My sweetheart is a Tastefully Simple consultant and does occasional parties for their distinctive foods and gifts. She’s announced that she will donate 100% of her profits in November to the Adami Tulu Project.

Tastefully Simple makes awesome gift baskets you can give to friends, family or clients, or you can stock up on your favorites: beer bread, wild rice soup or “garlic garlic” dip.

And every dime of profit will go to bringing hope and self-sufficiency to orphans and vulnerable kids. Breaking the cycle of poverty and keeping families together through education and twice-a-day meals, for 500 kids every year by the time we finish.

So click and here and start shopping. And enjoy the feeling of changing the world!

I just turned 33 this past week.

If you’re reading this and feeling incredibly guilty about not getting me a birthday gift (ha!), that’s awesome.

Because here’s what I want for my birthday.

Let’s get a huge head start on the next phase of the Adami Tulu Project to build a school for 500 orphans and vulnerable kids in Africa.

You can give $33 in honor of my old age.

Or $29 to make me feel young.

Or $10 to remind me how lucky I’ve been to be married to my sweetheart for the last ten years.

Or $4 to remind me how long I’ve had the awesome privilege to be a dad.

No matter what amount you give, not a dime goes to administrative salaries here in the US. It all gets put to work where it belongs.

We’re on a mission to end the global orphan crisis by keeping families together and giving people the self-sufficiency to pull themselves out of poverty. And you’ll have made a difference.

So thanks in advance.

You’ve made my birthday great.

Click Here to Donate

When we visited our second homeland of Ethiopia again in August, we went to put the finishing touches on the new classroom building that would take the Adami Tulu School’s capacity from 70 to 210 students. But we also knew that we weren’t finished making a difference yet.

We’ve developed the beginnings of a three year plan. We’re working hard to flesh it out and be able to share it with you all of you. But we know that the first step is another classroom building to house first and second grades, which will cost at least $50,000.

So when this opportunity popped up, we couldn’t resist: let’s get out there and start raising the money even though we don’t have the project fully completed.

How about a chance for an amazing skiing getaway in Aspen, Colorado?

The Aunt and Uncle of our friends the Pickers have, once again, generously donated toward our fundraising efforts. Only this time they’ve offered us not one but FIVE stays at the Hyatt Grand Aspen.

Any one of these November stays might make a great early-Thanksgiving get together for you and some friends or family!

We will begin the giveaways today and draw winners on October 15. To enter, donate $20 by clicking the link for the stay that you’re interested in. For every $20 you donate to Lifesong for Orphans, you will get one entry in the drawings. By the way, 100% of your donation will go to the new building at Adami Tulu School.

Here are some details and pictures about the Hyatt stays:

Hyatt Grand Aspen has complimentary continental breakfast, a pool and hot tub, fitness center, fire pit, daily room cleaning and nightly turn down service complete with chocolates. There is even a little hut by the hot tubs where you can hang your robes to keep them warm for you! The hotel is within walking distance of lots of shops and restaurants in Aspen.

The retail value of each stay is approximately $2,500.

To get to Aspen, you could fly into the Aspen airport. The hotel will pick you up and, since everything is within walking distance, you can go without a car during your stay. Or you could fly into Denver and rent a car to drive to Aspen. Or, of course, you could also just drive to Aspen.

Hyatt Stay Giveaway #1:

• Sat.- Sat. November 5-12 (full week stay)
• Studio Unit (Like a nice hotel room with small kitchenette.)

To enter the drawing for Giveaway #1, donate to Lifesong for Orphans here:

Hyatt Stay Giveaway #2:

• Sun.- Thurs. November 13-17 (five days/ four nights)
• Two Bedroom Unit (Two Bedrooms and Bathrooms, Kitchen, Livingroom, Dining Room, Washer and Dryer, etc.)

To enter the drawing for Giveaway #2, donate to Lifesong for Orphans here:

Hyatt Stay Giveaway #3:

• Sun.- Thurs. November 13-17 (five days/ four nights)
• Three Bedroom Unit (Three Bedrooms and Bathrooms, Kitchen, Livingroom, Dining Room, Washer and Dryer, etc.) Maybe a family could do an “early Thanksgiving get together” in this one.

To enter the drawing for Giveaway #3, donate to Lifesong for Orphans here:

Hyatt Stay Giveaway #4:

• Tues.-Sat. November 15-19 (five days/ four nights)
• One Bedroom Unit (All the things a two bedroom has but only one bedroom and bathroom)

To enter the drawing for Giveaway #4, donate to Lifesong for Orphans here:

Hyatt Stay Giveaway #5:

• Tues.-Sat. November 15-19 (five days/ four nights)
• Two Bedroom Unit (Two Bedrooms and Bathrooms, Kitchen, Livingroom, Dining Room, Washer and Dryer, etc.)

To enter the drawing for Giveaway #5, donate to Lifesong for Orphans here:

Just imagine, you could win a stay in Aspen, just for donating $20. What a deal! Plus, you get to be part of this amazing project to help these precious kids in Adami Tulu.

If you are unable to use one of the stays, you could donate your entry to a friend, your pastor, a family member, or someone who could really use the time away.

So get to donating! Let’s make a huge dent in that $50,000 before we even formally kick off this project. And let’s make a long term, sustainable difference in ending the global orphan crisis.

Let’s imagine that there’s an organization whose mission is to act in the best interests of the world’s children, and that organization consistently spends its time to make it more difficult for children to gain the forever family they’ve always dreamed of.

Sadly, that organization really exists. It’s called UNICEF and the United States is one of their largest sources of funding.

UNICEF’s unrelenting war against international adoption is a huge black mark that obscures all of the other good the organization accomplishes on behalf of children…so much so that Senator Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana), a proponent and friend of adoption, pursues a lonely battle every year to try and eliminate their US funding.

Ultimately, UNICEF is willing to sacrifice the lives of millions of orphans desperate for a family of their own, in pursuit of their geopolitical agenda to achieve prosperity in every country across the globe.

That’s certainly a valid goal, and UNICEF would find no greater ally than adoptive parents in the United States. That’s a large part of what has propelled us and many other families into action with the Adami Tulu Project.

Yes, one continent can’t just adopt all of another continent’s kids. But while we are working toward permanent solutions, we can’t sacrifice this generation of kids to spend the rest of their lives as orphans.

Elizabeth Bartholet of Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy Project says it best.

“Largely deprived of the human touch as they grow up, those who survive physically are unlikely to develop emotionally and mentally in ways that will make it possible for them to relate meaningfully and happily to either human beings, or to learn or work in meaningful ways. The longer they spent in such orphanages, the less chance they will have are anything resembling normal development.”

You can find more detail to this story here, but in the mean time, I hope you’ll consider contacting UNICEF via their web site or Twitter.

Every child deserves the love and permanence of a family, not just those who live in prosperous countries.

The billionaire industrialist Howard Hughes was once asked “how much money is enough?” to which he replied, “just a little bit more.”

I’m sitting on the veranda of the Hoteela Bethlehem in the lakeside town of Ziway, Ethiopia, just about five miles north of the tiny village of Adami Tulu, the site of our school project. Our team of 11 has traveled here to put the finishing touches on the new classrooms that will house about 140 new kindergarten students.

We’ve been spending time with the village children, doing crafts, games, stories and singing in the mornings, and painting the school in the afternoons.

But yesterday, something happened that changed us all in an instant.

Cacey and Mary Beth saw a woman with three children walking along the road behind the school, and asked our driver, Tsegaw, to come over and translate an invitation for the children to join us the following morning.

Aynalem, standing in a threadbare t-shirt on this cold and rainy day, told Cacey and Mary Beth that she wished desperately that her son, 6 years old, could attend the school we had just been involved in building.

Her husband had divorced her, and refused to support her and the children. So now, all four of them lived in a room that would barely fit a double bed, and looked tinier than the clothes closets in many western homes.

Aynalem worked as a day laborer in the fields seven days a week. Her 15 year old daughter Habtam dropped out of school after the seventh grade to either watch her 3 year old sister Tsegeteda and 6 year old brother Meyahel, or to join her mother in the fields if a neighbor was available to watch them.

And yes, she lived just feet from the new school…but she had been working both days of registration and had missed it.

These three children, fatherless and just one stroke of bad luck away from becoming motherless too, were the symbol of why we had traveled to the other side of the world. And we couldn’t help them.

Tsegaw, our driver who was there to translate, kept asking “can you not enroll him?” Cacey and Mary Beth returned to the classrooms in tears.

Our logical minds knew that we couldn’t solve every problem, save every person or bring even a glimmer of hope to every desperately impoverished family in a place like sub-saharan Africa.

But in that moment, as we all talked about what to do and how to respond, we knew the truth.

In our efforts to change the world and solve the global orphan crisis, how much is enough?

Just a little bit more.

So despite the fact that registration had closed, we decided to try to persuade the school administrators to take just one more. A year’s tuition at Adami Tulu School is 360 birr a year (about $21), but the actual cost of teachers, school supplies and meals for each kid is more like 3,000 birr a year ($176). So our team collected that, and the administrators were gracious enough to say yes.

Cacey and Mary Beth were able to visit Aynalem at her little home and tell her that her prayers had been answered. And as they did that, they learned that the little boy’s name translated to the English words “how much?” We looked at each other in amazement, knowing the answer.

We have seen the face of the global orphan crisis. We want to arrest it, reverse it, and for all intents and purposes, end it. And whenever we tire of this task, we need to remember: just a little bit more.

If we all do that, this job will get finished in our lifetimes.

As I write this, a team of 11 is aloft over the Atlantic Ocean, headed toward the village of Adami Tulu, Ethiopia.

They come from places as diverse as Little Rock, Arkansas…Bloomington, Indiana…and the Sierra foothills of California.

They range from a five year old boy with two Ethiopian siblings…to his parents who show an almost unlimited capacity for making a difference…to an adoptive dad and Chiropracter with a huge heart…to a couple who stepped out in faith to fly around the world to change it…and many more.

Cacey and I feel incredibly blessed to know each and every one of these people.

Thanks to your generosity and vision, a new school building has arisen in this tiny village we’re heading towards. And 120 orphans and vulnerable children, all sitting on the razor’s edge of extreme poverty and destitution, will now know what it means to have an education and two square meals every school day.

And while it’s hard for us to live with the fact that there were 350 kids wanting one of those 120 seats, that fact only gives us renewed determination to build a world where opportunity exists for all, and the only people wanting for food – for both the body and mind – are those unwilling to work hard for it.

The team will be putting the finishing touches on the new Lifesong Adami Tulu School building, lending our hand to painting and furnishing the classrooms. We’ll be holding a Vacation Bible School for the village’s children…but we’ll skip the “vacation” word as that’s a concept that hasn’t quite taken root in a part of the world where clean water is the luxury of choice.

And we’ll be spending a lot of time touring orphanages, group homes and the famed Fistula Hospital (Google it, you’ll be amazed) to get a deeper sense of the depth of the global orphan crisis that has left 18 million without any parents and another 145 million sitting on the razor’s edge of destitution.

This week, we also hope to answer the question: what’s next? Somehow, we believe that this team came together for more than one moment and one building.

The Adami Tulu Project team includes the 11 folks who were able to make it on this trip, and the many more who couldn’t but invested huge amounts of time, talent and treasure to make this possible.

And I think I can speak for them all when I say: we’re just getting started when it comes to changing the world.

I hope you’ll plan on joining us.

As a side note: internet access will be sparse on this trip but you can follow a few of the team members in real time on Twitter…in particular, @caseypicker and @AaronKlein, or on Facebook.

For the last two years, we’ve spent the first Sunday in November advocating to end the global orphan crisis in our world. Isaiah 1:17 tells us to “seek justice, encourage the oppressed and defend the cause of the fatherless.”

As a citizen of the richest nation on the face of this planet, this is something that I feel called to do, not out of the slightest bit of guilt…but out of the knowledge that we are incredibly blessed to live in a country where we don’t even understand what the word poverty really means.

So when I see the faces and hear the stories of a few of the 163 million children who have lost at least one parent, or the 18 million who’ve lost both…I have no choice but to take action.

The root causes of poverty that created the global orphan crisis are deep, twisted and complicated. Some of them may be self-inflicted. Most of them were formed or made worse by corrupt governments who take foreign aid and use it to enrich themselves and their cronies.

I know that we can’t solve all of these problems. Our efforts can’t fix developing world corruption. We don’t have the resources to end poverty. And it’s fairly well proven that doling out welfare payments wouldn’t end it anyway.

But I do believe we can end the global orphan crisis in my lifetime.

We can help to equip people to pull themselves out of poverty through entrepreneurship and hard work. We can help create self-sufficiency as a tool to break the cycle. We can use education to prepare these kids to support their families and to bring lasting change to their governments.

This year, we’ll recognize Orphan Sunday on November 6, 2011. I hope you’ll mark your calendar and make it the day that you stand up and decide to start changing the world.

You don’t have to change the lives of 163 million.

Start by making a difference for just one.

I previously shared some photos of the construction for the four new classrooms that YOU helped to build through the $42,500 we all raised for the Adami Tulu Project.

Today, I got these photos and a report from one of the people on the ground in Ethiopia.

“…we were dumbstruck by the number of kids and parents desperately waiting to enroll. There were 250 kids (plus parents) there competing for the 120 new slots—the four [new] classrooms being built.”

“We registered 211 (some kids were too old or too young or didn’t qualify for other reasons). The stories are so touching and often sad. Tomorrow we are scheduled to register again. And then Friday we will have a lottery to see who gets in. I really don’t like these emotional times, as there will be a lot of hurt people. Right now their hopes are so high.”

Yes, we’ll only be able to get 120 of those kids into school and fed a nutritious breakfast and lunch every day of the week. Yes, we’ll have to break some hearts and turn some kids away for lack of space.

But because of your generosity, you’ve made a huge impact on the lives of those 120.

With the knowledge of conversational English, computer skills and trade skills, each of those 120 will be equipped to build a brighter future for their country. Break the cycle of poverty. And start to bring the global orphan crisis to a close.

Thank you.

Just a reminder: if you’d like to get the official Adami Tulu Project t-shirt and contribute to the ground transportation costs for the team headed there in August to complete construction on the new classrooms, a simple donation of $25 (shipping included) will get you one! Get your t-shirt here.

Thanks to YOUR generosity, the walls at the Adami Tulu School are going up. This project is a reality! On behalf of the entire Adami Tulu Project team, we cannot thank you enough.

Just a reminder: we’ve got about $4,000 in ground transport costs for the team headed there in August, and all of these folks are covering their airfare costs. If you’d like to be a part of sending the team to put the finishing touches on the school and figure out what we can do next, you can donate to help cover those costs here.

And if you donate $25 or more, we’ll send you an Adami Tulu Project t-shirt with our thanks!

Several of our teammates on the Adami Tulu Project are running an innovative online auction. The proceeds will finish out the fundraising for the new restrooms at the Adami Tulu School.

We’re already building a brand new school building…but since we reached that $35,000 goal early, we thought we’d try to turn this…

…into this…

…and the fundraising is almost complete!

They have some incredible items to bid on: from a two-night stay in a luxury Oregon vacation home to Ethiopian art and jewelry, to handmade craft items. It’s SO cool!

So check out the online auction and bid away. It all goes to an incredibly great cause!