How Do You Communicate?

I remember when I was a little girl and the way I communicated with my friends was either to call them on our rotary dial phone or hop on my bike and ride over to their house. Life was so much simpler, but I also have to think that communications were so much slower…how did business get done?

Today, I am amazed that we are able to run a virtual foundation, out of over 150 homes around the world to help orphans in China. We get emails and Skypes with updates on the children we help daily from our staff in China. Problem solving is instantaneous and happens immediately with computers. We are able to conference call for meetings and there are days that I never speak to anyone except through my computer.

I have to laugh, though, at a conversation that I had with Amy on Friday. When I was talking to her on the phone, she said that she didn’t know where to start…she had hundreds of messages on Facebook, Twitter, email, that all needed to be returned. We both thought back to a year ago, it was just email and phone. Now we know people in all different mediums, people who want to help children, have questions about adoption, or doing the work to make this foundation run. There are even more social networking tools out there that we have still to explore, like Linked-In. How funny it is that we have so many ways to communicate. I wonder what will communication look like a year from now, what about 10 years.

What do you use to communicate and what is your favorite way to contact people? Do you think there is such thing as communication overload? Do you see disadvantages as more of our communication takes away from personal contact or do you think that communications will allow us to streamline how we work and create even more personal time?

Karen Maunu

Social Change

Our charity question of the week:

“Social change” is the current buzz word in the non-profit world... It is not just about simply helping people, but how charities are bringing about a larger change in society. Reading recent articles about this topic this past week has caused me to reflect on who we are and what changes we are creating with the work we do.

LWB started out by helping one child with heart disease. From that, the ripples grew with more medical children, our school programs, foster care, and orphanage assistance. We know that we are making a difference one child at a time, but have we affected social change in what we are doing?

Three years ago, we developed the idea of a special needs manual to educate orphanages on how adoptable so many children were. Our goal was to get the manual in the hands of as many of the orphanages throughout China and tell them how many families would love to have these children in their families. After the completion of the manual, we started trainings for orphanages, teaching them about special needs and providing training on how to file adoption paperwork. The program worked, and many new orphanages began to submit files on the children with special needs in their care.

In addition, in the orphanages where we work, we have continued to have conversations with the staff about the fact that every child, regardless of their needs, deserves a family. This has resulted in many more children with special needs having their adoption files submitted. For example, one orphanage in Hunan where we have a school program submitted paperwork on only 3 children in 2007, but in 2008 submitted 25; all children with special needs and many in our school. Beyond this, with our foster care programs involving children with special needs, local people have begun to interact with these children and realize that they are just normal little children. We have seen an increase in domestic adoption and a general shift in how children with special needs are viewed in the villages where we work.

The social changes that we have been making have been a ripple effect of our primary goal....providing direct aid to the children. As I have been reading articles on the importance of social change...I have to ask, is that enough? Is it the duty of a charity to set about making changes purposefully? Or is it enough to have change happen haphazardly as an after effect of our charitable actions? What do you think?

Karen Maunu

Associate Executive Director