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Calling all Bloghers…time to make Beth Kanter’s Birthday wishes come true!
She's asking for $10 to help improve school conditions for children in Cambodia. And she deserves to have her birthday wishes come true!
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Who's Beth Kanter?
She well may be someone we dub the Mother - guru of Social Media Strategy Know-How for non-profits and individuals. For all of us, Beth Kanter should be someone you’re following on Twitter (@kanter) and Facebook (beth kanter) as she’s living a phenomenal example of what is possible with building a network on trust, heart, intelligence, and making things happen.
For over just a few years, Beth’s raised over $215,000.00 solely through using social media tools like Twitter and Facebook-- to create a better life for many in Cambodia.
And so imagine my shock when I read Helen Walter's piece in Business Week’s "The Collective Power of Individuals" and Beth wasn’t mentioned. Not once. Anywhere in the piece.
And not to take away from the content that was reported about how in just one day David Armano (@armano) raised over $11,000 to provide safe housing for a single mom and her 3 children. But this was his first time turning to Twitter to raise funds. And here’s Beth who’s raised 20 times this over several years.
She needs to be known, followed, learned from and promoted for what she's proving is possible for individuals and collectives.
And this is why I’m writing this post to make sure she gets what she wants for her birthday! For this tireless, devoted, constant, selfless, brilliantly creative mind of a woman and a life stops at nothing to make good things happen and teach others—from San Francisco to Boston to Romania to Cambodia--how to use social media to create a better world.
I don't really know Beth too well. We're acquaintances..the kind that waive and smile at an event when we recognize each other. Um...excuse me but the next time I see her I just might run over to her and hug her for a really long time.
Because...her example is changing the face -- to me--of the why's and how come's we use social media. Surely she's blazing a trail to help promote a better life for Cambodia children. And she's a mom herself. She adopted a daughter and son from there less than a decade ago and ever since, she's devoted herself --in her free (ha!) time to improving the life of so many school children in Cambodia.
I first met Beth when she leaped with glee asking for t-shirts. Tshirts--that's all she wanted. Not money, not sponsorship. Here at a conference of several hundreds of women (Blogher 07 Chicago), here's Beth asking for t-shirts. For Cambodian youth. To say thank you ...for allowing her come teach them how to vlog (video blog). As she described where she was going and how she fundraised to get there (she raised over $4,000 for the Cambodian Blogging Summit--Clogger 2007), I sat listening to the woman who would forever change the way I viewed the potential of my own blog--of all of our blogs--and fathomed how defending our right to voice our words can bring communities together, build bridges between cultures, and make a better world.
She's a briliant technological expert who knows so much, is accessible, approachable and holds your hand through every post giving you how to's and why's and how comes. And in that way she builds trust, respect, awareness, and buy in. And as a result, you see that Beth is simply being and giving the kind of woman, friend, teacher, consultant, mom online as she is in heart and in her day to day. And why should it be any other way. Beth's example shows what's possible in sharing our hearts and lives with one another and insisting change is possible. She mentions the potential of our networking in her post today:
