Happy New Year!

K&OL + One Bead

How To Tie Your Bracelet

A Shout-out to someone who made a HUGE difference this summer

Camp Nellie Huckins in Freedom, NH 

One Bead Kenya Follow-up: In my own words

Cleveland Airport Take One

Alright everyone...here is our first attempt at a video update for you...please do your best to refrain from judging this clip, it can only get better! Meghan, Joe, and Christina left Canada yesterday around 9:00 am and arrived at my house in Hudson, OH at 4:00 p.m. Unfortunately for them, we spent the next 6 hours packing 8 suitcases each with 50 pounds of pens, pencils, scissors, glue, paper, and notebooks. It was really amazing to see all of your donations packed up and ready to go. I mean we got over 400 pounds of supplies...not too shabby! Anyway, we just arrived at the airport after hardly sleeping and last minute packing. We are all kind of shy when it comes to being filmed, but we will do our best over the next week to keep in touch. So excited!
-Meghan, Sara, Christina and Joe

Packing for Kenya!

Vermont Reggae Festival Coming up

While packing my suitcases and getting ready to head over to Kenya I have also been working on preparing for the Fountain of Stars Reggae Festival on August 17th and 18th. I will be in Kenya however representatives, Dana, Nicolette, and Michaela will be manning the booth on both days selling t-shirts and bracelets and enjoying the atmosphere. The real challenge has been figuring out how to get a giant box of t-shirts, supplies, gift basket, and beads to New Hampshire  without spending a small fortune! Luckily I have enlisted the help of a good family friend who is going to drive my supplies to NYC where Dana will pick them up. I am SO lucky to have such nice people who are willing to help me. I can't thank them enough and can only tell you that I would not be able to accomplish all of this without them. Anyway, keep an eye out for more information about the festival. It is our first music festival and I'm really excited to see what happens!

CEO's don't take vacations...

...They just temporarily get much better offices!

Attending a phone seminar entitled "Library Development and Book Distribution in West Africa"

One Bead at the Beach! I'm in the pink with 2 of my sisters, Margot and Paige pictured to my right

This past week I went on vacation with my family to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. Aside from eating some delicious seafood and enjoying the beach, I attended two phone seminars sponsored by CGIU. 
A few days before vacation, my mom and I realized that we can't just "go on vacation" on our One Bead website. In other words, we needed to pack all of the supplies required to ship orders of beads from the beach. and it's a good thing we did. One Bead had over 10 orders of bracelets! So during our lunch and dinner breaks from the sand and sea we would take a peek at pay pal and if an order appeared started packing. The next challenges were my phone conferences. The sand ended up making a GREAT chalkboard. I had signed up for phone seminars a while back that were put on by CGIU, which I attended last spring in Washington, DC.  The first one was "Designing and Managing Socially and Economically Sustainable Projects" and the second was "Library Development and Book Distribution in West Africa". The second was particularly interesting to me as my next goal involves building some sort of library at the Oloosirkon Government Primary School. One thing that was emphasized multiple times in each session was the importance of including the community in the process of building. Sustainable projects only work if they are backed by the community in which they evolve. The members of the community surrounding the school can best assess what they need and don't need.
Overall it was a great trip. Now that it is over it's time to focus on the next big thing...Africa!

xxx

Sara

One Bead Karma Yoga Class

Group picture before the class

 This was SO much fun! At 7:15 p.m. I packed up my car and went with my mom the Yoga Lounge in Hudson, OH (www.yogaloungehudson.com). When we arrived people were already showing up! The class was donation based, so instead of paying the regular fee for a class people could donate any amount to One Bead. Donations above $12 received a One Bead bracelet and donations above $20 could choose between a bracelet and T-shirt. What was amazing to me is that everyone who participated was so interested in learning about the cause. They were excited and wanted to be there! You could actually feel the energy in the studio of people dedicating 90 minutes of their day to others. It was very inspiring. We raised over $300! But more importantly we got a lot of people excited about what One Bead is doing. Kevin O'Brien did an amazing job leading the class and giving us a balance of laughter with focus and dedicated poses. I must admit I am a bit sore today!

The summer is coming to an end and I have learned so much from the different One Bead events that have taken place. It is important to have realistic expectations about what kinds of things you hope to achieve in any event. For me, I go into everything hoping to just get people excited and inspired to share my dream with others. If I can get even one person excited to the point where I am confident they are going to go home and tell someone else...then for me this is a win. The donations are a wonderful add-on!

Anyway, thank you as always for reading! Below is a playlist that Kevin shared with me for anyone interested in our Power Jam playlist Monday Night. It is a funny variety of songs :-) Thanks again to all those who showed up and practiced with us!

Namaste

Karma Class Playlist....you may have to zoom in to read!

Inspired by this movie musically, visually, and just about every other way possible!

http://www.beastsofthesouthernwild.com/

Musselman

The Musselman Triathlon was this weekend in Geneva, NY. First of all, I'd like to thank Jeff Henderson and his team for giving us the opportunity to be a part of such an incredible event! I'd also like to thank those who did come out and help us fill water bottles...one less person and this would not have been possible at ALL. We filled approx 2,000 water bottles over the weekend which were then handed out to finishers of the events. In exchange, One Bead was able to have a booth at the expo Friday night and Saturday. We raised a grand total of $232!!!  On Friday we filled water bottles from 3-5 and then I worked the expo from 5-7:30. Then, Saturday we worked the booth from 10-2 and then filled water bottles from 2-4...because there were only 2 of us, we weren't able to be present for the entire expo, but still managed to receive an enormous amount of feedback. It was so inspiring to meet so many impressive athletes. Anyone who can swim 1.2 miles, bike 56, and run 13.1 miles is a champion in my books!

Those bins full of water bottles were quite heavy!

Anna (pictured right on the far right) helped us fill water both days AND helped out with other components on the race. What a champ!

Book Recommendation

What's on my coffee table right now! My friend Chris let me borrow this book about the realities of starting a business and taking the risk of pursuing the "American Dream". It has some really useful information. What is most appealing to me is that there are insights from the author's own experience of ending one career and deciding to invest in his idea now known as the Painter's Pyramid. Check it out!

http://www.amazon.com/Start-Living-American-Dream-Entrepreneurs/dp/1439258643

One Bead for the Vegan!

Hemp, Hemp and more Hemp! The other day my friend Sarah e-mailed to tell me she wanted to order some bracelets but was wondering if there was an option for those not wanting to wear leather. So this is what we came up with! Enjoy x

Running a Duathlon on July 8th...like my shirt?

ONEBEAD.ORG !!!

It's here! I am sure many of you have already discovered this on your own. But I would like to take this time (post) to OFFICIALLY announce our new site:

www.onebead.org

I had a lot of trouble deciding when to do this. I have learned from my CTO, Mark Benya, that building a website is anything but easy. Although we finished the basic format weeks ago, I have spent the past few months nit-picking, changing, and adding all sorts of details. I'm learning that a good website never really is "completed". Additionally, I wanted to organize our new line of apparel before officially reveling onebead.org to the world.

So here it is!!! Please take some time to click the link above and admire the hard work of the following people:


Special Thanks (yes, you must read this section!)

Mark Benya- I don't think I could really ever fit in a single post how much he has done for this site. So Thank You Thank You Thank You!!!

Charlotte Lysohir- For being the first to tell me a couple of months ago that we had a lot of work to do before we showed this site to anyone! (still have work to do) But it has definitely paid off!

Matthew Mead- For taking charge of the whole production and design of our t-shirts this summer. You know you have found the best of the best when your graphic designer is calling you from a different country to make sure all of the apparel came in and everything is running smoothly.

Salli Swindell- For the lovely font and inspiration as always x

-----
Couldn't be more thrilled!! More pictures of shirts and beads to be posted soon....


xxx


Sara

Coming Soon to a mailbox near you...

One Bead was in need of some stationary....so this is what I came up with!

Sailing Conductors

Captain and Crew

Meet the Sailing Conductors!

As you already know, One Bead has long term goals to implement the arts, music, and athletics into primary schools worldwide.  We believe that these elements play an essential role in motivating and inspiring students to learn and grow. So, how will we achieve this you might ask?

This is our first project:

Meet Ben Bart and Hannes Hafenklang.  As you are reading this they are sailing from Sydney to Berlin, stopping many times along the way, and recording as much music as possible.

Taken from their website:

Their beads made it safe and sound all the way to India!

"During our 2-year journey from Australia to Germany, we will record musicians from approximately 40 different countries and on all 5 continents. Over the course of time we will be able to put together a number of songs played by artists that never physically played together – since the recordings are temporally and spatially separated."

So how did One Bead get involved??
In 2010, my cousin Max spent a year in Australia where he met the Sailing Conductors. Max came home and told us all about their mission and our whole family was hooked! As I started working on One Bead I kept thinking about how cool it would be to somehow involve these guys and their amazing project. On a whim I decided to e-mail Benni about One Bead and see if there was anything we could do. His response was as follows: "... From there the plan is to sail to Madagascar and then further south to Cape Town. But this doesn't mean we couldn't catch a bus, buy a motorcycle or hitchhike to come to Kenya. That's a place I've wanted to see my whole life. So, yeah! We'll be there!" I got that e-mail in March and ever since the excitement has been building as we develop plans for the Sailing Conductors to visit Kenya. If everything goes according to plan, they will arrive sometime in November and spend a few days rehearsing at the Oloosirkon school with any students and members of the community that play an instrument. They will then have a concert featuring everything that has been rehearsed.

This will be an amazing opportunity for the students and an equally entertaining experience for everyone to watch via the video. It is crazy to think about all of the connections occurring WORLDWIDE that are going to make this possible. From Australia to the US to Germany and then Nairobi....it's a small world.

So a special thank you to Benni and Hannes for being a part of our first of many projects involving the arts. Without them this would not at all be possible!

Bon Voyage

-Sara

I am sure you are anxiously wondering where you can find more information on the Sailing Conductors and the answer is right here! :

http://www.sailingconductors.com/
http://www.facebook.com/SailingConductors

South Africa

Can't help but post this Beauty! Taken by one of my best friends, Whitney Frary, while abroad in South Africa. Can't get much cooler...