Ben Willans fundraising memorial page

Hearing that your young child has ‪#‎cancer‬ is something that most of us will never hear. Being blindsided with Stage 4 of any kind of cancer is the worst kind of diagnosis.

A parents worst nightmare is happening for this family in England. Judy and Brians 4 yr old boy Ben was just diagnosed 4 weeks ago with Stage 4 ‪#‎Neuroblastoma‬ and is undergoing a very aggressive chemo treatment. The treatment has only a 30% success rate and because the UK doesn’t have protocol treatment for a relapse treatment, the family is raising funds to bring him to the United States.

Buddy Benches

I first heard about ‪#‎buddy_benches‬ from an UpWorthy piece. They started when Dustin Rumsey posted the idea on Facebook. The idea was very popular and many communities are stepping up to bring them to schools.

The idea if you haven’t heard about it, is that if a child is feeling left out or excluded they sit on the bench. This tells the students that they would like to talk with someone. The students then have the option of coming over and sitting down with them.

This gives them the chance to say “come play with me” without having to hold back from fear of rejection. It also teaches kids to be ‪#‎kind‬ to one another and include everyone in their activities.

Two hands working together

Redeeming the world sounds like a pretty humongous goal. We all look for ways to give back to our community, to ‪#‎pay_it_forward‬. Social enterprise is something that we can participate in whether you want to enhance your own business into a social enterprise or spend your consumer dollars supporting the businesses who are a social enterprise.

If you were to make a list of businesses who are looking to redeem our world, who would be on that list? They are known as ‪#‎social_enterprises‬ and some may be well known and others you might not recognize. We encourage you to take a look and consider doing business with these social enterprises, who are working hard to redeem our world. There is a link at the end of the article for the Social Venture Network’s list. I am sure that googling can find even more companies.

More and more businesses and organizations are stepping up to ‪#‎giveback‬ to society. There are two ways they are paying it forward, through contributions to charities and through having a business that doubles as a social enterprise.

‪#‎Charities‬ fill one kind of gap being filled of, “the give the man a fish”. They come to a problem with advocacy and policy changes. There is no money to be made in work of most charitable foundations. When there is a natural disaster, they can mobilize and get working much faster than social enterprise can.

With social enterprises, we have the gap being filled of “teach a man to fish”. They believe that what they create needs to create a deep and lasting impact. They want the beneficiary of their work to benefit long term. It is geared towards delivering long-term sustainable changes. They do this by commercializing the skills that the individual who needs assistance learns. They look at the problem and see how they can fix it at the best possible price, and maybe even get paid for the solution.

What we are advocating is the combination of the two hands working together. The right hand – without passion, without compassion, without drive we can’t create social change. The left – without advocacy, without policy, we can’t create social change. I don’t think the right hand or the left hand is better than the other. Combining them together just makes sense, many hands make short work as the saying goes. Sharing resources, values and working together we will serve the short term assistance that is needed and put things in place to see lasting long term change.

We saw this in our post a few weeks back. A college girl saw a short term need with the homeless in Detroit – it was cold and they needed jackets and sleeping blankets to keep warm. She took her skills and created a sample sleeping blanket that converts into a jacket. She then applied for a grant, which she won. She then taught and employed several homeless women to sew the jacket/sleeping blankets. They then had sponsors with local businesses to purchase the jacket/blankets to provide to those who needed them. The charity got the grant and sponsorship’s and provided the needed jackets/sleeping blankets. The social enterprise was created by her employing the homeless to manufacture the jacket/blankets.

We need to think outside the box of how things have always done. Everyone uses the once a year fundraising format. They have the
charity runs, the silent auctions with dinner, or the annual golf tournament. This just makes raising funds way to hard and too much work.

Instead lets think outside the box and look to innovate to create something new, different, and then apply a business model to it so that the service provided becomes self sustaining.

See more:  http://svn.org/meet-our-members/featured-member-profiles

Cocks Not Glocks

The new mantra at the University of Texas? ‪#‎CocksNotGlocks‬

I can honestly say that if my child was entering college this year, they would not be going to the University of Texas at Austin, Texas.

With all of the college shootings we have had, the tragic loss of life and emotional scars that those that were shot or were those who were standing next to them as the shots were fired – this ruling makes no sense to me.

Not my movie, not my drama

This is a really profound quote. It really struck a chord in my heart because I so resonated with the underlying truth. Really sit with the words, “tell me why they were so comfortable to say what they were saying to you”. What do you see about yourself that may have attracted this?

So what does it say about me, that someone might come to me with some “juicy” gossip that they are spreading about someone I know. What signals am I broadcasting that they think I want to join in and be a part of something like that? How am I telling them that I love the drama of someone else’s downfall?

People for the most part will not say to you a mean or hurtful thing about someone that you really care about. People for the most part will not gossip with someone that they know won’t put up with it.

There are some minor exceptions to this rule, like my father in-law. Years ago we were staying with my in-laws waiting for the closing on our home. I had went up to the kitchen to get something and he was there. He went off on a tear down of his son, about how he was a disappointment , that all of my father in-laws failures could be traced back to his children. He said mean, hurtful cruel things about his son. Finally he ran out of steam, and I just looked at him and said, “so what kind of response are you looking for here? Why are you telling me these things? I love my husband and he isn’t anything like the son that you are describing”, and walked away. He is the exception to the rule because he is so unhappy in his life, and he doesn’t want to take responsibility for how it has turned out, so he goes around trying to tear you down to his level. The only thing you can do with someone who has a toxic personality is limit the exposure to them.

Years ago I adopted the saying, “not my movie, not my drama”, for when people that I work with start down the road of tearing down someone in their life. My sister says, “not my circus, not my monkeys”. I try very hard not to join in or be around those kinds of conversations. If they won’t let the conversation be turned to something positive, then I excuse myself and walk away.

What we need in our lives is more positive conversations; more love shown in both our words and out actions. More up building and less tearing down. More compassion and less drama. More celebrating of the positive accomplishments of people and less glorification of the tragedy that takes someone out.

This even plays out in the feedback we provide around customer service. How fast are we to complain to someone in charge when we are not treated the way we want, but do we have the same rate of speed to ask for someone in charge to praise a persons excellent customer service in taking care of you?

This quote takes it a little deeper for me that just avoiding the “drama queens”. It says that the quality of the conversations that I am part of is due in some part (large or small) to what I am attracting – knowingly or unknowingly. Gives me a slice of a shadow that I didn’t realize might still be there to work on rooting out.

What do you think about this quote? Does it say anything special to you?

You can't dream when you are struggling to survive

This one hits home for me. When I was 13 yrs old, my mom left my stepdad for another man. We moved from San Jose where we lived in a three bedroom home and used the garage as a fourth bedroom into a motel room with one bedroom which was my moms. There were seven kids who slept in the living room. All we had was the clothes we could fit into a pillow case.

We were surviving on welfare food, which wasn’t sufficient to last the entire month. Then my mom’s new boyfriend disappeared and we could no longer afford the rent. My mom started bringing back to our place men she picked up in bars in order to pay for the motel room. When that wasn’t enough we moved to a campground. We were homeless for several months while she reconciled with my step father and they saved to get us into a new home.

the STAR program

When you drive down the road and see teenage girls dressed provocatively and selling their bodies, do you think she is a child prostitute or do you see her as a sexually exploited child?

As a society we have been taking damaged young girls and continuing to perpetuate their belief that they don’t matter and are somehow wrong and/or deserve the treatment they have been given in their short lives.

The courts are finally realizing that these teens are not criminals, but commercially sex trafficked children. They don’t need to be arrested, they need help. They have been emotionally and/or sexually abused and this unhealed trauma leads to drug use, makes it difficult for them to stay in school and stay out of trouble.

It is World Cerebral Palsy Day

It is World Cerebral Palsy Day

Tonight’s LemonadeMaker story is celebrating the parents of Natalie.

When she was 7 months old she was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy. Lucky for Natalie had wise parents. They brought her up to believe that she can be and do anything she wants. It might take her longer, but that isn’t a big deal.

Do you believe in destiny?

Do you believe in destiny? That somewhere out there is the soul mate that you’ve been looking for? Is this really a FB glitch or the universe bringing two people together?

A man in another state suddenly finds himself logged in to someone else’s FB account. He has a flip phone and so nothing fancy. He tries to log out but the FB button is missing. He messages the FB account for the woman’s account he is in, and asks for her help to get him off. Nothing works until they try her friending him and finally he can get off her account and into his own.

SOUP

Kaherl does crowdfunding with a LemonadeMaker twist.

SOUP delivers soup, salad, and bread and you get to hear 4 pitches from people or groups who are trying to bring positive change to the city of Detroit. Each presenter has four minutes for their presentation and at the end of dinner, everyone votes on the best one. The winner takes home a microgrant, which is the take for the price each person who attends pays for dinner.

In the past five years 800 ideas have been presented and the micorgrant usually run between $700 – $1,000.

One college student designed winter coats that could double as sleeping bags for the homeless (which we talked about a month or two ago). Another group employed women living in shelters to make jewelry from chipped graffiti paint. They have financed mechanic classes, a local travel guide and a documentary film. They granted a mircogrant to D.A.N.C.E. a company who offers affordable dance lessons for the city’s underserved youth.

What a great idea that could be easily duplicated in every city in the nation. You enroll local business leaders to come together one night a month to support those local LemonadeMakers who are designing programs that provide jobs to the homeless, who enroll the youth into positive up-building programs like dance. You help existing programs expand to be more successful. You make your city/town a better place to live. Improving the world, one bowl of soup at a time!

Read more: http://nationswell.com/amy-kaherl-detroit-soup-community-renewal/#ixzz3nxEPmxk8

The heart knows a thousand ways to speak

When I look at this quote and picture there is such a bond between the dog and child. You can just feel the energetic connection. Our pets sense our needs so well that it seems as though our hearts are speaking to each other.

I remember as a child I would hold my dog Snoopy and sometimes just cry out my frustrations. I felt like he was the only one who I could talk to about my problems. I knew that my dog was never disappointed in me. He was always happy to see me. I think that he is the reason I remained sane in an sometimes insane childhood.

Guitars Over Guns

Most of the hero’s that we talk about here at LemonadeMakers are the those everyday men and women that step outside of the comfort of their own lives to make a positive difference in the world. Chad Bernstein is one of those ‪#‎LemonadeMakers‬ trying to make a positive difference in the world.

On Thursday October 8, Anderson Cooper & the New Day team reveal the ‪#‎Top_10_CNN_Heroes‬ of 2015. One of those hero’s being considered for the Top 10 is Chad Bernstein. He is trying to help kids in Miami leave behind the ‪#‎gun_violence‬ through his nonprofit, Guitars Over Guns.