We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

611. BlinkNow: A Journey of Love + Sustainable Community Development - Maggie Doyne

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Meet Maggie 🤝—CNN Hero of the Year in 2015, humanitarian, activist, CEO and co-founder of the BlinkNow Foundation.

In this heart-opening conversation, Maggie takes us on a journey of purpose and possibility—from the humble beginnings of BlinkNow to a movement that now includes over 175 team members serving thousands of children, women, and community members in Nepal. You’ll hear stories of redefining family, lifting up the most vulnerable, and recognizing the sacred wisdom our children carry. ✨

This episode is equal parts grounding and inspiring—and a beautiful reminder that change begins when we choose to care deeply and act boldly. Tune in today 🎧

đź’ˇLearn: 

  • The power of love, empathy, and creating a nurturing environment for children to thrive
  • Strategies for building a holistic, community-driven approach to addressing complex social issues like poverty and lack of access to education
  • The importance of listening to and empowering local communities, rather than imposing outside solutions
  • How to design systems that care for the whole community

Episode Highlights: 

  • The Evolution of BlinkNow Foundation (9:11)
  • Community-Centered Approach to Empowerment (15:05)
  • Lessons from Children and the Call to Action (21:03)
  • Empowering Communities Through Youth Engagement (24:49)
  • The Journey of Documentary: Love and Loss (30:41)
  • Key Metrics for Engagement Strategies (22:54)
  • The Importance of Storytelling in Philanthropy (30:04)
  • Maggie’s One Good Thing: Look at a child’s face today (39:52) 

Episode Shownotes: www.weareforgood.com/episode/611

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Speaker 1:

Hey, I'm John.

Speaker 2:

And I'm Becky.

Speaker 1:

And this is the we Are For Good podcast.

Speaker 2:

Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.

Speaker 1:

We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.

Speaker 2:

So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.

Speaker 1:

So let's get started. Becky, who's the rabid fans today?

Speaker 2:

I am the rabid fan today.

Speaker 2:

And you know, I just think we have this immense privilege of lifting some of the most incredible stories that hit the universe and they stay in our souls. And one of those stories is coming to you today. It is such a joy to introduce you to the incomparable Maggie Doyne. She is a humanitarian and activist and co-founder and CEO of the Blink Now Foundation. She is also the author of Between the Mountain and the Sky, a Mother's Story of Love, loss, healing and Hope, which is becoming a revolutionary documentary which is now on the festival circuit.

Speaker 2:

And I think when Abby Felix says you need to meet a person, we sprint to go meet those people because they inevitably end up being the most extraordinary humans. But I had a chance to sit down with Maggie a couple weeks ago and John, my jaw, was on the floor and, if you can imagine, I am calling her at like 8 o'clock at night and she is in Nepal and we're having this incredible conversation and it's just such a joy to be able to bring that to the podcast today. So let me give you just a little bit of background on Maggie and then we're just going to hand the mic over to tell this extraordinary story. Her adventure really began at 19 years old, when she took the gap year following high school graduation in New Jersey, and she embarked on this tour of the world with nothing but her backpack and she found herself in the small village in Nepal, where she met impoverished children, including one little girl who was like crushing stones in a riverbed, and she was so deeply moved to action that she took the money that she was earning babysitting and she sent that little girl and several others to school before founding the Blink Now Foundation and community development, and she found this incredible human being, this amazing Nepalese man, tope Mala, and together they opened the Kopila Valley Children's Home to provide a loving home for homeless and orphaned children, and since 2007, it has grown and the foundation now supports the school, which educates more than 400 children.

Speaker 2:

They have a women's center. They have an education and training center that empowers women in Nepal. They have a women's center. They have an education and training center that empowers women in Nepal. They have a health and wellness program and there's all of this incredible work that is going on in this nonprofit that is really across the world from us. Maggie was named a CNN Hero of the Year in 2015 and was honored as a Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur and by the Dalai Lama as an unsung hero of compassion. I mean, there is so much more to this, but we want to get into it. Maggie, welcome to the we Are For Good podcast.

Speaker 2:

We are really honoring the whole space for you today.

Speaker 3:

Oh, staying right back at you all, I'm so grateful that you had me on.

Speaker 2:

Well, there's just something about your heart and the way that you listen to nudges and you have just really inspired this global, being a global citizen and what is that role? But before we get into the whole thing, we want to get to know little Maggie. Take us back to Maggie growing up and then lead us through the story of what happened when you took this leap of faith.

Speaker 3:

Okay, so thank you, little Maggie. So I grew up in New Jersey Jersey girl, jersey girl In the suburbs. And I'm one of three girls I'm the middle daughter. I had a really loving mom and dad, went to public school, rode my bike to school every day. A dog trampoline in my backyard, played soccer. You get the picture.

Speaker 2:

I think I see all this yes, ponytails swinging back and forth.

Speaker 3:

And when it comes to high school, everybody starts migrating to college, college, college. And it's not like are you going to college? Or what's your next step? It's which college did you get into? And I was a product of a privileged community where that was the biggest question being asked. And there was something about that question that brought up a lot of like inner unknowing, I guess. Like who am I? What's my purpose here? What do I want to study? What do I want to do? What am I good at? And it was kind of like at age 17, 18, I didn't have a sense of rite of passage or what I wanted to do before rushing into college. So that led me to signing up for a gap year. That's where Abby, I think, comes into the picture.

Speaker 1:

Abby's smiling at this right now.

Speaker 3:

And good gap year programs are not year off, they're a year on and it's just a journey kind of inward. You don't have to travel. My semester led me overseas and on my second semester I ended up in northeastern India, just by complete happenstance, and it was the year 2005. There was a civil war happening across the border and so my introduction into the landscape of Nepal was through the migrant, through the refugee, through girls who had been trafficked, through this escape from rural Himalayan communities. And I became friends with a girl my age, sunita, and she was like, unlike me, knew exactly what she wanted to do in life. She was so directed she was going to become a doctor. She is a doctor now but she didn't know where her village was and she's like can you come with me, let's go find my village. So two 18 year olds pack up our backpacks and we go to find her village, which she had fled during the revolution and the conflict. And we ended up in Nepal.

Speaker 3:

And very long story short. And we ended up in Nepal, and very long story short, the moments on the riverbed, the moment of questioning everything and just a moment of like what has happened to our human family and why didn't. I know that this is the reality of other kids who look just like me but were born into different circumstances, and that led me on a series of questions and wanting to understand, wanting to dig in, wanting to figure out what is my place in all of this? Once you see something, once you see a five-year-old breaking rocks on a riverbed or a child porter who's 13 years old little girl carrying 120 pounds on her back back and forth, like what, what do you do? What do you do and what's my place? And do I go back and just turn around and go to college back in Jersey, or you know, all the big questions surfaced and then basically plopped down roots, met my co-founder, met our team, met the community and realized that the community knew exactly what to do, they knew exactly what they wanted, they knew exactly how to solve these really complex, multidimensional issues and, because the conflict was coming to an end, there was a lot of hope and a lot of like spirit of wanting to rebuild and recreate community and focus on education and children.

Speaker 3:

And so we listened, my co-founder and I. My co-founder Tope is an orphan himself and comes from that region and he's just very, very respected, very admired. Him and his family are just incredible, incredible people. So they also moved back from India and we together just dug in, drew a little circle around the riverbed where kids were breaking rocks as laborers. And we've been there for 19 years and we haven't left and there's no more kids breaking rocks on the riverbed and we have a model that looks at the whole child and whole integrative community systems that are set up for children to thrive and grow and end cycles of violence and poverty. And that's Blink Now.

Speaker 2:

I'm already crying.

Speaker 1:

Man, there's so many hooks. We definitely could talk to you all week, not just all day, like all week we could talk about these things. But I think what feels particularly poignant, because we're living in a moment of so much uncertainty and so much change being thrown at us, and that was definitely the place.

Speaker 1:

It's not like it was a clear path for you to go into an unknown country and an unknown community, but you were guided by this deeper light that you had and deeper purpose that you had. And I just want to acknowledge that, because I think telling a story often makes it sound really simple.

Speaker 1:

And you go back to an 18 year old in the middle of a foreign country making these kinds of decisions like thank you for staying, you know, thank you for believing in the community and seeing the beauty and love um in a fellow human. So what, what an incredible story. So I want to talk about like blink now. I mean 19 years later. Y'all are 175 employees strong 175 employees Serving thousands of Nepalese children, women and community members.

Speaker 1:

I mean, what does it look like today? Like set some context for what BlinkNow looks and feels like today, and then we're going to break down your community approach.

Speaker 3:

So the first thing that we did was just guide with questions. We were like we know we don't have answers, but what does a child need to thrive and grow? And as we kind of dug in, we realized that, oh, it's a lot more than just like putting a child into school which you remember was the narrative at the time like give a kid a backpack, put them in school, everything's better. And the barriers that a child living in really deep poverty have to overcome are different, whether they're three months old, zero to three months at birth, to navigating toddlerhood, to being five, to being, say, 12 or 13. And so we really wanted to get to the root of the root of the problem, and in order to do that we had to look a layer deeper. So everything that we did was with this intention of how do we go deep and stop these problems from happening in the first place? So what started as a home grew into a school, grew into a meal and nutrition program, grew into family development, grew into a meal and nutrition program, grew into family development. Then we were like wait, what's better than helping an orphan, helping their mother before they become an orphan, helping their community system, creating jobs and financial equality and opportunity, and so that led to the Women's Center and health and wellness programming.

Speaker 3:

And if a child's drinking dirty water and they can't survive to the age of five or they're severely malnourished, you know, so it. You know there's this hierarchy of needs and you can't get to like this kid overcoming the challenges of poverty until you start way at the bottom, so like basic vaccinations and survival, and then you move your way up until you're at like digital literacy and they're in eighth grade and they get a computer and they're on Khan Academy and they're like learning how to code. But if you see what I mean, you like really start at the base, base and then building systems that are about a whole community and getting to like stopping the problem in the first place, so that you're not just drinking out of a water hose, and that just involves community leaders and people really deeply rooted in the mission and coming together and in the good and the heart of the community. So creating full service community schools that serve the heart and creating women centers where women are empowered and free and safe. And that is how we've grown our work over the years with deep listening, deep questioning. You know, never going in with answers, never, ever. It's like you know what's the next step. What's the next step? Where do we go next? And so that is how we were built by the people, for the people, deeply, deeply embedded in listening, and it's been incredibly successful, to the point where annually now we have 3000 visitors a year, people wanting to come and learn and and dig into how we do this work.

Speaker 3:

But I will tell you the root of it is very simple and that is that children need to be loved, nurtured, treasured, kept safe, educated and at the heart and center of all communities, which is so basic. You know, we don't even have to say it, the root of all violence, of all generational poverty, is simply some children not being given the childhood that they deserve and the basic human needs and rights. And if you can solve for that, if you can take care of the most vulnerable, to me like the most sacred of our whole human family and earth, then you solve every other problem stemming from that. And that's what we're all about. And every child, one child at a time, and again just going deep, and we weren't looking to like go out and spread a flag in every province or every region or every country. We were just like boom, draw a circle, go there and then people come to us to learn and take that into their communities.

Speaker 3:

You know, the other topes of the world who witnessed something, experienced something and wanted to change it so that that couldn't happen to other children. So that's been the journey. It's been wonderful, it's been learning. It's been incredibly, incredibly hard and difficult and filled with failure, filled with learning, filled with stumbling and falling flat on our faces. But here we are today and so proud and continuing to learn and grow and evolve with the sector and we kind of pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps, never expected to have a nonprofit or a global movement or 5, 1, 2, three, none of those, like. We went in, you know, bright eyed and like very, very not not knowing what was going to be ahead. So, but here we are.

Speaker 2:

Bless your story eyed idealism, because I am thinking right now what a brilliant storyteller you are, because I see what you did at the very beginning and you really helped us understand that Maggie had a nurturing, safe, loving childhood down to the trampoline and the dog and the parents who deeply loved her.

Speaker 2:

And I do think that that was so foundational in this conversation, because the fact that you had this seminal moment watching this girl breaking rocks and you drew a circle around the space and said never again will we ever have children breaking rocks right here as laborers, and the fact that you upended that scenario and built the most beautiful community school center of empowerment, rooted in people who had all the agency, who had all the power and all of the answers, and you gave it to them, John, it's giving me such vibes of like it's not about the donation, it's about the belief and it's about if you can get people rallied around the value system of we want to take care of children.

Speaker 2:

That's so easy to get on board with and you just stayed there as your heartbeat and I'm just so proud of this, Maggie, I'm so proud of what you've built and we just think you have this beautiful community-centered approach to the way that you are building a thriving community, and so we see it in your storytelling and you talk about these aunties and uncles who are encircling your kids to make them feel safe and empowered. So how have you seen this empathy, community-grounded approach affect your people in this corner of your world?

Speaker 3:

grounded approach, affect your people in this corner of your world. One of our core ethos is that if you wouldn't want your child to go there, don't build it. Paul Farmer, who we all know as a legendary, legendary man in our space, he always said like I'm not going to create a hospital that I wouldn't send my own mother to, and that was very much a guiding light in the space of alternative care homes, in the space of schools, in the space of community building. It's like it was always. We're going to create the school that our children will go to and, ironically, we said that for years and years and years and now both Topes and my children ended up going. You know, we're there, we're like, fully rooted.

Speaker 3:

I never knew how true those words would become, but some of the greatest compliments that I get is from like American kids will be like hey, if anything happens to me, can I grow up there, can I go to Maggie's? Oh, yes, but it's that sense of like these are our children, this is our community. It's a sense of our children are here and beyond biology, beyond what is family and how do we define family? And because our children had suffered from the loss of family family at the heart and center really became a value, and how do we create the vibe of a family? And so what was missing in the space that Tope and I really clearly saw is that these places, where our most marginalized children have access to, are dark and dismal and sad. I mean, even think of the word orphanage, which is such a bad word. It evokes all of these feelings of like neglected, forgotten, homeless. So we really tried to flip that on the head. We painted our walls bright yellow. There are trees, there are flowers, everywhere there are marbles, soccer balls, puppies, music, always playing, always a dance party on the roof in the rain, and just the childhood that you'd want to have and that you'd want your children to have meals around the table, fresh fruit, you know.

Speaker 3:

And again, starting with very little financially, because I was a kid, you know myself but build that was almost just as powerful, because everything you do have you really hold and treasure and make it go the furthest possible. So, building something from a seed, as opposed to going in with a big macro, bajillion dollar budget and plan. It was like, no, we're growing something out of this little thing and it's this little thing built on love as the core guiding principle. And family, because I think you know privilege and those who grow up with so much, with being tucked in at night, with being going to school riding your bike around the block, like safety it's. If you have that as a gift, it is inside you, it's embedded, it's part of your soul and you have that as a gift you can give inside you. It's embedded, it's part of your soul and you have that as a gift you can give to others. It's not a bad thing, it's something that you have a duty and a responsibility to share with the rest of our human family and with other children.

Speaker 3:

And so I've really worked on flipping the switch and the narrative around privilege and just being like hey, if you're empowered and educated and safe and free, if you learned how to drive, if you can read, if you can sign your name, just give it on, pass it forward one step at a time. And that was the guiding principle in our story. And Topes was like hey, I don't want what happened to me to happen to any other child in my region, in Nepal, in the world, and I'm going to give everything that I can to make sure that no child suffers the way that I do. So we both have very different he coming from nothing and losing his parents and his whole family. Young me coming from abundance and having enough and knowing what it was like to be loved, and something about that combination was really magical too. Wow.

Speaker 1:

Wow, and it's not lost on me that you just keep asking a better question, bigger question that we're trying to solve for something much greater, and so it's not just focused on just the kids.

Speaker 1:

You have this emphasis on caretakers as well, especially women. How they're so burnt out in this moment, but you are tackling this issue head on. How are you like leaning into this, and I mean, maybe you can give some encouragement to so many of us that are managing a lot of different roles, feel that burnout. How do we show up for these kids in a way that is generative and that is building into them and not adding to the problem and the pain?

Speaker 3:

I mean, I think children are our greatest teachers at this moment in time, because they're able to be in the moment. Like, have you ever noticed with your kids that like you're swirling and whirling and like, oh my God, what's going to happen tomorrow and how are we going to survive this moment as a humanity? And what's going on in the world is this and environmental anxiety. And you look at your child and they're like did you see the moon? I found a rock. Look at this rock. And they, when you look into it, there are teachers there are teachers.

Speaker 3:

They are the ones that are showing. Look at that. You look at the way a child looks at the trees and the sky and and they are the guiding light for us in this moment, and I think, because as caretakers we're so connected to them, it kind of brings us that level of sanity and groundedness and presence, and so our children have always been my guiding. Kind of centered groundedness and my have saved me from my darkest moments, which I've had many, and I struggle, I'm a worrier and I run anxious and like I'm terrified of the state of the world.

Speaker 2:

For kids and any empath, I think totally so.

Speaker 3:

So, but there's something about you. Look into the face of a child and you can't feel anything except hope and and like we got this. And so they, I think, are anchor in this moment, and this hope and belief that we can come together for them, like they're the one thing we can agree on, all of us, that we all want to better. I've met people all over the world and everybody wants what's best for their children. Now, do we need to expand our definition of who our children are? Yes, I think that's our work and that's our call to action as humans right now. They're all ours, they're our collective responsibility. Every decision, every step we make has to be rooted around the why of them. We're the grownups. Right, we have to make better decisions for them, and I think that's kind of the call to action for all of us right now.

Speaker 3:

It's like, okay, maybe we can't fix everything, but can you do something for one kid in your life, one person in your orbit, one child anywhere? I don't care where they are, I really don't. There are kids everywhere, whoever you are, wherever you are, they need us as adults and grownups. So that's what we do, that's what gives me hope, that's what gives me restoration, that is what gets me up every day. Thank God I have a life surrounded by them. Otherwise I be in a ditch somewhere Like I would not. I would not be in a good place. Bring your hope back. Yes, yeah, you know we've got.

Speaker 2:

We've got a trend this year called fuel young generosity, and it's this idea that if we can pour into children, they can revitalize so much. And if we can model empathy, generosity, and if we can model empathy, generosity, curiosity, service, love, if we can model that for them at such a young age, over and over again, those values get embedded in who they are and it becomes a generative act to their community wherever they land. And I am with you, maggie. I think there is no higher purpose in the way that we pour into kids and listen to them, and I just think you have rethought community development in such a beautiful way and the way that you're giving children their voice and agency to share what they need. And I wonder what you would say to our listeners in terms of how do we give more agency to those on the front lines of our mission? How do we start to look at them as partners rather than just the beneficiaries or simply the communities that we serve? How do we take it to a deeper level?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, there's this very fine line here and it's something that I've worked a lot on. There's a moment to be a voice and an advocate and to step up and be in the space of justice, right. And there's a moment to, like, step back and decenter and as an outsider especially, you know, like and that was a lot of my learning throughout my twenties being a young activist humanitarian entering the space. It's just like, where do we protect ourselves and we put ourselves to protect them, you know, and make sure that their childhood is sanctified and protected? And where do we step back? And I think the answer for us has been developing the whole.

Speaker 3:

The community is the voice. It wasn't me on the front line. Sometimes. It was like, hey, okay, this is right, this is wrong. I can use my privilege and my voice in this moment to say like, hey, we got to do something and there have been moments for that. And there are also moments to step back and really focus on education and values and make sure basic needs and rights are met, and then let the community come forward and say this is how we want to be as a community. And when you do that, when they have the resources and people are out of basic survival, you'll realize like, wow, that's the voice, that's the future, they're going to carry us forward. But there's a place for both in activism. There's a place for a voice and like we need to step up. And there's also a place for like, hey, step back, listen, let the community fight this fight and let them come up with a way, and that's the dance that we dance in the space.

Speaker 3:

And again, I think we're so obsessed with having answers and just like ask questions to people and be ready to listen, Because they're brilliant. People are wise. Like children are wise, I think a lot. I think children come into the world loving and knowing and, more than us teaching them like we need to learn from them and go back, go back into our original state, Right, Like even the fact that this started when we were so young. There was something about that idea what was ahead? And she had no right to like step in and try to get kids off of everyone.

Speaker 3:

I still admire the like no, we don't. I don't want to stand. I don't want to live in this kind of world where I have to look at this. So that's been, that's been my learning. I haven't always gotten it right. By the way, I've been wrong many times. I've stepped in where I shouldn't. I've stepped in where I shouldn't. I've stepped back where I shouldn't. You know, but when you're surrounded by people and that my 175 amazing aunties and uncles and my co-founder and our boards and our it's it's a lot easier. We're not. I'm not a whole. I'm with. I'm with them. I'm not. I'm not. The end, all be all in the equation.

Speaker 1:

This is human centered leadership, this is conscious leadership. These conversations stack together, but you are the applied uh that it starts with awareness and cultivating that muscle to listen and not just jump to action, but really to like take stock of what's in front of you. So this is such a beautiful conversation to like take stock of what's in front of you. So this is such a beautiful conversation. I'm loving and geeking out that you now have a documentary out, my friend.

Speaker 2:

You have a documentary. It's coming out. Yeah a movie's coming out. It's been like a decade in the works.

Speaker 1:

It is and friend listening. We're considered press, which means we can watch this thing, which I'm so excited about.

Speaker 2:

I've never thought of myself as press, Whatever. If that means I can get this film early, I'm press Great Maggie.

Speaker 1:

I mean it's called Between the Mountain and the Sky. It is in all these film festivals, like you said, winning the Audience Choice Award, which speaks so many volumes of such a delicate story that could really easily be so hard to tell, of a way that's not empowering, that's not centering dignity, but it's cutting through, it's connecting to people. Would you talk about what that journey was like and kind of tease what's coming out with it and how people can find it?

Speaker 3:

So the film, the process of the film, began after I suffered one of the greatest tragedies of my life and one of the greatest losses, and I would say I was at my lowest low in my rock bottom. I'd lost a child, robbie. And at the same time thank you, at the same time I, out of happenstance, met someone, a romantic partner, a guy, and he was and is a filmmaker. And as we were falling in love and I was at this really interesting intersection and crossroads, he did what he did best and originally I just asked him to capture our children. They were growing up, they were becoming teenagers and heading off to college.

Speaker 3:

It was this magical moment in our lives and so we started capturing, and as we were, I mean, first of all, how, in a million years living in Nepal, would I ever meet someone? Well, I met the love of my life. He's a filmmaker, director, cinematographer, editor and had been making commercials and was like, oh, I'm going to do something different. And as we fell in love, he captured it and for 10 years he captured the story, captured the story, captured the story and made it into something in partnership with some incredible producers, and it launched in the spring, and it is the story of love, motherhood, loss, hope. Um, you really are in it. You'll know everything about me and their organization and love.

Speaker 3:

And there's been, you know, a reveal in the film which you know I fell in love with the director as we were making and capturing and, um, that's all I'll tell you till you watch it. But it's been going around the world and it's launching around Mother's Day in the spring and the response has been soul shattering and, in all of the right kind of ways, it breaks people open, it navigates grief, it navigates our existence and why we're here and themes of love and are called action right now as human family. And it's, uh, my, my husband, so I wasn't part of making of the film at all. I actually watched it for the first time, like when it entered the festival, which is crazy, um, but it's coming out and it's doing incredible on the press and getting rave reviews and everyone who sees it comes out crying and touched and moved and it's everything I could have ever wished for and I think it's a piece of our legacy and it's something that we made for our children, kind of kind of guide them into the future.

Speaker 3:

It's very different from my book, although we chose the same title. And here it comes world, it's coming out, it's going to be here. Oh, it's terrifying, I mean as we're recording this right now.

Speaker 2:

You are in Canada, You're about ready to go to Boulder to a film festival. I mean, friends, this has been in Rome, Dublin, Madrid, Australia and I cannot wait to watch this film. And I want to make sure that people understand. There is a book. So go check out the book first, because it'll give you a different view, but then the film. How can they get the film as it comes out on Mother's Day, I know you're going to have an- online launch and where's it going to be, and all the things so it's going to be in theaters across north america.

Speaker 3:

Um, it is going to be on, available to watch on streaming and you can follow between the mountain and the sky. Uh, to learn more, and you can follow blinknoworg. We're going to be sharing updates and ways to watch the film and ways to support and, um, yeah, check us out. We're all over all the medias at BlinkNoworg.

Speaker 2:

We're just so thrilled for you Cannot wait to watch this film. I just think it's going to be one of the great stories that we have heard of this time of hope, and we need that inspiration, and you know how much we love story, maggie, and I wonder if you would take us into a moment of generosity, of philanthropy, like that profoundly changed you in your lifetime. If there's a moment or a person that lives to the surface, we would love to hear that story story Gosh.

Speaker 3:

philanthropy has become such a loaded word, especially for young people. It always felt like this. It was actually always one of my least favorite words as somebody working in the space. It's like philanthropy, philanthropic, it's just felt so attainable yes.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I remember being a young person, being like what, say what? Like what I actually hate when people use the word. It's one of those like triggers. But if we can get through the layers of that and just say philanthropy is just about doing good, it's for everybody, it's just like that one step, yeah, that one for good, we're for good. Yeah, why can't we call it that we're one for good, we're for good. Yeah, why can't we call it that we're all for good, we're philanthropists.

Speaker 2:

That's it. We've got a domain.

Speaker 3:

So to me it's anchoring around children and it's anchoring around us coming together as a family and saying our children matter more than anything. And to me it's the story of little Hema breaking rocks on the riverbed and she just looked up at me and said Namaste Didi, which means big sister. So this concept that, yeah, we're all sisters and brothers and family to each other. And today Hema is not breaking rocks on a riverbed, she's becoming a chef. She just finished college and from a riverbed to like watching her grow, watching her become a mother, um, has just been so humbling and I would say just never, ever underestimate the power of one small act in a world that wants us to freeze and stay in fear and stay curled up and draw a little fence and boundary and barbed wire around our hearts and our families and our homes. Just try to stay open, Try to keep us open and through action, through doing.

Speaker 3:

To me it's like philanthropy is just doing one small thing, and not even having the answer and not even knowing if you're on the right track, but knowing that that one small act, that one small step can lead you to something else and something else and something else. So Hema's story became the story of thousands of children. But again, we didn't get in it, thinking it would become like this. And you don't know where your journey is going to go either. Whatever your age, wherever you're from, whatever your journey has been, the power of giving to others is the antidote to depression, anxiety, um, connection, our humanness, which matters right now more than anything. And so we got this. Let's just hold hands and figure some of these things out and do what we can together.

Speaker 1:

It's not lost on me that literally yesterday, our team announced that the next impact up is called hold fast and I think, it stands out to me because there's so much chaos and uncertainty and we're not saying stay still. We're saying don't lose what matters, don't lose the long game that you're fighting for in the midst of so much chaos. And these are the kind of stories that are only possible when you dig in and you endure and you don't give up, and so thank you for that.

Speaker 1:

What a beautiful story and that's one of many thousand that have happened in your community. So all the feels I need, I might my hair standing on the tin. I'm trying to tamp it down.

Speaker 3:

But it's true, it's true, I think, children are the long game. So let's just right, like exactly what you said Children are the long game. It doesn't. You don't raise the child in one day or fix every. You know, we raised them in decades. And so let's parents we got this all kinds of parents, all kinds of family, we got this. We got this.

Speaker 1:

So, maggie, what's a one good thing you would leave with our audience? It could be a mantra that's cut through to you, or a piece of advice that's lifted through this conversation mantra that's cut through to you, or a piece of advice that's lifted through this conversation.

Speaker 3:

Look at a child's face today. Watch them smile.

Speaker 2:

Watch their wonder watch their presence and learn from it. I adore you so much, I know the first time we met, you used this word several times and I and I came back to it and you said it's just simple. It's always simple. When you talk about your community approach, when you talk about the way you love people, when you talk about your curriculum building, when you talk about you have an incredible PhD fellows program, you know where people come in. It's in your life. We keep it simple because you put the child at the heart of everything that you do, and I just think about what your love has empowered Maggie, and that has been the beautiful part of this story for me. So keep loving people really well. Like, we want to create some space for you to tell people how they can support Blink Now. What do you guys need right now? Like, throw it out there, let's see if this community can source it and let's get some people wrapped around BlinkNow in between the mountain and the sky.

Speaker 3:

Oh, thank you. Oh, my gosh, we'll follow along. You know we have this amazing newsletter and communications platform on BlinkNow where you can just see, connect, feel what's happening, feel a little hope. It's always filled with joy and heart. Become a supporter at the smallest, smallest, smallest monthly level, to anything you have. If you do want to engage in philanthropy, we'd love to be considered. We're looking for partners. We're looking for people who want to come to our Blinkenow Summit annually and learn and watch and grow together. We're looking for yeah, we're looking for fellows. We've got volunteer opportunities, camps that we run. So, yeah, come along on the journey and watch us as we continue to grow and sustain our work and learn together. Learn together, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Amazing. Wherever you want press, we are there.

Speaker 2:

We will be your press always.

Speaker 1:

Personal press over here.

Speaker 2:

I'm so amazed by your story. Thank you for coming to share it. Keep going, my friend. Thank you.