For all of you that have followed Charity Matters over the past few years, most of you know that I truly enjoy being the storyteller. I am Irish after all, so I guess it comes naturally? However, when the Good News Only site called Hooplaha.com approached me about doing a story on Charity Matters….well, the tables were turned.
The Hooplaha team and I share a common belief that people are innately good and more than that, good news and stories about good people doing great work need to be shared. So with that in mind, if this so inspires you, please feel free to share. The world needs more kindness and goodness, so thanks for spreading some and check out Hooplaha if you need a little happy news to brighten your day.
“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.”
Helen Keller
I hope you had a great weekend and that your team won last night….my team didn’t make it to the Superbowl this year, but at least made it to the photo above. In watching the Superbowl, you had to admire the teamwork that both the Patriots and the Falcons put into their game. It is the key to success in most things, not just in football. Every non-profit comes with its team.
This past weekend, I was lucky enough to get to spend time with my team. We worked, played, debated, problem solved and ultimately came together to develop new goals for our organization. The key was team work.
So this post is dedicated to the 1.9 million non-profit teams in this country. You are all winners and together we can do anything!
“In life, as in football, you won’t go far unless you know where the goalposts are.” Arnold H. Glasow
Since we started the week talking about resolutions and goals, I thought it only fitting that we would end it on a somewhat similar note. Being that Superbowl 51 (don’t ask me to try the roman numeral version of 51) is upon us, I think it is worth noting what each of these extraordinary athletes has committed to their goal.
Raising three sons, all who played football, I am guessing that these athletes started young with their goal setting. Like all of us, each year theses athletes’ goals and dreams expanded. An enormous amount of hard work, dedication and commitment is bringing each of these football players to that moment…when a dream becomes reality.
Meanwhile, all of us, will be rooting for our teams (Atlanta Falcons or the New England Patriots), catching up with friends, watching the great ads and hopefully, taking a small internal moment to realize that each of these athletes have worked towards their goals or goal post. Perhaps, maybe taking a small moment to ask ourselves, if we know where our own goal posts are?
Today is February 1st and the beginning of heart month. Over the years, I have interviewed a number of non-profit founders who have started incredible organizations to find a cure for congenital heart disease, which is the number one birth defect in the world.
This month, I will share some of those stories with you and re-visit some old Charity Matters friends to update you on their progress. I came across musician and heart transplant recipient, Paul Cardall’s video the other day and thought it sets the stage for this important month.
So, as we begin the month of February, let’s all remember to keep our hearts open to those who suffer with this horrible disease.
As January comes to a close, I realize it really has been quite a month. The post holiday recovery, a busy time for my non-profit day job, a new President, and few needed holidays. So it makes perfect sense that with all of this going on, that I have not really had time to make my New Year’s resolutions. It is better late than never!
While I could barely get a parking spot at the gym, the first few weeks of the month…it seems that those well-intentioned souls are already beginning to slack off on their resolutions, which seems like the perfect time for me to kick in with mine. To help me along, I pulled out my trusty copy of Write It Down, Make It Happen by author, Henriette Anne Klauser. The book’s author believes and proves that writing down your goals in life is the first step in achieving them.
The author tells stories of people who have done just that, and the way they began to realize their dreams. What I love the most about this book is that, in addition to asking you questions that slowly unravel your goals, each chapter ends with a little homework assignment. So as we say goodbye to January and hello to February, I have a clarity as to which direction I am headed in 2017. That in itself is an amazing resolution!
On a rain soaked day, a couple of weeks ago I met the most remarkable woman for lunch, her name is Katie Quintas. Katie is a living example of C.S. Lewis quote, “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” Katie’s hardship re-routed her destiny.
Katie’s life was fantastic. She had a husband, Silvio, she adored. A wonderful son, Bryan and a fantastic career consulting non-profits. Then all of that changed in 2006, when her husband Silvio was diagnosed with leukemia and six months later, her only child Bryan, was diagnosed with Stage Four Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma at age 16.
Katie’s employer was supportive as she tried to manage a full-time job and the two most important people in her life’s cancers. What Katie didn’t realize was how was she going to manage to cook, clean, do laundry, grocery shop, update everyone on Bryan and Silvio’s conditions, deal with the offers for help, all while working and driving between two hospitals over an hour apart from each other? She was overwhelmed, wondered how families manage and didn’t even know where to look for help.
It turns out that she was not alone.
As 2007 came to an end, and both Katie’s husband and son were finishing up their cancer treatments, she began looking for organizations that help families through daily life during an illness, especially the illness of a child. In 2009, when she still hadn’t found an organization that fit the need, she began discussing the idea of creating one with her husband Silvio. With her husband’s encouragement, she did just that launching Here to Serve.org in 2011.
The Quintas family had been through so much but realized that there were so many people who had less. With Silvio’s support Katie set up her non-profit to connect and create online care communities that come in at the beginning of the health crisis to organize, friends, resources, medical information, funding, support all without overwhelming the caregiver, who is typically the parent.
As I sat at lunch and listened to Katie’s story, it was almost too much to process what she had been through but even more to grasp what she does for others. When we both went onto her web-site together and I saw what a care community looked like for a family, it was unbelievable. Once I was part of a sick patients community, I could sign up for everything from walking the dog, bringing a meal, doing laundry, running an errand, donating groceries and the list goes on. The services Here to Serve provides is everything that Katie needed when she went through this and didn’t have.
Sadly, Katie lost her beloved husband to cancer, but she said his memory still keeps her going. Katie told me, “I can’t imagine not doing this. Here to Serve gets me up in the morning, it motivates me and I was created to do this work. This is my purpose.”
This past week, you would have to be hiding under a rock to know there has been a lot of talk about empowerment, but today I would like to share with you an inspiring non-political, good old-fashioned kind of empowerment. It’s the story of a young woman named Veronika Scott, who in 2010 found herself in a college class with an assignment to create a product that would fill a need in her Detroit community. An assignment that would change her life and empower so many more.
Veronika was the daughter of parents who had struggled with addiction and unemployment. So she found herself in a warming center for Detroit’s homeless with an idea to create a coat the could also become a sleeping bag. While she was working on her design, a homeless woman angrily confronted her and said, “We don’t need coats, we need jobs.” It was that moment that Veronika realized she could do both. She said, ” I wanted to create an opportunity, that I wish my parents had when I was a kid.”
In 2012, she created the Detroit based non-profit The Empowerment Plan, to elevate families from the generational cycle of homelessness. Veronika began hiring single parents from the local shelters, trained them as seamstresses to make the coats to meet the needs of the homeless community. More than that, she gave these women a purpose, a job, education, full-time employment and a chance to regain their independence.
Today, Veronika at age 27, has founded the non-profit The Empowerment Plan, employed 39 homeless women and made and distributed over 15,000 coats since 2011. As C.S. Lewis said, “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” Veronika is a living example when she said, “No matter what you’ve gone through, you still can do a lot with what you have.”
Each week I meet, interview, and discover the most amazing people, whose stories I share here.
What makes them extraordinary, is what each of them does with the hand they were dealt. The choice that they made to turn something negative into something positive.
The singular thread is that these remarkable people will do anything to ensure that the next person that comes along who is dealt that same hand, now has the resources that they did not.
It is a privilege to get to know these people, to tell their stories and to share them with each of you.
“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever…It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”
Aaron Siskind
I live in a house full of photographers. Not just the modern-day iPhone everyday amateur photographer, like myself, but a husband and three sons who truly love the art, the skill, the process and the gear. They are all passionate about their images and were long before there was an Instagram.
I came across a non-profit recently,that I will share with you later this week, that helps families restore their images after a flood or natural disaster. Just thinking about losing my photos had me thinking about how truly precious they are.
We may live in a digital world but it is still the ability to freeze those precious moments in time that continues to capture us all. As Marc Riboud said, “Taking pictures is savoring life intensely every hundredth of a second.” I think this year I will add becoming a better photographer to my New Year’s resolutions along with savoring life more intently.
It seems that the entire planet was happy to see 2016 come to an end. Over and over, everyone is saying goodbye to 2016 and hello 2017. What is it that we are all looking for this year that will be so very different from the last?
How could one year truly disappoint us so much? But it seems unanimous, that we are all SO over last year and looking ahead. 2017 is off to a great start, we get an extra day off, which in my book is a most excellent beginning. Lets be honest, we all really need it and it has been a busy few weeks as we try to catching up on sleep, life and friends.
So, as we begin to ponder about what we want from this new start, let me suggest a few thoughts….in the planning stage of resolutions. First, what went so wrong last year that you want to be different this year? How might you change that? What is the one thing you really want to accomplish this year? What are a few simple ways to start working towards that goal? How can you be kinder to those you love this year? And lastly, how can you be kinder to yourself in the next 365 days?
Why I do not yet have the answers, these questions are where I will begin…..that and heading off to the Rose Bowl to cheer on my team. Here is to a magical, joyous, prosperous and very Happy New Year to all!
There is nothing I love more than new beginnings. Fresh starts, new notebooks with empty pages that begin to tell a new story and the concept that a New Year brings a new chapter. A few years ago we spent New Year’s Eve in the Galapagos and we watched as people had created replica paper-mache mannequins of themselves with traits they wished to change and lit them on fire before throwing them into the ocean, symbolic of out with the old and in with the new.
This year, I think I would take a paper-mache shaped in the numbers 2016 and do the same. In the scheme of life, 2016 was not a horrible year but a tough one. We began moving last New Year, which was perhaps a foreshadowing of the year to come. It was a year with much movement. This is not to say, it was without fun and celebrations. My husband and I both turned 50, we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. We took a fantastic trip with our sons to Europe.
However, the year felt heavy, slow, emotional, and there seemed to be a feeling of climbing uphill slowly, very slowly. Do not get me wrong, I am full of gratitude for a life full of blessings. But gratitude aside, the year just felt tough.
So as I look ahead to 2017, I am filled with hope, possibility and the joy that comes with new beginnings. This year, I am dusting off the Charity Matters television treatment, I am opening myself to new possibilities to tell the stories of these non-profit heroes and I dreaming big.
Here is to a year full of possibility, hopes, dreams and making amazing things happen!
“The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
I would be lying if I didn’t admit to being a bit tired and overloaded this time of year. Do not get me wrong, I adore the holidays! I love everything about them, the decorations, the friends, the parties, the food, and even the presents. Truly, I do.
However, there are days when doing all the shopping, the wrapping and the cooking that it feels a bit overwhelming. We are about 10 days away and while I am checking things off the list, I am concerned with exactly that…..just checking them off, rather than feeling the joy.
With so much to do, it is easy to just go, go, go but if we are all moving at warp speed how can we be in the moment to witness the magic moments of the holidays? The other day I was whirling around getting ready for a party, I dashed into my in-laws to borrow something and in my rush almost missed my tiny niece hanging an ornament on the tree. She squealed with delight, which is what stopped me in my tracks to take the picture above.
And there it was….the joy, the wonder, the magic…right there in front of me and I almost missed it. I write this post as a reminder to myself that the joy is everywhere, if we just slow down long enough to catch it.
The second Sunday in December is an international day of remembrance for children that have died. Every year, in the middle of this crazy hectic season, I curse trying to get to this candle lighting event, I am running on empty and overload, a million lists rushing through my head…..and then I walk into the auditorium…..where I am greeted by hundreds of faces, many who are wearing their deceased child’s image on their t-shirt or clinging to a framed photo, as if it is a life raft…and I pause.
It is then, in this moment, that I know what is truly important. It is here, as I begin to hear one parent share the story of their child’s short journey on this earth and the big impact this small life had on so many, that I know what matters. In this room is full of sniffles, tears and broken hearts the traffic is forgotten, the holiday list vanish and all that remains is love and compassion.
The emotion is palpable and the love and connection these people feel for one another, although strangers, is real. For each of them has walked this path, a hellish journey where they never feel whole again because they have lost a child….their child.
Over 40 years ago, in 1969, a chaplain at the Warwickshire Hospital in England brought together two sets of grieving parents, realizing that the understanding and support they could give one another was greater than he could provide. At that kitchen table the Lawley family, Henderson family and chaplain, Simon Stephens created The Society of Compassionate Friends.
Today, The Compassionate Friends has over 700 chapters nationwide to offer friendship, understanding and hope to bereaved parents, siblings, grandparents and family members when a child has died. There are TCF chapters in more than 30 countries around the world, lead by volunteers who are bereaved parents, siblings and grandparents.
This Sunday, December 11th at 7pm, in time zones across the globe, the world’s largest mass candle lighting event will create a 24 hour wave of light in remembrance of a child gone too soon. I will be lighting a candle for so many, gone too soon and once again be grounded in what it is that truly matters…..love.
Today is December 7th and for most of us, that day doesn’t really ring any bells. However, for some of us either lucky enough to grow up with parents who told us about this sacred day, or perhaps, old enough to remember, it is a day in infamy.
So, while this may not be a non-profit moment, it is one even bigger. On December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese . 75 years ago today, Hawaii did not look like this. A recently discovered family film uncovered the moment the war began and along with it, uncovered the moment that it ended.
So while you are out Christmas shopping today, remember that you have that luxury because of those who went before us. The ones that gave us the gift of freedom.
