We cannot know for certain how long we have here. We cannot foresee the trials or misfortunes that will test us along the way. We cannot know God’s plan for us.
What we can do is to live out our lives as best we can with purpose, and love, and joy. We can use each day to show those who are closest to us how much we care about them, and treat others with the kindness and respect that we wish for ourselves. We can learn from our mistakes and grow from our failures. And we can strive at all costs to make a better world, so that someday, if we are blessed with the chance to look back on our time here, we can know that we spent it well; that we made a difference; that our fleeting presence had a lasting impact on the lives of other human beings.
This is how Ted Kennedy lived. This is his legacy.
Excerpt from President Barack Obama’s eloquent Eulogy for Senator Ted Kennedy, August 29, 2009
“DOING GOOD” IS ALIVE AND WELL DESPITE REPORTED WANE IN VOLUNTEERISM
The results of some surveys indicate that we are experiencing a decline in civic engagement. The good news is that despite this decline we are helping in other ways. Especially true for Americans 45 years and older, who are making a shift from their work within organizational structure to helping others in their own neighborhoods by coming up with their own creative ideas and implementing them.
A New York Times article entitled, Volunteering Waning in Recession, Report Says, written by Stephanie Strom and published August 26, 2009, refers to an example of such creativity and work in Peter Norback, of Miles, Tuscon, AZ.
Mr. Norback, a self-employed computer consultant, saw hunger in his neighborhood. In January, after hearing President Obama’s call for community service, Mr. Norback started the One Can A Week Food Donation Program.
He shared his passion with his neighbors as he began talking to them about his idea and soliciting and collecting food from them. He felt if every neighborhood did what he was doing, hunger would go away.
All of the food Mr. Norback collects goes to the Community Food Bank, where the demand for food was up 40% and, as a result, the amount of food available to families had to be cut in half. Mr. Norback’s One Can A Week program is successfully helping to fill the need of the Community Food Bank. The first week Mr. Norback raised 78 pounds of food and, this past week, week 33, Mr. Norback’s One Can A Week program netted 340 pounds.
You can read more about One Can A Week at Mr. Norback’s blog, and if so inspired you can read his how-to-guide there and learn how to start such a program in your own neighborhood.
According to his Second Week Update post, Mr. Norback learned two things in the first two weeks: People like the simple but useful commitment to community service and if he is consistent in his weekly pick ups, the donations will be consistent.
Feed Your Good Dog encourages you to be of service, whether you volunteer within an organizational structure such as a non-profit or come up with your own creative way of helping your neighbors.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. ~Margaret Mead
Sam Parker draws on his vast sales and life experiences and brings us the concept of “212 degrees”. He reminds us that it is the extra effort that makes the difference. Sam’s message is powerful. He encourages us to try harder, to give more, and ultimately, enjoy more. Sam also prompts us to remember that our efforts and successes, not only improve our own lives, but can improve the world. Learn more by watching this motivational video or visiting just212.com
Looks like Saturday will be a great day to spend with Cardio Kids at Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Georgia!
The Queen of Hearts Foundation, co-founded by Katy Atterbery and Carmen Perez, brings its Cardio Kids program back to the Green Market at Piedmont Park, and invites you and your kids to “a day for Awareness and Heart Health Education dedicated to Children. The Cardio Kids is all about an ECO Play Day to share fun outside. Games and activities to get their hearts pumping and to share information as to why it is so very important for them.”
The event takes place in a market setting at Piedmont Park in Atlanta. Cardio Kids’ tent is set up as a drop by where they will lead activities on the hour.
Destination: Atlanta, GA – Queen of Hearts Foundation’s Cardio Kids tent at the Green Market.
Date: Saturday, August 22, 2009
Time: 9:00am – 1:00pm
Location: Piedmont Park’s Green Market
Address: 1071 Piedmont Ave NE
Atlanta, GA 30309
CLEAN AND SAFE DRINKING WATER MADE POSSIBLE BY CHARITY:WATER
Scott Harrison has a special gift. His gift is in his natural ability to successfully promote his clients. Today, Scott’s “client” is a non-profit organization that he founded – charity:water. Charity:water brings clean and safe drinking water to people in 14 developing nations.
In his July 12, 2009 blog post, The New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, gives us an idea how Scott uses his “natural gift of promotion” for charity:water to “ensure that every penny from new donors will go to projects in the field.” Kristof tells us that Scott “accomplishes this by cajoling his 500 most committed donors to cover all administrative costs.”
Scott’s journey to charity:water shows us what can happen when one uses their “gift” for good.
Scott graduated from New York University with a communications degree. He spent 10 years in special event planning and promotions, and then started a small upscale event planning and nightclub consultancy business. Kristof says that Scott “spent his nights surrounded by friends in a blur of alcohol… He lived in a luxurious apartment and drove a BMW — but then on a vacation in South America he underwent a spiritual crisis.
‘I realized I was the most selfish, sycophantic and miserable human being,’ he recalled. ‘I was the worst person I knew.’”
Scott decided to see what the opposite of his current life would look like. In August, 2004, he left the event business and all he had worked for in Manhattan to serve for a year as a volunteer photojournalist onboard the Mercy Ship Anastasis in impoverished Liberia, West Africa. – a country with no public electricity, running water or sewage.
There he became familiar with the life-threatening effects of contaminated water and in September 2005, returning home to New York City, he tested the idea behind charity: water by producing a large exhibition of his photographs and videos called mercy. Despite opening in the midst of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, Scott’s mercy. show was a success. Visitors contributed more than $96,000 towards providing medical procedures and freshwater wells in West Africa. Scott returned to West Africa for another 6 month journey in October 2005, before returning to Manhattan in the spring of 2006 to found charity:water.
Over the last 3 years, using his gift, Scott and the charity:water crew have according to Mr. Kristof’s post “raised $10 million (most of that last year alone) from 50,000 individual donors, providing clean water to nearly one million people in Africa and Asia.”
View the following video to see The Idea Camp’s interview with Scott Harrison and learn the details of his incredible journey to charity:water.
One who considers himself free is indeed free and one who considers himself bound remains bound. As one thinks so one becomes is a popular saying in this world, and it is true. ~ from the Ashtavakra Gita
Less than a week ago, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in to the Supreme Court and became our country’s first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice. Forget all the politics…she is to be admired for taking responsibility and rising to the challenge as a child and young woman to improve herself, and as an adult for being committed to improving the world around her.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was born to a Puerto Rican family and grew up in a public housing project in the South Bronx. Her dad was a factory worker with a third grade education and died when she was only nine years old. After her father’s death, Sotomayor turned to books for solace and her love of reading and learning grew.
Sotomayor and her brother Juan acquired their strong belief in the power of education from their mom. Sotomayor was driven by an indefatigable work ethic and while managing a diagnosis of juvenile diabetes, she excelled in school. She graduated as valedictorian of her class and won a scholarship to Princeton University.
Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton. She was a co-recipient of the M. Taylor Pyne Prize, the highest honor Princeton awards to an undergraduate. At Yale Law School, Justice Sotomayor served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and as managing editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order.
Justice Sotomayor’s improved herself through hard work and dedication, and as a result her community has benefitted. On a local level, her favorite project is the Development School for Youth program, which sponsors workshops for inner city high school students. Every semester, approximately 70 students attend 16 weekly workshops that are designed to teach them how to function in a work setting. The workshop leaders include investment bankers, corporate executives and Justice Sotomayor, who conducts a workshop on the law for 25 to 35 students. In addition to the workshop experience, each student is offered a summer job by one of the corporate sponsors. The experience is rewarding for the lawyers and exciting for the students, commented Justice Sotomayor, as “it opens up possibilities that the students never dreamed of before.” [Federal Bar Council News, Sept./Oct./Nov. 2005, p.20] This is one of many ways that Justice Sotomayor is using her education and experience to improve the world and inspire young people to achieve their dreams.
Justice Sotomayor now has the opportunity to role model on a national level. She improved herself and now can improve the world.
Some of the information in this post was extracted from a White House press release which can be read by clicking here.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver founded the Special Olympics and, on July 20, 1968, the first Special Olympic Games were held at Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois.
The Special Olympics was created out of Ms. Shriver’s love and respect for the individual nature of people with intellectual disabilities and her desire to see that they reach their full potential without changing who they inherently are. The bonus, as Ms. Shriver saw it, is that we all change for the better as we allow people with intellectual disabilities grow into all they are meant to be.
In a statement from the Special Olympics on her death, Timothy Shriver says “… it was her unconditional love for the athletes of Special Olympics that so fulfilled her life.”
Her son goes on to say that his mother “…never hoped that people with intellectual disabilities should be somehow changed into something they were not. Rather, she fought throughout her life to ensure that they would be allowed to reach their full potential so that we might in turn be changed by them, forced to recognize our own false assumptions and their inherent gifts.”
To that end, as we learn from the video, the Special Olympics provides individuals with consistent opportunities to realize their potential, develop physical fitness, and establish self confidence thereby enriching both individual lives and communities as a whole.
So it is that Eunice Kennedy Shriver dedicated her life to her “special friends” and through her lifelong tireless efforts created a world stage on which they can inspire us all by improving themselves and improving the world.
The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.
~John Locke
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