Gift 8 ~ The Clothes off My Back / Employment Networking

With eight days of giving complete, one of the things I'm realizing is that it is easy for me to give because it is something I have already been doing (and, there are some gifts that aren't even making this blog). Many of the things Cami talks about in the chapter along these lines resonates. Most certainly, I would say that taking on the 29-gift challenge -- and keeping an online journal of it! -- has brought a heightened sense of awareness and focus on giving and in accepting gifts in my life. As Cami says, doing this "reminds you that you're part of something bigger and that you have gifts to offer the world."

For gift 8 (March 26), Cami's gift is the clothes off her back. First, Cami gets a call from her friend Jeff who agrees to join her on her project idea. This leads her to set up a website (http://www.29gifts.org/) and sends a nice note to invite 29 friends to join her on the site and take the challenge. Later that day, her friend Eve calls and signs on to the challenge and they end up exchanging gifts (or favors) leveraging each other's talents. Cami tells Eve of a serendipitous reunion she had a while ago with Mbali, her friend who prescribed the 29-gift challenge and who Cami got to visit with her friend Angel for a Cowrie Shell Divination. Cami set up her own divination, but her appointment turned out different than Angel's, since Mbali felt she needed to perform a sweep instead to clear energy and promote healing. Cami followed all the instructions from the sweep and the prescribed ritual to be performed within the next week which included, among many things, to give away all the clothing she is wearing. As it turned out, Cami gave away some of the clothing but not all of it. Her conversation with Eve made her realize that in not getting rid of everything, that she is still resisting change and after their phone call ends, she goes directly to her dresser to get rid of the clothes she had previously kept. Now she is finally ready to let go.

As a job contact, my gift this Sunday is to reach out to job seekers in the Employment Network at Saint Ambrose (ENSA). I start by finding the list of 17 seekers found on the ENSA Yahoo! Group site and begin making calls. Of the 10 job seekers I spoke with this evening, only two had found a full-time job but neither was optimal (one was an hour drive with a poor cultural fit, and the other was located in Atlanta which involves a move from Ohio). Many have been out of work for several months, and one for as long as a year. All were in need of something, whether it be a networking connection (LinkedIn was the most popular); an updated job contact listing; a practice interview; or just someone to talk to about their situation including one dealing with depression given the one-year anniversary of the loss of a loved one. One gentleman also had a son recently laid off, and he sent me his resume within minutes so I could pass it along to two companies with a connection.  In all, this is much more of a gift than I had imagined, with four hours of time given so far, seven more seekers to talk to, and at least two individual follow up meetings.