It’s Not A…

Project, but a PROMISE. The Guinea Project like in the link I am about to share with you all, really is just that a promise to bring a smile and a little bit of light to the children of Guinea. Please take the time to read the post. This project not only helped me as an artist to realize that my art can mean something but it allowed me to meet some really awesome and talented people in the process, and I hope to meet these new friends in the near future. So go and read the post. And thank you if you’ve read this and travel over the provided link!

http://adriftinasea.tumblr.com/post/44692792394/more#_=_

Give your hands to work and your feet to walk.

It was Mahatma Gandhi that said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”. At some point in my own life, something happened, something in my brain clicked and I started to look at the world differently. I realized that I made myself blind to the world around me, blind to all of the brokenness. Most of us end up so wrapped up in ourselves and materialistic we fill our lives with that we forget to be thankful for the simple things: Food, clean water, homes, clothes, shoes, medical services and education. This moment of clarity happened starting in May 2008 during a mission trip to Homestead, Florida and then really kind of hit me like a sack of rocks in October 2008 when participating in CROP Walk. Which in a previous post I wrote about that experience, I walked five miles on surfaces including: dirt, gravel, cement, black top, brick and grass. Doing that was humbling and most people wouldn’t be able to fully grasp the mental impact by doing a simple act like that had on me, that five miles was the beginning of something new, something much bigger than myself. However, like most people, that eye opening moment faded and life continued, and up until the past few days was stored in the back of my mind. Fortunately and unfortunately the thing that brought it back to the front of my mind was an actor that I admire for the work he has done, but more so now that he has been able to do work with Unicef in Guinea. Reading his blog posts brought my own moments of clarity back to the front of my mind and continually leave me heartbroken and wanting to be apart of something to help get the word out about these world issues that are seemingly over-masked by more mundane news stories. You can Read Tom Hiddleston’s stories from Guinea here (and I highly encourage you to do so): http://blogs.unicef.org.uk/

Now for some facts that are important to the meat of this post. I will also include the links to the websites I got the information from, some of which are directly quoted.

From Unicef: http://www.unicef.org/media/media_fastfacts.html

• In 60 countries in the developing world, more than half of primary schools have no adequate water facilities and almost 2/3 lack adequate sanitation.

• As of 2006 it’s estimated that 158 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are engaged in work labour.

• Estimated that 650 million people across the globe with a disability. And according to statistics close to 200 million children have sensory, intellectual and metal health impairments.

• Over 17.5 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS, of that 14 million live in sub Saharan Africa.

From Church World Service: http://www.cwsglobal.org/resources/

• 925 million people do not get enough to eat.

• Malnutrition leads to almost 1/3 of childhood deaths before the age of 5.

• Hunger kills more than AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis combined.

• One in seven people will go hungry tonight.

Now how do some of these organizations go about visualizing and work to help alleviate some of these issues? Unicef is a huge organization that helps to educate and give financial support for countries on how they can build up their communities, they fund raise and they have celebrity support. Church World Service, their largest form of fundraising and donations come from communities participating in CROP Walk. Those are two well known organizations. However the philosophy and mission of a much smaller organization really hit the points of what is needed to support the developing world, which gives us more of an opportunity to see how as an individual human being we can make a small difference in the world. The smaller organization, I am going to briefly mention is Safe World. I strongly recommend checking out all of the mentioned organizations I have mentioned. Here is the website for Safe World: http://iamsafeworld.org/#/main

I think Safe World said it in the most simple way: Their values “People- At every level… Everyone matters.” Their Philosophy is: 

“We want to create and produce ideas that can cross cultural lines with general ease. Because the needs for belonging and love are universal, we are working to make sure our missional development is the same way.”

Can it be that simply loving and educating, with some added financial support really help to slowly improve the lives of people who have close to nothing? It has also been said that “It only takes a spark to get a fire going.” (Pass It On written by Kurt Kaiser)

While reading Tom’s posts there was one person who had a spark of inspiration, when I read their comment I got ridiculously excited for a project that they proposed and they forwarded the idea to Tom’s publicist, he also really loved the idea. What is this idea? To create a book that holds stories, poems, illustrations and photographs geared towards children between the ages of 5 and 12. We want to bring the same happiness and feeling of be safe in these stories to the children who live in these developing countries. Last link to share with you all, if this project sounds interesting to you please, please, please  click the link and read more details about the project. http://adriftinasea.tumblr.com/

I am definitely not going to be sorry for the length of this post. And if you’re reading this sentence now, thank you so much for taking the time to read the entire post. Go and remember another quote from Gandhi, “In a gentle way you can shake the world.”

 

Buckets of love to you all,

Cailin

One Step At A Time….

I was reading quotes somewhere a few weeks ago and came across this one: “You never know what’s around the corner. It could be everything or it could be nothing. You keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then one day you look back and you’ve climbed a mountain.” -Tom Hiddleston. I can say that I have experienced this, I have physically climbed one mountain and figuratively climbed many mountains in my short 25.5 years on this planet. Each time as if a weight has been lifted, but soon realize that I will have to face another mountain potentially with a higher peak to reach. I like that challenge, that is what makes our lives worth living and what keeps us pushing forward and it allows us to grow.

*Photo credit and copyright: Cailin Thompson(paperdaisygirl)
*Quote credit: Tom Hiddleston

Also here is a post I wrote about my night climb of Mount Monadnock to see the sunrise. https://paperdaisygirl.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/mountains/

Mumford and Sons

Yesterday I was walking home from a local cafe and was listening to Mumford and Sons, as I have been since acquiring their album Babel. Well their song “Below My Feet” was playing and it gets to the chorus “…Keep the earth below my feet. For all my sweat, my blood runs weak. Let me learn from where I have been. Keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn. Keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn…” and I am not sure why I hadn’t picked up on the lyrics before, however it reminded me of a poem I had written back on 10 May 2009 while sitting in church. I realize that makes me seem as if I wasn’t paying attention to the church service, maybe I wasn’t, maybe something wasn’t keeping my attention, I probably had something else on my mind. I wrote two small poems that day… maybe not poems but a string of words. Well here is the poem I wrote that I was remind of while listening to “Below My Feet”

Give Love

Give Peace

Give Hope

Give Faith 

Give Heart 

Give your hands to work

Give your feet to walk.

 

It is possible I was thinking of walking in Crop Walk back in September or October or I was thinking about TOMS One Day Without Shoes, either are completely valid thoughts. Crop Walk that year I had walked with a friend barefoot for 5 miles in Abington, Virginia. Walking five miles barefoot on cement, gravel, brick and grass (delightful temporary relief) is an eye opening experience. Maybe if I had trained my feet beforehand by walking barefoot more often it wouldn’t have been as bad and I wouldn’t of had two and a half inch (?) blisters on my heels, however I don’t think that would have left the same impression on me and my thoughts towards the causes that TOMS and Crop Walk support. TOMS supports the world and the need people have for simply one pair of shoes to keep feet protected and Crop Walk raises awareness for world hunger their motto is “We walk because they walk.”. Did you know that in many places around the world people have to walk up to six miles most of the time barefoot to get their supply of water for the day? Stepping on sharp rocks and many other things getting cuts on your feet and all without access to even simple medical supplies to keep cuts from getting infected. Just imagine having to do that everyday just to get water. A lot of my friends asked why I would walk five miles barefoot when it wasn’t necessary to the walk, they also asked what would it prove or what did I gain by doing that. We no longer seem to have the ability to do something just because we wanted to do it, according to society we have to have a motive or a reason. Okay, if that is the case, my reason for walking Crop Walk barefoot is simply because there are millions of people out there that have no choice but to walk barefoot and risking infection and injury and having to suffer through that, if I had had worse than blisters on my feet I could have gone to the doctors and would have been given the proper treatment to keep me from getting an infection. The next time you have the opportunity to do something that supports a cause and do something that causes people to ask you questions about what you are doing, you take that opportunity, because it means getting the word out there about something that you support. Lastly, always take the opportunity to do something that is humbling, it makes you look at the world around you with a new perspective.

This blog post was inspired by Mumford and Sons and Tom Hiddleston for also mentioning the song mentioned earlier because it reminded me of writing about a poem I wrote.