JasonBayer.com

Blog Action Day took place on October 15th, 2008 when over 12,000 bloggers banded together to discuss a single issue - POVERTY.  Unfortunately, I didn’t write a post on the 15th, but I wanted to share my story about how I was inspired to take action through Blog Action Day and my growing social network community.

Over the past couple of months, I have become an active member of the rapidly growing twitter social network community.  As I place my twitter username (jmanstudios) into newly created twitter user directories such as http://justtweetit.com, I have picked up numerous “followers” of my twitter feed.  On Monday, I was follow by a guy named Jamin Garoutte a freelance web/graphic designer & photographer from Indiana. Typically, I’ll check out new follower’s profile to decided if they warrant a follow-back.  I noticed that Jamin had a blog called the JAG Design Blog so I clicked the link to check it out.  It turns out that Jamin had a great story that he chose to blog about on Blog Action Day that inspired me to take action.  You see for the past 4 years, Jamin and his wife have been sponsoring a little girl in Kenya, Africa. And for $30 a month, they are able to meet many of her needs, including food, water and education. He went on talk about the organization that he uses for sponsorship, as well as a website called Charity Navigator that tracks and rates these types of charitable organizations.

So I jumped on Google and Charity Navigator and started looking as some different organizations that help impoverished children.  I had never really thought about sponsoring a child in another country before, and I had no idea it was so inexpensive. I also thought what a cool learning experience this could be for my children, who I came to understand didn’t have much knowledge about the global problem of poverty and the challenges that face millions of children around the world.

I wanted to find a child in Africa… maybe it was because my good friend Marty is currently visiting there with his family, maybe it was because some friends of mine recently adopted a baby girl from Kenya, maybe it was because I remember seeing the images of malnourished kids from Africa while I was growing up.  For whatever reason, I was drawn to Africa.  So when I clicked on the link and watched the introductory video about World Vision’s new interactive online sponsorship program called mySponsorship, I knew I was at the right place.  I went on to learn that the mySponsorship program not only allows me to sponsor a child but also to interact and engage in an online environment through the use of e-mails, photos and video allowing me to watch the progress and success of my sponsored child and community. I thought… This is great! An opportunity for myself and my family to positively impact the life of another human being and a great chance at exposing my kids to a totally different way of life without actually have to be there.

So, I rounded up the family to discuss what we were going to do and was floored by my kids lack of knowledge about poverty.  This made the decision to move forward with the sponsorship program that much easier.  We went on to choose an 8-year old boy named Saliou as our sponsor child.  Saliou is growing up in a poor community in Senegal, West Africa where families live in round mud huts with either a thatch or tin roof.  The average monthly household monthly income is $47 for a family in Senegal.  Unfortunately, I am unable to post Saliou’s picture as is not allowed in WorldVision’s child privacy & security policies.

After signing up as a sponsor, I contacted my new friend Jamin to tell him the good news that because of his blog post on Blog Action Day, I too had signed up to sponsor a child myself!  So to all of you bloggers out there looking to make a difference, keep writing, keep posting… you never know when your action to write will make a difference in a real, practical way.  I hope that this story can help to encourage someone out there to help make a difference in a child’s life!