Happy New Year everyone -- I hope you enjoyed a wonderful holiday! I apologize for not giving proper warning about my radio silence here...I had a post queued up to let you know about my holiday plans for the site, but ended up falling off the social media map in the most delightful way. Taking work into low gear + truly living the minimalist holidays mantra afforded me the most relaxed and restorative holiday season ever! Anyway, during this window of down time, like many folks, I spent a lot of time reflecting on 2012 and thinking about the year to come. Today, I wanted to share eight intentions I'm setting for 2013. I would love to hear yours as well!Happy New Year everyone -- I hope you enjoyed a wonderful holiday! I apologize for not giving proper warning about my radio silence here...I had a post queued up to let you know about my holiday plans for the site, but ended up falling off the social media map in the most delightful way. Taking work into low gear + truly living the minimalist holidays mantra afforded me the most relaxed and restorative holiday season ever! Anyway, during this window of down time, like many folks, I spent a lot of time reflecting on 2012 and thinking about the year to come. Today, I wanted to share eight intentions I'm setting for 2013. I would love to hear yours as well!
It's hard to believe that this time last month I was in Ethiopia with ONE Moms -- the trip still lives so vividly with me (I just dreamed last night that I was headed back to Africa). Many of you asked how you could help -- I hope to circle back soon with a list of ways to help the specific sites we visited while on the ground in Ethiopia. Meanwhile, today, I'm asking you to consider making a difference by taking two actions in twenty seconds. So simple. So easy. So important.
Our final site visit in Ethiopia represented the awesome and the ironic. Muya (which means talent) is a woman-owned, fair trade business that has "made it" in many ways. In contrast to the primitive yet productive trappings of fashionABLE, Muya is situated in Addis Ababa on a rather restorative feeling compound -- a series of modern buildings (vs. wood and tin roofed huts) nestled between plenty of foliage. They make a gorgeous array of home and fashion products and produce scarves for Lemlem (which distributes to clients such as J. Crew). Yet despite their successes, they still struggle to gain footing with sellers; largely, it seems, due to outsider stereotypes of Ethiopia.
Ever since reading Roger Thurow's The Last Hunger Season I've been thinking a lot about global food issues and about how simple agricultural educational practices (e.g., how to space out seeds, fertilize, water) are huge game changers when it comes to sustainability and helping farmers in third world countries not only feed their families, but access other necessities such as education. Our visits to USAID's ENGINE hub and a nutrition demonstration showed the progress being made in this direction.
The more Ethiopian families I've met and the longer the time apart from my family grows, I find myself increasingly wondering about how the girls are doing in school. Did Laurel have a good day? Was the special Italian, art, music, or gym? [I can never keep the schedule straight.] What songs did Violet sing today at circle? All of what I envision -- the shiny classrooms, piles of books, and endless snack supply -- lies in stark contrast to what I'm seeing on the ground in Ethiopia, whether at traditional schools or at the Population Council's safe learning spaces for girls suffering in urban slums. The program is called BiruhTesfa (bright future), and I really need to tell you about it today.
Today was a day of inspiration. We rose at 4am and flew from Addis Ababa to Bahir Dar. We then spent many hours traversing bumpy rural roads on a bus. Our first two stops were the Madera Woreda Health Office and Anbesame Health Center, which both benefit from USAID funding and have subsequently made great strides in providing maternal and child health, family planning, and nutrition services in rural areas. Our third stop was to the Sene Mariam Women's Beekeeping Group, a program that is funded by USAID's Feed the Future initiative and that was developed to provide training and create jobs for disadvantaged women. I was inspired not only by how impacting USAID's programs are, but by the courage of the women we met at all three stops.
This morning the ONE Moms journey took us to the Mojo secondary and primary schools in Mojo, Ethiopia. Both schools operate at ~1:45 teacher/student ratio and benefit from the UK Department for International Development (DFID)'s initiatives around basic services (e.g., sanitation) and education improvement (e.g., text books, teacher development). The on-site improvements (e.g., computers, books, lower student/teacher ratios -- the secondary school used to operate at a 1:67 ratio) and quantitative results (e.g., in the past 5 years, the rate for passing university entrance exams has climbed from 60 to 89%) are remarkable and I wanted to share some audio and video.
I have been a complete jumble of emotions since arriving in Addis Ababa on the ONE Moms mission trip. Yesterday, I was a bit of a wreck after bonding with a child at Mary Joy. But today, despite the painful histories and continued hardships to which I was exposed, I experienced a day of hope. I saw progress and great strides being made to improve the lives of Ethiopian women and their children. I saw it in the form of fashionABLE and the Hamlin Fistula Hospital.
The beginning of my journey to Ethiopia was not ideal. I slept through my 3:30 am alarm and was woken to the sound of my phone ringing -- the cab company calling to find out why I missed my 4:15 am reservation. Luckily, they doubled back and I made it to my flight out of Boston (barely). Then we had a 5 hour delay in Dulles (I am forever grateful to my friend Liz for her fine companionship and generosity during the delay) and the 13 hour flight to Addis Ababa. But anyway, I am finally here in Ethiopia!This Saturday I set off on the long journey to Ethiopia as part of ONE Moms. It's starting to feel real (particularly when I look at the list of things I need to take care of before I depart), but I don't think the magnitude of the trip will really set in until we land in Addis Ababa. I've received a lot of questions about this trip so I thought I would address the most common of them all in one place.
I love cooking, but like many parents, on weekdays I need dinners to come together fast (often one handed while I haul around Violet, whose latest great delight is honking my nose repeatedly). We've been in a bit of a food rut, so when my friend Kristin Appenbrink at Real Simple asked if I would participate in a blog relay about their stress-free month of dinners, I was like, um yes, I need ideas for a stress-free month of dinners!
A month from today I head to Ethiopia as part of ONE Moms. I went to get my first round of vaccinations this week and while I was waiting, I inhaled the Ethiopia culture report shared by the travel clinic. And today I wanted to take a cue from Asha (the candor of her post hit a nerve for me) and share some facts about Ethiopia and ONE. I shared many of these facts with Laurel (who accompanied me to the clinic) and she was fascinated by it all. This trip will clearly be a game changer for me, not only for personal reasons but because it has already made me realize that I need to share more of the world with Laurel.
Friends, I'm diverting from regularly scheduled editorial today because my mind is swimming after my trip to Washington, DC yesterday. I am humbled and honored to share that I am now part of the ONE Moms advisory board, through which I will work on inspiring community action around issues such as maternal and child health, agriculture, and the empowerment of women and girls in developing countries. As part of this work, this fall I will travel to Ethiopia -- I can barely wrap my head around the magnitude of this upcoming trip; I know it will change my lens on, well, everything else in my life. And you all are part of why this is happening and I can't thank you enough.
Back when Asha and I announced our Minimalist Parenting book deal, I mentioned that we wanted to ultimately integrate our communities into the process. Why? Because you are awesome. And smart. And funny. And such an integral part of why this book is even happening. And now, the time has come -- we want to add your brilliance to our completed chapters! Over the coming weeks we will ask specific questions on various topics over at the Minimalist Parenting blog; our first question is about money. Come on over and share your brilliant budgeting tools and strategies!
It is enormously gratifying when ideas that I propel into the world not only stick, but help people minimize stress and clutter. During my Do Less As a Life Strategy talk at BlissDom in February, someone asked me about e-mail management and I shared my "3-touch rule." And then a couple of days ago (about two months later!), there was a bunch of Twitter chatter between @the818 (who used my method to get her inbox down from 770 to 24!) and @alexandrawrote, @Melaina25, @LoveFeast, @hollywoodhwife, and @linzlovesyou about this topic. I promised these folks I would share the method with everyone so here goes.
For Laurel's first few birthday parties, I assembled fun yet somewhat insane birthday parties -- inviting tons of people, making tons of food, and admittedly not being particularly mindful of the fact that Laurel is overwhelmed by large crowds and that I was putting a lot of unnecessary work on myself. I eventually smartened up, opting for smaller and simpler gatherings. And whether it's a function of my minimalist parenting mindset (as it turns out, birthdays offer an excellent opportunity to work on "do less" practices), the second child phenomenon, or the fact that I'm experiencing discord with one of my siblings, for Violet's birthday, I truly was happy with the idea of celebrating with just our immediate family of four.