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

Recently I was asked to write weekly for a large, well-known Web site. I was happy to be asked and was glad to have fallen on their radar. But when it came time to read and sign the contract I had to laugh and laugh I did!

The contract contained a lot of double speak as well as their right to own my content perpetually worldwide. How funny is that, friends? So, in other words, they could repackage my content and publish it in a book and I wouldn’t see a dime from sales. Or, they could take my content and re-run it on a Web site they might launch five years down the road. Needless to say I turned down that faux opportunity because I have to protect my interests first and foremost. No potential opportunity is worth the possibility that your content will be used over and over again without your consent or proper payment.

I want to tell you a quick story, one that I have told before. When I was a newbie blogger a big media company came to me and wanted me to join their ad network. I was so thrilled to be speaking with this company that I lost my marbles. I became a part of their ad network and signed an exclusivity contract, and signed away my traffic to them in the process. Sure, I was able to write for said media company and it was a great byline, but I was stuck in a contract for a year that limited my earning potential. We all know how ad networks can do that sometimes.

This is all to say that while I have learned a lot along the way and can share my advice with you I had to walk through the fire first before becoming wiser. Always remember, don’t be flattered just because a brand or media company comes your way. Carefully weigh the pros and cons then make a measured decision.

I know I can get in the press more. I just need to be more intentional about it. In 2003 I started a community for homeschoolers and was in the press – both national and international – several times every month. I was on CNN and in every major newspaper in the country. I even had a South Korean news crew come to our home to do a news segment. It was pretty intense, but extremely worth it. In 2012 I need to replicate the same energy I had in the early days to transform that into more media mentions about the work I currently do like this piece in Skirt magazine. I’m really excited about 2012. This has been a great year, but next year is going to be phenomenal. How do I know? Because I’m going to make it happen.

I write this to stress how imperative it is to push yourself if you want to really grow. Pushing yourself is vastly different for everyone. Pushing yourself as a blogger may mean going to conference for the first time or taking a totally different approach to your blog’s content. It may mean reaching out to work with a brand or pitching yourself to the media.

After seven years working online I know I have to push myself so I don’t get complacent and run on autopilot. That’s very easy to do. I have to push myself to create a better Mom Bloggers Club and Mom Blog magazine. I have to push myself to create a more engaged Facebook page. I have to push myself to be more focused and dedicated to getting things done.

Taking risks jump starts your engines. It makes you more creative and allows you to see different paths to reaching your goals. The next time you feel stuck in a rut, first write down your goal. Then think about how you’re going to get there. If taking a risk will get you to your goal quicker don’t hesitate to do it.

Be courageous! 

This Friday I will make my way to Washington, DC for Blogalicious! I love Blogalicious. It is by far one of my absolute favorite conferences of the year. I can’t wait to catch up with tons of my friends. This is going to be a phenomenal weekend.

Then directly after Blogalicious I will stay in DC for meetings with ONE and the other ONE MOMS. We’ll be meeting with members of the Obama Administration and our elected officials. I cannot wait to see everyone. The last time we all saw each other we were saying our good-byes in Amsterdam.

Then I am off to London for some meetings and meet-ups and a conference. It will be a whirlwind for sure as I’m not staying very long; just long enough to do everything and fly back home. I can’t wait. I think I’m secretly excited about flying Virgin Atlantic for the very first time.

And then yesterday I was asked to speak on the mom blogging panel at the Alliance for Women in Media Symposium on November 2 in New York. The panel moderator will be René Syler from Good Enough Mother. I will join Susan Getgood, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Blogher and Ilana Rosengarten, President, Mommy Shorts.

So excited! Will you be traveling anywhere soon? Will I see you at Blogalicious?

The UN General Assembly convened talks about non-communicable diseases and countless NGOs and advocacy organizations continued discussions about reaching the Millennium Development Goals set forth by the UN in 2000. In fact, collectively we have four years until all of the MDGs must be met in 2015 and right now the maternal health goal is far from being met. Though significant strides have been made to save lives of women and children 350,000 women still lose their lives in childbirth every year in sub-Saharan Africa, and Central and South Asia.

UN Week was an extremely busy time where I learned a tremendous amount about the Millennium Development Goals and saw the launch of several new initiatives designed to improve global maternal health.

Million Moms Challenge

ABC News and the UN Foundation launched the Million Moms Challenge (www.millionmomschallenge.com) that charges moms around the world to connect around the issue of maternal and child health. The Million Moms Challenge was created to make a difference in the lives of moms and children who need the most help. In fact, for the first 100,000 sign ups, Johnson & Johnson will donate $100,000 to several NGOs helping moms and babies around the world.

Social Good Summit – Panel about the Future of Maternal Health and Technology and New Media

At Mashable’s Social Good Summit, Christy Turlington Burns, founder of Every Mother Counts discussed what led her on the path to devoting her life to educating people about the systemic worldwide maternal and child health problems. Heather Armstrong of Dooce fame discussed her new commitment to using her blog and voice for the larger purpose of amplifying the issue of maternal and child health and how the trip to Bangladesh  changed her life and the way she now views her platform for social good.

Million Moms Challenge Breakfast at ABC HQ

In the middle of the week I made my way to ABC headquarters on the upper east side of Manhattan. There we had a networking breakfast that celebrated the launch of the Million Moms Challenge.

Shot@Life Launch by the UN Foundation

To read more about the party, be sure to hop over to Mom Blog magazine for my full coverage.

The highlight of my evening was to quickly say “hi” to Viktor, my favorite on Project Runway this season. I really hope he wins!

Plus, the Emmys come on tonight! If you’re into awards shows you’ll be in for a treat. I can’t believe it has been a year already since I covered Emmy weekend last year with Duncan Hines. That sure was fun! Have a great Sunday!

Nominee Reception | Emmy Awards 2010