Musical sweetness

What happens when you spread some musical sweetness around?

We challenged 100 of you to "like" Music Makes Our Students Smarter...and you delivered!

We challenged you to get Music Makes Our Students Smarter to $75,000...and you delivered!

Now it's our turn to deliver!  As a result of meeting these challenges, we will be donating 2 musical instruments to the Children's Cancer Association through their MusicRx program.  These will be purchased from their Amazon Wish List.

But let's try sweetening the pot a bit more ;-)

Well, what can be sweeter than lemonade?  How about lemonade fighting childhood cancer!  So here's our next challenge for you.  Why not pay our virtual Alex's Lemonade Stand a visit and help us hit a $1000 milestone.  Once we hit the $1000 milestone, we'll donate a third musical instrument to the Children's Cancer Association!

And because you've been doing so well helping us spread around musical sweetness, we're extending our first challenge.  When Music Makes Our Students Smarter gets to 200 "likes", we'll donate a fourth musical instrument to the Children's Cancer Association :-)

Kiva

Maybe you haven't heard about Kiva before.  Maybe you've heard of Kiva but you don't understand how it works.  Maybe you know how it works but you're worried about getting paid back.

Every so often we receive one of our favorite e-mails.  Today it read "You've received 12 repayments!"  Apart from the obvious excitement about receiving a repayment, joining Kiva brings so much more than that.  For us it's more about the joy of knowing that a small act of kindness has made a true difference in the lives of others.  People who ordinarily would not have the opportunity to improve their lives.  That's what Kiva is all about - loans that change lives :-)

Still not convinced?  We leave you with today's e-mail:

Repayments for loans that have ended
Funded on May 18, 2011
	Igor Ukraine  |  Manufacturing You Loaned: $25.00 Newly Repaid: $0.11 Total Repaid So Far: $25.00 (100.00% of your loan) Repayment Status: Paid back
Funded on Nov 28, 2011
	Gia Georgia  |  Agriculture You Loaned: $25.00 Newly Repaid: $2.50 Total Repaid So Far: $25.00 (100.00% of your loan) Repayment Status: Paid back
Repayments for loans that are paying back
Funded on Jan 20, 2012
	Andres Felipe Colombia  |  Musical Performance You Loaned: $100.00 Newly Repaid: $3.65 Total Repaid So Far: $37.43 (37.43% of your loan) Repayment Status: Paying back on time
Funded on Mar 7, 2012
	Ecederio Peru  |  Musical Performance You Loaned: $50.00 Newly Repaid: $4.60 Total Repaid So Far: $35.16 (70.32% of your loan) Repayment Status: Paying back on time
Funded on Apr 6, 2012
	Mamasodik Tajikistan  |  Musical Instruments You Loaned: $50.00 Newly Repaid: $2.78 Total Repaid So Far: $22.23 (44.46% of your loan) Repayment Status: Paying back on time
Funded on Apr 18, 2012
	Luis Bolivia  |  Musical Performance You Loaned: $25.00 Newly Repaid: $1.35 Total Repaid So Far: $10.10 (40.40% of your loan) Repayment Status: Paying back on time
Funded on May 9, 2012
	Augustin Rwanda  |  General Store You Loaned: $200.00 Newly Repaid: $16.67 Total Repaid So Far: $116.67 (58.34% of your loan) Repayment Status: Paying back on time
Funded on Jul 11, 2012
	Firuz Tajikistan  |  Musical Performance You Loaned: $100.00 Newly Repaid: $5.13 Total Repaid So Far: $23.79 (23.79% of your loan) Repayment Status: Paying back on time
Funded on Jul 18, 2012
	Ep Teresamira Group The Democratic Republic of the Congo  |  Food Stall You Loaned: $100.00 Newly Repaid: $11.10 Total Repaid So Far: $55.55 (55.55% of your loan) Repayment Status: Paying back on time
Funded on Aug 15, 2012
	Brigida Bolivia  |  Music Discs & Tapes You Loaned: $100.00 Newly Repaid: $7.96 Total Repaid So Far: $31.06 (31.06% of your loan) Repayment Status: Paying back on time
Funded on Sep 17, 2012
	Heriberto Paraguay  |  Retail You Loaned: $25.00 Newly Repaid: $4.00 Total Repaid So Far: $7.89 (31.56% of your loan) Repayment Status: Paying back on time
Funded on Sep 19, 2012
	Gloria Maria Del Carmen Peru  |  Crafts You Loaned: $25.00 Newly Repaid: $6.37 Total Repaid So Far: $18.39 (73.56% of your loan) Repayment Status: Paying back on time

Epilogue

First we'd like to say thank you to everyone who read, commented, tweeted, participated, and shared this journey of 37 days of giving with us.  It would not have been the journey it was without all of you :-)

To be perfectly honest with you, when starting this journey I personally did not know where it was going to lead.  None of the charities were preselected - they were discovered each day through research or your suggestions (and with the tragedy at Newtown, a focus thereafter was on charities that support children).  As the days went by, what actually surprised me the most was not only how much many of the charities were new to me, but also how their stories and work are so inspirational, necessary, and beneficial to us all.

About a week ago I went to see the movie The Hobbit.  There were some lines in the movie that really resonated with me and you may have seen me tweet some of them.  Here is the full quote:

Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found.  I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay.  Small acts of kindness and love.

- Gandalf, The Hobbit

From these lines arose an idea.  Imagine if I set aside $1 a day for the entire year for charity.  Now imagine if 5, 10, or even 37 people did the same.  You don't need to imagine what a difference that would make!

With this we are going to continue our journey of giving but a little differently.  Get ready for #smallactsofkindness :-)

From the 37 charities we highlighted we have selected our favorite 2 (an incredibly difficult choice!): Save the Children (HEART program) and Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation.  Following the theme of small acts of kindness, we will be setting aside our collective dollars every day in 2013 for each charity (all 365 days) and donating throughout the year.

Finally we'd like to wish everyone a very Happy New Year!  May 2013 be full of small acts of kindness and love :-)