by Mannahattamamma (UAE) | Sep 23, 2013 | Family, Family Travel, Kids, Older Children, Poverty, UAE, USA, World Motherhood
Ever since we moved out of Manhattan to Abu Dhabi, in the summer of 2011, our family has been lucky enough to do a lot of traveling. Seeing the world had been, in fact, one of the primary reasons we’d decided to make our move–well, that and the fact that we’d been offered interesting jobs in a fascinating (and sometimes frustrating) city. Our move coincided with a kind of “sweet spot” for our kids: they were old enough to be able to experience our travels and remember them…but not so old (read: teen-agers) that separating them from life in New York, in the shape of things like sports teams and romances, had become impossible.
So off we went, carting twelve suitcases to the other side of the world, not entirely sure what we’d find when we arrived, but ready to explore. We’ve had some great trips and amazing experiences, seen stunning beauty and gut-wrenching poverty. Our journeys are not terribly rugged or adventurous (our kids aren’t that old yet, and let’s face it: I’m a big believer in things like indoor toilets and mattresses, which is to say: I’m a wimp), but I like to think that we are all being opened to thought-provoking encounters of all sorts. (more…)
After twenty-plus years in Manhattan, Deborah Quinn and her family moved to Abu Dhabi (in the United Arab Emirates), where she spends a great deal of time driving her sons back and forth to soccer practice. She writes about travel, politics, feminism, education, and the absurdities of living in a place where temperatures regularly go above 110F.
Deborah can also be found on her blog, Mannahattamamma.
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by Jennifer Burden | Sep 21, 2013 | 2013, Social Good, World Voice
We can’t wait to head to New York City tomorrow to attend this year’s Social Good Summit! This is one of our favorite conferences, and a great place to catch up with many of the people and foundations, including some that are a part of our #Moms4MDGs campaign, that we work with online throughout the year. It will take place at the 92nd St. Y in Manhattan from Sunday, September 22nd through Tuesday, September 24th in tandem with the Summit at the United Nations.
World Moms Blog editors and contributors, Elizabeth Atalay, Nicole Melancon, Nicole Morgan and LaShaun Martin are on their way to New York City! And my very good friend, Kelly Pugliano from EatPicks and Mom Got Blog, will be coming to the Social Good Summit for the first time with us. We’ll be attending both, sessions at the Social Good Summit, and thanks to ONE.org and the GAVI Alliance, panels at the United Nations. There will be so much to learn and to write home about! We will also be meeting Wateraid and attending a special lunch with ONE.org, Save the Children and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And LaShaun will be speaking at the summit for Shot@Life! And Nicole Morgan will be on stage to tell her wishes for her children! We can’t wait!!
And to top it all off this week, we’ll be meeting World Moms Blog contributor, Nancy Sumari from Tanzania! She is the former Miss Tanzania and Miss Africa World and current social entrepreneur. We are over the moon excited about meeting her!!!
I also have something else super excited to tell you — this year, I was awarded a “Global Influencers” Fellowship by the UN Foundation. Along with 9 of my peers in various places of the media industry, I will be up early and taking special classes to discuss and brainstorm the MDGs and more with guest speakers prior to the start of the conference each day. I’m really looking forward to telling you all about this!
Speakers this year include Al Gore, Melinda Gates, Will.i.am and more!
And the good news is that you don’t have to wait until we attend the summit to hear all about it. There is a live stream that you can join in!
Click here for the live stream: Social Good Summit 2013 LiveStream.
Follow the Social Good Summit’s hashtag on Twitter: #2030Now
Be part of the conversation! Let’s make a difference!
Jennifer Burden, Founder, World Moms Blog.
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 Meredith (USA) | Sep 20, 2013 | Communication, Education, Family, Kids, Milestones, Motherhood, Parenting, Preschool, SAHM, School, USA, World Motherhood, Younger Children
School will be starting for my children this week, and for many children this new routine and the new teachers can lead to much anxiety. Not only are the children feeling some of this anxiety but many parents are as well.
This past week, the teachers for my son and daughter called over the phone to introduce themselves before “meet the teacher” night. That same afternoon, a neighbor of mine called me to ask if I had received a phone call from my daughter’s teacher yet. I hadn’t at that time, and I could tell there was panic in my neighbor’s voice. She told me that she was very worried and upset that her son’s teacher this year was a “first year” teacher. She had been a teacher (and so had I), and we both know that the first year teachers do struggle a bit. But, in my opinion, the first year teachers bring with them the fresh ideas and new approaches to the classroom. I do understand her concern and could totally relate to her anxiety. (more…)
Meredith finds it difficult to tell anyone where she is from exactly! She grew up in several states, but mainly Illinois. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education from the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana which is also where she met her husband. She taught kindergarten for seven years before she adopted her son from Guatemala and then gave birth to her daughter two years leter. She moved to Lagos, Nigeria with her husband and two children in July 2009 for her husband's work. She and her family moved back to the U.S.this summer(August 2012) and are adjusting to life back in the U.S. You can read more about her life in Lagos and her adjustment to being back on her blog: We Found Happiness.
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by Dee Harlow (Laos) | Sep 19, 2013 | Birthing, International, Maternal Health, Nutrition, World Motherhood
One of the most exciting day in any parent’s life is the day we get to bring our baby home. I was ecstatic to bring our two twin babies home, and very scared too about being left on my own to care for them. But it was indeed one of the most exciting days of my life.
On a recent work trip down to Salavan Province in southern Laos, I got to see two beautiful healthy babies on their way home from a district hospital with their parents. I don’t know who was more excited, them or me! To witness that special moment really touched me because of the volunteer work that I’ve been doing with Cleanbirth.org to help expectant mothers and newborn babies get a safe start in life by providing “clean birth kits” to women in rural Laos who would otherwise give birth unattended at home or in the forest using often unsanitary tools that can cause infection leading to death of the mother or child.
For me to know the long and difficult road that these two mothers have taken to give birth safely made the miracle of birth all the more awesome to me. To know that unless they traveled all way to a provincial hospital, they most likely did not get any prenatal check ups, or vitamin supplements, or ultrasounds. Although the standard of care that we consider basic are indeed accessible and cost relatively little because they are subsidized by the government, they are only available in large urban centers. This means that the 70% of the Lao population who live in rural areas either require a lot of resources to receive this care, or get none at all. Many factors contribute to the inaccessibility of the care expectant mothers need including, geographic remoteness, lack of infrastructure and seasonal limitations for travel on rough roads, lack of transport or money to pay, little knowledge of the health requirements of prenatal care or services available, as well as family priorities of working for subsistence living and other household responsibilities, and many others. (more…)
One of Dee’s earliest memories was flying on a trans-Pacific flight from her birthplace in Bangkok, Thailand, to the United States when she was six years old. Ever since then, it has always felt natural for her to criss-cross the globe. So after growing up in the northeast of the US, her life, her work and her curiosity have taken her to over 32 countries. And it was in the 30th country while serving in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan that she met her husband. Together they embarked on a career in international humanitarian aid working in refugee camps in Darfur, Sudan, and the tsunami torn coast of Aceh, Indonesia.
Dee is now a full-time mother of three-year old twins and continues to criss-cross the globe every two years with her husband who is in the US Foreign Service. They currently live in Vientiane, Laos, and are loving it! You can read about their adventures at Wanderlustress.
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by Sophie Walker (UK) | Sep 18, 2013 | 2013, Being Thankful, Competition, Health, Inspirational, International, Life Lesson, Sophie Walker, Sports, UK, Uncategorized, Womanhood, Women's Rights, World Events, World Motherhood
Hurrah for Diana Nyad!
In a few short weeks she has overturned long-established ideas about age and ability and strength and given us all a reason to keep swimming.
Nyad, in case you’ve been looking the other way, is the 64-year-old woman who recently became the first person to swim the 110 miles from Cuba to the U.S. without a shark cage, taking almost 53 hours.
This would be a marathon effort at any time, but when you consider that it was her fifth attempt over some forty years; that she had to wear a mask to protect her from jellyfish stings; that she took in so much sea water it caused her to vomit constantly for almost all of that 53 hours; that she arrived finally with face and lips swollen from sun and sea water – well, then her achievement, and her insistence not to be deflected from her aim, would seem to reflect almost superhuman levels of endurance.
The word endurance does not typically bring to mind 64-year-old women. In our culture, it is often used to describe young men – runners, rowers and cyclists at the peak of their profession or pushy capitalists doing extreme sports to fill that adrenaline void when Wall Street is closed.
Google “Endurance” and up come pictures of young, lean, tanned male muscle in a celebration of machismo as traditional now as images of mustachioed weight-lifters once were in Victorian times.
The same web search also shows sepia-tinged photographs of the tall-masted Victorian adventure ship christened Endurance, on which British polar explorer Ernest Shackleton set off for Antarctic expeditions in the last century. (Twenty-first century sailor Ellen MacArthur’s solo circumnavigation of the globe strangely does not feature.)
Nonetheless, I think many women, hearing Nyad’s achievement, will have given a little nod, and maybe a small smile, of understanding. Many more will never hear of her, yet understand without discussion the will that kept Nyad going.
Though they may not be sports fanatics, or travelers with a yen for the toughest destinations, many women set their own personal standards of endurance in their day-to-day existences.
Their marathon may consist of walking for hours to find water and food in conditions of extreme poverty and hunger. Their endurance training may consist of watching their children die for the lack of a cheap vaccine. Their 53-hour record may be for the time worked within a dangerous and miserably uncomfortable factory, to earn a tiny amount with which a family can just about be supported.
For the luckier ones, endurance may just mean a bleak commute, juggling the needs of employers and families and ever-mounting bills. It may mean keeping smiling when a child is in pain, it may mean getting up for the fifth time in one night to attend to small, fevered offspring while knowing that big important morning meeting is looming. It may mean getting over the disappointment when that male colleague got that promotion. It may mean an ability to keep walking with head high when the cat calls keep coming.
Endurance can mean many things. Diana Nyad has reminded us that it is not an exclusively male domain. Already crowds of cynics are assembling to cast doubt on Nyad’s achievement, wondering how an old woman could have completed that swim in that time. Clearly her next endurance test lies just ahead.
But whatever the outcome, she has broadened the parameters of what the will to keep going looks like. And that is no small feat, either.
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our writer in the UK and mother of four, Sophie.
The image used in this post is credited to Alan Cleaver. It holds a Flickr Creative Commons attribution license.
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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