance. I have high standards. There’s a difference. They say diamonds are a girl’s best friend. I say diamonds can be anybody’s best friend. It shines. It glistens. It makes you glow. But I don’t want it on my fingers. I don’t want it on my wrists. I don’t want it on my neck and I don’t want them in my ears. I don’t even want them to be dripping all over me. I just want one. And I want it in my man.
We sometimes refer to the people closest to us as our rocks. They are stable, solid and strong. They pick us up when we fall. They support us when we are weak. They anchors us amidst our pains and confusions. But I don’t want anyone to be my rock for rocks eventually erode. I need someone to be the one who makes me shine, the one who makes me glisten and the one who makes me glow. I want someone to be my diamond because like they say, diamonds are forever.
Social media engagement strategist passionate about non-profit & social change. Travel blogger longing for the world. MBA student at Georgetown University MSB.
Magazines are a one time read. It’s not like your favorite book where you can read it again when you’re in the mood. So what do you do with them? Do you toss them in the recycling bin? Pass them off to a friend? Build the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the bathroom?
Loading ...![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=ea578452-0a04-4725-84a3-0ce732af023f)
Here’s the synopsis:![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=0725bf5d-9426-44a7-9ab9-4ce0b126ab7d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=8e4a62d8-e250-431d-916a-02eb0f7d5a42)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=a0cba0b9-8b7e-462e-acdb-d6540d985d4c)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=29e0851a-b15d-455e-bdaf-b2fd7a51dadd)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3129c6f7-1fc8-4e55-85bc-29b3236688a0)
