La Iguana Chocolate About 90 minutes up the rocky mountain road, the dense rainforest air takes on a tantalizing scent. Aromatic, rich, fresh, and enticing. It’s the smell of freshly produced, locally grown, organic chocolate. Bouncing along in our 4×4’s, our small group winds up through the scenic mountain range to a family-owned organic chocolate…
Helping Others Helps You How’s your life going? Need to shake it up? Need to find more meaning and feel more connected and purposeful? Volunteering is the cure for what ails you. Helping others is one of the best things you can do for yourself and your mental well-being. Yes, the point of volunteering is…
To Live is to Learn “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein was brilliant at one-liners. If ever there was a quote to illustrate the importance of learning, this is a good one. Pedal forward, don’t stop moving, changing or growing, keep learning to get…
This week’s story was written from a night-time plane somewhere over the Caribbean. An evening flight out of Atlanta put me right back into the Nicaragua I left in a sudden, last minute urgent trip home. International flights are where I can do my best, uninterrupted thinking, and as I flew back to the country…
The goal was to build a crèche (or a kindergarten) for the local village kids using bricks made out of mud. Wellington, a local farmer, had recently expressed a need to add a classroom to the small village school on his land, just outside Chintsa in South Africa. Our group had been assigned this project…
This week we bring you the entrepreneurial story behind Venture Within. In an interview hosted by Chapin Kreuter, I get a little personal and tell the story of how I came to be the founder of Venture Within. It might inspire you. It could entertain you. It will definitely inform you. 🙂 Have a listen…
We had already begun to sweat profusely under the morning sun as my group and I stood in the dried up school yard, staring upwards at a tall heap of old truck tires piled against a crumbly brick wall. Just behind us, Nicaraguan school kids in their crisp, white button-up school shirts tucked into navy…
