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	<title type="text">ItStartsWith.Us</title>
	<subtitle type="text">Sharing stories about people making a positive impact</subtitle>

	<updated>2011-02-16T15:58:21Z</updated>
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		<author>
			<name>Nate</name>
						<uri>http://ItStartsWith.Us</uri>
					</author>
		<title type="html"><![CDATA[A Love Bomb for Lauren]]></title>
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		<id>http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/?p=2591</id>
		<updated>2011-02-16T15:54:09Z</updated>
		<published>2011-02-11T08:18:25Z</published>
		<category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="People" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="beauty" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="community" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="gratitude" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="happiness" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="Lauren" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="love" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="Love Bomb" />		<summary type="html"><![CDATA[In which we let Lauren know how much we love her...]]></summary>
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&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2011/02/11/a-love-bomb-for-lauren/laurenwall/" rel="attachment wp-att-2592"&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/LaurenWall-300x204.jpg" alt="LaurenWall" title="LaurenWall" width="300" height="204" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2592" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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Hey Lauren, it&amp;#8217;s February 10th, 2011. Well, technically it&amp;#8217;s February 11th, but I say the date ends not at midnight, but when you go to sleep. And I haven&amp;#8217;t gone to sleep yet . . . you know how that goes. Anyway, it&amp;#8217;s February 10th &amp;ndash; your one-year anniversary of being on the &lt;a href="http://dropalovebomb.com"&gt;Love Bomb&lt;/a&gt; team. You were one of the very first ones, my friend. And seven months ago you took over leadership of the team. You&amp;#8217;ve now officially been running it longer than I have. Congratulations . . . and thank you.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I remember the very first time I ever noticed you, when someone pointed me to a piece of writing you had done. It was really, really good, so I went to your blog to read more. And what I found there was even better. After reading for 30 minutes, I remember tweeting something like, &amp;#8220;This is what a blog should be. Raw, real, vulnerable, beautiful.&amp;#8221; And that&amp;#8217;s just your writing! Your photography is gorgeous. Intelligence is crazy. Personality is fun. You look like a model. And your heart . . . that&amp;#8217;s the best of all. Do you know why I asked you to take over the team so long ago? Not because of anything listed above. That stuff helps, of course, but your &lt;em&gt;heart&lt;/em&gt;, Lauren &amp;ndash; you just straight-up LOVE people, in a way that I knew I never could. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Every week you lead the Love Bomb team in reaching out to a person who&amp;#8217;s struggling, and you lead by example. When I read what you write to each person, the sincerity and empathy in your words are striking. And not many people know this, but you follow up with the people we help. You keep in touch with them. You become friends. &lt;em&gt;You take a vested interest in their lives.&lt;/em&gt; Wow. That&amp;#8217;s what people in this world need so much more of, and you&amp;#8217;re always willing to give.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So today, on your anniversary, I wanted the rest of our team to give a little something back to you. Everyone goes through personal struggle, and you&amp;#8217;re no different. I understand that you&amp;#8217;re in the middle of a rough time right now, and so do some of our team members. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;But know this, Lauren: &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;You.&lt;br /&gt;
Are.&lt;br /&gt;
Loved.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I tell you that a lot. I know you know it. But what I don&amp;#8217;t tell you nearly often enough is that you changed my life. You brought joy back into it when I was in a very dark place. I finally started &lt;em&gt;laughing &lt;/em&gt;again, and 9 times out of 10 when I laughed, it was with you. That did so much for my soul last year. So, so much.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;You were surprised the other day when I agreed with someone about how talented you were. That made me realize that I&amp;#8217;ve been pretty quiet with my praise for you. Now that we&amp;#8217;ve been friends for so long, and you&amp;#8217;ve worked for/with me for so many months, I totally understand that you&amp;#8217;re brilliant. Because I know how much you&amp;#8217;re capable of, I also expect a lot from you. And while I think that being demanding drives you to become better in certain aspects, I never want you to feel that I take you for granted.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#8217;t know if you know this, but I still read almost everything you write. I look at all your pictures. I talk about you to everyone. In fact, often when my family members ask how I&amp;#8217;m doing, they ask how you&amp;#8217;re doing as well. Because you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; family to me. You&amp;#8217;re my sister, Lauren, and I want nothing but the best for you in this life, whether you continue working with me or go far off into the world to do whatever is next on your list.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Thank you for always being one of my best friends.&lt;br /&gt;
Thank you for leading this team by example.&lt;br /&gt;
Thank you for loving unconditionally.&lt;br /&gt;
Thank you for being you.&lt;br /&gt;
You are enough.&lt;br /&gt;
You are loved.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;I love you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2011/02/11/a-love-bomb-for-lauren/laurennateblissdom-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-2596"&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/LaurenNateBlissdom1.jpg" alt="LaurenNateBlissdom" title="LaurenNateBlissdom" width="605" height="499" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2596" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Similar Posts:&lt;/strong&gt;
&lt;ul class="similar-posts"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/07/14/love-bomb-update-and-a-challenge/" rel="bookmark" title="July 14, 2010"&gt;Love Bomb Update, And A Challenge.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/04/09/sharing-the-joy-love-bombs/" rel="bookmark" title="April 9, 2010"&gt;Sharing The Joy: Love Bombs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2011/01/30/you-cant-outsource-yourself/" rel="bookmark" title="January 30, 2011"&gt;You Can&amp;#8217;t Outsource Yourself&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/11/15/love-bomb-video-update-2/" rel="bookmark" title="November 15, 2010"&gt;Love Bomb Video Update!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/02/06/dropping-love-bombs/" rel="bookmark" title="February 6, 2010"&gt;Dropping Love Bombs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- Similar Posts took 19.678 ms --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;



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		<entry>
		<author>
			<name>Nate</name>
						<uri>http://ItStartsWith.Us</uri>
					</author>
		<title type="html"><![CDATA[When You&#8217;re In Over Your Head]]></title>
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		<id>http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/?p=2581</id>
		<updated>2011-02-16T15:51:33Z</updated>
		<published>2011-02-07T04:44:00Z</published>
		<category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="People" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="community" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="generosity" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="hope" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="inspirational" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="kids" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="love" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="Love Drop" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="medical" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="money" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="pain" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="parents" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="projects" />		<summary type="html"><![CDATA[I'm helping a family get a service dog for their two autistic boys this month . . . but I can't do it alone.]]></summary>
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I feel like I just took a happy, laughing, running leap into the deep end. And only now that I’m here do I realize why this part of the pool is such a challenge. So what do you do when you’re in over your head? You reach out for help, of course.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Many of you know that my business partner (J. Money) and I launched a new project on January 1st: &lt;a href="http://lovedrop.us"&gt;Love Drop&lt;/a&gt;. Each month we work to change the lives of one family or individual by bringing community together around the concept of micro-giving. Last month we were able to do some amazing things for Jill, a single mom in Chicago whose family had become homeless for the second time. If you’d like to learn more about that story, you can find it &lt;a href="http://www.lovedrop.us/jill"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Love Drop can be labeled as social entrepreneurship, which means it’s a (barely) for-profit business &amp;ndash; we take out just enough from the contributions to pay taxes and run operations. It makes enough to be sustainable so we can continue to do it without going into debt. We love what we do, and we are honored to be a part of these families’ lives each month.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In January we brought in around $5,000, of which we gave Jill around $2,500, as well as many other gifts of goods and services from team members all over the world. For this month, February, we chose a recipient family that really, really touched our hearts, and in doing so we took on a challenge that is well beyond the strength of our team at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This family lives in my own city of Milwaukee, which I’m really excited about. Here’s the story in a nutshell: The Rewolinski family consists of a mom, a dad, and three children. The two older boys (Ethan, 7 and Alex, 6) are autistic and need &lt;em&gt;constant &lt;/em&gt;attention. The family has been trying to obtain a specially trained service dog to help with the boys . . . especially to stay near Alex, who will attempt to run away at any time. They’re all ready to have a dog placed in their home by a wonderful organization called &lt;a href="http://www.4pawsforability.org/"&gt;4 Paws for Ability&lt;/a&gt;. I know it’s a fantastic organization because J. and I took a trip down to Ohio to inspect the facility and make sure it was awesome (which it was).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;4 Paws works with the family to place a dog in their home, free of charge and with no waiting list. The one thing the family must agree to do is provide $13,000 worth of fundraising for 4 Paws, which is a non-profit organization.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And that’s where Love Drop comes in.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We made it our goal this month to help them raise the $13,000 necessary to get them started training with their dog and get it placed in their home as soon as possible. Great goal, powerful story, amazing thing our community can help out with this month, right? Right. Except with our business model, we’d have to bring in double that revenue in the form of contributions to make it happen. And we’re simply not there yet &amp;ndash; we just launched this project a month ago, and our membership is still small.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Also, neither J. nor I have ever done any kind of fundraising before. Ever. You see, usually we keep it simple, and choose to work with those that we can easily help within the framework of our project. Bringing in $5,000 &amp;ndash; not too hard. Bringing in 5 times that &amp;ndash; ridiculously tough.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And since we help a new family each month, we have very little time to bring in the money. In this case, it means that we only have until February 28th to raise enough money to get this done. I think we’ve brought in close to $2,000 in the first week, which is good, but not nearly enough.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Before I tell you what we’ve decided to do about this situation, I want you to meet the family, and especially the two boys we’ll be helping. Alex is in the black shirt, and Ethan is the one with the full head of hair. &lt;img src='http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /&gt;  Check out the video below to take a peek into their home. If you don’t have much time, skip to the last two minutes or so.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe title="YouTube video player" width="560" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1SJtRcjeCHs?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Just so you know, the way Love Drop works is that at the end of every month, J. and I literally go visit the family at their home and present them with everything that the community came together to help out with for the month. The Rewolinski’s live in my hometown of Milwaukee, just a few miles from me, and I don’t want to go to their house on February 26th and tell them that our community and our city could not do enough to help them get their dog. I want to go in there happy and confident, knowing that this city and our national network came together to do something incredible this month, something that will quite literally change their lives.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;J. and I talked about it, and we realized that we aren’t going to be able to get this dog if we do things the normal way. But we do think there’s a way to bring in $13,000 if we work our tails off and have a &lt;em&gt;lot &lt;/em&gt;of help from individuals and small businesses, especially those in the local (Milwaukee) community.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So here’s what we’re doing about it: We’re not going to take any money for taxes or operations for Love Drop this month &amp;ndash; we’re going to funnel all of that money directly towards fundraising for 4 Paws so we can help this family get their dog. &lt;strong&gt;Every penny that we get this month will go towards the $13,000 needed for the service dog. Love Drop can take a hit in February . . . Ethan and Alex can’t.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;There’s no way we can do this alone, though. We really, really need your help to get it done in such a short timeframe. So we’re asking you to pitch in however you can for Ethan and Alex. Here’s what you can do:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1)  Give money through Love Drop&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
You can do this quickly and easily on our site here: &lt;a href="http://www.lovedrop.us/get-involved"&gt;http://www.lovedrop.us/get-involved&lt;/a&gt;. There are directions provided to subscribe monthly via PayPal, to do a one-time donation via PayPal, or give by credit card or physical check. We will make sure that everything we get this month (up to $13,000) goes straight over to 4 Paws and is accounted for correctly. If you’re an individual or business that gives a significant amount, we will include your information on our “Friends of Ethan and Alex” page &lt;a href="http://www.lovedrop.us/friends-of-ethan-and-alex"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2)  Give money directly to 4 Paws&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
If you want to make a larger, tax-deductible donation directly to 4 Paws, you can do so here: &lt;a href="http://www.4pawsforability.org/donation.html"&gt;http://www.4pawsforability.org/donation.html&lt;/a&gt;. (Just make very sure to note that the money goes toward the Alex Rewolinski account.)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3)  Spread the word&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
If you can’t help out financially, please help us spread the word this month by sharing this blog post with your network, or by sharing the story on Facebook or Twitter using the buttons at the top of the &lt;a href="http://lovedrop.us"&gt;Love Drop&lt;/a&gt; homepage. If you have a blog, you can also join our &lt;a href="http://www.lovedrop.us/blogger-network"&gt;Blogger Network&lt;/a&gt;, and we’ll send you an email with free content that you can copy/paste to share this story with your readers.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So that’s what I’m focusing all my energy on this month, guys. I’m not gonna lie &amp;ndash; it feels really weird to write all this and ask for money and help from you. I’ve never done anything like this before, and it puts me in a really new and uncertain situation. But the fact of the matter is, my discomfort this month is nothing compared to what this family deals with on an daily basis, and if I can spend all my time in February making sure we come together to help change their lives, then I’m happy to do it. Yes, I’m in over my head &amp;ndash; but I wouldn’t have it any other way right now.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I know this was a really long post, and I thank you all for reading and being a part of such a large group of caring people.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;J. and I really want to make this happen for the Rewolinski’s this month. Thank you for helping us out &amp;ndash; we truly appreciate it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Much love,&lt;br /&gt;
Nate&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div style="color:#666666; margin-top:30px; font-size:65%;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Photo Credit:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a style="color:#666666;" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jefharris/2616806578/sizes/o/"&gt;Jef Harris&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Similar Posts:&lt;/strong&gt;
&lt;ul class="similar-posts"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2011/01/01/our-first-love-drop/" rel="bookmark" title="January 1, 2011"&gt;Our First Love Drop&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/11/03/love-drop-business-details/" rel="bookmark" title="November 3, 2010"&gt;Love Drop Business Details&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/03/25/a-new-itstartswithus-project-love-drop/" rel="bookmark" title="March 25, 2010"&gt;A New ItStartsWith.Us Project: Love Drop&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/10/20/love-drop-launching-soon/" rel="bookmark" title="October 20, 2010"&gt;Love Drop Launching Soon!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2011/02/11/a-love-bomb-for-lauren/" rel="bookmark" title="February 11, 2011"&gt;A Love Bomb for Lauren&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- Similar Posts took 14.308 ms --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;



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		<entry>
		<author>
			<name>Nate</name>
						<uri>http://ItStartsWith.Us</uri>
					</author>
		<title type="html"><![CDATA[You Can&#8217;t Outsource Yourself]]></title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/itstartswithus/~3/nsi1j_5NJmk/" />
		<id>http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/?p=2575</id>
		<updated>2011-02-16T15:47:22Z</updated>
		<published>2011-01-30T16:54:09Z</published>
		<category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="Ideas" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="People" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="advice" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="blogs" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="lessons" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="projects" />		<summary type="html"><![CDATA[In which I learn my lesson about outsourcing what should be my responsibility to others...]]></summary>
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&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2011/01/30/you-cant-outsource-yourself/outsourced/" rel="attachment wp-att-2576"&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/outsourced-199x300.jpg" alt="outsourced" title="outsourced" width="199" height="300" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2576" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;p&gt;I used to write a blog. Then, as I began to build and grow &lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/changetheworld/index.html"&gt;all&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://dropalovebomb.com"&gt;my&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://lovedrop.us"&gt;projects&lt;/a&gt;, I realized that I didn’t have the time to write on a consistent basis. So I outsourced writing duties on the ItStartsWith.Us blog to other people. And now here I find myself, three months later, realizing that I am no longer a blogger.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;To be fair, I never really considered myself primarily a blogger &amp;ndash; I’ve always been a more project-oriented guy who just happens to write adequately and often enough to be viewed as one. But still, I was proud of &lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/bestof/index.html"&gt;my writing&lt;/a&gt;. And now I am not. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Back in October I brought on someone to manage all the writing on the site, including contributions by a small group of staff writers &amp;ndash; not professional writers, but people pulled from our team who were interested in writing, gaining experience, getting their voices heard, etc. At that time I wrote my last “real” blog post, “&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/10/14/your-best-friend/"&gt;Your Best Friend&lt;/a&gt;.” Other than that my only contribution to the blog has pretty much consisted of updates on the various projects I’m working on, except for &lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/12/28/5-things-i-know-for-sure/"&gt;one small bulleted list&lt;/a&gt; that I wrote in 30 seconds as a note to myself, but decided to publish. Ironically (or appropriately), that one tiny post generated more traffic than any of the other articles in the past three months.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Please understand that I’m not taking anything away from the people I brought on to help me with this. They did exactly what they were asked to do, and I really like some of the stuff that came out of it. The simple fact of the matter, however, is that they’re not &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt;. And I hope you understand that’s not meant to sound prideful . I’ve simply realized that when you have a blog that’s built on personal experience and a familiar voice, you can’t just up and quit and give the job to someone else. It doesn’t work like that. I’ve felt this in my heart for a while now, but after trying it for three months, I also have the numbers to back it up. Every single applicable statistic on reader engagement is down (and down &lt;em&gt;big&lt;/em&gt;) over the last three months. Across the board, folks.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I know in my heart what I want to do: I want to be proud of my blog again. And it’s so very difficult to say to those who have been helping out “Sorry, I don’t need you anymore,” but it’s what I’m going to do. Because at the end of the day I need to be 100% satisfied with the caliber of my work, and this is the way to do it. I’m taking back my blog, starting now.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I’d like to thank all the good people at &lt;a href="http://blissdomconference.com/"&gt;BlissDom&lt;/a&gt; for reminding me to take another look at what I’m doing with my online voice. I’ll write more about that experience later (now that I write again, ha), but for now I’ll leave you with something that Scott Stratten (&lt;a href="http://twitter.com/unmarketing"&gt;@unmarketing&lt;/a&gt;) said in his keynote that really hit me. He was answering the question: How often should you write?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“You should write when you have something to say.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And that’s what I intend to do from now on.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div style="color:#666666; margin-top:30px; font-size:65%;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Photo Credit:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a style="color:#666666;" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tidymind/4016908941/sizes/m/"&gt;Rob Warde&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Similar Posts:&lt;/strong&gt;
&lt;ul class="similar-posts"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2011/02/11/a-love-bomb-for-lauren/" rel="bookmark" title="February 11, 2011"&gt;A Love Bomb for Lauren&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/11/29/ive-been-thinking-about-changing-world/" rel="bookmark" title="November 29, 2010"&gt;I&amp;#8217;ve Been THINKING About Changing World&amp;#8230;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/02/06/dropping-love-bombs/" rel="bookmark" title="February 6, 2010"&gt;Dropping Love Bombs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2009/11/11/why-20sb-partnered-with-iswu/" rel="bookmark" title="November 11, 2009"&gt;Why 20SB Partnered With ISWU&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2009/11/22/what-your-business-needs-right-now/" rel="bookmark" title="November 22, 2009"&gt;What Your Business Needs Right Now&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- Similar Posts took 12.866 ms --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;



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		<entry>
		<author>
			<name>AliciaB</name>
					</author>
		<title type="html"><![CDATA[The Mysterious Letters Project]]></title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/itstartswithus/~3/G-JrKi_Gjsc/" />
		<id>http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/?p=2570</id>
		<updated>2011-01-26T15:31:04Z</updated>
		<published>2011-01-26T15:31:04Z</published>
		<category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="Uncategorized" />		<summary type="html"><![CDATA[
			
				
			
		
Last year, we set out on a mission to surprise an entire town with handwritten letters with our Mysterious Letters project. Our leadership team pulled together, brainstormed, used the Internet to find as many addresses as we could and hoped our project would be a success.
The town we picked was Omer, Michigan. With the help [...]]]></summary>
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&lt;p&gt;Last year, we set out on a mission to surprise an entire town with handwritten letters with our &lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/10/04/mysterious-letters-update/" target="_blank"&gt;Mysterious Letters&lt;/a&gt; project. Our leadership team pulled together, brainstormed, used the Internet to find as many addresses as we could and hoped our project would be a success.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The town we picked was Omer, Michigan. With the help of a few amazing It Starts With Us members (you know who you are), we were able to send handwritten letters and postcards to almost everyone in Omer. We also received e-mail messages from members around the world, which we wrote on stationary and sent to the town in Michigan.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;However, the amount of handwritten letters we received from members outside of the leadership team was disappointing — two letters (so, thank you to the two of you who took time to do this).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Overall, this project turned out to be an interesting experiment. Perhaps more members would have written letters if we promoted the project more, or if we created more enthusiasm around it. Albeit the lack of member participation, the Mysterious Letters project was still a success, as we did end up doing what we intended from the beginning — surprising a town with anonymous, handwritten letters. It certainly wasn’t a failure. Thank you to all who participated.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;After reflecting on the way the Mysterious Letters project turned out, I’m willing to try this again with another small town. How about you guys?&lt;strong&gt;Similar Posts:&lt;/strong&gt;
&lt;ul class="similar-posts"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/09/15/our-first-open-source-project-mysterious-letters/" rel="bookmark" title="September 15, 2010"&gt;Our First Open-Source Project: Mysterious Letters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/11/11/mysterious-letters-update-2/" rel="bookmark" title="November 11, 2010"&gt;Mysterious Letters Update&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/09/08/vote-now-on-our-first-open-source-project/" rel="bookmark" title="September 8, 2010"&gt;Vote Now On Our First Open-Source Project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/10/04/mysterious-letters-update/" rel="bookmark" title="October 4, 2010"&gt;Mysterious Letters Update&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/11/23/mysterious-letters-update-3/" rel="bookmark" title="November 23, 2010"&gt;Mysterious Letters Update&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- Similar Posts took 21.522 ms --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;



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		<entry>
		<author>
			<name>Lauren</name>
						<uri>http://laurennicolelove.com</uri>
					</author>
		<title type="html"><![CDATA[Love Bomb + Love Drop for Jill!]]></title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/itstartswithus/~3/H6Gu0szZxjo/" />
		<id>http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/?p=2563</id>
		<updated>2011-01-22T04:54:04Z</updated>
		<published>2011-01-22T04:53:37Z</published>
		<category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="Organizations" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="People" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="Uncategorized" />		<summary type="html"><![CDATA[
			
				
			
		
Just wanted to throw up a quick video update for you guys on this week&#8217;s Love Bomb mission as we partner with Love Drop for Jill, our very first Love Drop recipient! Check it out.
Love you guys!

You can read more about Jill here on the Love Bomb website, or go directly to the blog post [...]]]></summary>
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&lt;p&gt;Just wanted to throw up a quick video update for you guys on this week&amp;#8217;s Love Bomb mission as we partner with Love Drop for Jill, our very first Love Drop recipient! Check it out.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Love you guys!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5h6-q-eFYsY" frameborder="0" allowFullScreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;You can read more about Jill here on the &lt;a href="http://dropalovebomb.com"&gt;Love Bomb&lt;/a&gt; website, or go directly to the &lt;a href="http://www.lovedrop.us/blog/a-little-more-love"&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; to leave her a comment. &lt;strong&gt;Similar Posts:&lt;/strong&gt;
&lt;ul class="similar-posts"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/04/09/sharing-the-joy-love-bombs/" rel="bookmark" title="April 9, 2010"&gt;Sharing The Joy: Love Bombs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/02/06/dropping-love-bombs/" rel="bookmark" title="February 6, 2010"&gt;Dropping Love Bombs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/11/16/watch-this-space-iswu-blog/" rel="bookmark" title="November 16, 2010"&gt;Watch This Space: ISWU Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/06/29/join-the-love-bomb-team-now/" rel="bookmark" title="June 29, 2010"&gt;Join the Love Bomb Team. NOW.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/11/15/love-bomb-video-update-2/" rel="bookmark" title="November 15, 2010"&gt;Love Bomb Video Update!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
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			<name>Beverley</name>
					</author>
		<title type="html"><![CDATA[Alia Mohamed &#8211; Superstar]]></title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/itstartswithus/~3/fEtwwD0YK24/" />
		<id>http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/?p=2534</id>
		<updated>2011-01-19T22:18:53Z</updated>
		<published>2011-01-19T17:00:47Z</published>
		<category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="Uncategorized" />		<summary type="html"><![CDATA[
			
				
			
		

This is the second in a series of posts featuring ISWU members from around the globe sharing what they are doing in their communities to make a difference.

Alia Mohamed&#8230;Superstar
Most people would not consider Alia Mohamed famous.  She’s not an actress, pop singer, politician or even an athlete with exceptional abilities.  But at age 22, this [...]]]></summary>
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&lt;p style="text-align: left"&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is the second in a series of posts featuring ISWU members from around the globe sharing what they are doing in their communities to make a difference.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-2549" src="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/africa1-300x151.jpg" alt="africa1" width="300" height="151" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Alia Mohamed&amp;#8230;Superstar&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Most people would not consider Alia Mohamed famous.  She’s not an actress, pop singer, politician or even an athlete with exceptional abilities.  But at age 22, this Marymount University biology senior has a fan club of 200 Somali orphans.  To them, Alia is a true superstar who has changed their lives forever.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;What moves someone to take action with passion and commitment?  Alia is the fifth of eight children who, with her family, fled Somalia when she was only one year old, escaping the country’s civil war.  Although she was raised with charity work and selflessness as part of her upbringing, she admits she never really thought about Somalia.  In January of 2009 when she heard about the incident where nearly 100 Somalis were killed in a roadside bombing she realized that no one was talking about Somalia, which is the poorest country in the world.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Then, in the summer of 2009, she attended a Somalia youth conference where the attendees were encouraged to get involved with topics like politics, education, health care, immigration and refugees.  When the speaker talked about how the orphan population was rising rapidly, she couldn’t get this out of her head. “Just like Somalia as a country has been abandoned, the orphans have also been abandoned.” Although everyone was eager to engage in discussions about politics and other topics, no-one seemed interested in the startling statistics&amp;#8230;.Somalia has the largest orphan population in Africa and maybe the world, yet no-one seemed concerned about the children.  She kept thinking, “The children are the future of the nation, and if provided with the necessary care, they will lead the nation into a different path.  We can focus on all other dilemmas our country faces, but how far will they go if we don’t educate our kids and care for them?”&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-2550" src="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bev2-300x200.jpg" alt="mtm2" width="300" height="200" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;With the education she received at the youth conference on how to start an NGO (non governmental organization), she knew exactly what she had to do.  &lt;a href="http://www.mercytomankindf.org/"&gt;Mercy to Mankind&lt;/a&gt; was born and with the help of family and friends, fundraising efforts quickly allowed them to raise enough money to hire two teachers, rent a house in Mogadishu and initially bring 50 children a new home.  The foundation is dedicated to orphans who have lost both parents, as these are the most in need.  Currently they house 200 children ages 3-13.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-2548" src="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bev3-300x200.jpg" alt="mtm3" width="300" height="200" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;She is sincerely hoping that in the spring of this year, the foundation will have enough funds to start building a children’s centre and bring even more orphaned children a permanent home.  In talking with Alia you know that her heart and passion is with the children. Her vision sounds simple. “My dream is to see every orphan in Somalia provided with basic needs such as education, medicine, home and love.  I am so blessed to have changed these children&amp;#8217;s lives and hope to brighten the lives of many more. Orphans and children in general, are prone to violence in Somalia and I’m glad that’s not the case with my children.”  To the orphans of Somalia, Alia Mohamed will continue to be a true superstar.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To find out more about her foundation please visit: &lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.mercytomankindf.org/"&gt;http://www.mercytomankindf.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;This is the first article my ISWU team member Beverley:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2554" title="bev" src="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bev.jpg" alt="bev" width="240" height="240" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Beverley is a freelance writer and songwriter who lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She has written everything from full length magazine articles to song lyrics and loves to research, design and build stories. She is passionate about helping and supporting others who reach out and help as well and is delighted to be a part of the ISWU team. You can visit her personal website at &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="www.beverleygolden.com"&gt;&lt;span style="border-collapse: separate; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: medium;"&gt;&lt;span style="border-collapse: separate; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: medium;"&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style="color: #3e53ff;"&gt;&lt;a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.beverleygolden.com/" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span id="lw_1295475480_5"&gt;http://www.beverleygolden.com&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Arial"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The first article in the Continent Series can be read &lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/12/01/iswu-spotlight-arriba-las-manos"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Similar Posts:&lt;/strong&gt;
&lt;ul class="similar-posts"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2009/07/23/help-for-hurting-kids-mary-beth-waters/" rel="bookmark" title="July 23, 2009"&gt;Help For Hurting Kids: Mary Beth Waters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/12/01/iswu-spotlight-arriba-las-manos/" rel="bookmark" title="December 1, 2010"&gt;ISWU Spotlight &amp;#8211; Arriba las Manos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2009/04/24/hmm/" rel="bookmark" title="April 24, 2009"&gt;Hmm&amp;#8230;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2009/06/25/im-not-your-mama-or-your-daddy/" rel="bookmark" title="June 25, 2009"&gt;I’m Not Your Mama Or Your Daddy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2009/05/05/heart-of-a-soldier-michelle-johnson/" rel="bookmark" title="May 5, 2009"&gt;The Heart of a Soldier: Michelle Johnson&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
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		<entry>
		<author>
			<name>Lauren</name>
						<uri>http://laurennicolelove.com</uri>
					</author>
		<title type="html"><![CDATA[Mastering Life In 2011: The New, Sexy 1950&#8217;s Culture]]></title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/itstartswithus/~3/JMmh6pJv_Nk/" />
		<id>http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/?p=2539</id>
		<updated>2011-01-18T01:01:31Z</updated>
		<published>2011-01-17T19:04:12Z</published>
		<category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="Ideas" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="People" />		<summary type="html"><![CDATA[The secret to everything: Getting outside of yourself. ]]></summary>
		<content type="html" xml:base="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2011/01/17/mastering-life-in-2011-the-new-sexy-1950s-culture/">&lt;div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px;"&gt;
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&lt;p&gt;Today I have something very short and sweet to say:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The secret to just about everything is getting outside of yourself.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;What do I mean by &amp;#8216;getting outside of yourself?&amp;#8217; I just mean slowing down your brain and paying attention to the people around you. Putting a hold on your personal goals, and asking who needs help with theirs. Making a sacrifice so that someone else can get what they&amp;#8217;ve been waiting for. Going over to your Mom&amp;#8217;s house instead of sending her a message on Facebook.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Over the last couple of decades, we&amp;#8217;ve become a very individualized society. Words like &amp;#8216;family&amp;#8217; and &amp;#8216;community&amp;#8217; aren&amp;#8217;t dropped too much anymore when discussing life decisions. The idea of still being friends at 25 or 30 with the kid you met on the playground when you were 5? That&amp;#8217;s obsolete for 9 out of 10 people. With the traditional media explosion (&lt;em&gt;radio, television, and eventually the Internet&lt;/em&gt;), culture shifted from what immediately surrounded you in your daily life to something that&amp;#8217;s worldwide, and people then had their pick of what culture they wanted to adhere to. Through traditional media, we all got grouped into the humanity movement.&lt;strong&gt; And, true to human nature, we rebelled by &amp;#8217;standing out,&amp;#8217; &amp;#8216;being unique,&amp;#8217; &amp;#8216;embracing diversity&amp;#8217; and &amp;#8216;doing me.&amp;#8217;&lt;/strong&gt; (I could elaborate much more on the symptoms of individualism, but that&amp;#8217;s for later, and not quite the point of this.)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Then came what I lovingly refer to as Teh Soshal Mediaz. Thanks to social media, we&amp;#8217;ve suddenly become a relational generation again. Sure, it looks wildly different from the 1950&amp;#8217;s, but I think we&amp;#8217;re finally realizing that we might have thrown the baby out with the bathwater when we raced to put our careers first, let go of some pretty significant family values, and when &amp;#8220;doing me&amp;#8221; became the epitome of Cool.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Even if you don&amp;#8217;t use social media, that&amp;#8217;s okay. It&amp;#8217;s changing your world for you, and you didn&amp;#8217;t even have to Like any Facebook fan pages. There&amp;#8217;s been an outrageous rush in even the last 365 days to raise awareness, build online communities, use Twitter to strengthen local non-profits, bring philanthrophy to the corporate world, interact personally with customer groups, and elevate the importance of sincere relationships.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#8217;ve even gotten so far as to have a man we call Doctor Love (Paul Zak) do &lt;a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/147/doctor-love.html"&gt;extensive studies&lt;/a&gt; to prove that Oxytocin, the cuddle chemical, is triggered by things like a positive Facebook status comment. &lt;strong&gt;In the same way a bearhug from your best friend does.&lt;/strong&gt; The significance? The corporate world is now anticipating that in the near future, their worth will be primarily measured not by their profit margins, but in customer relationships and their trust factor. &lt;strong&gt;Yes, people. Social capital is more valuable than money in the bank.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This has left us scrambling to figure out how to best gain this social capital. &lt;em&gt;And it&amp;#8217;s so, so easy. &lt;/em&gt;The secret is getting outside of yourself.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;What does this mean for you? &lt;strong&gt;It means that we finally have proof that putting others first is the best way for the world to work.&lt;/strong&gt; It means that engaging in a sincerely interested manner with the person at the drive-thru gives you an amazingly good return on your 5 minute investment. It means that putting a sticky note on your dashboard reminding you to focus on others, and not yourself, will actually increase your standard of living. It means that the whole purpose of social media is to be social: &amp;#8220;marked by friendly companionship with others.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;But, there&amp;#8217;s a catch. Being driven by love isn&amp;#8217;t something you can fake. Even behind a creative Twitter handle, intricate philanthropic blog network, or super cute profile photo, people can tell fairly quickly what your motive is. Most people who are paying attention can skim a blog, and after 10 minutes, give you a fairly educated guess on what that blogger&amp;#8217;s definition of success is.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I want this to be a challenge to you. &lt;strong&gt;Make a conscious decision to put other people&amp;#8217;s interests above your own.&lt;/strong&gt; When you go through the drive-thru, stop thinking about your next destination long enough to realize that a real human being is serving you. And when you jump on Twitter and half-skim a couple hundred tweets as your type yours up, pay attention to who needs a little extra love that day.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Success isn&amp;#8217;t complicated, you guys. Fight the urge to be ruled by the numbers game and to be &amp;#8216;doing me&amp;#8217;, and let&amp;#8217;s go back to our 1950&amp;#8217;s roots &amp;#8211; where family and community take priority in our lives. While still crushing on our sexy MacBook Pros.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Lauren (&lt;a href="http://twitter.com/laurenlankford"&gt;@laurenlankford&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: Lauren is the Team Leader for our sister project, &lt;a href="http://dropalovebomb.com"&gt;Love Bomb&lt;/a&gt;. You can check out&lt;a href="http://laurennicolelove.blogspot.com"&gt; her own blog here&lt;/a&gt;, and follow Love Bomb on Twitter &lt;a href="http://twitter.com/dropalovebomb"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Similar Posts:&lt;/strong&gt;
&lt;ul class="similar-posts"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2009/06/29/social-media-for-good-12for12k/" rel="bookmark" title="June 29, 2009"&gt;Social Media For Good: 12for12k&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/08/19/on-cool-people/" rel="bookmark" title="August 19, 2010"&gt;On Cool People&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2009/07/09/12for12k-in-july-eye-care-for-kids/" rel="bookmark" title="July 9, 2009"&gt;12for12k In July: Eye Care For Kids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2009/06/01/who-do-you-know-part-i/" rel="bookmark" title="June 1, 2009"&gt;Who Do You Know? (Part I)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2009/06/04/who-do-you-know-part-ii/" rel="bookmark" title="June 4, 2009"&gt;Who Do You Know? (Part II)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- Similar Posts took 15.548 ms --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;



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		<author>
			<name>Susi</name>
						<uri>http://purplepoops.tumblr.com</uri>
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		<title type="html"><![CDATA[&#8230;You Are So Beautiful, Can&#8217;t You See It?]]></title>
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		<id>http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/?p=2353</id>
		<updated>2011-01-14T04:01:35Z</updated>
		<published>2011-01-14T04:01:35Z</published>
		<category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="Organizations" /><category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="People" />		<summary type="html"><![CDATA[
			
				
			
		
Following is a second article from our blog series highlighting  young ISWU members.
&#8220;Hey now, you are not ugly, you are so beautiful. Can&#8217;t you see it?&#8221; This was sent by Opperation Hope [misspelling intended], a website where anyone can enter a recipient and a message, and the email will be sent anonymously for you (which [...]]]></summary>
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&lt;p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Following is a second article from our blog series highlighting  young ISWU members.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"&gt;&lt;img class="size-medium wp-image-2356 aligncenter" src="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/opperationhope-300x136.png" alt="Opperation hope" width="336" height="176" /&gt;&amp;#8220;Hey now, you are not ugly, you are so beautiful. Can&amp;#8217;t you see it?&amp;#8221; This was sent by Opperation Hope [misspelling intended], a website where anyone can enter a recipient and a message, and the email will be sent anonymously for you (which is really handy for people you don&amp;#8217;t normally talk to, like your estranged brother-in-law or the lonely shy girl at school). Opperation Hope was created by Aly and Mebediel [not their real names], two teenage girls in California, US that, one day, decided to send an anonymous email to a lonely sophomore at their school. That was their first Opperation Hope email, and their first step to changing the world. One sender told Aly and Mebediel that the boy she wrote to had changed the way he acted, becoming more outgoing, less restrained, and making more friends. Each message they send is just as amazing, and offer advice we all deserve to hear, but often forget: &amp;#8220;You are awesome, so I just wanted to tell you this: Be yourself; everyone else is taken,&amp;#8221; and &amp;#8220;&amp;#8230; A lot of people appreciate you and what you do. Never doubt that.&amp;#8221; So far, the girls have filled 17 hearts with hope.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"&gt;
&lt;p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"&gt;You can share some hope at &lt;a href="http://opperationhope.weebly.com/" target="_blank"&gt;http://opperationhope.weebly.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"&gt;&lt;a href="http://opperationhope.weebly.com/index.html"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"&gt;&amp;#8212;&amp;#8212;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Entire Interview with Mebediel And Aly&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: How many people have used Opperation Hope?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;M: So far there have been 17 messages that were sent through us, and one person has asked us for advice.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: Have you had any feedback from people about it?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;A: Yes, I believe so, and we&amp;#8217;re always very excited whenever we receive one.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;M: We have had a couple of suggestions for improvement on our site such as the &amp;#8220;Other acts of hope&amp;#8221; section, the &amp;#8220;Ask for hope&amp;#8221; section, and a suggestion that we might forward any replies from the &amp;#8220;victim&amp;#8221; (I have no better words for the person we send the email to) back to the original sender.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: Has anyone told you an inspirational story about their experiences with it?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;M: So far, no one has shared any inspirational stories with us, but there was on boy who kept communicating with us; we knew the hope-sender personally, and she told us that she had seen a change in how he acted&amp;#8211;that he was more outgoing and less restrained after that, and that helped him make more friends at school.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: The boy that inspired you to start it &amp;#8211; did you ever see any change in him?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;M: If I remember rightly, the biggest change we saw in him was that he found some friends later on&amp;#8230;that may or may not have had anything to do with our email.&lt;br /&gt;
A: Well, in general, yes, although it probably wasn&amp;#8217;t because of our email. He found a few new friends and I think, he recently reunited with his old friends, so we&amp;#8217;re glad that he&amp;#8217;s not all alone anymore!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: Do you read the messages &amp;#8211; (i assume you have to since you have to rewrite them, and you might want to make sure they aren&amp;#8217;t mean?) and if so, what was your favorite one?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;M: Yes, we read the messages, and so far we haven&amp;#8217;t had any mean ones. One of my favorites is, &amp;#8220;People can be so hurtful but people can be so healing. So don&amp;#8217;t give up on people. You&amp;#8217;re a wonderful guy. A lot of people appreciate you and what you do. Never doubt that.&amp;#8221;&lt;br /&gt;
A: I guess my favorite one has to be, &amp;#8220;Hey now, you are not ugly, you are so beautiful. Can&amp;#8217;t you see it?&amp;#8221;. It just sounds so honest and sincere, I love it!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: Are there any others that really stand out to you?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;M: All of the Opperation Hope messages are amazing, but two more that stood out to me are: &amp;#8220;Hey now, you are not ugly, you are so beautiful. Can&amp;#8217;t you see it?&amp;#8221; and &amp;#8220;You are awesome So I just wanted to tell you this: Be yourself; everyone else is taken. =D&amp;#8221;&lt;br /&gt;
A: Other than my favorite, one that stands out to me is &amp;#8220;People can be so hurtful but people can be so healing. So don&amp;#8217;t give up on people. You&amp;#8217;re a wonderful guy. A lot of people appreciate you and what you do. Never doubt that.&amp;#8221;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Similar Posts:&lt;/strong&gt;
&lt;ul class="similar-posts"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2009/07/20/redefining-beauty/" rel="bookmark" title="July 20, 2009"&gt;Redefining Beauty&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/06/23/of-swell-chicks-and-secret-agents/" rel="bookmark" title="June 23, 2010"&gt;Of Swell Chicks and Secret Agents&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/07/01/1824/" rel="bookmark" title="July 1, 2010"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/12/09/comments-wanted-what-would-you-do/" rel="bookmark" title="December 9, 2010"&gt;Comments Wanted: What Would You Do?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/09/08/vote-now-on-our-first-open-source-project/" rel="bookmark" title="September 8, 2010"&gt;Vote Now On Our First Open-Source Project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- Similar Posts took 22.126 ms --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;



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		<author>
			<name>Kai</name>
						<uri>http://www.fearlessbliss.com</uri>
					</author>
		<title type="html"><![CDATA[I&#8217;m Not Crazy About Commercials, But This Is Good One&#8230;]]></title>
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		<id>http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/?p=2528</id>
		<updated>2011-01-11T16:29:44Z</updated>
		<published>2011-01-11T16:28:56Z</published>
		<category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="Uncategorized" />		<summary type="html"><![CDATA[
			
				
			
		
Happy New Year Everyone!
 I came across this artistically powerful video re-posted on Neal Hightower&#8217;s site www.sixsimpletruths.com.  Although it&#8217;s a long commercial for a company&#8217;s inspirational artwork, I must admit it&#8217;s very well done and it gave me goosebumps (especially since I love good quotes).  As we&#8217;re transforming ourselves and the world, words of wisdom from those who [...]]]></summary>
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&lt;p style="text-align: center;"&gt;Happy New Year Everyone!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="text-align: center;"&gt; I came across this artistically powerful video re-posted on Neal Hightower&amp;#8217;s site &lt;a href="http://www.sixsimpletruths.com"&gt;www.sixsimpletruths.com&lt;/a&gt;.  Although it&amp;#8217;s a long commercial for a company&amp;#8217;s inspirational artwork, I must admit it&amp;#8217;s very well done and it gave me goosebumps (especially since I love good quotes).  As we&amp;#8217;re transforming ourselves and the world, words of wisdom from those who have traveled the road before us can make our travels over the speed bumps a bit easier&amp;#8230;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="text-align: center;"&gt;Thanks Neal for sharing some great inspiration with others. You&amp;#8217;ve inspired me to pass it along:)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="text-align: center;"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="640" height="385" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /&gt;&lt;param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ev2duJejO3o?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US" /&gt;&lt;param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /&gt;&lt;embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="640" height="385" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ev2duJejO3o?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Similar Posts:&lt;/strong&gt;
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&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/06/07/why-i-do-what-i-do/" rel="bookmark" title="June 7, 2010"&gt;Why I Do What I Do&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
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		<entry>
		<author>
			<name>Priyasha M</name>
						<uri>http://xshishu95.tumblr.com</uri>
					</author>
		<title type="html"><![CDATA[Simply Said: Teenagers Are Awesome!]]></title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/itstartswithus/~3/2M-5h3c6Xis/" />
		<id>http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/?p=2347</id>
		<updated>2011-01-05T15:05:54Z</updated>
		<published>2011-01-05T15:05:54Z</published>
		<category scheme="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog" term="Uncategorized" />		<summary type="html"><![CDATA[
			
				
			
		
Priyasha, age 15, lives in Indonesia and  is one of our young ISWU team members making a difference in the world.  Following is her first blog post as a new writing team member. 
Simply said, I think teenagers are awesome. Yes, I may be biased based on the sheer fact that I am a teenager, but I [...]]]></summary>
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&lt;p style="text-align: center"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Priyasha, age 15, lives in Indonesia and  is one of our young ISWU team members making a difference in the world.  Following is her first blog post as a new writing team member. &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="text-align: left"&gt;Simply said, I think teenagers are awesome. Yes, I &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be biased based on the sheer fact that I am a teenager, but I sometimes feel like my generation right now is amazing just because we (well, some of us at least) still have little bits of innocence from our childhood combined with maturity as we turn into adults. Kind of like a butterfly halfway through metamorphosis, except in our case, we get to explore the world during our time of change and not in a cocoon.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="text-align: left"&gt;Sometimes I think teenagers today, and throughout history, are underestimated because of the stereotypes bestowed upon us. They say we all listen to music too loudly, are moody, mean to our parents, and rebellious. Sure, I’ll admit, that might be true, but at the same time I think it should be known that lots of us do have ideas on how to change the world around us and it would be incredible if teenagers and adults could work together more often to combine our thoughts and hopes to create something of greater good. This teenage generation has the power of the Internet, amongst other things, and we are stronger than ever, if our “powers” are used correctly, of course.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div id="attachment_2349" class="wp-caption alignright" style="width: 319px"&gt;&lt;img class="size-full wp-image-2349 " src="http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ryan-hreljac1.jpg" alt="With Ryan Hreljac. I'm the second from the right." width="309" height="232" /&gt;&lt;p class="wp-caption-text"&gt;With Ryan Hreljac. I&amp;#39;m the second from the right.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class="mceTemp"&gt;
&lt;div class="mceTemp"&gt;
&lt;div&gt;When I say we are stronger than ever, I mean to say, since a mass percentage of the teenage generation is connected on the internet and frequently uses it, call me naïve, but if we put our “powers” together, we could start something really big, or change the world in a really big way. Of course, it would be done with the support and help of anyone willing to join our cause, whatever it might be.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p style="text-align: left"&gt;One of my favorite examples of teenagers impacting the world in a massive way is Ryan Hreljac. I met Ryan and he is one of the humblest, nicest guys I’ve ever known. Ryan started the Ryan’s Well Foundation with an idea of his when he was only six years old. He started with raising enough money to build a well in Africa and the foundation has spread from then on to eventually help “over 700,000 people” get access to clean water and sanitation services. Ryan’s only 19.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="text-align: left"&gt;I could go on about all the amazing teenagers in this world trying to benefit our world and who are helping in all sorts of different ways, but I just wanted to give everyone reading this one example of a teenager who I feel is making a giant change to make the world a better place.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="text-align: left"&gt;Finally, what I’m trying to say is, sometimes teenagers are undervalued because we are younger, and if teenagers and adult worked simultaneously, it could create something immensely powerful which would help our world in some way. Of course, since teenagers are so young, we do need help and guidance, and working with people older than us would definitely help us solve that problem.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Meet Priyasha:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="480" height="385" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /&gt;&lt;param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/uhGqegEaY78?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;rel=0" /&gt;&lt;param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /&gt;&lt;embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="385" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/uhGqegEaY78?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;rel=0" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Similar Posts:&lt;/strong&gt;
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