Help Change the World..

I'm not the greatest person to participate in fundraising activities.

Don't get me wrong I'm a very charitable guy, but I tend to be the guy who makes the donation more than the guy who asks for them . I always feel like I'm imposing on someone when I ask them to support the fund raising efforts of one of the causes that are important to me like the American Cancer Society, or Easter Seals, or the Lupus Foundation, so when I am asked to be part of a group making the effort to raise money , I am reticent about asking others for their help. Maybe its a character flaw, but that's just how it is. This time I'm making an exception to that behavior because my friend Rocky Turner has allowed me and my son Hal and daughter-in-law Jennifer the privilege of helping Rocky in her constant efforts to raise money for children in Kenya.

You may know Rocky because she's married to Jeff Turner and is busy raising 6 kids, or because she has achieved so much recognition for her work with Mothers Fighting For Others, or maybe because she's just a really smart and beautiful person. Doesn't matter how you know her or if you're just hearing about her for the first time. She does stuff that some people just talk about, and other people just dream about. She works hard to make a difference - a real difference for real people.

One of those people is Irene Mwihaki, the newest member of our family. Our family has taken on the task of raising money to help her obtain an education. According to Rocky:

Irene is an extremely bright girl. She had the highest marks of all the
girls entering HS this term. She is determined to make herself proud this
school year.

I've never been to Kenya and know embarassingly little about the country. So I took a few minutes to find out what life might be like there. According to Kenya-advisor.com, life in Kenya is challenging beyond our expectations

A 2005 report by the United Nations ranked Kenya as 154th out of a list of 177 countries, in terms of life expectancy, literacy levels and overall gross
domestic product. Just three years earlier, the country had ranked 134th. For
comparison, Uganda was ranked at 144th, and Tanzania was 164th. Both are immediate neighbors of Kenya.

But we're struggling too right? Our economy is terrible weak, and everyone is feeling a pinch - but even at its worst is it this bad?

So is making a donation to Irene going to help? Surely going to school is basic. Even the poorest child in the US has that opportunity.

School fees are often out of reach for poor families, leaving each generation to continue trying to find work while lacking the education to advance. Cultural biases towards women create further limitations for the growing number of female-led households.

I look at Rocky's pictures of Irene and I see a pleasant bright eyed young girl who should have a great future in front of her. After all if you are smart, hard working and pleasant, shouldn't you have a reasonable chance be able to achieve happiness if not greatness? My Grandparents and Great Grandparents left countries where they could not achieve to come to this country. That's just not possible for everyone. But because they did, their children and their children's children had the chance to achieve and succeed. Irene deserves that too.

So help me show the power of community on-line, where a small donation from a lot of people can make a huge difference in a person's life. I'm going to depart from my norm and ask you to make that small donation. If you can, just click on the widget on the side of the page, and gove whatever you can - if you can't make a small donation, feel free to make a larger one - and if you don;t have $5 or $10 or $20 (or more) to give, forward this post to someone who might - take a minute to make a real difference in somone's life - a real some one - a smiling bright eyed girl who lives in a poverty stricken country who shouldn't be forced to loose that smile or waste the intelligence that is so obvious when you look at her eyes.

Honor your loved ones and your life by helping someone today- Please... Make a difference in the world with a little donation by making a big difference in this little girl's life -