So we heard in the introduction that you
started this charitable organization - 365give
and why don't you just tell us about your
start and how that all began.
Absolutely. Well, it started a lot of years ago
and as many of you heard - it's my super fun fact,
no longer up - I am a mother to three super beautiful
little boys that I adopted locally here in Vancouver.
Now I know, not all of you think that having three boys
is fun but my kids are great and when I started the
adoption process you go through a lot of
questions and one of the questions that came up as we
were going through the process was what are your
expectations for your child? What do you
want him to be when he grows up or her.
At that time we didn't know.
And my answer was pretty instant.
I just really wanted my child to be a kind,
compassionate, happy little human being.
That was all the expectations I had for
my child and I realized when I took a look
around our world, raising a happy child these days isn't
quite as easy as we think it is.
The World Happiness Report actually tells us that over
220 million children suffer from anxiety and depression.
Children. And none of you are out of this.
Another 1 billion adults also suffer from anxiety
and depression. So I decided that I was going to do
something a little differently with my son.
And many of you may have heard that the first five
years of a child's life are their most
important years so at the ripe old age of three I
decided I was going to start instilling what I hoped for
for my child. And so on his third birthday,
over birthday cake and ice cream, I sat my son, Nick,
down and I said "Nick, we are gonna do one thing to
give back to the world every day for one year."
Yes, he had the look on his face of "Mom what
the hell are you talking about?"
So you know I had to go about this a little bit differently
and roll it out in three-year old terms so I got out the
crayons and the pencils and off we went and I said
"Nick we're gonna do one thing to be kind, helpful,
compassionate to either an animal, a human being -
another person - or the planet. And that's how we
got going. So every day for 365 days my son and I
committed to doing one daily give every day.
Excellent. And you started blogging along the way
as well so you started to tell your story a little bit.
I did, so my son actually asked if we could share it with
friends and family and I am NOT that scrapbook kind
of mom, so instead I decided I was gonna start a blog
and we named it 365give. Kind of made sense.
Now I'm not some inspiring writer or some social media
guru - this was the days before Instagram - and so I
started blogging and every day I just wrote a little story
about what Nick and I had done to give back
to the world everyday. You know our actions had to be
small and really simple. So simple a three-year-old
can do them. And so it was easy for me. Every day we
tracked our stories and it was really neat
what happened because obviously we kind of
were hoping our friends and family might check in every
now and then to see what we were doing.
But things really changed and people started reaching
out to us from all over the world because they were
actually inspired by my little three-year-old boy, Nick.
And what were some of the early gives that you did?
Oh yeah, our gives. Well you know what, I actually
happen to have right here … so this is our
daily giving list we made. We sat down. We got out the
crayons. I think they're gonna pop it up there. There it is.
So this is how simple we made giving and
some of our favorites, and we still do them to-day,
you know the donating towels and blankets down at the
local SPCA is always a favorite because when we got
down there we got to spend some time and
volunteer our time with the cats so my son
It made his day it would be like "yes" let's go
to the SPCA today and he loved that part and just
getting to spend some time and volunteering his
time while we were down there. A couple
of other favorites that, you know, were also very fun is
... we are blessed that we live down at the beach so you
know a really easy project we could do is when we went
down to go play at the beach we would pick up garbage
along the way. You know, we didn't do it for long … we
are talking about a three year old here so
but for three minutes we would pick up garbage
and very easily we could pick up a bag of garbage.
It was one of our daily gives we said to the planet.
One of the ones that we still do as well today and
as most of you know the Salvation Army
out there we would give our toys and all the
clothes that we no longer needed and we actually call
this a double daily gift because we are helping the
planet by making sure that our things we no longer
wanted weren't going into the dump and of
course it's helping people along the way.
And I think our favorite, and we still do it every
Christmas morning even to today, is we make cookies
on Christmas Day and we go and deliver them to our
local firehouse to thank them for all of their service.
And what were, this is one of my favorite podcasting
questions, what did you learn about yourself, what did
you learn along the way, what did
Nick learn? You know I think that I'm going to have to
give you two parts to this one. I think one of the first
things that I learned as a parent is that creating a daily
giving habit is actually really easy. You know I kinda
look at it like brushing your teeth every day and
I'm telling you right now it's easier to teach a
three-year-old to give than it is for them to brush their
teeth every day. But when you start thinking about it like
that, once you get into that daily habit of doing it,
it sticks with you and I can tell you right now and even
aren't still to this day in our family we make it a daily
habit and we name it in our house even if it's something
really simple - my son helps me upload the dishwasher,
he helps me set the table, we name it "you did your
365give" today so it has become a culture and when we
don't do it we really miss it. That's cool. I was telling
someone about this and about our interview today and
they said "all these great things that we wish we had
as parents." I'm glad to hear that, thank you. I wish I
could go back and do this with my girls. You know what
… it's all possible. And I know in our conversations that
you've learned some things about happiness
along the way. Maybe you could just share that.
We have well you know one of the things that I really
learned, and if you ever take a child down to the SPCA
and spend some time with those cats, you think that
you are the one giving but what you come
to understand is how happy it makes you
and every time Nick and I did our 365give, this smile
would always end up on his face and I actually came to
realize that by doing our daily give, he was becoming a
really happy the little kid and it was amazing to watch.
Cool. So after you did your initial 365 days, yes, things
built on the blog. Just continuing with your story, what
sort of happened next? Well you know if anybody
has ever heard the saying here "when you
give you receive." I'm just gonna throw this little story in
here today because I haven't told it too often but
on day 365 was the day my son's fourth
birthday that our second son came home.
He is, sorry, still to this day, the apple of my eye
and just six months later his little brother came home
and then things started to change. But what really
changed was when I got a call and it was from a
girlfriend of mine and she's a teacher here in Vancouver
and she asked me if she could take the 365give concept
into her classroom. She wanted to teach her students
how to give back to the world and she wanted to teach
them everyday how it was done. So we went to work
and we created an educational program.
It's actually a tool for teachers that
incorporates a daily giving practice with their
everyday curriculum. So as the kids are doing their
science and their math and their reading and their
writing, they also get to choose how they're going to
give back. Our program is a little bit unique because it's
powered by the kids. Instead of their teacher telling
them that they have to do this to give, the kids actually
get together and they get to choose how they want to
give back to the world. Choose causes or choose the
planet, things that are really they're inspired by and
show them how they can make an impact. And it's been
amazing to watch these kids as young as
kindergarten come up with daily giving ideas they can
do together. They give back to their schools,
they give back to their communities, they give back to
their families. And we keep watching this ripple happen
and it's been an amazing journey to watch. And then, as
Roger mentioned, you did a TEDxStanleyPark talk in
March a little over a year ago and then the video went
up in April I believe - and just tell us what's happened
since then because, I don't know if Roger mentioned it
or not, but you're up close to 2.4 million views of your
video. Amazing, amazing well and I have to tell you I'm
so humbled and and Nick and I feel so blessed.
If you want a kid that's surprised when their mom has
2.4 million views on YouTube you become the
superhero in the family. So along with my other boys.
You know when when we did that talk and when I did
my talk - I call it "How to be happy every day"
because what I learned along the journey and I don't
know if anybody here has ever heard this before, but
have you ever heard of the "Helper's High" before?
Anybody ever heard that term? So, I'm just going to
explain this a little bit and I'm going to tell you about
the talk. When you give, your endorphins actually
kick in ... you get this high … they literally call it
the "Helper's High" and researchers been studying this
for decades. What else happens is something
called the "happiness trifecta."
And its this brilliant combination of things that go off
and fire off in your brain that includes dopamine,
oxytocin and serotonin. So when you're giving, you're all
fired up and you're ready to go and you know, you're
feeling on this natural high. It's amazing. And so the talk
ended up being called "How to be happy every day, it'll
change the world" and what we realized from the talk,
as soon as it went up, people are really looking
people all over the world are looking for that key to
happiness. And the more views we got every day, and
even to today, the power of just one voice standing on a
stage telling a story like everybody here is today, is
amazing how it ripples and 2.4 million people either
have gone out and given at this point or we've planted
a seed that we know one day will stick with them.
And that one voice and that one action from my son
and one talk has taken our organization from a small,
local, Vancouver, not-for-profit to now a global
organization. We have over 250 schools in 30 countries
participating in the … we call it "The 365give challenge."
Thank you, thank you. We are so blessed. We get to
connect with people from all over the world. We have
thousands of individuals, we have hundreds of families,
we even have businesses that have come and joined
and are now part of our community and what we see
and what I hear every day from the people that email me, to the comments
on the TED talk … it's possible, it's actually possible
to change the world and it's why we're here today.
We're here to inspire brave actions and now I can
tell you it's actually possible. With one small daily give
it can ripple around the world and it's amazing.
Cool. So one final question: I'm sure you've heard
today hundreds of stories, maybe thousands of stories,
as a result of 365give. Could you just share, pick one.
Okay. I think because this one is relevant to Vancouver
rather than somewhere on the other side of the world,
I'd like to share this one with you. Last year I had the
opportunity to work with a youth philanthropy group
here in Vancouver so these are high school kids.
And I had 12 kids and they wanted to do something with
365give and show their community that they too could
make a difference. And we know the challenges with
being a high school kid student these days. So we got
together and we came up with a special day and we call
it "Do one give day." Well these kids let me tell you
- they got every school in our district involved, they
accomplished 4,000 daily gives in one day just with our
school district and globally another six which made
10,000 daily gives in 30 countries globally and these
kids just amaze me of when you give them the power to
go out and change the world that they've made it
possible. So we're looking forward to moving that
forward this year and and bringing more people on
board and making even a bigger change. Thank you.
Thank you. That's from my West Vancouver kids. I just
love them. Kids really get it, don't they. Yes, they
completely get it. It's the rest of us that have to catch up.
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