CFCA Trip - What Do You Want Me To Share During My Trip?

Ok, so you know I'm headed to Guatemala for a mission awareness trip and I want to know what you would like for me to share while I'm there via this blog - the title kinda summarizes that, right?

But first, a little bit about why I'm going to Guatemala...

CFCA is a global non-profit organization headquartered in my hometown - Kansas City, Kansas. CFCA's mission is a passion of mine:

Our mission is to walk with the poor and marginalized of the world.

• We provide personal attention and direct benefits to children, youth, aging and their families so they may live with dignity, achieve their desired potential and participate fully in society.
• We invite people of good will to live in daily solidarity with the world’s poor through one-to-one sponsorship.
• We build community by fostering relationships of mutual respect, understanding and support that are culturally diverse, empowering and without religious or other prejudice.

Grounded in the Gospel call to serve the poor, CFCA is a lay Catholic organization working with persons of all faith traditions to create a worldwide community of compassion and service.

A nonprofit organization (NPO) working with persons of all faith traditions to create a worldwide community of compassion and service - if you know me well, you know this isn't just a passion but a perfect calling for me. 

You can read a bit about why John and I sponsor Angelica, teenager in Guatemala, through CFCA in this blog post.  It has been a dream of ours since we started sponsoring Angelica in 1998 to meet her through one of CFCA's mission awareness trips. The CFCA infographic below is from about a year ago and gives overview answers to common CFCA mission awareness trip questions:

With four kids and two full-time working-out-of-the-home parents we decided to put that dream on permanent hold. I began doing more local volunteering with CFCA including helping with public service announcements and fundraising events.

Last year, I became a member of CFCA's Social Media Advisory Board and was thrilled when CFCA asked me to be their first mission awareness trip social media advocate. I am going to meet Angelica - our sponsored daughter who we have been "talking" with via letters for the last 14 years! This is going to be amazing for me. I honestly don't have the words. And if technology and the local wifi holds up, I'll be sharing it with you in real-time or near real-time.

I'll also be interviewing CFCA staff and families and understanding local CFCA initiatives including micro-lending businesses (which I'm really excited about given my start-up roots).

So now that you have a little background, please let me know what you'd like to hear about and see me do while I'm in Guatemala. Judy-Anne Goldman of CFCA will be with me and we'll have a video camera and laptop in tow so we'll be ready to capture and deliver on your requests. 

DISCLOSURE: CFCA is covering my flight and lodging for my Guatemala mission awareness trip in return for me documenting my trip via blog posts and sharing my mission awareness experience via my social channels. 

CFCA Trip - Compliation Post: What I Need To Pack for my Guatemala Mission Awareness Trip

So I asked you through this blog,  Facebook and Twitter what three things I should pack for my upcoming CFCA mission awareness trip to Guatemala. You know good advice comes in threes and here's the excellent suggestions I received and am planning to pack:

• Peanut Butter - Angela Robson
• Multi-purpose wet wipes - Kerry Bettenhausen  and Erica McClenny 
• Use your phone to take pictures of any prescription bottles for meds you may take, your passport/travel docs, etc. If you misplace anything or need a prescription, get questioned about a med at customs inspection, etc. it makes things so much easier - Matt Ridings (#lightbulbbrilliant)
• Good shoes - Katelynn G
•  Toilet paper - Veronica
• A small bottle of pure tea tea oil - it works as natural astringent and bug repellant for scratches and bug bites - Kerry Bettenhausen  
• A Camera - Shanxi
• Crafts for the kids - Angela Robson
• Water Purifying Bottles - Erica McClenny (this was a oh-wow, they make those? suggestion for me)
• A sarong wrap - besides being a comfortable skirt, it can be used as quick robe, towel or extra blanket. - Judy-Anne Goldman
• Sunscreen - Veronica
• Liquid bath soap - Judy-Anne Goldman
• A light jacket/sweater for evenings - Katelynn G
• Medicine - Veronica
• Comfortable clothing you can mix and match over several days - Shanxi
• Jake Jacobson is letting me borrow his Garmin Forerunner so I can share with you where I've traveled every day of my trip - Thanks, Jake! - Jake Jacobson
• And my favorite - Matt's Travel Gear Pinterest Board (lots of great ideas for all your travel).

 Thanks to everyone for all the great ideas around question number one! 

I don't leave for Guatemala until December 26th so keep the suggestions coming. My next CFCA post will be question number two as I crowdsource my way to prepping for this wonderful trip.

Find out more about why I'm going to Guatemala on my personal CFCA page.

DISCLOSURE: CFCA is covering my flight and lodging for my Guatemala mission awareness trip in return for me documenting my trip via blog posts and sharing my mission awareness experience via my social channels. 

CFCA Trip - Three Things I Need To Pack

The next several posts, and a smattering of posts thereafter, are going to be about social media - but not about the industry or my work. I’m switching my lens to social media for social good.

See, I’m going on my first trip to Guatemala with CFCA leaving on December 26, 2013, to meet my family’s sponsored child, Angelica. John and I have been sponsoring her since 1998 – since before any of our kiddos were born.  

This meeting has been a long time in the making! And I’m looking forward to taking y’all along for the festivities but first, I really need your help. Nope, I’m not asking for money to get me to Guatemala. I really need your brain power - your developing country traveling expertise.

I need advice in preparation for this big trip and what better place to ask for advice than my online community?! Via all my social channels, I’ll be asking a developing country trip related question on Tuesday of every week until I leave for Guatemala. By then I hope to be educated through all of you and ready to take on the adventure ahead of me.

And here’s my first question: What are the top three things I must pack and why?

In my upcoming posts, I’m going to be sharing the reasons I’m going; what CFCA is about; what CFCA is planning for me while I’m in Guatemala; and of course, at the end of each week I’ll do a compilation post of the answers to the weekly question.

While I’m in Guatemala, I’ll be posting recap blogs with video here on this blog and in-the-moment updates on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,  and Pinterest. All updates will be tagged with #cfcatrip.

I can’t begin to share with you how excited I am to be going to Guatemala and meeting Angelica. I’m looking forward to learning from all of you.  I appreciate you helping this developing country trip noobie become a developing country trip expert! We have less than six weeks, friends, so get me your answers in the comment section below to Week One’s question: What are the top three things I must pack and why?

Let’s do this!

DISCLOSURE: CFCA is covering my flight and lodging for my Guatemala mission awareness trip in return for me documenting my trip via blog posts and sharing my mission awareness experience via my social channels. 

Long Time No Post

Yep, I fell victim to time starvation and consciously narrowed down my online activities over the last eight weeks. My Empire Avenue stock is down, my klout score too, I'm connected on Google+ but not really engaged...I'm not tweeting or posting on Facebook as much. The biggest victims have been this blog and posterous accounts.

I've been traveling a lot for me (8 of the last 10 weeks) some personal, most for work and I haven't gotten into my new schedule groove. I always write my posts at home at night when I can't sleep. Well, when I am at home these days, I'm sleeping like a baby and when I'm not, I'm not making time for posting.

With my new job, I am taking in a lot of industry content specific to our agency, our clients and also broader trends. There's so much amazing stuff being produced that I have gotten caught up in consuming and I'm still figuring out how to share, what can be shared...you know all that IP stuff that comes with agency work, and what really do I want to share. And I'm not producing. Yep, I'm making this way too complicated.

All that said, I got knocked off my "figuring out" mode and long list of excuses this morning. Well, it actually started yesterday...I caught this PSA with Jennifer Connelly for charity: water on TV. My thoughts went to all the great work the SMCKC team did a few years back on the charity: water international twestival kick-off and I was thinking how mainstream the initiative is now. I also thought about how we had a boiling water advisory a few weeks ago and how terrible it would be to not have clean water. The ad reminded me to check up on what CharityWater was doing online.

Just a few minutes ago, my "get back into posting" moment happened and I'll share it with you over my next post (coming at lunch).

Twestival - Kansas City

Twestival is a worldwide fund raising effort that is occurring this Thursday, February 12 organized 100% by volunteers around the world via social media - mainly twitter. 100% of the money raised from these local events will go directly to support charity. Specifically - water projects.

Why water?
One in six people on earth don't have access to safe, clean drinking water.



Why Twestival?




The Kansas City Twestival volunteer team (@KCTwestival) has done an amazing job putting together and getting the word out about our local tweetup with a cause including this fantastic video from Ramsey Mohsen:

Twestival, Tweet. Meet. Give.



All the details on the February 12th Kansas City evening event are at KansasCity.Twestival.com. I'm looking forward to taking part in this worldwide charity event with my KC friends. Hope to see you there!

Good People Day - April 3

Gary Vaynerchuk, to me @garyvee, is requesting we all get together and chat up the good people in our lives. Watch Gary's video for details.

Pay homage to those that have helped you, the truly good peeps. Take time to reflect on Thursday, April 3rd and say thanks publicly to the good folks in your life via your blog, twitter, facebook profile, pounce, emails, or even IRL (novel idea)... however you want - just communicate out there so the good vibe keeps rolling...think about it, wow what a ripple effect YOU could cause.

The idea of everyone online (even those in the media) talking about good people that do amazing things just because they truly want to help people, instead of sensationalizing, bitching, gossiping, and spreading rumors - even if that could last 1 hour...it would be a wonderous, refreshing moment my friends. Let's take part!

Out with the bad juju and in with appreciation and goodwill!

GPD08 on!

Social networking for social good

I admit it. I'm a feel good person. I truly believe that when I'm doing good for others, it comes back 100 fold to me. Maybe that's why I'm so enamored with social networking and all the helping voices, hands and hearts I've come across.

I feel extremely lucky to have come into contact with social media mavens that are rocking the social networking scene for social good. There's Beth Dunn, @santaclaus - aka the Provident Partner Elves, Michael Ben-Nes, Chris Brogan, Nate Ritter, Beth Kanter, and Michele Martin - just to name a powerful few.

Chris Brogan is providing 100 useful blog tips - 1 topic a day. There's actually several pointers with each post.

Beth Kanter's blog provides tips for non-profit neophytes to experts on using social media.

Today, I added the Sharing Foundation widget to my blog's sidebar. Beth Kanter and Michele Martin have teamed up to raise funds for the Sharing Foundation in the America's Giving Challenge.

As Michele explains, "The top 8 individuals with the most unique donors for their cause will win $50,000 EACH, while 100 charities will be awarded $1,000 based on the number of donations they receive through the Challenge. The minimum donation of $10 can buy a young Cambodian student a school uniform (so he/she can go to school) and a month's worth of English lessons in the Sharing Foundation's ESL program."

Consider donating $10 to the Sharing Foundation, if you can't donate - please consider passing this message on to others.