By the time you read this post, I’ll be in Cambodia. For those of you who have been following my blogging since 2004, you know why Cambodia is in my heart! For those of you who are new, let me share why.
The photo above is of my children, Harry and Sara, who were both adopted from Cambodia. When my husband and I were in Cambodia in 2000 to bring home Harry, our infant son, we got a blessing from a monk. We promised the monk that we would hold Cambodia in our hearts and travel back with our children to their birth country when they were old enough to appreciate it. That time is this week!
We not only kept that promise, but our family went on to support various projects in Cambodia through my board membership on the Sharing Foundation and through the connections I made through my first blog, Cambodia4kids. I united my passion for social media and nonprofits, training, fundraising with Cambodia.
- I raised money through my blog and later on Twitter to send a young women, Leng Sopharoth to college from 2006-2010. I met Leng in 2007 and recorded this interview. Leng graduated from college and is married. My children will meet her for the first time.
- I raised money to help sponsor the first Cambodian Bloggers conference and raised a lot of the money via Twitter as Shel Israel noted in his book, Twitterville. I also used Twitter to get 300 t-shirts donated to bring over for the conference. I took photos of my daughter wearing the t-shirts with thank you notes for each of the donors.
- In 2007, I won the Yahoo for Good Contest, winning $50,000 for the Sharing Foundation. A year later, I competed in the Case Foundation’s America’s Giving Contest, coming in first place. I got recognition from BusinessWeek and the story was shared in this post.
- For the past two years, my family and I have been supporting a second college student, Keo Savon, and we will meet her as well as tour other Sharing Foundation projects.
- I will also meet the bloggers who have become my friends over the years and do a little bit of geeking out – perhaps learning some tips and techniques from them.
- The photo, by the way, was taken in 2006 and was the winner of the Creative Commons Photo Swag Contest in 2006 and my kids plays an important role in different fundraising videos I created for the various campaigns to support children in Cambodia.
I was going to to take a complete sabbatical offline, but my next book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit” – co-authored with KD Paine is due out in 6-8 weeks. The marketing plan needs attention and it is important because my share of the royalties are going straight back to Cambodia to support the Sharing Foundation! My first book, The Networked Nonprofit, helped send a few kids college – I want the next book to help me keep that promise to the monk.
So, expect light blogging over the next week or so. I will share a report about the projects in Cambodia. If you want to follow my trip, you can subscribe to my public updates on Facebook
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