Saying ‘Yes’ To Helping Others

June 16th, 2009

In lieu of my weekly weight loss post:

You might remember that this whole weight loss thing started with the New Year’s Resolution of saying ‘yes’ to living a more meaningful life. Part of the resolution was the commitment to saying ‘yes’ to losing weight – but the other part of the resolution was meant to get me to start saying ‘yes’ to new opportunities that presented themselves … instead of running away from them (like I had been).

Several weeks ago I was sifting through my Gmail and out of curiosity I decided to look in my “spam” mail box. Mind you, I NEVER do this and must have been excessively bored. I get hundreds of SPAM emails a day and never give it another thought. For whatever reason, my eyes were drawn to a email with the subject line: “POVERTY IN AFRICA, please read!”

At first I thought it was one of those scams that try and get you to release your bank account information, but it turns out that the email wasn’t SPAM at all. It was written by a middle school student named Quinn. She and her classmates Kelsey & Hazel were doing a social action project focused on Heifer International. She was asking me to help her spread the word about this organization via my blog.

Instead of deleting the email or responding with quick reply of ‘thanks, but no thanks’ – Paige and I decided to help them out (we have a soft spot for middle school girls). We took a road trip to Bellingham, Washington to meet the girls in person to hear what they had to say and then made a little video about it:

If you enjoyed this video or want to spread the word about Heifer International – please Tweet, Buzz, Stumble or post this video on Facebook. Let’s show Quinn, Kelsey and Hazel that their voices can invoke change and even at their age, they can make a difference through their actions.

“In order to move forward, you have to give something back.”

- Oprah Winfrey, Stanford University Commencement Speech, 2008

Tags: cnn, heifer international, ireport, Oprah, video

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 6:34 am and is filed under Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.