I don’t think I realized how small my world is until this week.

Unlike many of you, not much of my work world takes me outside of Canada. But this past week I had the business trip of a lifetime, when fulfilling an invitation to be a speaker at the 29th annual International Fundraising Congress in Holland.  An event that attracts nine hundred delegates from over seventy countries. Seventy! That alone is unbelievable.

I met people from Cameroon trying to raise money to fight AIDS, which is afflicting 30% of the population under thirty-five. I met people from Spain trying to educate the world on how to eradicate poverty. I met people from Germany building homes for teens that have been incarcerated. I met people from Brazil trying to fund heritage festivals in communities that can barely feed themselves.  I met people from France who protect patients who are abused or mistreated in hospitals or in home care.

Given the opportunity to talk one on one with a wide cross section of delegates, a new breed of individual was presented to me. They are the serial humanitarians. I don’t mean that in any way negative. These people travel the globe. Continent to continent. Country to country. Challenge to challenge. They work for organizations you know such as UNICEF, and for bodies you may never have heard of such as Rote Nasen Clowndoctors  (Red Nose Clown Doctors). These people have seen things I will never see.

They have built houses in India.
They have held dying hands in Burma.
They have rescued flood victims in Sri Lanka.

They protect animals in Denmark.
They stop hunger in Germany.
The help farmers in Italy.

My role for three days was to conduct a six-hour Masterclass on writing cause marketing proposals and two workshops on corporate sponsorship.  At least that’s what it said on paper, and is what I set out to do.

Over the course of my sessions, my role underwent a metamorphosis. I became a coach, a cheerleader, and advocate. Many of these people really didn’t understand how valuable their organizations could truly be to a corporate sponsor. They were brave enough to face adversity in the jungles, slums, and ghettos of countries I have never heard of. Yet an MBA toting marketer, backed by a big corporate logo, made them wilt.

But once we talked about the equity that lay within their organizations, the stories that they could help sponsors tell, the manners in which they could engage their followers in a movement, the information they could access which proves their impact, and the ability they all possessed to build the careers of their individual champions at their corporate partners… you could see the light go on.

Together we brainstormed ways to price a global cause marketing relationship; identified data that could uncover the issues most important to consumers in their home country; and schemed opportunities to generate substantive media coverage.

Magically, it became a brainstorming attended by people from dozens of countries, with incredibly different backgrounds, religions, ideals, and beliefs.

I fly home with a business card stack of new contacts. Many of who have asked for me to send them templates. They think that I have something to teach them. But they taught me. They have opened my eyes to the power that exists within these organizations. The drive. The determination. The commitment.

They taught me there is a big, wide world out there.  I’m embarrassed by how little I really knew.

It won’t take long for me to expose some of my clients to these opportunities. I humbly feel enriched by the opportunity to get out of my tiny, and chilly, Canadian sandbox.