CareNow

Guess what? I came to the end of my unemployment benefit. Oh my gosh - how is that possible? I was supposed to have a new job in two weeks time - one month tops. Fortunately, I suppose, they have extended the benefits for another 5 months. But this is so crazy wrong.

My friend Valerie who was laid off from Disney with me (only she lived in Florida) moved to Virginia where (she has just announced), she has found 3 jobs! So they do exist - just not here apparently.

Here in California, I am starting to do some consulting work. I will be working for my friends Ed and Wendy Bjurstrom who are the founders of a non-profit organization called CareNow. Their mission is to provide basic health care to the least served peoples in the world. Those people live in remote areas of Africa where AIDS is pandemic but where something as simple as a band-aid might never have been seen before. Ed tells me that in his travels, he has witnessed such poverty and lack of service or education that there is no knowledge whatsoever of germs and that in all actuality a mother, with no idea of how to treat what you and I would consider a child's minor wound, might as easily put dirt on it to stop the bleeding as wash it with water. If someone breaks a limb, they are destined to become a cripple because no one knows how to set a bone. These are villages where serous medical issues are treated by witch doctors. In fact, Ed and Wendy are in Africa right now, visiting some of the remote medical "clinics" that CareNow helps fund. It is important work.

I will be helping them to raise awareness through advertising and marketing but primarily by corporate sponsor development. This is new for me but it is, essentially, "sales" in that I will be meeting with corporations to educate them about this organization and its work and hopefully secure some of their philanthropic dollars to keep the operation running.

I used to sell advertising pages in a kids magazine to video game companies. What a shift.

Not that what I did before wasn't important. It was important to my company and to me. But imagine what it means if I am successful in getting Company XYZ to fund a shipment of supplies to a remote village in Africa, and that as a direct result of that shipment, a mother is taught that a little soap, water and rubbing alcohol can clean and disinfect a minor injury that left unattended can infect and kill her young child, and ultimately, a life is saved. That is a "6 degrees of separation" game that is interesting to me.

So I am keeping busy - finding my way around this new life. Unexpected. And interesting. Very interesting.