I’m a words person.

Cards are my favourite part of presents and I love receiving books with inscriptions on the front cover. On bad and good days, I go back to emails, posts or letters; and on really good or really bad days, phone calls are the way to go. Words are timeless and always soothing.

Three years ago, I was preparing for a short internship in Malawi. While friends were taking 3-month graduation trips backpacking across Europe or Asia, my dream trip was 3-months in the warm heart of Africa. The Sunday before I left for Malawi, my church gave me a large package bursting with letters – one for every day that I would be away. And surely, I made a point to read each letter that was written. The letters contained words of encouragement, recipes for Filipino food, photos and even a poem – which was probably the first and last time I would have a poem written for me. These letters kept me grounded and every night was a reminder that someone was rooting for me. Some letters made me laugh, others left me thinking, and all made my heart happy.

In the quest to be better, to grow and to find my heart work, change has always been necessary, with comfort largely thrown out the window. In the journey of moving from “I’ve always wanted to…” to “I am…”, decisions have to be made that will both warm and stop your heart.

My bold steps over the years has taken me to places close by such as Ottawa and Connecticut, and also to places far away such as Singapore and now, Tanzania. However, people and change are not the recipe for romantic success stories. Chasing dreams is never glamorous, but doing work that makes you feel alive is.

Change can be equally a primer for days that are so successful that you’ll be dancing to Carly Rae Jepson at your desk, and days so miserable that you’ll be lying on your bedroom floor questioning why you’re here in the first place. It’s in these times that words strung together to form a simple message will have effects greater than intended.

As June rolls around and turns the cool winds into warm summer breezes, many other transitions will also take place. High school students nervously off to university, university graduates confidently taking on full-time careers, and working professionals bravely tackling a new work environment.

We all know someone who has or will be making a physical and/or professional leap of faith. My challenge to you is to mail / email / text / call / skype one person and let them know that you think they’re awesome. Whether their journey started two years ago or will begin just as the season changes, a Sarah Peck or Amber Rae drawing, or even a simple “I was just thinking about you” scribbled on a postcard, is a guaranteed recipe for a smile (note: please feel free to copy those exact words, for multiple use).

I’m a words person.

I’ve received a handful of packages, letters and gifts while in Tanzania and the days when I received those packages became, if they already weren’t, dance-at-my-desk days. Therefore, for you and for the leaps of faith that you’ve taken, if you email me your mailing address, I’ll be more than happy to send a postcard over from Tanzania.

Tanzania is unique in that the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MoHSW) has appointed a dedicated National mHealth Coordinator who oversees mHealth initiatives rolled out throughout the country. Initiatives led and coordinated by the mHealth Coordinator include:

1. mHealth Community of Practice - regular gathering comprised of practitioners, researchers and partners who meet regularly to discuss projects and current topics in mHealth
2. mHealth Tanzania Partnership – connecting with mHealth developers to ensure alignment with the Ministry’s interoperability and scalability requirements for nation-wide use would be considered in the development. As mentioned in the latest Mobile Monday in Dar es Salaam, the Ministry “can finance the development and buy the applications that are developed together” and are “happy to meet with any developer even with just an idea to see if it could be implemented under the partnership.”

On a day where I felt the heavy pressure of the negative energy, I felt drained. Negative attitudes are draining. There is a big difference between being disagreeable and being unpleasant and I felt the attitudes around me were straddling the border of these two. At the same moment, the four of us were in discussion of running a half marathon together. It’s been a common and lingering item on all of our bucket lists for years but has remained just that – common and lingering.

Needing and thinking about all the positive energy and encouragement coming from our discussion, I registered for the Toronto Waterfron Half Marathon.

These three take me from “I’ve always wanted to…” to “I’m going to…”. They inspire me with their actions, encourage me when I’m stuck, push me to constantly be better and challenge me with honest opinions. We can celebrate each other’s accomplishments and criticize each other’s work within the same paragraph. They send me information that I should know and tell me when the work I do is not good enough. I am who I am and where I am because I’ve watched and learned from their ambitious pursuits.

To Ruby, Renjie and Nick – thank you. See you at the finish line.

Who are your go-to people?

Dear team,

While I’m used to crisp fall weather, pumpkin spice lattes and the transition to winter jackets at this time of the air, I’m experiencing quite the opposite this year as the hottest and most humid days are quickly dawning upon Dar es Salaam. I spent the past month becoming a SQL ninja in efforts to turn our project statistics into meaningful numbers, and likewise, turning those numbers into digestible reports. In summary, it was a great month as we hit our December target on November 24. This month was spent making necessary improvements to the eVoucher program, fighting many, many unforeseen fires and beginning to adjust our plans for 2012. Professionally, November was a great month.

Personally, I’ve been thinking about the difference between passion and purpose. We talk a lot about passion. About finding our passions, living life passionately and acting on our passions. We’ve also talked a lot about why being passionate in itself is not enough.

Passion is a creative engine that forumaltes reasonable ideas in your mind and much further than that, it’s the driver of these ideas. Passion is emotional. It keeps you awake at night, wakes you up in the morning and has the potential to provide but joy. Purpose, on the other hand, is practical. It’s built on the foundation of necessity.

Purpose is the milestones achieved as a result of passion. It goes beyond emotion (note: not meaning that purpose is not emtional) and works to fill economic or social voids.

This past month, I turned 25 (side note: for some unknown reason decided to Google ‘top 25 under 25‘ to benchmark myself) and this age bracket, I’ll be putting my efforts towards answering the question of purpose based on my knowledge of my passions. Doing what I love is still only about me. Doing what the community, city, country or world needs from me, that is truly self-less.

Peace & love / kris

You can decide where on the spectrum you stand, but results will sway you and people will sway you. Over the past week of the launch, both warnings of caution and encouragements of idealisms have been thrown my way. Over the past 2 months, I’ve been asked if I work for “another NGO” and judged based on the failings of the international development sector.

It’s tiring.

And while it’s easy to tune out the cynicism and scepticism, it’s not so hard to listen. I listen so don’t repeat mistakes that have been made already. I listen because the warnings made are valid. I listen because it’s easy to think that my project is going to be different, that my project will be the outlier, the success; but reality is, it might not be, so I’ll do what I can to prevent the failings.

I listen to the cynicism and scepticism, but don’t join in – I’ve decided to stay on the positive side of the spectrum.

In the spirit of transparency, see FailFaire for a collection of Failings in ICT4D and M4D.

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence.

Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.

Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.

Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.  The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

Easy to Implement
Involves ideas from the product team; considers the developers’ expertise and project budget first; and requires thorough training to ensure scale

At first glance, it seems like a fairly simple decision. However first glances aren’t enough to read the fine print that budget, time and functionalities are finite. With these limitations, a compromise has to be found: How do you build something user-friendly with the existing functionalities? How do you design something that’s easy to implement based on user requirements?

Oct17 is our set launch date, so I’ll see if the compromise tipped too far one way.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.