Happy June, Everyone! Wasn’t it just May? Man, time is flying by here at CEI. We hope that you all had a delightful spring because here comes summer! It’s time to kick back, relax, and soak up the sun. Enjoy every second and have some fun! - Your Friendly CEI Development Team (photo credit: Q.Photo - Students Playing at Kalapuwa Sri Leadership Academy, Sri Lanka)
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Happy June, Everyone!

Wasn’t it just May? Man, time is flying by here at CEI. We hope that you all had a delightful spring because here comes summer! It’s time to kick back, relax, and soak up the sun. Enjoy every second and have some fun!

- Your Friendly CEI Development Team

(photo credit: Q.Photo - Students Playing at Kalapuwa Sri Leadership Academy, Sri Lanka)

Ten Benefits of Volunteering - Part 2

Volunteering is an amazing way to gain new experiences, make a difference, and better your health? No matter the reason why, we think that volunteering is a powerful and amazing experience. Recently, we have read countless studies that outline the benefits of the volunteering experience and decided it was time to contribute to the discourse. Check out our top five reasons for volunteering below. 

5. Better Your Health
In 2007, The Corporation for National and Community Service released an article on recent research on the health benefits of volunteering. Their research boiled down to this: “those who volunteer have lower mortality rates, greater functional ability, and lower rates of depression later in life than those who do not volunteer.” Sounds like a pretty good reason to volunteer to us. What say you? (via. The Corporation for National and Community Service)

4. The Pay It Forward Effect
When you see someone doing something good, you tend to be inspired to do good as well. We are influenced by those that we interact with socially and professionally, so it makes sense to assume that when we volunteer, those around us will feel compelled to volunteer as well. Think of it as a wave of volunteerism started by you. We are not suggesting you go out and recruit people to join your cause, though that is definitely one approach, but simply by being an advocate of volunteerism, you will increase peoples interest in the activity. Oh, and in our experience, when you volunteer with children, you encourage them to foster change in the world. Trust us, we know.

3. Gain a New Perspective, Challenge Your Old
Volunteering can be tough work. You open yourself up to a world outside of your own. You can encounter many differences that will challenge your view on the world, from differences of opinions and cultural differences, to differences of language and lifestyle. Exposure to the world around us helps us to not only better know ourselves, but better understand our place in society and the world. Volunteering, be it in Costa Rica or central Detroit, will enable you to grow as a person and help to form your thoughts and perspectives. 

2. Cultivate New Interests
Sounds similar to creating new job options and skill sets, we’ll give you that but volunteering can create new passions and interests beyond work. Many of our volunteers go over to Sri Lanka not to gain exposure to a new career or to learn how to build an organization, but to continue to work towards a passion, be it working with children or working in education. It is not their profession, but it is their passion. We believe that it is important to have both and if they happen to coincide, you are extremely lucky.

1. You Make a Lasting Impact on Others
When all is said and done, the purpose of volunteering is to give of yourself. Be it through community service, fundraising on behalf of a charity of nonprofit, volunteering is to take time out of your schedule and donate it to a worthwhile cause. Some often criticize volunteering as a means to make people feel better about themselves, but to us that is not a bad thing if you are also making a lasting impact on the life of another person. Helping people helps us in ways we are just starting to understand.

Whatever your reason for volunteering, keep it up! You are making an impact with the donation of your time and effort. Haven’t gotten around to volunteering? There is always time and plenty of organizations that will welcome your help. Begin researching, see what fits, and take a few hours out of your weekly schedule to volunteer. 

CALLING ALL CEI VOLUNTEERS AND INTERNS!

We are still looking for people that have volunteered and interned with CEI! Come share your story with our team and fill us in on what you have been up to recently. 

Have you volunteered or interned with CEI? We want to hear from you!
We are looking for our past and present volunteers and interns to share their stories and memories with us. Please contact Maria Quinn at maria@childempowerment.org. We look forward to hearing from you! Also, check out the CEI page on Great Nonprofits and share your story there for all to see! 

Interested in learning more about volunteer opportunities with CEI?
Please send us an email to info@childempowerment.org. We are always looking to engage new volunteers in our work.

Ten Benefits of Volunteering - Part 1

Volunteering is an amazing way to gain new experiences, make a difference, and better your health(?). No matter the reason why, we think that volunteering is a powerful and amazing experience. Recently, we have read countless studies that outline the benefits of the volunteering experience and decided it was time to contribute to the discourse. Below is part one of our top ten reasons for volunteering. 

10. Make New Friends and Connections While Doing Good
Volunteering is a powerful way to make new friends and connections. It is also a way to strengthen familial bonds and the relationships you have currently with others. Volunteering introduces us to new and challenging opportunities that enable us to grow as individuals and as a group. It is no surprise to us that countless blogs and research findings have written about the positive effects of volunteerism on building new relationships and fostering old. To us, volunteering always you to grow with those you are assisting and those who your are working with. Upon polling our staff, we have learned that nearly everyone in our office has developed a strong relationship with people they met over the course of volunteer work. A few have even spoken about the professional connections made and sustained through volunteering. 

9. Gain Confidence and Self-Awareness
Countless studies have analyzed the positive social effects of volunteering. Volunteering inspires confidence. The act of volunteering can lead to personal growth. Volunteers are often valuable components of any organization. Feeling appreciated leads us to feel better about ourselves. Knowing that you are making a positive contribution, makes you more aware of yourself and how you, as an individual, can impact a cause or an organization. 

8. Develop a New Skill Set
The skills you can gain from volunteering are limitless. Campaign practices, fundraising, budgeting, construction, nonprofit management, volunteer coordination, advocacy, sales of every shape and variety, marketing… Seriously, limitless. Just because you are not a paid employee, does not mean that your work will be unimportant and non-contributory. Volunteering can help you gain the necessary experience to change careers or make you more valuable in your current career. We should never stop learning and volunteering can give us a means to continue our education.

7. Explore New Career Options
In our effort to never stop learning, sometimes we find ourselves questioning the path we are on. Am I meant to be a teacher? Am I meant to be an investment banker? Finding a career or changing a career can be a frightening path, but volunteering can help us to make the best informed decision. Follow your passion, or what you think might be your passion right now. There are likely hundreds of opportunities out there for you to learn a new trade or gain experience in a new field. You will gain necessary skills and exposure to potential new jobs, as well as valuable connections. Add in some volunteer hours to your weekly schedule, see what fits and what does not. You will be happier for it and know, if and when the time comes to make a change, that you are on the right path.

6. Set Yourself Apart
Breaking into the job market is getting tougher and tougher these days. With numerous highly qualified applicants for each open position, it is tough to set yourself apart. Volunteering can be one way to race ahead of the pack. Volunteering provides opportunities to work with people and organizations that may prove to be invaluable in your job search. We hear countless stories of individuals who got their first job through a volunteer position or whose boss found a common interest in volunteerism during the interview process. Volunteering shows a level of engagement and compassion that bosses tend to like. So get out there and start volunteering, you never know what doors may open.

Check back on Friday for our Top 5 Benefits of Volunteering!

A Heartfelt Thank You

Thank you to everyone who helped make our GlobalGiving fundraiser a success! 

Through the donations of 56 amazing donors and $2K in matching funds, we have secured enough support (nearly $5K!) to fund our sustainable fish farm project and to gain a permanent spot on GlobalGiving along with 111 other wonderful organizations doing great work! It is very rare that we are at a loss for words, but today we are so humbled and grateful that our development team is silent, smiling but silent. 

From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you. Please stay tuned for updates on what your generosity has allowed us to achieve together.

Calling All Interns and Volunteers!

(photo via noblehour)

Happy May, Everyone!

As we kick off the slow crawl into the beautiful summer months here in the states, we find ourselves thinking about how eagerly we anticipated our summer breaks from school and those last few weeks of class where we didn’t care about books but the family vacations, bike rides, and pool days that we were about to partake in. 

Summer is always a special time. Many of us spend it working, or traveling with our families, and some spend it volunteering. Each year, CEI has welcomed amazing volunteers and interns to our Sri Lanka campuses and offices to work with our staff and students. 

Volunteering abroad is a special undertaking that opens our minds and hearts to the world around us. It allows us to experience other cultures and learn from perspectives that differ from our own. Our staff has had a variety of experiences volunteering domestically and abroad and we believe that their collective experiences have helped to better our practice. 

We are reaching out to all of our former volunteers, staff, and interns. 

Have you volunteered or interned with CEI? We want to hear from you!
We are looking for our past and present volunteers and interns to share their stories and memories with us. Please contact Maria Quinn at maria@childempowerment.org. We look forward to hearing from you!

Interested in learning more about volunteer opportunities?
Please send us an email to info@childempowerment.org. We are always looking to engage new volunteers in our work.

It’s #FundraisingFriday!

Mark Twain said,

“Don’t tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.”

Well, the kids at CEI’s Leadership Academies in Sri Lanka are getting to know the fish alright! Three different varieties: Milk Fish (shown above), Sea bass and a restaurant favorite, Tilapia. Our students take on the various responsibilities of proper feeding, cleaning of the ponds, monitoring of pH levels, maintaining a harvest calendar, and all the while they are learning valuable vocational skills as well as benefiting from the satisfaction of a successful harvest. The region surrounding Kalapuwa Sri derives its income primarily from a fishing industry. Providing our students with the opportunity to learn aquaculture skills and techniques will enable them to enter into the community as employable adults following their graduation from our programs.

Specifically, the funds that CEI is raising through our vocational fish farm project on GlobalGiving, will go to a new fish processing facility that CEI has designed and developed to double as a learning space for our students to hone valuable vocational skills that will allow them to provide for their futures. This new unit will help facilitate the cleaning, processing, and ultimately the marketing of the fish where the children can be involved in it directly. The facility will provide training on best practices, methods on maintaining the quality and standard of the farmed fish, and packaging and final delivery of the fish. Students will also be involved in the money management aspect of this project and learn important accounting skills while selling the harvest to local restaurants and hotels.

As April comes to an end, have we got a whopper of a story to tell you! CEI is so close to our goal of becoming a permanent part of the GlobalGiving community it’s not even funny! We only need 7 more stellar individuals to contribute to our sustainable fish farm project. It’s no whale of a tale that there are only 3 days left to donate so give a gift and tell us your big fish story here on our blog!

Let’s Talk Sponsorship

What is it? What does it mean? How do we do it? How can you help?

Sponsorship, be it an individual child, a project, or a class, is the easiest way to make a direct and instant impact on the life of a child. We often hear from people, particularly young people, that sponsorship is perceived as a heavy burden to undertake. We don’t see it that way. You can do it once, you can do it every month. The choice is yours.

Sponsorship is a way to forever change the life of a child. It is a special opportunity to ignite a spark and show someone that they are worthy and important. At CEI, we have facilitated the successful sponsorship of thousands of students in both Sri Lanka and Uganda. 

You might find yourself wondering how we are different. There are so many organizations out there conducting sponsorship right now. What sets CEI apart? Simply, we guarantee that every single penny of your sponsorship donation, typically $30 a month, goes to your sponsored child. Simple. Easy. Different. We realize that individuals choose to sponsor a child to make a difference in that child’s life, not to contribute to an organization’s overheads. Each tax-deductable donation goes to the care, education, and well being of the sponsored child. That’s what sponsorship is to us and what we believe it is to everyone out there who participates in sponsorship programs.

To learn more about our sponsorship programs, check us out at http://www.childempowerment.org/sponsorship or send us an email to info@childempowerment.org. (Also, please forgive any glitches, we are currently in the process of updating our website.)