This is so true for all of us, isn’t it? As soon as we learn a skill, a profession, or a trade, or foster one of our passions we use what we have learned and love to do to earn a living. That is why I love what The Shanti Uganda Society does for women’s economic empowerment in the Luweero District of Uganda.

A partner of Mom Bloggers for Social Good, the Shanti Uganda Society improves infant and maternal health, provides safe women-centered care and supports the well-being of birthing mothers and women living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda. In addition, they have helped form a Women’s Income Generating group where Ugandan women make beads, jewelry, and textiles to earn an income.

The Shanti Uganda Society sent me some of the women’s products and I adore them! Check out the gorgeous Katula necklace, Nabutono bracelet, and patch shoulder bag below.

All money from the sale of the women’s products go back into running the Shanti Uganda Society birth house. If you are looking to buy products for a cause I highly recommend these!

Photos: Michael James

That said, I am beginning a new weekly practice where I reflect on the things I love to do and that have fueled me over the years. One of the things I love to do is travel. Although traveling can become a bit much at times – that’s why I haven’t traveled nearly as much this year — there is nothing like hopping on a plane, checking into a new-to-me hotel and relaxing even if for thirty minutes or so before starting off to work. Hotels fuel me. Planes fuel me. In fact, the more I travel the more I find that flying is one of the only times I can truly relax. I put all of my gadgets away and don’t pull them out until I land. Flying gives me the tech detox I should be able to replicate when I’m on the ground, but never do. And when it’s a flight to another country - absolute bliss!

The second half of the year I will be traveling a lot. I am bracing myself for the rigors of being on a plane more times than I will be able to count. More than that I am looking forward to the energy I feel when I arrive in a new city whether here in the States or abroad or a city I’ve traveled to a million times.

Traveling is good for my soul. How about you?

They made me a 3-D card with flowers, mountains, forests and la pièce de résistance: a dragonfly with lips no less.

There is nothing more special than a gift created by your children. This touched me deeply.

Wishing you a happy and love-filled Mother’s Day! 

That was true then and it is still true now.

I started blogging eight years ago because I was reading really smart mothers who blogged about everything from their families and children to work-life balance and, yes, the mommy wars. In those days it seems like a mommy wars controversy erupted weekly and lit up the blogosphere. I wanted to be a part of that conversation and started my first blog. That blog is long gone, but I used to write about my daughters and family life. I also blogged about breastfeeding for Mothering magazine and motherhood for Literary Mama. As my daughters have grown older I write about other things now like the mom blogging industry and pressing global issues. As I have watched the mom blogging community form and shape itself over the years I am proud that mothers are still voicing their opinions about major issues of the day like the provocative Time magazine cover that hit the Web yesterday.

As the cover gained traction within the mom blogging community I followed links to fantastic moms’ posts about the Time cover and the mommy wars like Fact: Mommy Wars Do Not Exist by Susan of 5 Minutes for Mom and Where is the Mommy War for the Motherless Child? by Kristen of Rage Against the Minivan, I am Mom Enough by Kelly of Mocha Momma and It’s Time to Stop Fighting the Mommy Wars by Katherine of  Postpartum Progress. I followed the barrage of tweets and the slew of status update opinions on Facebook and smiled. This morning I read Ciaran’s post Are Mom Bloggers a Bunch of Boobs? It’s really deep and worth a read or two. In fact, I’m going to have to give it a re-read!

These posts and others reminded me of the good ol’ days when we used to blog heavily and freely about key issues that shape our society and motherhood. We wrote from a variety of perspectives and opinions – some popular, others not – and together it was this swelling cacophony of good writing.

I’m really happy that cacophony is still here and banging loudly throughout the mom blogging community!

So often I work so fast and all of the time that I tend to forget things I have done and don’t congratulate myself on the goals I have accomplished. It’s actually sad that my husband has to remind me of some of the amazing things that have happened in my life but because my mind is always moving 100 miles per hour I don’t give them the attention they deserve.  So today, I am writing down the big milestones that have happened in my life so far this year so I can have something to come back to whenever I feel things aren’t falling into place as perfectly as I want them to.

January 

In January I launched Mom Bloggers for Social Good which is a global coalition of mom bloggers who spread the word through their networks about pressing global issues. I am most proud that I actually started it instead of keeping the idea in my brain as I so often do. And I am also proud that I have been able to forge relationships with some of the largest nonprofits and NGOs on the planet. It has been an amazing ride so far. I can’t imagine what else is on the horizon.

You may have watched TEDxChange live as it was streamed around the world in several languages with hundreds of local TED groups watching together and taking part in robust online conversations.

On stage at Trafo, a former industrial power plant, five speakers took us through their work with sanitation and design, the critical need for renewable energy, African women and the importance of their voices in the global community, music that transforms lives as well as family planning. Melinda Gates sparked a worldwide movement during her TEDxChange talk to spread the word about the importance of family planning. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is dedicating its time, resources, and influence over the next 30 years to make sure women in developing nations have the choice to decide how many children they want to have as data tells us family planning reduces maternal and child deaths.

I enjoyed covering the event and meeting many German bloggers including a couple of  mom bloggers. They told me the mom blogging space there is a fledgling community. One  blogger speculated that it might be because of the German motherhood ideal. Maybe one day their community will grow. I have no doubt it will.

After the talks, there was a gorgeous reception where hundreds of TEDxChange attendees were engaged in lively discussions amid the backdrop of a newly refurbished power plant with dimmed lighting and blue candles placed throughout the space. The energy from the talks spilled out to the reception floor where I overheard several discussions about the ideas that had just been shared on stage.

It was wonderful being around a community of thinkers who believe in working in new ways to solve the world’s problems. If you have been following my work since the beginning of the year I started Mom Bloggers for Social Good, a global community of mom bloggers who use social media for social good. If you would like to join, we’d love to have you on board.

I greatly enjoyed my first time in Germany and hope to get back soon. You can see a set of my Flickr photos of my stay in Berlin. You can also read more about my thoughts on TEDxChange on Mom Bloggers for Social Good.

I have learned so much since my trip to Kenya. I have learned about complicated issues surrounding global poverty and real solutions to eradicate it. I have learned about HIV/AIDS and how it is tearing through developing countries, but with a global effort it can come under control. I have learned about fair trade, fair labor, and workers’ rights. I have learned that through simple solutions like having access to better seeds, arable land, and working together in farming collectives people can grow more food thereby living more food secure lives. I have learned that maternal deaths are rife in developing countries and need to drastically be reduced. No woman should die because she’s bringing life into this world.

This all leads me to why I am going back to Africa.

By happenstance I met a woman at my neighborhood coffee shop last fall who it turns out is the founder of the Nyanya Project, a non-profit organization that helps African grandmothers care for their grandchildren in the event their parents die from AIDS.

The Nyanya Project helps African grandmothers form working cooperatives that generate the income necessary to provide healthcare, education and a loving home for their grandchildren. The Nyanya Project also runs a preschool in Kibera, one of the largest slums in Kenya.

The woman and founder of the Nyanya Project  is Mary Martin Niepold, a Lecturer in Journalism at Wake Forest University and an amazing woman. In 2007 Mary went to Africa to volunteer and came back with a strong desire to do something, anything. Now the Nyanya Project helps African grandmothers in Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda.

This summer I will be going back to Kenya to volunteer with the Nyanya Project to help children who have lost their parents and the grandmothers who care for them.

If you would like to go, you can! You will have to fund your own trip as all Nyanya Project funds go to the work they do in Africa.

If you’ve ever dreamed of going to Africa to do work that helps others, here’s a wonderful chance to do so. Contact me at jjames@mombloggersclub.com to find out more information.

Or, if you cannot go to Africa, but would like to donate to the Nyanya Project to further their work, please take a moment and give what you can. They would be so appreciative!  Donate here. The Nyanya Project recently received a matching grant donation so everything you give is automatically doubled!

If you donate. Thank you! And if you would like to go to Kenya with me and the Nyanya Project, I can’t wait!

We are going to meet Willa Shalit (pictured above) who is the CEO of Fairwinds Trading as well as amazing Haitian artists. Willa Shalit is the genius behind the Heart of Haiti program that allows Haitian artists’ work to be sold in Macy’s stores across the country.

While we are in Haiti we will also visit Sean Penn’s relief camp and a camp for women of domestic violence.

It’s going to be an amazing few days and I can’t wait to share it with all of you. This holiday season when you’re last minute shopping at Macy’s be sure to look for the Heart of Haiti section. Your purchase will literally go a long way to improve the livelihood of a Haitian artist and his or her family.

Happy Holidays!

And then I decided to go back through the year to chronicle all the work I’ve done with ONE. It’s pretty surreal. It is so important to me to not forget a thing.

1. Met with ONE this February for the first time. I honestly didn’t know what that initial meeting would lead to.
2. Traveled to Kenya with the ONE Moms. We met people health workers for HIV/AIDS as well as families who live with the disease every day.
3. Traveled to Kenya with the ONE Moms. We visited Kibera, one of Africa’s largest slums.
4. Less than a week after coming home from Kenya the ONE Moms were featured as ABC News’ Person of the Week. We held a viewing party at Blogher.
5. I spoke about social media and social good during Social Good Week in New York.
6. The ONE Moms met Dr. Jill Biden in the West Wing of the White House.
7. I was on the White House grounds. Still amazed by that!
8. I, along with other ONE Moms, was excerpted on the White House blog.
9. The ONE Moms footage was shown on Good Morning America’s jumbo tron in Times Square.
10. I met with my state senator’s office during the ONE Moms’ work on the Hill.
11. I attended ONE and Red’s The Beginning of the End of AIDS panel where Bono (founder of ONE) and Alicia Keys were there.
12. I attended the ONE and Red The Beginning of the End of AIDS panel where President Obama gave a speech about ramping up HIV/AIDS relief as well as donor dollars. Look how close I was to him!

Thank you, ONE!

If you’re not already a member, be sure to join. They don’t want your money. They just want your voice.

On the first day in Kisumu, in the western part of Kenya, I was forced to choose between using a latrine or waiting to get to a local hospital to relieve myself. I walked to the latrine with a few of the other moms and upon stepping in I could barely breathe and I almost hurled. The latrine smelled entirely of feces and urine and I absolutely could not force myself to use the bathroom there. While it was one of the more sanitary latrines I would encounter during our time in rural Kenya I had to really time my bathroom visits. It was then that I realized that something has to be done about sanitation in areas that need it in Kenya. Sanitation, in fact, is a problem in many developing countries.

The lack of sanitary latrines in countries around the world is serious business and the lack of sanitation claims the lives of thousands of people every year. There were also bags of feces all over Kibera, the largest slum in Kenya, where cholera breaks out frequently. Sanitation problems lead to diarrhea and parasites. It is vital to get this problem under control in order to save people from sickness and death.

Today through the rest of the week is World Toilet Day. This initiative is to spotlight how important it is to get sanitation under control. I saw it first hand. There is good news, though. According to this article, Sanitation: Cholera and the Super-loo, in the Economist some universities with the help of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are coming up with smart ways to manage sanitation issues in developing nations. What is needed now? More investments in sanitation as well as smart ideas to solve the sanitation problem.

On the Net: toiletday.org