All I want for Christmas...

... is you to be happy and other people to have better lives. How about that? So I decided to start a fundraiser for Somaly Mam Foundation. Somaly Mam is a sexual slavery survivor. She was sold to a brothel as a child, but heroically managed to escape. And when she did, she promised to herself that she will work to help those who were left behind. And so she founded Somaly Mam Foundation. Now - if she can do this, if she can get over what she had been through and work to help others, what's our excuse not to? None, exactly. 

And so I'm asking you, dear readers, to help me help her. I started a fundraiser whose goal is to raise $500 by my birthday. I'm not celebrating my birthday if I don't manage to raise the money. Will you help? Not me, but the 1-2 million children who will be sold to slavery within the next 12 months. 

Ok, let's do this. All you need to do is to click on THIS LINK which will bring you to my CrowdRise page and donate, or share the page with your friends.

Thank you!

Not really unemployed, but still searching. So what have I been up to?

I feel like I have abandoned this blog, although I never meant to. The truth is that I was hoping that soon, I'd have great news and interesting updates to put here, advice for job searchers, exciting things related to my job. And don't get me wrong, I love my job! It's fun, I work with great people and I get to do great things. 

I was thrown into the water without having been taught how to swim literally the very first day I showed up at work. Without having any idea how things work, I was sent to a meeting on the power of 1% (of the U.S. federal funding) my first day and asked to write a blog post about it (and you can read it here). I was tasked with organizing MCHIP's presence at several conferences and believe me - at first, I didn't understand half of the things I was asked to do. However, I did everything I was asked to do and more and looking back, I realize how much I've learned in such a short time.  (Not to mention the fire in the office on my third day at work...) 

And so I have worked on coordinating MCHIP's presence at:

• The APHA Annual Meeting, where we also held a special event on the quality of care for mothers and newborns) that I helped to organize;
• That same week, we held a special event on Continuing U.S. Investments Made in Global Health: Why It Matters More Than Ever, from which I also wrote a blog post for MCHIP (read it to see what Congresswomen ended up coming to our event!).
• Then there was ICASA, mHealth Summit and more conferences coming.
• I also organized all our World AIDS Day 2011 activities. We were lucky enough to be joined by Susi Wyss who came to read her story Eggs (and whose book I highly recommend). We were also  Facing AIDS with AIDS.gov, and posted a ton of information online, including this blog post by one of our staff in South Africa.
• Which brings me to another big part of my job - social media management! That's right, I'm pretty much in charge of MCHIP's Facebook presence and Twitter account. So like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter to learn something new about global health every day. Who knows, maybe you'll be our 1000th follower? (Because that's how far I got MCHIP's Twitter! :))
• And just a couple of days ago, another blog post written by me became the blog spotlight for now.

And that's what I've been up to. My job is part-time, but there are days when I spend 11 hours there. And then I come home and look/apply for jobs because, unfortunately, my job isn't permanent and it won't sponsor my visa. So that's what my life is about.