{"id":4347,"date":"2010-01-15T03:12:05","date_gmt":"2010-01-15T03:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/athomeshuntsville.com\/realestate\/?p=4347"},"modified":"2010-01-29T14:32:51","modified_gmt":"2010-01-29T14:32:51","slug":"using-social-media-to-help-in-haiti%e2%80%a6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/athomeshuntsville.com\/realestate\/2010\/01\/15\/using-social-media-to-help-in-haiti%e2%80%a6\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Social Media to Help In Haiti\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the pressing pressures of what we consider ‘normal’ <\/strong>daily life propels us forward minute by minute, I am sure that your own family has taken pause<\/strong> at the great human tragedy that now faces one of\u00a0 our neighbors to the east in the Caribbean Island of Haiti<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

While attempting to formulate our own family’s response, one of our Internet colleagues, Tom Vanderwell, author of Straight Talk About Mortgages<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0 shared with one of\u00a0 our regular Internet communities his own personal experience over the last 48 hours, since such a powerful earthquake struck one of the poorest nations on the planet, in an area where such strong earthquakes are so completely RARE<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Tom asked the community to share his post locally in an attempt to motivate all of us, many of whom are far more fortunate than our Caribbean Neighbors<\/strong>, to actually make an effort to help, despite our own varying economic circumstances because this particular crisis warrants our personal attention. Yes, Tom does have a personal connection to this tragedy and his story follows unedited:<\/p>\n

For the last 22 hours and 15 minutes (with the exception of a 2 1\/2 hour nap around 4:00 this morning,) I\u2019ve been using social media to help in Haiti.<\/p>\n

As many of you know, my wife and I adopted our two youngest children from Haiti in the summer of 2004 and we have remained very involved with the orphanage that we adopted them from, God\u2019s Littlest Angels<\/a>, which is in Petionville Haiti. I\u2019ve been on the Board of Directors for the orphanage since 2006 and every year since 2003 (with the exception of 2005), at least one of our family has been back down there on a mission trip to help out. My 20 year old has decided to devote her life to third world medical missions, almost certainly in Haiti.<\/p>\n

Throughout those experiences, I\u2019ve developed a pretty extensive network of people around, literally, the world who have connections to Haiti. Most of those are Facebook Friends. In addition to that, I\u2019ve developed a pretty extensive network of online friends in the real estate and lending communities literally all across the country. If you consider Seattle to Miami to be all across the country, I think I\u2019ve got it covered. Yesterday, those two worlds met and it\u2019s been truly a mind-blowing experience. Let me explain:<\/p>\n

At 5:15 pm, I got a tweet across tweetdeck that was from @latimes (I use that as one of my news sources). It talked about a massive earthquake in Haiti, near Port Au Prince. I immediately hopped on AIM and talked to God\u2019s Littlest Angels stateside coordinator and confirmed that the orphanage was affected but that the damage appeared minor and everyone was safe.<\/p>\n

I then spent the next several hours e-mailing, face-booking, twittering and IM\u2019ng with people all over the world trying to connect people, find out what\u2019s going on, reassure adoptive parents who are panicking because their kids are down there and heck just help. <\/p>\n

One of the other people who I follow on twitter is @anncurry. Ever watch the Today Show on NBC? Yeah, that Ann Curry. Well, she tweeted that they were trying to get in touch with anyone who speaks English and is on the ground in the earthquake zone. That started a series of DM\u2019s, IM\u2019s and so forth and eventually, I was able to connect people from NBC with Dixie Bickel, the orphanage director at God\u2019s Littlest Angels.<\/p>\n

In addition to that, an adoptive mom in Oregon and I connected yesterday about this all. Guess what she does for a living? Yep, she\u2019s in charge of utilizing social media for their business. She and I ended up connecting and actually had a phone conversation at around 1:00 this morning (my time, not her time). We then worked up a way to make a difference in Haiti. We\u2019ve kicked off the God\u2019s Littlest Angels 1000 x 1000 Campaign. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what we\u2019re doing:<\/p>\n