Helping others inspires you to do more…
[Click on the image to enlarge, download or print it for posting
Warning: Reproduction for commercial purposes is prohibited]
Many of you, like my wife and myself, dream of someday making a serious commitment to a humanitarian project: devoting a few months – maybe even a few years – of your lives helping people in need, protecting endangered species or even participating in an large-scale ecological project.
Until such an opportunity becomes reality we have already started to act. Our present actions, – small daily gestures to help out here and there – are much more modest than our initial dreams. In our hurried and harried lives, we try to integrate such gestures as often as possible.
Some people call it kindness; others may call it solidarity, a helping hand or good citizenship. For those who benefit from the action as well as those who initiate it, it’s the impact that matters, not the moniker.
In fact, for me, it’s a bit like playing sports. You need a good dose of discipline to overcome the initial rigors and to resist the temptation to abandon everything when things get tough. The payoff, however, is great joy and a wonderful sense of accomplishment!
Participating, donating some of your time, making a difference in someone’s life: they all provide the same high! You’re smiling on the inside and the good adrenaline is flowing. Oddly enough, as far I am concerned, the sense of satisfaction is sometimes greater when helping a perfect stranger!
It really is like playing sports. Over time, I feel like I can do more and I can do it better. So why not attempt something great one day? And why not turn my humanitarian dreams into reality?
So it’s not surprising that I would choose to add a non-profit component to the NosVies project. I am gradually working on it with a group of volunteers who hail from different countries and bring with them their own perspectives. It will be a first step towards social entrepreneurship. I’ll tell you more about it very soon.
So for those of you who wish to one day participate in a large humanitarian project, I encourage you to start now by offering a helping hand to the people whom you encounter in your daily life.
But I should warn you, like all good things, it could become addictive!
Dan Bassill says :
Thierry, I saw your introduction on Omidyar.net and visited your site. The illustrations are great and your commitment to helping others is wonderful. I’m a Commissioner for the Illinois Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service and the leader of a Chicago non profit with two names (Cabrini Connections, http://www.cabriniconnections.net ) and (Tutor/Mentor Connection, http://www.tutormentorconnection .org)
In my http://tutormentor.blogspot.com you can see efforts by me to create illustrations that communicate more clearly than words. In the Tutor/Mentor Institute section of http://www.tutormentorconnection .org you can find short pdf essays, with more of these charts and maps.
I would love to find a way to connect with you and your network, to enlist your illustrators in helping us create a daily message frequency that gets the attention of more people throughout the world and points them to places in local communities where they can be a volunteer, leaders and/or donor in support of various social causes.
I’m organizing a blog exchange for May, leading into a conference I’ll host in Chicago during May 17 and 18. You can read about the blog exchange at http://www.tutormentorexchange.n et/Partner/CC/Conference/May2005 /current.asp
My hope is that you’d write about tutoring/mentoring, using some of your illustrations to motivate people to connect.
Dan Bassill says :
Hi Thierry,
In response to your question about what a blog exchange is, this link provides some ideas on what these are: http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2007/03/blog-exchanges-connecting-stakeholders.html
Since I’m hosting a face to face conference in Chicago on May 17 and 18, my aim is to enlist bloggers who will write about volunteerism, networking, and tutoring/mentoring, during early May. I’ll list anyone who does that on my list of bloggers.
By creating the list, I’m also asking that each blogger take a look at the blog of someone else on the list, and write something in their blog about that.
Thus, if you participate, you could use one of the illustrations you posted on Omidyar.net to illustrate how mentors are “heros” in the lives of kids.
If you were to visit http://www.gifthub.org, you might create a different illustration to show how important donors are to tutor/mentor pgorams.
I’m not looking for a daily message, just a minimum of one post during the first two weeks of May.
I aim to repeat this concept every 3 months, with the goal of finding more people who are using blogs to promote volunteerism, service, philanthropy and tutoring/mentoring. As the number of bloggers on the list grows, I feel we can increase page visits for all of us.
Thierry Koehrlen says :
Thank you Dan for your message and your invitation for collaboration. This is a perfect example of the type of wonderful outcome I was eagerly expecting with this post. Let’s synchronize to work together on your project.
Easton Ellsworth says :
Very cool site, Thierry! I love the creative cartoons. Keep up the awesome work here.
Michelle S says :
I love this blog and what you are saying! Helping others is a new source of happiness! The Wish Upon a Hero site is made up of anyone,everyone who wishes to help others by being a hero or anyone can make wishes there and many times they get granted! No red tape and its free. I dont mean to advertise on your neat blog, but wished to let you know about it since it is about helping others also! thanks and keep on writing!