Six months ago, I started wearing a Hello Somebody watch. Why? 
Because someone gave it to me and I thought it looked cool. They come in a million colors and remind me of old school Swatches. But then people started asking me about it and I started to wonder “Who is Hello Somebody?”
Turns out they’re a mission organization out of Dallas. They were using the watches to provide a million free meals to people. They hit that goal. And then, because I was curious about what they’re were going to do next, we started to talk.
Manny, the co-founder of Hello Somebody came to the Quitter Conference and hung out with me. Then I hung out with him in Dallas and Atlanta. The more he shared his heart for what they were working on, the more I felt like we could have a lot of fun changing the world together.
Which brings us to today and Team Patrick.
Hello Somebody’s mission is to support causes that are already in motion with any and every resource they can muster. They recently partnered with Africa New Life, who has been in Rwanda for the last 10 years feeding and educating kids from the street. They’ve developed a special program where 100 young leaders in the community go through an intensive year long experience. The new program provides meals, spiritual training and after school tutoring five days each week in a first-class facility. Here’s what Charles Mugisha Buregeya, the Founder and President, of Africa New Life said about it:
“Africa New Life already had many children that we were sponsoring to go back to school, but these kids were different. I realized that if someone didn’t reach out to these kids soon, there was the potential that much of the progress we were making as a nation might be destroyed by these boys as they became men. Men who had learned, through no fault of their own, that no one loved them, no one cared for them and that the only way to survive was to become criminals.”
So here’s the really simple thing I think we can do today.
Meet Patrick Niyifasha. He’s 11 and his favorite food is potato chips. He wants to study English and eventually be a deputy in Parliament for Rwanda. 
I’d love to send Patrick through the year long program with Africa New Life. What will that take?
70 watches.
The watches, despite being ridiculously cool, cost only $25.
If there are 70 folks who will join “Team Patrick” with me and buy a watch, we can knock this out with a quickness.
I bought a watch today. A red one. It was fast and easy. I’m probably going to give it to a friend. All you have to do, is click on this link and buy the watch. Make sure you click on “note to seller” which is under the shipping info and write “Team Patrick” in the comments. That way we’ll know when we hit our goal. We’ve only got 70 spots and they’re probably going to go fast.
To up the ante a little, I saw my friend Carlos at Catalyst yesterday and he is going to do the same thing with one of the other 100 kids Hello Somebody has committed to help.
I want to beat Carlos today. Let’s get to 70 first.
If you get a watch, please write in the comments on this post, “I’m on Team Patrick. I chose yellow!” Unless you chose red or blue or, you get it. You could tweet “I’m on #teampatrick, you should be too! http://bit.ly/rpITH3 ”
If you can’t get a watch today, but still want to support the project, Tweet or Facebook, this, “Watch what @hellosomebody and Stuff Christians Like are doing in Rwanda! http://bit.ly/rpITH3 #teampatrick”
To recap:
1. 70 watches = Patrick going through the year long program.
2. The watches are cool and cost only $25 even though other sites sell them for $60. Buy one today.
3. You can give them to a friend for Christmas or to yourself for “Happy October 7th day.”
4. We need to beat Carlos and RagamuffinSoul.com because SCL is surprisingly competitive like that.
Thanks for going on adventures like this with me. I’ve got a big announcement next week about one SCL went on a few years ago and Matt Chambers of SafeWorldNexus is going to Uganda in November to continue distributing the mosquito nets we did last year. Folks have been receiving the GPS coordinates of where their nets went and that’s awesome.
Go Team Patrick!
Jon
