by Elizabeth Atalay | May 14, 2013 | 2013, Interviews, Social Good, Social Media, United Nations, World Interviews, World Moms Blog, World Voice
Photo by Elizabeth Atalay
World Moms Blog recently took part in the Global Mom Relay, developed in partnership with United Nations Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, BabyCenter and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Leading the effort were Co-chairs Arianna Huffington, Jennifer Lopez, Lynda Lopez, Elizabeth Gore, and Sharon D’Agostino. The relay supported the Every Woman Every Child Movement launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to improve the quality of life of women and children in line with The Millennium Development Goals to be reached by 2015.
Each time a Global Mom Relay piece was shared, a $5 donation was made by Johnson & Johnson and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to one of the four partners, the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Health(MAMA) ,Shot@Life, Girl Up , or the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.
World Moms Blog Founder Jennifer Burden and Social Good Editor Elizabeth Atalay attended the culminating event in New York City last week, the MOM + SOCIAL Conference at the Tribeca campus of the 92Y.
We were thrilled to have the opportunity to interview Elizabeth Gore, one of the co-chairs of the Global Mom Relay, host of the MOM + SOCIAL, resident entrepreneur at the United Nations Foundation, former championship equestrian turned inspirational advocate, and mom to Opal Mae.
Elizabeth Atalay: Can you tell me a little bit about how you transitioned from championship equestrian to champion for women and children?
Elizabeth Gore: I grew up on a cattle and horse ranch in Texas, and was the first female to graduate from college in my family. At Texas A & M University I showed horses, and I always thought that I would eventually go back to help manage the family ranch.
The tipping point came for me when a friend of mine had to drop out of school because she became pregnant. There were no family or child services available for students on campus at the time. We protested, and advocated, until the university finally created a children’s center. (more…)
Elizabeth Atalay is a Digital Media Producer, Managing Editor at World Moms Network, and a Social Media Manager. She was a 2015 United Nations Foundation Social Good Fellow, and traveled to Ethiopia as an International Reporting Project New Media Fellow to report on newborn health in 2014. On her personal blog, Documama.org, she uses digital media as a new medium for her background as a documentarian. After having worked on Feature Films and Television series for FOX, NBC, MGM, Columbia Pictures, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Castle Rock Pictures, she studied documentary filmmaking and anthropology earning a Masters degree in Media Studies from The New School in New York. Since becoming a Digital Media Producer she has worked on social media campaigns for non-profits such as Save The Children, WaterAid, ONE.org, UNICEF, United Nations Foundation, Edesia, World Pulse, American Heart Association, and The Gates Foundation. Her writing has also been featured on ONE.org, Johnson & Johnson’s BabyCenter.com, EnoughProject.org, GaviAlliance.org, and Worldmomsnetwork.com. Elizabeth has traveled to 70 countries around the world, most recently to Haiti with Artisan Business Network to visit artisans in partnership with Macy’s Heart of Haiti line, which provides sustainable income to Haitian artisans. Elizabeth lives in New England with her husband and four children.
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by Sophie Walker (UK) | May 13, 2013 | Being Thankful, Childhood, Cooking, Family, Food, Home, Inspirational, Life Balance, Motherhood, Parenting, Sophie Walker, Traditions, UK, World Motherhood, Younger Children
The sun is shining through the trees at the bottom of the garden and dancing dappled light on the kitchen window. It gilds the pot of basil on the sill and warms our faces and illuminates the dust of flour in the air around us as Betty bends to her task.
She stands sturdily beside me, elevated on a kitchen chair, wrapped in a bright plastic apron. I have tied her hair up – though untidy tendrils still make their way across her cheek – and as she leans over to check her progress I have to resist the urge to kiss the perfect dimple in the nape of her neck.
Betty and I are baking. With nimble little fingers she is sieving the flour and baking powder, tap-tapping it against her palm like a tambourine and watching the clouds of white fall into the bowl. From time to time she looks up at me and grins, exposing the sweetly crooked front tooth that is the result of falling on her face mid-dash down the garden path a year ago. Betty does everything at a dash: most of her toys have to have wheels just to keep up with her. But today, she is by my side and she stays there. It’s Wednesday: our baking day, the day I don’t go to work. So here we are, elbow to elbow, delighting at our creations and the alchemy we work.
This is just as new to me as it is to Betty. I have always cooked, rarely baked. I have produced breakfasts, lunches, dinners; steaming layers of lasagne (“with GREEN pasta, Mummy!”); round, ripe tomatoes stuffed with rice; home-made turkey burgers with a secret parcel of melted cheese inside; roast chicken, roast lamb, roast beef; fat, gleaming omelettes; pancakes on feast days and naughty nuggets and chips on holidays and just-because-we-can days. But baking: that was for people who had time. I provided proudly but quickly and efficiently and then I got on with the next thing on my list.
What Betty and I do now is different. I watch her tap the egg oh so carefully on the rim of the mixing bowl before gripping it with both her little thumbs and attempting to prise it apart. Her approach is not working, so she grips it harder with her little fist and the egg crunches and splatters into the creamy whiteness of the blended butter and sugar. She makes a sound of consternation and looks up at me. I laugh, and she relaxes, and together we pick out the bits of shell. We are both learning to be patient, to enjoy the process as much as the outcome. She is so entranced by what happens when she stirs the ingredients together that she forgets to fidget and want to run. I am so entranced by her absorption that I forget to worry about what’s next on the list.
Week by week we work our way through her favourites. My baby daughter has my heart already but week by week I give it to her all over again in every offering: tender yellow vanilla-scented cupcakes that she decorates with butterflies; sturdy banana and cherry loaf; chocolate chip cookies that expand so alarmingly while cooking that we shriek and slam the oven door shut quickly and giggle. We make flapjacks, shaking oats and raisins into the mixing bowl and I smile to see her eyes widen and her hand wobble at the weight of the golden syrup we spoon in next, inhaling the bitter metal smell of the glutinous mass, our mouths watering.
Sometimes Betty gets tired and pushes the bowl back over to me to mix. Sometimes she rests her head against my side and curls a small arm around my back, sucking the first two fingers of her other hand as she watches me turn the mixture over and again and back on itself until the lumps are gone and the components blended. Then she stirs to help me transfer it into multicoloured cases, or buttered tins, before setting about licking the spoon clean, rosy pink tongue lapping like a kitten’s.
When our cakes are baked and ready, our kitchen smells of love.
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our contributor in the UK and mum to 2 daughters and to 2 step-sons, Sophie Walker.
The image used in this post is credited to the author.
Writer, mother, runner: Sophie works for an international news agency and has written about economics, politics, trade, war, diplomacy and finance from datelines as diverse as Paris, Washington, Hong Kong, Kabul, Baghdad and Islamabad. She now lives in London with her husband, two daughters and two step-sons.
Sophie's elder daughter Grace was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome several years ago. Grace is a bright, artistic girl who nonetheless struggles to fit into a world she often finds hard to understand. Sophie and Grace have come across great kindness but more often been shocked by how little people know and understand about autism and by how difficult it is to get Grace the help she needs.
Sophie writes about Grace’s daily challenges, and those of the grueling training regimes she sets herself to run long-distance events in order to raise awareness and funds for Britain’s National Autistic Society so that Grace and children like her can blossom. Her book "Grace Under Pressure: Going The Distance as an Asperger's Mum" was published by Little, Brown (Piatkus) in 2012. Her blog is called Grace Under Pressure.
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by Jennifer Burden | May 12, 2013 | Family, Motherhood, World Motherhood
A photo my mom chose for this post of us from 1999!
Today, on Mother’s Day, I’m here in Disney World at the Disney Social Media Moms conference, while my mom will be celebrating her day with my sisters, not me. So, although we aren’t together today, I want her to know how much I love her. I want her to know that even though there are many things we see eye-to-eye on, as well as, some things we don’t, she has been my biggest influence in life and part of the reason why I am here.
She taught me that if something isn’t being done for you and you want it done, then you have to get up and do it yourself. You see, there was a time that she wanted the hedges cut in our backyard and my dad wouldn’t have time to do it himself, so she would tell me to get my sneakers on, and she’d be out there using a large electric hedge trimmer on a ladder, and I’d be raking the leaves and branches below her. We got the job done together before dad got home from work.
Or when she needed a room painted, I would help her. Or when she needed the bathrooms cleaned — that was my job every Saturday morning. Or the lawn mowed…you get the picture. My dad did a lot, but mom always wanted stuff done straight away, and still does!
She taught me that there doesn’t have to be any time spent waiting around. That I should just roll up my sleeves and get the job done, if it was something important to me. I apply what she taught me today to running World Moms Blog with our editing team. When there’s something that we see that needs to be done in the world, we consult our fellow World Moms, roll up our sleeves and find a way to get the job done.
Here we are, over 50 of us from around the world, running a global website that we all feel like the world needs, as we tell the stories of mothers around the world. We are getting to know each other, learning our differences and embracing our commonalities. We are pointing out things that we want changed in the world or finding ways in how we can deal with them as they are through our voices. We are also breaking the barriers of “us” versus “them.” And on the path to creating just an “us”.
So, Mom, I’m at this amazing Disney conference, rolling up my sleeves and getting the job done and working on this project I started with the help of many amazing moms. And, I want you to know that I’m so glad that we cut those hedges together when I was a kid, even though I probably didn’t want to. And I promise that although it may not be by operating large power tools on a ladder, I will find a way to pass this gift you gave me to my daughters. You can count on that.
Love, Jen
Today, in many countries, Mother’s Day is celebrated. World Moms Blog sends a virtual hug out to all the mothers, present, miles away and who have passed on. And we thank them for the difference they are making or have made in a child’s life because it is, in turn, the difference they are making in the planet’s future.
*This post is being linked up to our contributor Nicole Morgan’s blog, Sisters From Another Mister for the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life campaign, which advocates for vaccines for children who need them most!
http://www.sistersfromanothermister.com/?p=6815
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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by Tara Bergman (USA) | May 10, 2013 | Family, Food, Husband, Kids, Motherhood, Parenting, Tara B., World Motherhood, Younger Children
My family had a wild night recently. We were invited to a pizza party at a neighbor’s house in honor of their son’s birthday. My boys (N who is 7 years old, W who is 3 years old) were excited.
A little background…
I have been having a rough go with W over meals lately. I don’t battle with him over what he chooses off the plate or how much, but I am enforcing attendance at family meals. Ignoring the rest of us to play upstairs is not an option. So if W doesn’t want to eat with us, he must sit on the steps and wait it out. He almost always chooses to eat with us. However, sometimes things go the other way.
Back to the pizza party…
I knew W would be less receptive to eating when playing at a friend’s house, but this was a pizza party. Pizza is one of the only things W will eat anytime, anywhere. (more…)
Tara is a native Pennsylvanian who moved to the Seattle area in 1998 (sight unseen) with her husband to start their grand life adventure together. Despite the difficult fact that their family is a plane ride away, the couple fell in love with the Pacific Northwest and have put down roots. They have 2 super charged little boys and recently moved out of the Seattle suburbs further east into the country, trading in a Starbucks on every corner for coyotes in the backyard. Tara loves the outdoors (hiking, biking, camping). And, when her family isn't out in nature, they are hunkered down at home with friends, sharing a meal, playing games, and generally having fun. She loves being a stay-at-home mom and sharing her experiences on World Moms Network!
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by Melanie Oda (Japan) | May 9, 2013 | Japan, Parenting, Sexuality, Women's Rights, World Moms Blog
Japan and porn. (Sigh.)
While the “hardcore” stuff is supposedly illegal, and censors wield a mighty airbrush (Images of pubic hair are illegal), soft porn permeates everyday society. In every convenience store, in every bookstore, and in places you cannot avoid (including on the train,) there are images of girls in suggestive poses, scantily clad. (And that’s not to mention the questionable manga comics that some men read in public without shame.)
It’s very different from the world I grew up in, where that kind of stuff was saved for cable TV, R-rated movies, magazines hidden under mattresses.
I find myself having to have conversations with my children that neither they nor I are ready for.
Part of the problem is that I’m not sure how I feel about it.
The “junior idols” here, preteen girls who pose in T-backed underwear? I find that disgusting and legally questionable. But the other stuff? The women who are of legal age and choose to use their sexuality to make a living? It seems like a cop-out, an affront to the rest of us who make our way in the world with our clothes on. (more…)
If you ask Melanie Oda where she is from, she will answer "Georgia." (Unless you ask her in Japanese. Then she will say "America.") It sounds nice, and it's a one-word answer, which is what most people expect. The truth is more complex. She moved around several small towns in the south growing up. Such is life when your father is a Southern Baptist preacher of the hellfire and brimstone variety.
She came to Japan in 2000 as an assistant language teacher, and has never managed to leave. She currently resides in Yokohama, on the outskirts of Tokyo (but please don't tell anyone she described it that way! Citizens of Yokohama have a lot of pride). No one is more surprised to find her here, married to a Japanese man and with two bilingual children (aged four and seven), than herself. And possibly her mother.
You can read more about her misadventures in Asia on her blog, HamakkoMommy.
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