A diary of an experiment in social entrepreneurship

Archive for December, 2009

Yours Sincerely, Gideon

While Mama Lucy has been visiting the US and Europe, so many students have been sending messages of missing her and enquiring about her trip.  Here’s a note she got from our aspiring astronaut, Gideon Gidori:

Dear Madam!Gideon-5

Receive many greetings from Tengeru

I am fine! The main reason for writing this email is to ask you if you cold be able to  come with a DVD called “APPOLO 13”  It is all about the space shuttles.

Could you please greet Zoë and Pan for me? Please say Hi to Stacey and Sanjay as well! Tell them that we love them so much!!!

How was your flight? Was it nice?  How much did you enjoy it? What did you see when you were up there? Did you see the world below you? How is America and Americans? How do they look like? Have a great day and God bless you so much!

Yours sincerely

Gideon

PS:  Mama Lucy leaves the US tomorrow to return to Tanzania.  If you’re interested in giving a holiday gift that will change the world for a child like Gideon by giving them a great education at her school – tuition, a uniform, school supplies, or boarding – order today so that Mama Lucy can personally acknowledge your gift with a note to your gift recipient before she leaves the country, and in time for the holidays.   Click here to place your order at http://bit.ly/epicshop.

You can read more about her journey on her new tumblr blog at http://mamalucy.tumblr.com.

Photo by Tim Llewellyn at www.fourl.com.

TweetsGiving 2009: Gratitude by the Numbers

I wish we could measure the gratitude that TweetsGiving cultivated in the hearts of participants – that, after all, is the most important metric of all.  Perhaps this quote from team member John Haydon gives just a hint of how hearts were transformed:

I know that I’ve become a bigger person in how I connect with others. When I hang with my friends and family, I tell myself, ”this is the only moment we have.” I have much more gratitude equity than before I participated in Tweetsgiving.

But until we have a gratitudometer, we’ve collected these other metrics that give us some indication of just how much thanks – and giving – was created this TweetsGiving.   I hope these numbers give some insight into just how far the spirit of gratitude spread.

Much of our strategy this year involved face-to-face gratitude parties across the globe. Since many amazing organizers were involved well before the official launch of TweetsGiving, the metrics for the whole month of November are relevant. The increase in engagement we saw throughout the month makes sense given the launch of our BuddyPress community and the buzz on twitter that began once organizers started to promote their events.

Here are some of the most relevant November campaign stats for TweetsGiving …

  • IMPACT: One library and one classroom at Shepherd’s Junior School in Arusha Tanzania and countless people around the world inspired and transformed by gratitude expressed online and in person between friends, family, and loved ones.
  • TANZANIA PARTICIPATION: 555 tweets from 11/24 – 11/26.  On the final day of TweetsGiving, we saw both students and teachers tweeting from Tanzania well after midnight their time.  It turned out that the teachers had staged a vigil of sorts, camping out overnight in their classrooms to share their gratitude.  The children had been sent home, but it was clear that they’d wandered overnight to an internet cafe where one of the students, Gideon, lives in a back room.  Even parents emailed us to learn how to tweet and get involved, though we haven’t been able to count all their tweets as we don’t know all their usernames.
  • DONATIONS:
    • Total  Raised: $30,902 USD, up 180% from $11,021 in 2008
    • Total Donors:  More than 647, up over 80% from 360 in 2008.  This is a significant underestimate, as many donations were submitted in aggregate, with 1 donor submitting on behalf of many cash donors at an event.
    • Estimated Event total (ticket sales, raffles, and other event funds):  $14,035 USD, up 100% from $0 in 2008 as we had no live events. This figure is likely an underestimate because some events usepied the donation option on the tweetsgiving.org homepage rather than our event ticketing system for ticket purchases at the door.
    • Online Total (excluding ticket sales & live events): $16867 USD, up 53% from $11,021 in 2008
    • Top Turkeys: 64 donors gave over $100 – up 25% from 51 in 2008
    • New Donors:  587 donors , or 91% of total donors, had never before contributed to Epic Change.
    • Return donors:  60 donors, or 9% of total donors, were repeat donors.  Just over 16% of 2008 donors donated again in 2009.
  • THANK YOU NOTES: 22,605, up 653% from an estimated 3,000 total tweets in 2008
    • tweets: 21,226 sent by 7,638 unique Twitter users – with a total reach of 78,170,484 (a sum of all the followers of each of those 7,638 participating Twitter users)
    • blog posts: 896, up 737% from 107 in 2008.
    • photos (Flickr) – 336
    • videos (YouTube) – 79
    • songs (Blip.fm) – 68
Deb Bruser gratitude tweet Mickey Gomez gratitude tweet
  • SITE TRAFFIC (combined for tweetsgiving.org and epicchange.org)
    • Site Visitors – 36,029, up 95% from 18,468 during the same period in 2008
    • Page Views – 75,691, up 112% from 35,638 during the same period in 2008

  • CAMPAIGN VIDEO VIEWS: 9,640 between Youtube and Vimeo, up 151% from 3,852 total views of our 2008 campaign video
  • EVENTS:
    • Total Events – 37
    • Total Estimated Attendance – 1500
TweetsGiving 2009 Events Map

chartIt’s worth noting that our entire team and Honorary Turkeys, our Wild Turkeys group in the Epic Change community, and our event organizers played an important role in spreading the word as TweetsGiving got started. There were also several celebrities including Ashton Kutcher, Alyssa Milano, and Deepak Chopra, whose participation helped get the word out to an even wider audience.

So many thanks to everyone who helped make TweetsGiving 2009 a success – participants, everyone engaging in the Epic Change Online Community, event organizers across the globe, our Honorary Turkeys and core team and the many sponsors and partners who made TweetsGiving a success.

Thanks for bringing your grateful heart to the party! We hope you were as inspired as we were.

This TweetsGiving post was written as a collaboration between Avi Kaplan, Stacey Monk and Sanjay Patel.

A Very Happy Holiday Message from Mama Lucy

FINALdama_alice_compressed_largeHallo my friends!

I’m SO excited to inform you that today I received an email from my daughter about the results of our class 4 national exams.  Out of more than 100 schools in Arusha district, our school  scored 2nd position, only 2 points behind the top school.  When I heard this, I feel it’s good to write to you and share the good news!!

I hope during this holiday you’ll help us offer the opportunity for a great education to even more children in my village.  By choosing one of the gifts below, you’ll help a child attend our school.  This will help children who have lost their parents or come from families that cannot afford basic needs.

Each of these gifts will help a child get education for a full year:


You can buy these gifts in the Epic Change gift shop.


If you’ll order before I leave US on 14th December, I’ll send a note of thanks from me to the one receiving your gift. By investing in the education of a child, you’ll create a more beautiful future for all of us. What gift could be better than that?

Thank you so much!  Happy Holidays!

Mama Lucy

PS:  I hope your holidays are as happy as mine!  I’m having great time on my first visit to Europe and US.  You can see few photos and read some little about my journey on my new tumblr blog, but I’m most excited about TweetsGiving!  Thank you SO much to all of you who helped to raise money to build a new classroom and our school’s first library.  I’m SO excited!!