I got an email from Renee Ross in July, letting me know that she had set a goal to run a half marathon in an effort to help her friend’s daughter who was suffering from Leukemia. As part of the Mom It Forward mission, I am committed to helping change the world one mom at a time and when I heard about Renee’s initiative, I knew a #gno Twitter party was just the thing to get the word out.

Renee lined up many panelists, including members of the American Cancer Society (ACS). As word spread, cancer nurses and those struggling from cancer caught wind of the event and RSVPed.

The Twitter party generated nearly 8 million impressions from 235 participants. The information shared was amazing. I learned so much and at times, just sat back and took it all in, remembering my mom’s best friend who had died of Leukemia when I was 15. I wondered what tapping into such a community would have been like for my mom and for her friend Diane. To feel the strength  of a group of women sharing with and caring for each other was powerful.

Today, I received an email from Renee. She stated:

I think it is so important to use influence for good. Thank you so much for offering to host this special GNO. BTW, I ran 10 miles today before church. I am just so excited that I completed what I thought was an impossible task just a year ago!

Not only is Renee making a difference in others’ lives, but she is also momming it forward to herself. Way to go, Renee!

If you know of someone who is a Mom It Forward mom, please submit their story to momitforward [AT] gmail [dot] com.

The Rwandan genocide broke my heart. And it opened my eyes to the world outside my little town. I cried and sobbed and beat my pillow for hours that night. My little 13-year-old heart could not understand how people could commit such inhuman atrocities, and how other people could just stand by and watch it happen. It’s the first time I remember being angry, ashamed at my country, my lifestyle, even God.

I struggled through that summer, feeling isolated, alienated, confused by the world and wondering about my place in it. The answer came through the story behind the lyrics to “The Battlehymn of the Republic” — it used to be an old English drinking song, and the American adaptation shared the crass, degrading lyrics typical of the genre. Julia Ward Howe was standing on the steps of the US capitol building with Abraham Lincoln one rainy evening during the Civil War. Watching the soldiers march past over the slick grey cobbles and hearing their lusty song, she asked him, “why must young men go forth to die with such obscenities on their lips?” His response to her turned my anger into resolve and has been a guide for my life ever since; “Why don’t you do something about it?”

I haven’t written any immortal poems. I haven’t built any orphanages or found the cure for any diseases. I haven’t even traveled very much. But since that day almost 15 years ago, I have kept my promise to myself to do something—to never be one of the people who just stands by and lets suffering happen.

Most of the things I’ve done are small—”drops in the bucket,” you might say. And coming to realize more and more both the scale and complexity of the challenges made those drops seem small indeed. One third of the population, some 2 billion people, live and die without access to clean water and proper sanitation. 1 in 5 women in the US will be raped at some point in her life. We’re still losing an area the size of Panama to slash-and-burn deforestation each year. And over the course of the next hour, some 500 African children will have died of malnutrition. These problems are BIG. And it takes a lot to solve them. Big hearts, big ideas, and most of the time, big money. I don’t, and may never, have the millions of dollars it takes to start unraveling the complex social problems that keep me up at night.

But what I realized one morning after a particularly sleepless night was that while I am not (and may never be) one person with half a million dollars, I AM connected to half a million people with $1. And all those little “drops in the bucket” put together WILL change the world.

I know our work at Tipping Bucket won’t wipe out poverty in one fell swoop. But I also know it will make a difference. Being able to work directly with innovative, committed world-changers and helping to share their experience, their contribution, with the world is a unique opportunity.

The myriad faces of the world’s suffering and inequity are daunting, heartbreaking problems. But together, we can do something about it.

SaraJoy Pond, founder of TippingBucket.org, is a designer, educator, evaluator and determined to change the world. She’s currently one defense away from a PhD in Instructional Psychology, is intensely fond of typography, symphonic cello, and stracciatella gelato and detests bad line breaks, bean soup, and writing her own bio.

Photo 1 and Photo 2 courtesy of Flicker.

I also wanted them to have their eyes opened to the poverty that exists in the world so they would come back with a greater understanding and appreciation for what we have and the lifestyle we enjoy.

The day before we returned from Guatemala to the US, we toured a facility called Safe Passage.

Safe Passage (“Camino Seguro”) opened its doors in 1999 to provide a safe alternative for children living around and working in the Guatemala City garbage dump. We believe that every child should have access to education, and we enable those enrolled in our program to attend school and to access opportunities for work and life beyond the confines of poverty in the Guatemala City garbage dump.

Today, Safe Passage serves approximately 550 children and 70 adults who represent over 300 families living in the vicinity of the Guatemala City garbage dump. We run a comprehensive program that incorporates healthy living, academics, creativity, and fun for students young and old.

On our visit, we first went to a spot overlooking the garbage dump. Chase (age 9) and Connor (age 7) truly couldn’t comprehend what we were witnessing. That this was a place where garbage was discarded? Easy enough to understand. That entire families, including children, spent their days there, collecting anything and everything to sell for their survival? Not a chance!

So next, we took them to the Safe Passage facilities—first to the school and then to the women’s facility.

The boys were able to go on a tour of the school and see how it differed from their own. They interacted with the children and asked lots of questions.

Then, we went to the women’s center, where we met mothers from the nearby shanty towns who were receiving business training and English lessons. We bought necklaces they had made from the paper taken from the garbage dump—now a viable business for many women there.

On its website, Safe Passage quotes William Arthur Ward:

We can throw stones, complain about them, stumble on them, climb over them, or build with them.

I loved being able to show my children an example of an organization who “builds with them” during our travels to Guatemala. It was definitely a perfect ending to an already wonderful family vacation.

To learn more about volunteer opportunities at Safe Passage, click on this link.

After an Earth Day activity in her pre-school class this Spring, my 4-year old daughter said to me, “You know, mama, we should really find new ways to help clean up the Earth.” As an active recycler, I agreed.  As a mother, I felt proud.  As the only adult in the room, I was humbled that my pre-schooler was leading the charge to make her world better.  I knew I had better jump on her bandwagon quick!

Inspired by the Earth Day lesson, my daughter asked if we could organize a Recycling Event for our block.  With the help of her big sister, she designed a flyer that listed common household opportunities for Recycling:

• Everyday items:  junk mail, cardboard, aluminum cans, plastic and glass bottles
• Household items:  old clothing, shoes, and even baby items
• Electronics: cell phones, keyboards, and computer monitors

We delivered the flyers to each house. We offered neighbors to use our garage as a Drop-Off Site for all of their recyclables, for one week’s time. At the end of the week, we took a day to sort and deliver a garage (and driveway) full of items to the appropriate places.  For example:

• Adult clothing, baby clothes, and even children’s clothes:  donated to a local women’s shelter
• Healthcare products:  deposited in a designated box at Target
• Unused keys, old umbrellas, and even broken nail clippers: recycled at a scrap metal center

It was a long-week of collecting items and an especially hot delivery day—which I was ultimately grateful for. The heavy lifting, salty sweat and extra effort added to the gratification of it all.  My daughters got to see that their hard work paid off right away, when at every delivery stop they were met with wide-smiles and genuine appreciation. I know my kids will remember the heart-felt “Thank-you’s” and I know they meant it deeply when they answered, “You are welcome.”

Energized by the success of our block’s Recycling Event, this has become of the summer of thinking beyond ourselves. Some of their latest ventures involve:

• A Lemonade stand – all profits going to a Haiti Relief Fund
• Labor Day weekend yard sale – to raise money for saving animals from kill-shelters
• Making flowered baby headbands to sale to raise money for the Wish Upon A Star foundation

I’d like to say I have challenged my daughters to come up with ideas of how they can show kindness, help others, and contribute to the world during their summer vacation—but it is more accurate to say that they are stimulating me to keep up with their creative ideas and thoughtful plans for doing good. I can’t wait to read it all through their own words, in their back-to-school “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” stories!

All of the service projects we participated in had one thing in common: we went outside of our home and worked!

Fast forward to adulthood where the landscape of charity looks vastly different from that from my childhood. The internet has made giving easier and faster not to mention, convenient.

Here are five simple ways you can take advantage of giving from the comforts of your own home.

1. Make Micro Donations

Micro donation/lending organizations like Choice Humanitarian, Kiva, and The Tipping Bucket have made donating to various causes on a regular basis not only possible because donations can be as low as $5, but also simple because all that is required is the click of a mouse and inputting a bit of information.

Even the established non-profit organization the Make-A-Wish Foundation is applying principles of micro donating in its new symbolic giving program this summer: Summer of 5000 Wishes. To make a donation, just check a box for the symbolic item you’d like to purchase—items as low costing as sun screen and as costly as a flights. Then, check out the impact your donation made on the overall wish through a financial thermometer (see example on right).

2. Get Information Via Websites

The internet has made information about issues easily accessible and readily available. In days past, we were reliant on newspapers, magazines, or research at the local library. Now, all you need to do is search for terms and a variety of articles, information, and sites pops up with both information as well as ways to help. For example, do you want to learn more about ways in which to help erase teacher-funded classrooms? Three non-profits come to mind spearheaded by these large companies: Bing, General Mills, and OfficeMax.

3. Get Up Close and Personal With Causes Through Blogs

Blogs have personalized causes for us by introducing us to the people who suffer from them.

We’ve learned more and have championed causes like The March of Dimes because of people like Heather Spohr and the unfortunate death of her sweet daughter, Maddie. She has inspired us to raise not only awareness, but funds in her memory.

We’ve supported each other through tough times, like when Anissa suffered a stroke, when Melissa’s house flooded, and when Stellan was hanging on for dear life.

And we rally for people who need our help, thoughts, and love on a daily basis like Tammy and Stephanie.

Through blogs, we’ve learned the power that comes from reading, sharing, and supporting—even from behind the computer screen. Service comes in many different forms and sometimes, a prayer, a kind comment on a blog post, a letter dropped in the mail, or supporting an online auction to benefit someone during rough times is exactly what is most needed.

4. Connect With Others Via Online Communities

Twenty years ago, my brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I remember the process that diagnosis entailed. My mom spent hours and hours researching in the local library. My brother received diagnosis after mis-diagnosis. My mom didn’t know of any other moms facing similar issues and had no one she could relate to. Learning to parent a mentally ill child was a long and lonely learning process.

Not that all of those problems would be simplified in today’s online world, but the power of online communities goes a long way in providing answers, support, and encouragement. Moms can talk openly about everything from autism and diabetes to home schooling and general parenting issues. The support is an act of service in and of itself that benefits both the giver and the receiver.

5. Create Buzz About a Cause on Social Networking Sites

Thanks to tools in social media, groups don’t have to travel to Africa to offer humanitarian aid. Social Networking Sites like Twitter and Facebook are another great way to share and receive information, raise awareness and funds, and connect with people who share your passions and with whom you can relate—and are no further than a step and a click away.

In April of 2009, I ran a campaign, including online and offline events for Yehu Microfinance in support of women entrepreneurs in Kenya. In one month, and in partnership with the 12for12K organization, we raised $15,000 and got the word out in a huge way. People in 10 markets had the opportunity to attend events, but people all over the world had the luxury to interact from the comfort of their own homes with people in Kenya via a Twitter party and donate via a Chip In widget in as small as $2 amounts. Twitter and Facebook helped generate buzz and excitement and information and made all the difference in raising both awareness and funds.

The next time you are wondering how you can better your community or make a difference in the world around you, stop! Get online. If you have time to go out into your community, research options to do so. If you don’t, identify ways to serve online. Making a difference in the world is as simple as the click of a mouse! Start today!

As the devastating images from the latest Gulf oil spill began to criss-cross the Internet, the stark reality of the damages became visible to everyone. Questions like, “What have we done? How did this happen”? and “What can we do?” began to echo through many of our thoughts—I know this to be true for me anyway. The powerful thing is, great communities (like the one here at Mom It Forward) do find ways to help. A community like this one is proof that you can gather in thought, take action and transcend physical barriers to help make change. We may not all be able to physically lend support to the Gulf clean-up efforts, but there is proof that a lot of “little” actions can be amplified and add up to something much more powerful.

One organization that has clear ideas about how to help is Oceana, a nonprofit organization focused on protecting the world’s oceans. If you’d like to help support Oceana and its conservation efforts, the cool designers at The Heads of State have made it easy and rewarding.

This video explains more:

Thanks for watching and thinking about how you can help. Even if it’s just by spreading the word, it is helpful. The team at The Heads of State says it best: “We know this poster won’t save the world, but we’re hoping, with your help, it can make a small impact on the growing devastation.”

For more information about Heads of State and this Gulf charity poster, please visit Daily Grommet.

With so many different worthy causes, the problem people have, especially in a difficult economy, is deciding what efforts they can support. In the end most people choose causes that have affected their lives directly.

At Sweatshirt Blanket we asked ourselves how can we help?

Being relatively new to the scene, we reached out to some influential mom bloggers for their opinion on our product and to help us do some good.  In March, we ran some contests where the winners not only received a sweatshirt blanket of their own, but were also asked to nominate their favorite charity to receive some customized blankets that they could use in their fundraising efforts.

We were touched by the passions the challenge evoked as we read each entry and learned of the missions of many great charitable organizations.  It inspired us to take what was started from these contests and turn it into something bigger, which is how our Spread Your Warmth campaign was born.

Creating Awareness

Through the Spread Your Warmth campaign, we will be using our blog and our product to raise awareness for the many wonderful causes out there.  Each month, we will ask the readers of our blog to help select a charitable cause or organization we have profiled to win a dozen customized sweatshirt blankets free of charge.

Plus, as a thank you for taking the time to nominate a cause, we will print an extra sweatshirt blanket with the winning organization’s logo for the person who nominated them.

How It Works

We’ve made participating in the Spread Your Warmth campaign easy with a simple nomination form that can be found on our site.  All you have to do is complete the nomination form with as much information that you have available so that we may profile them on our blog.

For each nominated cause we will write a post about them to help raise awareness for their mission.  The blog post we create will be that charitable causes’ official entry into that month’s contest.  All entries posted during a particular calendar month will then be put to a vote of our blog readers, as well as Facebook and Twitter followers, to determine the winning organization.

Enter Today

We want to hear about the causes that you are passionate about no matter if they are local or national, big or small.  For April, we were privileged to profile ten worthy causes through the Spread Your Warmth campaign.

The contest for May is now open and voting for April’s nominees will run through May 7th.

For more information, follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook.

Our trip started in Central America—Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras—to visit my parents. And then, thanks to a trip from Royal Caribbean, we visited the Eastern Caribbean, where we have stopped at St. Thomas and St. Maarten and are en route to the Bahamas.

As a mom on a family vacay to foreign lands, I have a goal to help my children experience the cultures in the places we visit, learn about the people’s varying traditions, and not only come away with a knowledge of, but also an appreciation for our similarities and differences.

Here are 10 things to help increase children’s cultural awareness during travel:
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1. Teach your children the language. Teach them key phrases before you leave and practice with them while you are traveling, pointing out when you hear others use those phrases while you are out and about. When you return from your vacation, keep using the phrases with them around the house, especially when you talk about your trip.
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2. Encourage your kids to play with other kids in the area(s) you visit. If you are in a place where you can do so, arrange play dates with other children. Even if they don’t speak the same language, kids are great at getting past language barriers. When we were in Guatemala, we invited the son of my parents’ friends to go with us to the children’s museum. We had an advantage, because my parents live there. On the Royal Caribbean cruise we are currently on, we have our kids meet up with other kids almost daily at Adventure Ocean in the Kids’ Zone. They have made friends from all over the world in the time they have spent there.
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3. Call out cultural traditions. Making a point to call out similarities and differences is key to helping kids appreciate new and exciting cultures. In Guatemala, we visited the ancient capital—Antigua—during Semana Santa (Holy Week). This gave us a great opportunity to share rich Catholic traditions of Alfombras (carpeting the streets with saw dust, fruit, and pine needle in religious designs) and Processions (the celebration of Christ’s death).
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4. Have them write a Travel Journal. Capturing the most meaningful parts of their day(s) in a travel journal is a powerful way for kids to process their experiences. Encouraging your kids to use the travel journal in a way that works with their personalities is important. My older child is more structured, so we came up with a list of questions he answers every day. My younger child likes to draw and write about whatever comes to his mind. Both ways work.
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5. Act like a local. “When in Rome, do as the Romans” applies well to increasing your children’s cultural awareness during foreign travel. Some things we’ve done over the past 3 weeks include: going to church in Spanish at a church in Guatemala; playing at a public park with the other kids; eating at a Guatemalan restaurant recommended by a local; swimming at a public beach and public lake (not the tourist destinations) in El Salvador; instead of going on a cruise-arranged excursion in St. Thomas, creating our own schedule and going to a beautiful local beach by taxi.
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6. Try the food. Food plays such an important role in a country’s traditions. Eating local dishes gives you a rare insight into their day to day lives. Many people in the US think that they will have tacos and enchiladas in Guatemala. We were determined to help our kids see that wasn’t the case. They ate fish, rice and beans, chicken from the national fast food chain (not McDonald’s), and fell in love with a drink called Limonada con Soda. Mmmmm!
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7. Have your children take pictures. Equally as important as encouraging your children to write in their travel journals is making it possible and encouraging them to take their own photos. Even young children love snapping pics. The lens through which they view the world and that with which they snap pictures from will enlighten you as well as help them capture their memories.
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8. Prepare a travel report. If you travel when class is in, help your kids prepare a report of their trip when you return. For us, this will consist of putting together a slide slow of our favorite pictures (no more than 3-4 minutes). The goal with this is to have the kids go through the pics, choose their favorites, and have a keepsake, not to mention something they can share with their classmates.
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9. After the trip, make a book. Nowadays, photo books are so simple to make. Blurb, Snapfish, Cherish Bound, Shutterfly, and others offer great deals and a streamlined process. My friend Aimee from Greeblemonkey went to Ireland with her family and created a beautiful book with photos from her trip. It is not only a keepsake for her family, but it is for sale. The pictures are that beautiful! Have a look!
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10. Decide as a family which culture you’d like to learn about next and start planning! Appreciating diverse cultures is exciting and can be contagious. Once you learn about one or two, you realize that there is a whole world of rich traditions and cultures to explore. So why wait? Start planning, begin a savings plan, and research the next destination and culture your family would like to learn about. For us, my 6YO is dying to meet the people of Senegal. I hadn’t envisioned a trip to Senegal, but why not? If Connor has the excitement for western Africa, we should maximize on that! Where do you and your kids want to go?

I’d love to hear what other tips you have, especially what has worked for you and your family.

Not knowing exactly what our schedule would be, how much access we’d have to materials to accommodate our normal egg-dying traditions, and how much time we’d have to prepare, we set low expectations but reassured the boys that they’d have an Easter they wouldn’t forget. And forget they won’t!

Today, we went to Antigua—a colonial town in Guatemala. There, we experienced a beautiful and elaborate Catholic procession complete with floats; streets carpeted with Christ-adorned designs made out of saw dust, pine needles, flowers, salt, and fruits and vegetables; and families dressed in black, following the 8-hour long procession with feeling, reminiscing and mourning Christ’s death.

The video below captures the beauty and importance of this amazing tradition! Although I am not Catholic, this event touched my soul, causing me to reflect on and appreciate my own beliefs. I hope it does the same for you. I wish you all a Happy Easter and Passover season and peace during this time of year!

So, when we planned our current trip to Central America, I was looking forward to the opportunity to go native, so to speak!

Instead of scheduling a trip where we’d visit amazing water parks (I hear there are some fabulous ones in Guatemala!), we opted to see ruins, attend church in Spanish, visit colonial towns, arrange play dates with local kids who only speak Spanish, and volunteer at orphanages.

Our first stop? Livingston Island, Guatemala (on the Rio Dulce and the Caribbean Sea)—one of the most fabulous scenic trips of my life (by boat, no less). I was excited when a local gal offered to do my hair. Why not get a little further relaxed over lunch, right? Wrong! Have you ever worn corn rows? I’m not going to rule out that I’m pain adverse, but tears don’t lie, dude! And those were real tears I shed. But… when in Rome, right? Fortunately, my hair is really short, so the process didn’t take too long.

Last night, after my mom had removed all the braids and beads, my 6YO looked at me and said, “So, does this mean you aren’t African American anymore, mom?”

If there is one downside of teaching cultural awareness to my kids (and truth be told, I don’t think there is one), it’s that sometimes my well intentioned plans to help them become aware of and celebrate diverse cultures can be confusing to them. Being “Roman” and doing things “as” the Romans do are not necessarily the same, right?

What do you do to help your kids embrace other cultures?