February 7th, 2011

I got to work this morning at 9:30am after briefly chiseling the ice out of a large hole we keep open in the frozen lake in front of our cabin where we fill our water buckets and wash our faces while we say our morning prayers (not knowing it was going to be my only physical exercise for the day) and didn’t leave my desk until 12 hours later when the generator ran out of gas.

The workload right now is so intense, that 12 hours didn’t seem to even put a dent in it.  I was typing an email furiously to a promotional partner for our February $28K Campaign when the power flickered and I knew shut down was imminent.

Work today was hell.  It wasn’t the work, it was the way I was not able to handle the stress of being so short-staffed,

wearing about 9 too many hats,

advances and setbacks with the website,

no funds coming in today and not wanting to flog the newsletter recipients with another call to action to raise funds- said we were going to give them a break this time…

a revelatory phone call with a program director of a non-profit which is a bit further down the road than BARKA, operations of $400K (Development Director doubled their operating budget), 2 FT staffers on the ground in Africa, she said that the way to grow “right” is to apply all those business skills to keep organized and on task… we agree.  This call resulted in a fairly unanimous decision between us and Board members that our desire to accept TOM’s Shoes donation of 33,333 pairs of shoes may not be feasible for BARKA at this point, until we have staff and more country-based partners in Burkina… that was a disappointing acknowledgment.

A million other things happened today- we spent an hour dealing with the paypal business account for BARKA Foundation,

looked up private foundations in Maine for Christina Long, an extraordinary supporter who is a sophomore at John Bapst Memorial High School and wrote an impassioned letter asking for donations which she will send out to companies throughout Maine, signed by the entire student body,

conversed with Glen Niemy, another extraordinary supporter who we met last month when we presented at the Bridgton Lakes Region Rotary Club in Maine… after the presentation he grabbed Ina, pulled her aside, put a $50 bill in her hand and said ‘Call me, I want to help.’  That’s an offer you can’t refuse.  He’s a very busy lawyer who works on both coasts, and a long distance runner, and he was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer and said to us last night that he was more interested now in helping others and not being as focused on himself and his own needs, and that our project was “unambiguous” and he offered to tap his friends for donations, contact a buddy who knows someone at Stephen King Foundation, speak to the school board, put it out to the legal community, get the Rotary more involved, and to contact local newspapers… I mean, what more could you ask for?  We asked him if we could put his name in our newsletter because we wanted to share his inspiring and selfless love-in-action, and he humbly replied that he didn’t think he was all that inspiring but to go ahead if it would help.

We’ve been calling all angels.  Alex Falk, another angel we met through Rotary in Marblehead, MA, who is the CEO of a hi-tech company that’s putting out a product launch in 2 weeks stopped what he was doing to donate $500 on our Global Giving project page and offered to share the urgency of BARKA’s need with the Rotary Club in coming weeks.

Up until today we’ve been getting donations from people we don’t know and who are not even on the email newsletter- new faces are finding us for the first time.  Twitter?  Facebook?  Global Giving?  A natural consequence of increasing momentum?

Jeez, for a minute I was thinking that today was a train wreck because it was yet another day (7 in a row) when I have not been able to accomplish what I set out to do, namely write a press release about our February Fundraising Slam, modify a recent 5-page grant proposal for a more general audience, and put up the blog I’ve been writing in my head for 6 months about how it shouldn’t be this hard to do this work, that funding should not be so sparse and what’s wrong with our current giving models and aid systems- specifically that they’re not selfless enough, nor bold enough to take risks and venture outside their own paradigm… I did send an initial email to Huffington Post, on the day they happened to have been bought out by AOL for $315M (it amazes me how AOL can still consistently make the headlines), and Ned Breslin, outspoken CEO of Water For People is now following us on Twitter.

Molo a molo as Faddaben in Kokrobite, Ghana taught us… little by little.

This blog is long enough. Just watched DemocracyNow online (they’re keeping the heat on coverage of the Egyptian Revolution), ate some deer steak, and it’s 1:30am.  After the power went out, I went outside and meditated and sat in prayer for a couple of hours… the silence is so beautiful… thank goodness I can clear my head… must be 10 degrees F and it doesn’t even feel very cold.

I only recounted about half the day’s work.  Two other quick items worth noting:

1. May 27 BARKA will hold several “Walks for Water” in Maine and New Hampshire with Living Innovations, a community of special needs adults
2. A developing “virtual technical advisory committee” of retired Peace Corps volunteers who were stationed in Burkina Faso and will advise BARKA’s work on the ground in various sectors.

As Ina would say, tomorrow is another day.