At World Moms Blog we’ve been so “Go! Go! Go!” that I haven’t had time to reflect on our year, and now that I have, it was really “WOW!!” Here are some amazing and memorable highlights!

World Moms Blog contributors and editors met up for the first time in Washington, DC in January, around the UN Foundation’s Volunteer Summit for Shot@Life. I was also invited to speak at the event on grass-roots fundraising and party planning for social good during the summit.World Moms 2012 DC 500

In March, our Indonesian contributors, Maureen and Shaula Bellour, also met for the first time ever in Jakarta for coffee.

World Moms Blog contributors Maureen from @ScoopsofJoy and Shaula Bellour meet for the first time in Jakarta in March 2012!

In April, I was invited back by the UN Foundation to speak, this time at a press conference in Times Square with actress Amanda Peet! Footage from the launch of the Shot@Life public service announcement (PSA) was featured on television stations in the US, including CNN and Fox News. World Moms Blog was also quoted in an article regarding life-saving vaccines for children at Scientific American.

“In celebration of Mother’s Day, actor, mother and Every Child By Two Vaccine Ambassador Amanda Peet, center, World Health Organization’s Dr. Jacob Kumaresen, left, Real Simple editor Kristin van Ogtrop, second left, Shot@Life’s Devi Thomas, third left, World Moms Blog founder Jennifer Burden, second right, and Toshiba’s Satoshi Kawada, right, join the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life campaign to unveil a PSA on the Toshiba Vision Screen in New York’s Times Square, Friday, May 11, 2012, to show how people in the U.S. can help mothers in developing countries protect their children from deadly diseases with life-saving vaccines. (Diane Bondareff/Insider Images for UN Foundation)”

In May World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman in their “Top 100 Websites for Women 2012“. And we were screaming our heads off in excitement all around the globe when we heard the news! Out of over 1100 websites we were officially listed by Forbes!!

Our contributors have never been more proud of our work in providing voices to women around the world as we unify in motherhood. We are breaking cultural and religious boundaries and talking about what matters most, raising the world’s future, our children, as well as, advocating for global health issues for women and children. To top off the honor, we sneaked a picture with the publisher of Forbes Woman, Moira Forbes, in September at the Social Good Summit in NYC.

Jennifer Burden of World Moms Blog with Moira Forbes, publisher of Forbes Woman, at the Social Good Summit, September 2012.

Our editors worked hard this year to collect feedback from our contributors to unveil our  new blog design, which launched at the beginning of August. Thank you to our blog designer, Kayleen from Booyah Creative!

Also in August, 9 of our contributors headed to the BlogHer conference in New York City. We had a special World Moms Blog meet up at Uncle Nick’s Greek restaurant to get to know one another better before the blogging festivities began!

World Moms Bloggers from right to left: Frelle (USA), Nicole Morgan (USA), Natalia Rankine-Galloway (Morocco), Diana Stone (USA), Maman Aya (USA), Lady Jennie (France), Deborah Quinn (UAE), Jennifer Burden (USA) and our friend Kelly from @Eatpicks enjoyed a meal together pre-BlogHer ’12 in New York City in August! (Nicole Melancon (USA) not pictured.)

Before we left BlogHer, Nicole Morgan came up with a great idea to use our World Moms Blog Step & Repeat banner to ask women what their “one wish for world mothers” was.  It was a lot of fun! Look out for further expansion of this idea into 2013. And, I wrote about World Moms Blog and the “one wish for world mothers” on the Huffington Post.  Speaking of HuffPost, here, we captured Lisa Belkin of HuffPost Parents at BlogHer ’12 posing with the World Moms Blog banner.

Jennifer Burden and Nicole Melancon of World Moms Blog pose with Lisa Belkin of HuffPost Parents at BlogHer ’12 in August 2012.

In September, World Moms Blog was granted a press pass to the exclusive Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, where we got to witness some amazing speakers in action, including Queen Rania of Jordan, Ban-Ki Moon, Nicholas Kristtoff, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, and US President Barack Obama.

Jennifer Burden of World Moms Blog at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City with Emily McKhann of The Motherhood in September 2012!

We were also at the Social Good Summit in New York City, where we met up with our friends at ONE, the UN Foundation & the GAVI Alliance.

World Moms Blog editors, Jennifer Burden, Nicole Melancon and Elizabeth Atalay reunite at the Social Good Summit in NYC on September 23, 2012.

While at the Social Good Summit, we also met the amazing Andi Gitow, a senior television producer at the United Nations, who later provided this insightful interview on World Moms Blog to our senior editor, Kyla P’an. At the same time, contributing editor, Elizabeth Atalay, scheduled a meeting with the President of the Fistula Foundation while in NYC, which led to her post on our site to raise awareness for women suffering from fistula, a maternal health problem.

Also in New York City, we attended the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week!  We were there to support our Shot@Life friends who walked the catwalk for STRUT: The Fashionable Mom Show! Thank you to our friend, Holly Pavlika of Momentum, for the invitation.

World Moms Blog was invited to NYC Fashion Week! Editors Elizabeth Atalay of Documama & Jennifer Burden. (Maman Aya, also there from World Moms Blog, not pictured.)

Next, our ongoing project with the GAVI Alliance to create a documentary around life-saving vaccinations, initiated World Moms Blog events in India (Purnima Ramakrishnan), Indonesia and two in the USA (Denise Paredes & Jennifer Burden) in 2012! Here is a photo montage from the party in Bali, Indonesia thrown by Lady E.

The Bali, Indonesia GAVI Global Tea Party for life-saving vaccines for children in the developing world hosted by World Moms Blog contributor, Lady E.

In October, we received this amazing picture tweeted from the #ONEMoms in Ethiopia! This year World Moms Blog is thrilled to be a community partner with the #ONEMoms.

The #ONEMoms in Ethiopia in October 2012 gave a shout out to World Moms Blog!

As if things couldn’t get any better, in October, the UN Foundation invited us to Uganda to observe UNICEF’s programs there! I am already learning so much from Shot@Life champion, Cindy Levin of RESULTS, a citizens’ lobby to end poverty, who was a part of the delegation. To top it off, champion LaShaun Martin of Shootie Girl and Mocha Moms, who was also on the trip, is joining World Moms Blog!  We’ve only made a dent into writing about the adventure, so look out for more from the Shot@Life trip in 2013.

Discussing important motherhood and global health issues with a mothers union in Fort Portal, Uganda, on a delegation with the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life campaign to observe UNICEF’s Family Health Days. October 2012. (Photo credit: Stuart Ramson/UNF)

We love to see our contributors continue to make friendships offline, too. In November, World Moms Blog contributor Maureen got the chance to meet another writer in Jakarta, this time Ana Gaby!

World Moms Blog contributors meet in Jakarta again in November! Pictured here, Ana Gaby from Stumble Abroad and Maureen from @ScoopsofJoy.

In December, Ruth Wong of Singapore and Maureen from Indonesia initiated and carried out a surprise gift exchange program, called Fairy Moms, to unite our contributors around the world, and to help further bond our global mothers behind the website. It has been a great success!

This year, we raised awareness on a number of important global topics such as maternal health, life-saving vaccinations for children in the developing world, fistula, the education of girls, mentoring special needs children and international orphanages.  We also wrote about our own mothers’ experiences in mental health, friendship, religion, culture and women empowerment, to name a few. We added some really great new contributors, and new contributors to our World Voice column (Social Good & Human Rights).

World Moms Blog increased our global editing power – we are pleased to welcome Nicole Melancon (USA), Elizabeth Atalay (USA), Kim Siegal (Kenya), Ruth Wong (Singapore), Maureen (Indonesia), Alison Lee (Malaysia), Margie Bryant (USA), Erin Threlfall (Indonesia), Polish Mom Photographer (USA) and Karyn Van Der Zwet (New Zealand) to our editing team. And thank you to Roxanne Piskell (USA) and Diana Stone (USA) for also previously helping out with our editing this year!

We promoted five Contributing Editors to Senior Editors who have taken on managerial roles for World Moms Blog and have been outright superstars: Kirsten Doyle (Canada), Kyla P’an (USA), Eva Fannon (USA), Purnima Ramakrishnan (India) and Alison Lee (Malaysia). The website is no longer a solo effort (me!) — we are a global team now making this happen! All the editors and contributors are also volunteers, which makes this truly amazing.

It blows my mind how a group of global mothers, all very busy in one way or another, have come together to make World Moms Blog so successful.  We care about each other and this movement.

Lashaun Martin (USA) and Jennifer Burden (USA) thank the World Moms Blog editors and contributors from UNICEF offices in Kampala, Uganda, where they were on a delegation with the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life campaign in October 2012.

From Monday December 23rd through January 6th, the editors and contributors at World Moms Blog are taking a hard-earned break, a blogcation for the holidays. We will resume our regular schedule on Monday, January 7th, 2013. We are extremely appreciative of our readers and hope to give you all more great stories to read about from around the globe in 2013. Thank you, dedicated readers!!

 

— Jennifer Burden, Founder & Managing Editor, World Moms Blog

Photo credits to World Moms Blog staff, unless otherwise stated in captions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jennifer Burden

Jennifer Burden is the Founder and CEO of World Moms Network, an award winning website on global motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. World Moms Network writes from over 30 countries, has over 70 contributors and was listed by Forbes as one of the “Best 100 Websites for Women”, named a “must read” by The New York Times, and was recommended by The Times of India. She was also invited to Uganda to view UNICEF’s family health programs with Shot@Life and was previously named a “Global Influencer Fellow” and “Social Media Fellow” by the UN Foundation. Jennifer was invited to the White House twice, including as a nominated "Changemaker" for the State of the World Women Summit. She also participated in the One Campaign’s first AYA Summit on the topic of women and girl empowerment and organized and spoke on an international panel at the World Bank in Washington, DC on the importance of a universal education for all girls. Her writing has been featured by Baby Center, Huffington Post, ONE.org, the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life, and The Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists.” She is currently a candidate in Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in the Executive Masters of Public Affairs program, where she hopes to further her study of global policies affecting women and girls. Jennifer can be found on Twitter @JenniferBurden.

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