Our journey

Well ladies (Joce, Amanda, Mel & Linds, I'm addressing this directly to you), we've come a long way from cooking and jacuzzi-ing in the mountains of West Virginia (Black Bear retreat I & II). During our first two get togethers we ate & laughed alot. We had that one brain flurry of "what can we all do together?" which led us to where we are now. This year in San Francisco we decided to start Spotlight. I've been putting a couple bucks a day in the bread box in my kitchen... Mostly money saved from no longer drinking any coffee priced over a dollar. I made my quota for April ($50) and am well on my way to making it for May (although I did have to "borrow" for laundry once while waiting for my paycheck). I'm thinking that this will be easier (financially) when I am no longer a starving grad student. I've been having a lot of fun so far thinking about who I will give the "pot" to when it's "my turn." I've already got a few organizations in mind that I think will be able to "parlay" a spotlight grant into something....(else - not sure what). In the running are a couple of organizations I will call "meta-NGOs" - in other words, NGOs that help other NGOs. I guess I've got a few more months to think about this... (What do you guys think about posting our "giving calendar"?)

Beginnings

Spotlight (the organization and the blog) are works in progress. We know we want to work together to build something great. And we know there's lots of messed up stuff in the world that we can try to do something about. So, we've come together and are putting some money into a fund and investing our resources in small, innovative organizations to whom a small amount of money could make a large difference.

We'll post our thoughts, commentary, and rantings about books, articles, theories, stories, travels, and anything else that seems appropriate. And, we'll profile people who are doing cool things.