It’s a scary, beautiful road when we leave the comfort of the familiar to forge a new path.

For two years, I worked as an assistant for the International Program Group Communications team. I had an incredible boss who encouraged me to pursue my passions. I flourished under his leadership as I learned more about my skills and developed relationships around the ministry.

So two months ago, when offered a new position as the International Partner Development Web and Marketing Specialist, I knew what I had to do. This was an opportunity to steward my gifting and passions for writing, marketing, and cultivating relationships of impact.

But that meant leaving the people I’d grown so close to. My co-workers had become a second family to me!

Learning a new role can be lonely. Sure, I love my new bosses and the new people I’m meeting, but I miss my old team. Leaving familiar paths to venture onto new ones feels vulnerable and sometimes scary.

A new friend of mine, Colleen,* knows these feelings well.

I met Colleen through OurCompassion, which I now work to help develop. She’s a sponsor and correspondent from Australia, and she recently blogged on OurCompassion about her struggle with cancer: (more…)

Social media is my job. I manage this blog. I send out the tweets for @compassion. I create the photo sets in Flickr, upload videos to YouTube, update our Facebook status, etc.

I have a good job. I like it a lot. I don’t want to do anything else. My fellow webbies are great peeps. Lots of fun. And I love seeing and being a part of the conversations you have with one another. But amid all that I can still be a bit jaded at times.

Since this blog is a place of honesty and transparency, I have to admit that I have been known to say “Who cares?” to a tweet or two. Not any I send, of course.

I also admit to not putting much effort into managing “my personal brand” in those spaces, and that includes our newly launched OurCompassion.

However, on Wednesday, I learned what OurCompassion is really about. (more…)

Back in March we asked you a simple question: Where Do You Sponsor a Child? And boy howdy, did a conversation take off!

Now, we’d like to introduce you to OurCompassion.org — our new Web site to more easily connect you with people who sponsor children in the same country or child development center as your child.

Of course, if you want to connect with other people, you can do that, too. We’ll allow it.

OurCompassion isn’t just a U.S. project. At this time, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are participating, but all of our partner countries will eventually be involved.

We’re building OurCompassion to help make your sponsorship experience more vibrant, dynamic and rewarding — to help take it beyond what it has been in the past.

Our development priorities for OurCompassion will revolve around delivering the functionality necessary to bridge the gap between you and your child — relationally, geographically, technologically, etc. We’re not trying to recreate Facebook, but we do want OurCompassion to communicate with the networks you’re in.

It’s going to take time for our vision to be fully realized; we are a nonprofit, after all. But for now we invite you to join OurCompassion and experience what we call “joined together thinking.”

You can also view the OurCompassion video, Joined Together, as well as all of our videos on YouTube.

Our commitment to you is to make OurCompassion what you want it to be. Do not hesitate to share your thoughts with us.