I wish I could. Really, I do. But the truth is perhaps I’m not evolved enough. Maybe I haven’t had the right teacher, maybe I haven’t tried hard enough – or, more likely, too hard to do it the “right way” – when perhaps there’s no “right way” at all.

But I think I know what it feels like. To me, it feels like baking chocolate cookies. Fully present. Senses heightened. Mindless & mindful all at the same time.

When I cook, my mind stops making lists. It stops worrying, planning, regretting, wondering. There’s something therapeutic for me about stirring a pot with all my strength, kneading dough, chopping garlic and ginger for curry, making soup made entirely from scratch, and the scent of fresh-baked cookies.

This isn’t the type of cooking done by most Americans I know in less than 30 minutes; that’s a nearly impossible feat for me, and completely unpleasureable. This is the type of cooking done on a Sunday afternoon for five slow hours, or, as it happened last week, a Friday afternoon, for more than three.

Normally, here and everywhere, I think everyone I know would call me “task-oriented”. There’s a distinction made in organizational psychology between those focused on getting tasks done, like me, and the “maintenance-oriented” who keep a team playing together nicely. No one has ever mistaken me for the latter. While we’re here in Tanzania, there’s a list of at least twenty things to be done – teaching classes, labeling & cataloging books so that the library can open the moment construction is finished, meeting with Mama Lucy & the architect to get the children’s home underway…but the truth is I relish moments when there is nothing that must be done. Friday, for instance, we baked cookies. Cookies aren’t necessarily on the critical path to our next big deliverable – but I think they may very well be the most memorable thing we’ve done in Tanzania so far.

Gladys had never even eaten a chocolate chip cookie. I’d baked them once before for Glory & Gideon, so they’d each eaten one. Gideon swore he couldn’t bake, but was more than interested to know how. The matron at the school’s rented 3-bedroom, 14-child boarding facility had taught Glory & Gladys to make chapati over an open fire in the makeshift kitchen-shed out back. That was all they knew of baking, though Glory had cooked bananas with her sisters too.

After I made them tuna casserole with Kraft macaroni & cheese for lunch (forgive me, I know, but, really, I couldn’t help myself but to bring it and share a tiny taste of America), we set about making cookies. We had no measuring spoons or cups, and they’d never followed a recipe, but they were, as always, quick learners. For the first batch, we helped them understand the directions, measure, pour, stir, and even taught them how to crack eggs. (Forgive me again, I know, but I may have let them taste a tiny bit of the dough, too, raw egg and all.) For the second batch, made much more quickly, they’d mastered the art and did it all by themselves.

They stared through the glass oven door as the cookies melted, in awe of the transformation taking place before their very eyes. In science, they’d just learned about the states of matter, and were transfixed as they watched the dough transform from solid to liquid and back to solid again.

Do you remember the first time you tasted a warm, freshly-baked chocolate chip cookie?

I don’t, but I’m not sure it could have tasted better than these.

As we passed each child a cookie, they waited, we counted to three, and they each took a bite. Gooey, still warm, I asked if biscuits (local sugar cookies) were better, or, their favorite food, chapati (a flat, warm, thick tortilla-like local bread). Nothing, they insisted, was better than this.

I asked Gideon, our future rocket ship pilot, if he preferred learning how to use Twitter, or learning to bake chocolate chip cookies. There was no contest. Cookies. How could anything compare?

Last year, when Gideon learned to use Skype, his father, Gidori, was working in a small internet cafe, and lived with his son in the back. The video was dark & blurred, the audio nearly indecipherable, especially when coupled with a language barrier, transmission was delayed and stilted, and the connection would cut every minute or so, so you’d have to redial. But Gideon was relentless. He’d dial again. And again. He’d stay on skype for hours while his father worked at the cafe. On Halloween, he snuck out from the back room at 3am, determined to make out from the shadowy figure on screen the costume my niece Zoe was wearing. We stayed on skype with Gideon at home while Zoe trick-or-treated for hours, dialing & redialing so he could catch a glimpse when she returned home. Suffice it to say, when he had access to the internet from his father’s cafe, Gideon’s interest in skype was tireless.

I asked him if skype was better than chocolate chip cookies – and he thought for a bit to determine his answer.

“No,” he said, with total conviction, “This is the best day ever.”

Wherever you are, and whomever you love, I hope today you find time together to get something done that can only be done when there’s nothing that must be done.

I’m not usually a light sleeper. And jet lag doesn’t usually so affect me.

Chalk it up to the ebb and flow of a sometimes capricious universe.

I had a bad dream too – and some seriously itchy welts on my back that we’re attributing to bedbugs. Enough with the whining. Sleepy, itchy, whatever, somehow Arusha has come to feel like home. Nyumbani. As I reflect back on the first time we arrived, wide-eyed, apprehensive and totally overwhelmed with the constant rush of never-before-seen flashes of experience and insight, now is so very different. We are no longer wageni (guests), just old rafiki (friends) – though I’m sure our Swahili has, sadly, not gotten much better.

(Prayers have begun. It’s 5am. I was right, they do drown out the dogs, though they’re trying very hard to sing along.)

My sleeplessness could be a result of the fact that my mind is filled with so many ironies and so much cognitive dissonance both when I arrive and when I leave Africa each time…how could the same world hold so much and so little all at once?

This morning, as a lie awake, I’m consumed with…

My Super Sweet 16.
I flipped on the television earlier today briefly and found out that Yasenia (sp?) of New Jersey was having her 16th birthday party. Hooray. As her gifts, she received a 7-carat diamond ring and a Mercedes S550. (I don’t even know what that car codename means, except that her father paid over $100,000 USD for the privilege.) In addition, through the miracle of MTV, she gifted the rest of the globe with a radically ostentatious display of her conspicuous consumption. When she was finished, NBA stars gave even the poorest people in the world a tour of their palatial estates, er, “Cribs”.

A month or two ago, someone Mama Lucy follows on twitter was giving a 140-character inventory of their technology possessions – all the latest toys and gadgets they’d proudly acquired. Not one to shy away from important conversations, Mama Lucy subtly & graciously engaged the person, with whom she’d interacted many times before. She tweeted (I’m paraphrasing) – “Wow. You’re truly blessed to have so much. If you don’t need all that you have, the children at my school need technologies like these for learning.” The tweeter did not respond.

I wonder how the world would change if each time we consumed, we were required to interact with those who, through no fault of their own, could not afford our luxuries. What if, when we spent $100 USD on our next meal, we had a conversation with a child who hadn’t enough to eat, or, when we proudly purchased our next iPad, we spoke directly to the factory worker who constructed the machine?

We may call these radical inequalities the “status quo”, a somehow immutable evil. We may delude ourselves into thinking that somehow we or our ancestors have earned our relative privilege. We may blame or credit “the system” from which we benefit, as if we do not in our action (or inaction) perpetuate it. I wonder.

What is enough?
This week in class, I asked students in the 5th & 6th grades to write short paragraphs on their recent field trip to NgoroNgoro Crater. I passed a clean sheet of paper to each student on which they’d write their name and 5 or 6 short sentences about their trip, depending on their grade level. At the end of class, as I collected the work from each student, sixth-grader Vicky pointed out that six sentences had only taken about 1/4 of the paper, and asked if she should use her ruler to carefully tear the “used” portion of the page from the “un-used” portion. Since she hadn’t written on 75% of the page, she knew we could use it later for another assignment.

Imagine if our children were so careful, so conscious. Vicky is no Yasenia – and yet, our culture, and its exports, may sadly imply she should aspire to become her.

It’s not what you know…
While we’re here, we’re hoping to open the school’s first library and move the technology lab from its current classroom (which will be used to house their first seventh grade class next year) into the same space to create a library & technology learning center. To give Mama Lucy a few ideas on finishing touches, yesterday we visited three other local schools to see their libraries and computer labs. The schools we visited were founded nearly the same time as Mama Lucy’s, and had nearly the same number of students.

One, founded by an Australian, was funded by millions of dollars from abroad. Millions. Admittedly, the facilities are gorgeous – surpassing even most US schools I’ve visited. I’d wager, though, that Mama Lucy has spent less than 10% of that budget, perhaps less than even 5%, to build her school. Mama Lucy’s students have also outperformed students from this comparatively extravagant campus for both of the past two years in which they’ve participated on national exams.

As Mama Lucy, Sanjay and I talked about our visit on the way home, we reflected on the differences between her school and it’s comparatively extravagant counterpart. We wondered whether Vicky’s conscious regard for resources would be found there, whether that proud aspect of her culture would be maintained.

We also discussed changemakers we’ve met from across the globe. Indigenous changemakers from emerging economies are often incredibly resourceful, scrupulously efficient, and able to create remarkable outcomes on a shoestring budget. They also tend to be able to negotiate the best prices for local goods and services; here in Tanzania, when I’ve mistakenly tagged along to request estimates for construction or materials, we’ve been quoted a mzungu (foreigner) price that may be 10 times the going rate for a local.

Yet it is vastly simpler for Western changemakers to attract resources to their projects than for an African or Nepali, for example, to forge the relationships required to attract investment from abroad.

I wonder if Vicky or Yasenia, if they set their mind to change the world, would sooner find funding for their endeavors. Would we laud Yasenia for her generous heart and lavish even more resources upon her if she set about changing the world in her own image? Would we be impressed by her audacity when she sought to raise $10M for her project? Would Vicky even be heard? Would her relatively meager request for $100K be brushed aside, dismissed as small potatoes in comparison?

So many questions dancing right now. I fear I’ll have to sleep to hush them. If sleep would ever come.

Of course, my more common path to quiet these incessant internal inquiries is to keep so busy that I won’t go absolutely mad in my attempts to resolve unanswerable questions.

While I wait for sleep to return, I’ll text friends to set up email, twitter & tumblr accounts for 20 fifth graders, and type up the short essays they wrote…

I wonder if I do these things as distraction or progress.

But two days ago, they saved my life. And I’m not even exaggerating…

Before I get to that part of the story, I must first share that the last two weeks have, for the most part, been bliss.

A few things I have not done:
(Seriously, not at all.)

• Dial – or even touch – a phone.
• Use the internet.
• Turn on a computer.
• Send a text message.
• Tweet.
• Blog.
• Use Facebook.
• Watch television.
• Interact with a screen.
• Taken a photo, or a video.
• Stay up late to finish the work – or get up early to start it.
• Eat hurriedly to get back to a task.
• Make a to-do list.

A few things I have done.

• Swim in the ocean and in a freshwater spring that’s 72 degrees all year long.
• Hike. Alot. Through swamps and mangroves and hardwood forests.
• Eat mangos freshly-picked from a tree on a hidden trail – and wild blackberries too.
• Cook meals slowly over an outdoor fire.
• Have a romantic dinner on the water under a canopy during a thunderstorm at a delectable indian restaurant where we were the only customers.
• Get my skin kissed by the sun. Over & over & over again.
• Chase raccoons and turtles.
• Run from snakes and big hairy spiders.
• Fall asleep exhausted and salt-covered.
• Read 2 books. Purely for pleasure. (loved The Omnivore’s Dilemma & didn’t love Little Bee)
• Run with my dog in the grass and on the beach.
• Lose 5 more pounds. To add to the 11 I lost last month.
• Toast marshmallows.
• Play with kids – and people – I love more than anyone in the whole wide world.

In short, I was thoroughly human. And it has made all the difference.
I feel like a whole new girl.

Of course, as I mentioned, there was the one near-death experience.

I left one activity off the list above:

We canoed for more than 7 hours in alligator-infested waters.
Of course, I’m not really sure you can call it “canoeing” when you:

• Tip the boat 7 times in 7 hours.
• Swim as often as you float. (Did I mention there were ALLIGATORS in the water? Like, ones that have eaten people in this very creek.)
• Cut your hand so badly that you’re rendered nearly incapable of rowing.
• Use your hands more than your oars to steer and grapple with low hanging trees that threaten to decapitate you if you lose focus for even a second.
• Sink into over 4 feet of mud as you claw your way onto an uninviting shore where snakes and who-knows-what-else await.
• Once toppled, feel your feet tangled in tree roots under water as you scramble to get a life vest to your boyfriend who’s not a great swimmer and whose face, barely surfacing above the water, wears a look of sheer terror.
• Stand on the muddy banks looking for a nonexistent hiking path to safety or motorized rescue.
• Watch powerlessly as a torrential downpour and thunderstorm open up overhead.
• Hang perched in a tree crying & blowing a useless emergency whistle while your boyfriend, whom you can no longer see, holds your flipped canoe against a current whose speed is being multiplied by the power of the storm.
• Hold on for dear life to each passing branch and threaten not to go on as you sob and say “i just can’t do it.”
• Lose glasses, a flip camera, hat, sunglasses, and your dignity in a creek that we’d later learn is the “most challenging canoe run in Florida”. Nice.
• End up floating somehow backward down the creek as more low-hanging and fallen trees greet you at every zig and zag.
• Scream like a little girl while you watch alligators pass under the boat & swat away spiders that are bigger than your hand.
• Get back in the boat 7 times in 7 hours, each time more terrified that the next time you could get tangled in the jaws of a hungry reptile or roots that threaten to drown you.
• Get rescued by gracious kayakers named Tanya & Larry who shepherded you slowly down the rest of the course as you cry in gratitude and a fear that won’t relent until you reach dry land.

(Maybe this description from another unsuspecting canoeist on this run will fill in any missing details.)

Larry would right our boat twice after kayaking up and downstream searching for oars we lost in the upturns.
Somehow, through it all, he maintained his sense of humour, saying the last time,
“You know, the open part’s supposed to be on top, right?”

Tanya kayaked calmly, encouragingly behind us whistling to Larry when we needed his help to surmount an obstacle.

Larry and Tanya had once been rescued by helicopter as they crossed a raging river in Northern Georgia.

For me, the whole experience was just a reminder that people rarely get where they’re going all by themselves. (Not even me.)
Especially when they’re going somewhere they’ve never been.

The stories of rugged individualism that surround our entrepreneurs, heros, athletes, leaders – and even ourselves- are only myths and legends. The self-made man is a fable. Behind each one is an unseen, unheard, rarely celebrated legion of friends, families, employees, supporters, fans, educators, coaches & more – who’ve invested in dreams not their own to make them possible.

While I was out, several folks pitched in to help. Many people had my back – Betsy, Tori, you know who you are.

It’s good to be reminded that you’re not in this alone.

When you need it most, and when you least expect it, there’s a Tanya, Larry or maybe even a helicopter waiting just past the next bend to carry you home. As long as you keep getting back in the boat, stay on the trail, and keep rowing.

Thanks, to all of you who have been my Larry & Tanya over the past two weeks – and over the last three years.

My gratitude is deep and abiding.

And I’m back.

Off to Africa again on Friday…

it won’t come.

because what’s inside me right now is the deep enveloping knowledge that i have nothing left to give right now.

i’m tired.

i’ve been putting it off for a while, thinking (and hoping) this feeling would soon pass.

it hasn’t.

i’m weary to my bones.

i’ve no will to say or do the right thing.
or even to figure out what that is.

somewhere between our last fundraiser and our upcoming trip to Africa, i’ve lost the pervasive sense of joy that is normally so inherent for me in this work.

not that i always expect it to be joyful.
sometimes, i realize, it’s just plain heartbreaking and hard.
but it’s worth it all the same.
just as it is now.
and if i had even an ounce left, i’d gladly pour it.

but right now, i need to be truthful
and open
and let myself be fully human.
radically imperfect.
imperfectly radical.

as much as epic change is an organization (whatever that means),
i am just a girl.

a girl with a heart full of hope
that a different world is possible.

a world that honors & celebrates the deep, abiding, mystical, soulful, exquisitely imperfect humanity in each of us.
a world that knows each of us holds the infinite capacity to live the greatest dreams our mushy, breakable hearts hold.
a world that understands that our greatest potential can only be realized when we see, hear and reveal the possibilities in one another.

we are the keys to unlock one another’s greatest aspirations.
we can lock one another out, or let one another in.

to honor the humanity & possibilities in one another, though,
we must always honor the humanity & possibilities in ourselves.

so tomorrow, as i leave on vacation for two weeks, or as long as the little girl inside me needs to play,
i will relish my own humanity.
the broken bits that make it nearly impossible for me to work right now.

and the magical bits that will return me right here, stronger, happier, more alive than ever
and probably sooner than i’d ever have imagined.

in the meantime, i wholeheartedly recommend

• learning from beth kanter’s new book: http://www.bethkanter.org/launch/
• playing in jen lemen’s dream lab: http://www.mondobeyondo.org/dreamlab
• listening to this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPz3YaIJkjQ
• & letting yourself off the hook.

you know the way you always recall just what you’d forgotten when you stop trying so hard to remember?
my guess is, if we let one another off the hook, we’ll create just enough space for all our ideas and possibilities to come true.

see you soon.

xo,
stacey

		My name is Gideon Gidori. In Tanzania,I am proud of my mother I love my mother because she has done a lot to me and my life. She has born me Raised me and took me to school. She is a very nice person and I couldnt reach here where I am without her.When I joined school I met a mother. And she was mama Lucy. I love mama Lucy. She is a very kind person. She also took care of me like my own mother. In I appriciate all that she has done for me. I have learnt a lot from Mama Lucy and my mother because they loved me very much and second they contributed a lot to my education untill I am a big boy in class six. I thank mama Lucy she has done a lot to me and I wish them a happy mothers day!!!”
		“my name is glory. i am 12 yrs old. i like my school that why i decided to join it.i was so pleased with my fellow pupils;teachers and other staff. i loved the school director MAMA LUCY because of her great care. at that times she handled us as your really children. i really appriciate for that. i can so speak that she is a caring mother. she did great things for me.i really wonder o mercy heart she has!! she helped poor peoples providing education e.t.c by all that much she decided to up the computer class. i thank her very much. she is an owesame mum and she is hardworking. I AM WISHING HER A HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY.”
		My name is Catherine George. I am 12 years old. I love my mother very much because,she love’s me too and she took care of me since when i was young till now and she took me to school to get something that i never knew but now i know something i thank her very much. And Madam is a good mother to us I love her so much. HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY.”
		“My name is Phinehas Peter. I am in class six. I love mama Lucy very much because she loves us too.We love her because she has increased many teachers to teach us. She has brought many computers to our school and she have done very many good things to our school thats why I love her. Even though I have my own mum but she is more than another mom to me in education. I wish her a happy mothers day.”

And, from the parent of a younger child, Mr. Patrokil Kitaly.
“Thanks so much Mamas Lucy Kampton and Stacey! You are always come up with good ideas to change the world and make our kids to have good education.Am proud the way both you works.With this…… .Happy mother’s Day!!!!!”

Mama Lucy has also been tweeting from Tanzania to participate in the celebration. I think she’s articulated clearly how your mom will feel when you create her a heartspace and add your love for her at To Mama With Love.

Nope. I wasn’t a bad kid. I just shared my Mother’s Day gift a few days early, because I knew she was bound to discover it. She cried because I’d taken the time to make her a very personal gift. She cried because the gift I made would make the world a better place.

Today, we launched www.ToMamaWithLove.org. On the site, you can create a “heartspace” for a mama you love, and personalize it with words, photos and even video if you’d like. When you add your mama to the site, you’ll give in her honor to invest in the dream of Mama Lucy.

At the school, Mama Lucy’s next step is to build a home on campus for many of the children who attend, so that every child has a nurturing environment to learn and grow. With www.ToMamaWithLove.org, we hope to build this home out of the love we share for moms across the globe. Just imagine.

According to the LA Times, this year Americans alone will spend $14.6 billion on Mother’s Day. Imagine if the gifts we gave made the world a better place for children & Mamas everywhere.

I invite you to make a Mama you love cry (with joy!) by giving in her honor & creating a heartspace full of the memories you share at www.ToMamaWithLove.org. You can check out the sample heartspace I gave my mom here, on the To Mama With Love site. It includes a few family photos, a love note and this video I made for her:

Together, we’ll celebrate how grateful we are for remarkable women, like Mama Lucy, who create a better future for all of us by loving, nurturing & educating the world’s children.

If you’re a Mom, I hope you’ll let those who love you know that this year, you want them to create a heartspace in your honor, too.

Any questions? Email me at stacey@epicchange.org or tweet me at @StaceyMonk.

Spread the love,
Stacey

PS: If you’d like to get more deeply involved in spreading the word about To Mama With Love, you’re invited!! Click here to join us.

We’re incredibly grateful to Organic Beauty Now for their generous sponsorship.  Organic Beauty Now will give $1 for each tweet sent using the hashtag #ToMamaWithLove – up to $2,000 – which builds room for 2 children!!  If you follow @organicbeauties on Twitter, you’ll also be entered to win one of five $50 gift certificates.

Today, Jean launched her site, Thrivable.org and her book, Thriveability: A Collaborative Sketch, to which I contributed a short essay on hope. I struggled, as I often do, to find the right words and, even in sending them to her added self-deprecating note about how I wasn’t sure it was good enough. She assured me it was.  I wrote:

I wish I could write about hope in some sexy, inspiring sort of way. Barack Obama’s campaign did this exceptionally well. But not me.

To me, hope isn’t sexy at all. Far from.

To me, hope is hard work. It’s a little voice inside that whispers “get up” when every fiber of your weary being says “lie down.” Weariness is not sexy.

Hope hides in every corner of this vast, beautiful universe, just waiting to be found. But it’s only ever found once you’re absolutely convinced that it’s lost. Lost hope is not inspiring.

Hope is the realization that you are something when you think you have nothing at all. Having nothing at all isn’t all that appealing either.

But there’s something about being weary, losing hope and having nothing that reminds you: You may have nothing, but you are something.

In fact, you are hope. And so am I.

Which must be precisely what makes hope so. damn. sexy.

Below, you’ll find the rest of Jean’s book, with a collection of essays from some of the smartest people I know…

• Finish project in Tanzania: Raise funds to support two final loan installments to Mama Lucy for construction of a boarding facility/orphanage and school cafeteria.
• Pay it Forward: Reinvest repaid loan funds in a new partner(s) to be selected in consultation with Mama Lucy.
• Get Ready to Grow: Establish clear brand identity and develop a scalable financial & technological infrastructure that will support the addition of new Epic partners & fellows.
• Innovate & Lead: Pioneer a new approach or program (e.g., TwitterKids, TweetsGiving) to meet other stated goals and continue to share ideas on the web and at visible live events.
• Pay the Bills: Raise annually renewable funds to support basic operating expenses.
• Get Students Involved: Build a base of support among university students and professors.
• Build the Board: Imaginatively expand the Epic Change board to support organizational growth.

Of course, we’re hopeful about the future because, with your support, we’ve come so far so fast. Just look what’s happened since we received our 501c3 status in September 2007 and made our first investment in Tanzania in December 2007, less than 2.5 years ago:

PS:  We’re just getting started…

*Notes:

• Metrics listed in the “Now” column are cumulative since the date of founding.
• Website Visitors: Counts per year in May 2008 were extrapolated from data recorded at that time about average hits per day.
• Facebook: Friend totals include redundancies and were calculated as the aggregate of Facebook Fans, Facebook Cause members, and Facebook Friends of Epic Change founder Stacey Monk.
• Twitter: Follower count includes redundancies and was calculated as the aggregate follower count of @EpicChange, @TweetsGiving and the personal accounts of staff members @StaceyMonk, @sanjspatel and @meshugavi.
• Blogs: This captures only the total number of blog posts recorded using Radian6 during TweetsGiving as tracking inbound blog links is cumbersome and inaccurate.
• YouTube Videos:  View count includes views of our Gratitude video, which does not appear in the Epic Change account, but instead in the personal account of Epic Change founder Stacey Monk.
• Audits and Forms 990 are available for download at http://epicchange.org/about_us_financials.php. 2009 Reporting will be available in mid-2010, as required by IRS guidelines.

• Classroom participation & instruction
• Library setup & reading instruction
• Social Media instruction for teachers & students
• Blogging & documentary storytelling
• Film & photography instruction for teachers & students
• Fundraising Performance preparation & local marketing
• Marketing Epic Change products in local tourist hotels & markets

This voluntourism trip is a rare opportunity to learn about an incredible culture while contributing to it. The estimates below include accommodations, airport transfers in Tanzania, $25,000 in emergency medical insurance, $500,000 in emergency medical transportation insurance and a contribution to Shepherds Jr. School as compensation for the time and effort our hosts will provide in accommodating our visit.

Budget accommodations will be provided at the Arusha Resort Center, where we stayed during our last visit. They offer hot showers, electricity that usually works and a location near town center that’s hard to beat. Deluxe accommodations are offered not far away at the Impala Hotel; a nice, comfortable hotel that is set in a very safe atmosphere that offers some of the best dining in Arusha. Additionally, there’s a gift shop and an internet cafe – albeit expensive – that’s open late inside the hotel.

For most volunteers, we recommend the 2-BR apartment option because it offers spacious accommodations including a living room where volunteers socialize and, most importantly, a kitchen where you can prepare your own meals. We choose this option ourselves because, even though it’s far from luxurious, it offers so many of the comforts of home. More luxurious accommodations that are very near the school are available by request too.

In addition to learning about Tanzania through your participation in at least 25 hours of volunteer service per week, we also would love for you to explore this amazing country further by participating in one or more optional excursions where you can learn more about the Maasai people, go on a wildlife safari in the Serengeti or even climb the highest mountain on the continent of Africa. Optional excursions include:

The very authentic Maasai cultural safari is offered by Kitumusote, a Tanzanian NGO dedicated to ensuring sustainability of the Maasai people’s way of life. The Kiliminjaro climb and the luxury safari will be planned through iExplore. The budget camping safari will be offered by a local outlet in consultation with Mama Lucy. We have personally worked with each of these operators and assure that these experiences are not to be missed, although they may challenge your comfort zone.

Meals: Food is not provided in the cost of the trip. The cost of restaurant food is significantly lower than we are used to – a safe bet is $25 per day (not including bar drinks) for lunch, dinner and snacks. The 2-BR apartment also has a full-sized kitchen with a microwave, mini-fridge, oven, hot plates, pots & pans and silverware for making home-cooked meals.

Airfare: Participants are responsible for booking their own flights into Kilimanjaro (JRO) airport. As an estimate, NYC or DC to JRO with one stop is less than $2,300, and as cheap as $1,800 with more stops or a longer layover. Do not book your flight until your trip has been confirmed. If we book together, we may be able to arrange a group discount. Flights into neighboring Kenya (Nairobi – NBO) tend to be cheaper but would require a short flight or long bus ride to arrive into Kilimanjaro. If you choose to fly into NBO, you’ll have to arrange your own transport to JRO – be aware that most international flights arriving into Nairobi come in after the last bus to Arusha has departed meaning you would have to overnight in Nairobi. We can definitely assist you with finding the best airfare and itinerary for your trip.

Funding your trip: All costs are estimates until time of final payment & booking. A non-refundable deposit of $500 is due by 4/1/10. 50% of the remaining balance is due by 5/1/10, and the full balance of your trip cost is due by 6/1/10. All payments are non-refundable. You’re welcome to fundraise to pay for some or all of your trip. Please contact us directly so that we can provide you with support for your fundraising efforts.

A few final notes:

• Participants are responsible for all airfare, passport & visa fees, required immunizations, anti-malarial medication, trip interruption/cancellation insurance, as well as food & spending money in Tanzania.
• Shared accommodation rates are dependent upon our ability to identify roommates.
• The 2-BR apartment requires a full month’s payment regardless of whether or not it is booked for fewer weeks.
• The required minimum stay is two weeks. If you plan on staying only 2 weeks, you will be expected to come for the final 2 weeks of July from 7/18 – 7/31.
• Optional excursions are subject to minimum participation.
• An end-of-term school fundraising performance is expected to occur on 7/30.
• Participants assume all risks and liability associated with travel, and will be expected to abide by rules and regulations published by Epic Change.
• Be flexible. While you may specify your preference of volunteer activities, your assistance may be required on many tasks, including but not limited to the list above.
• Each participant will be required to contribute at least 1 blog entry per week throughout his/her stay in Tanzania.

If you’d like to participate, download and complete the trip application and submit it by 4/1/2010. Questions? Contact Avi Kaplan at avi@epicchange.org or at 202-495-1464. To confirm your trip, an application and a $500 non-refundable deposit is required by 4/1/10. You can make this payment online or by check.

We hope you’re as excited as we are. Mama Lucy and nearly 400 smiling children just can’t wait to see you!

On January 20th, the Silicon Valley Tweetup held it’s first event of 2010 for Shepherds Jr. School in support of the Twitterkids of Tanzania. Over 200 people braved the rainy weather to gather in the heart of Silicon Valley, and I had the great pleasure of attending this fun event. In addition to meeting an incredible group of individuals, over $2,300 was raised to support Mama Lucy’s efforts!

All of the funds raised will go toward a much-needed orphanage/boarding facility at the school. The total estimated cost of the facility is USD $50,000 which will accommodate approximately 50 children. Every $1,000 raised will ensure that one more child has a warm, safe place to call home, with a loving Mama from their community to make nutritious meals and tuck them in at night.

I was just amazed by the turnout and felt great pride knowing that such a large number of people support Epic Change and Shepherds Jr. School, a primary school many thousands of miles away in Tanzania. I want to thank Michael Brito for organizing this incredible event and for personally inviting me to attend.

Here’s what Michael had to say about the event.

I’m humbled. I’m humbled because the people of Silicon Valley stepped up big time. The fact that we raised over $2,300 for an awesome cause justifies every stressful moment we had planning this event. And for this reason, we will continue with these tweetups and make an even stronger effort to support local & global organizations.

You can read more of Michael’s reflections on the Silicon Valley Tweetup Blog, view event photos here, or click below to see video from the event.