Watch below:

Everyday, Third Culture Kids are doing their part in globalizing compassion. Recently, we worked together to raise $1,285 for relief efforts in Haiti.

Doing our part doesn’t stop there. We can continue to do more to help others.

As part of our partnership with TED.com’s Charter for Compassion, we put together a video of fellow TCKids talking about compassion in different languages.

What about you? Can you talk about compassion in your own words?

Our goal is to talk about compassion in 100 languages and share our message to as many people as possible. With the help of our diverse TCKid community, we can surely reach our goal and get closer to globalizing compassion.

Do you have your own way of saying “Compassion”? Leave us a comment below.

You can learn about the origin of “Third Culture Kids” from the sociologist who coined the term, Dr. Ruth Hill Useem:
http://www.tckworld.com/useem/home.html (Credit: Ann Baker Cottrell)

“The Useems returned to India a second time in 1958, …. to study overseas Americans in India; they took their boys with them to live abroad on both visits. It was these experiences which led to John and Ruth Useem’s coining of the term “Third Culture” and, by extrapolation, “Third Culture Kids.” Dr. Ruth Hill Useem began publishing on Third Culture Kids in the 1960s. She is widely regarded as the founder of TCK research.”

It’s hard to believe it has been 40 years. It has been estimated that there are 4 million TCKs worldwide (1998, Eakin) but that number will continue to increase as the world becomes more globalized. Today, we have over 23,000 third culture kids and cross cultural people online with over 50 local groups worldwide.

It has been a great privilege to serve this community and to be part of it.

Happy anniversary to you!

Joyeux anniversaire,
Brice Royer

P.S: Would you like to celebrate the anniversary? Please repost this link on your Facebook or blog.

I would like to give a special thanks to Dave Pollock, Ruth Van Reken, Norma McCaig, Josh Sandoz, Margie Ulsh, Robin Pascoe, Donna Musil, Ann Baker Cottrell, Rebecca Anderson Powell, FIGT & Interaction International and everyone for their service to this community. Thank you!

Would you like to thank someone not on the list? Please leave a comment!

(Trailer from Charter of Compassion. Share your ideas and win prizes! (Competition is over.) Winners of the best idea has been announced! Scroll below to see the finalists.)

What does it mean for you and Third Culture Kids?

• Unique opportunity to have your creative ideas featured and reach massive media coverage.
• Making a difference by showing stories of compassion and forgiveness from around the globe.
• Prize: Ruth Van Reken will offer 3 autographed copies of the Third Culture Kid book to the winner(s) and finalists!

Compassion doesn’t mean feeling sorry for people. It doesn’t mean pity. It means putting yourself in the position of the other, learning about the other. Learning what’s motivating the other, learning about their grievances. – Karen Armstrong.

What to do next?

• VOTE FOR THESE SUGGESTIONS: (Share your ideas).

Thank you,

Judging Committee:

Dr. Paulette Bethel, Ruth Van Reken, Kimberly Van Cleave Michaels of FIGT and Erin Sinogba.

WINNERS ANNOUNCED!

Dear Contestants – thank you for participating, for sharing your ideas with the community.

We are happy to announce to you that we have the 3 winners of the books donated by Ruth E. Van Reken’s, NEW REVISED EDITION: Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds, Revised Edition by David C. Pollack and Ruth E. Van Reken.

The judging committee has been busy the past month reading and selecting finalists, from among 84 excellent ideas we had to choose from to select the 4 books winners. Their submissions will be become part of the finalists ideas that were originally provided and voted upon.

THE WINNERS OF THE BOOKS AND FINALISTS ENTRIES OF THE TCKID CHARTER OF COMPASSION COMPETITION 2009 ARE:

1. Compassion in 100 Languages. A Video presentation of Global Nomads speak the Golden Rule: “Do to others what you would have them do to you.”

Winner: Takako

2. A Day in Your Shoes: Ask someone in your life, or a stranger if appropriate (or go to an agency or organization or nursing home or somewhere) if you can spend some time with them as they live with something difficult.

Winner: Kathryn Cole

3. A “Day of Awesomeness”. We spend most of our time looking at other people’s faults, criticizing them either because we disagree with them or because it helps them improve themselves or what they do, and that can be painful. Take a day to look at everyone you know and strangers you encounter, think about what makes them awesome and affirm them.

Winner: John Chuidian

4. “Idea of the day for Globalizing Compassion”. Select from all the contributions you get for this initiative the 365/366 most creative and diverse ideas, prepare with those a daily “E-idea of the day for Globalizing Compassion”

Winner: joining hands

We will release the overall competition winning idea in the very near future. Again, thank you everyone for your energy, creativity and sharing of ideas with the TCKID community and the TCKID Charter of Compassion Competition!

Greetings to all,

Just to let you know that the Third Culture Kid book revision is now available. Please note a tiny title change too, just so you can make sure to find it. It used to be Third Culture Kids: The Experiences of Growing Up Among Worlds. Now it is simply “Third Culture Kids: Growing UP Among Worlds, revised edition.” (no “the experience of”..)

You can order the book here on Amazon.

So what’s the same? What is different or new in the new edition?

What’s the same is the original book is still there…the explanatory chapters at the beginning, the TCK Profile, the “how to help” chapters at the end. Hopefully they are only better and strengthened with lessons learned in the last ten years.

What’s new? Besides updating various facts and figures, acknowledging the arrival of Facebook, Skype, and other changes in our world since the first edition, we have added a chapter on Cross-cultural kids–a larger overarching category to which we belong with others who also grow up cross-culturally. Hopefully this enlargement will give us new ways to look at how lessons learned in our experience also relate to many others…and also to acknowledge the growing complexity of many TCKs stories… We feature Brice’s story as one of our examples!

Each chapter after the first 3 ends with “Lessons from the TCK Petri Dish”…the place where we examine new ways to use and apply our story to other CCKs in today’s world.

And then, the last appendix, Appendix B, is an article by Momo Kano Podolsky, writing about her research into the Japanese experience of TCKs. I hope this will begin to bring to light a huge amount of research most of us don’t know about because most is written in Japanese. But it’s great to begin seeing work done in many lands and places begin to come together.

So just want you know the revision is out and what the updates are, even without messing up the parts that I hope had helped at least some of you find language for your own story.

May you find new joy in your journey each day…

Ruth E. Van Reken
http://crossculturalkid.org

Questions? Comments? Please leave a comment below this blog.

UPDATE: October 16thThank you ALL for your responses..I’m trying to write each of you back but never sure how all of this works (Brice knows I’m internet challenged!) But what gratifies me most is how quickly you are enthusiastic for the expanding ways to see and use our many facteted stories in the larger context of how the world is becoming..and I do want to say one word to Michael. One great hope I have in doing this update is to honor the vision my co-author, Dave Pollock, already had for other types of CCKs in the first edition..we just didn’t have the language yet…but as you more than well know since you have known him longer than any of us…his work with refugees and non-Western TCKs for many years before his death as well as traditional TCKs was the seed bed for so many ideas here. My last letter to him was saying it was time to update the book as we had talked about before, but I never received a reply before his untimely death. I want to publicly honor your father here as the one who gave me my “Aha” moment more than twenty five years ago and has led the way for so many of us personally and with what is on this website now. He was a great, great man and it will always have been my honor to know him and work with him on the original TCK project and hopefully carry his vision on a bit more in this edition.

October 12th Update: Pledge success! A couple of weeks ago, we challenged you to identify supporters to save your TCKID community. The goal of the Organizing Pledge isn’t just to save TCKID which has recently been attacked by hackers, but it was an effort to identify and mobilize advocates for your Third Culture Kid community.

Over 300 have signed the pledge. You can read their comments and find out what’s next here.

How will it affect your community? Why is it urgent?

The webmaster said it was very complicated to fix it and the backups have been lost. The attack that was made on Wordpress and it has affected some large websites. Wordpress is being used by governments, nonprofits and corporations. Read the News of this attack on The Guardian.

How long will it take to bring it back? It may not be brought back exactly the same it used to be. Assuming that we can do it, it would more than a week. We are organizing a pledge to identify supporters by September 25th before moving forward so you can decide what to do.

The cost of inaction and band-aid solutions is great. Every day, hundreds of people depend on the TCK community for emotional support, outreach, research and much more.

“Hi there, It upsets me so much to learn that TCKid’s currently under attack. TCKid has truly been one of my biggest emotional supports. And I can only be too grateful to every single individual in the community. – Amanda”

But we’ll need resources to make your ideas become real – to pay for part-time webmaster, keep training volunteers, organize online TCK chats and more local event, and the best technology available to empower volunteers and make sure your voices are heard.

Now it’s up to YOU to decide how the community should move forward.

What to do next?

Can you chip in $1 or more to save TCKID to beat this attack?

DEADLINE TO VOTE: SEPTEMBER 25TH MIDNIGHT PST

Enter your email below to become a donor and get a FREE gift

After entering your email, you will be sent to a 100% secure Paypal form that accepts credit cards.

TCKID has been attacked, but we don’t want to leave you without support! Donate now and get a free chat event with our members.

We will organize a chat event so you can get support. Even though the site is down we still want to help, because we don’t want to leave you alone. So you can join the chat and still get support from members.

Why support the TCK community? Who is part of this community?

“I just wanted you to know that I am so happy that TCKid sponsored these chats in January. I have met a lot of wonderful people, and learned from them. I am really grateful to be a part of this community.” – Annette

When I lived in Texas, I struggled to fit in, no matter how hard I tried… then I actually met a TCK here in the TCKID chatroom. We exchanged emails, and eventually got on Skype … and now we’re best friends. This community really changed my life, this is why I got involved to help. – Scott”

I see this attack as a wake up call, to get more involved and to start a new way, shaping the community the way we like it to be. – Yu Yu Din

From Daniela Tudor, Brice Royer, Paul, Michelle Kim, Yu Yu Din & members of the TCK community.

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Voting and showing your support is just the first step. It’s up to you to build and organize support for the TCK community.

Invite your friends, family, and neighbors to vote and get involved.

Email friends and family

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Hello, Colorado TCKs! For all of you who have attended a TCK meetup so far, would you take a moment to share your thoughts? I’ll start:

I thoroughly enjoyed both meetups so far! It’s great to feel “normal” once in awhile and just chat about things that most of the world doesn’t get. Despite our diverse childhoods, ranging from Europe to Africa to Asia to Mexico, we all seemed to have similar stories (someone’s story of drinking ketchup out of a cup with a straw reminded me of my own strange habit of drinking the little cups of half-and-half at restaurants!).

Lots of laughs and fun…I am really looking forward to the next one, and hoping for a great big turnout!!!

By Angela

Last Saturday, I went to the first meetup from the Taiwan TCK group not really knowing what to expect. We ended up talking for four hours, laughing so hard the management had to tell us to tone it down and hugging everyone goodbye at the MRT station.

Judy, Angelica, Chi and Zoe

Afterwards, we all decided that we benefitted from the group and the meetings would go on monthly in the future. We wanted to reach out to more people who find themselves between cultures to join our group, whether or not they are the typical TCK like Zoe or an someone who found herself drifting away from her home culture later in life, like Chi.

I’ve started this blog as a way of continuing the conversation online. It’s also a way for us to keep in touch between meetings and perhaps arrange additional meetups for fun times like movies or going to the beach B-)

Read more about our first meeting…

The more the four of us talked, the more experiences and attitudes we seem to have in common. And I know on some level that is an illusion because we are all quite different people, I’m sure, and don’t really know each other very well (although Judy and Chi are friends from before). Still, it is nice to air viewpoints and feelings that would not be understood or affirmed by most of our friends not because they don’t love us enough or care enough, but because, perhaps, there is a part of us that is not <i>accessible</i> to them.

Without being too dramatic about it, I think belonging to two (or more!) cultures is a gift, but it is a gift that extracts a penaulty. The penaulty is a nagging sense of never fitting in completely in your environment. You can’t go home if home is not a singular entity. For most of us, most of the time, this loneliness is a managable background presence, easily lost in the noise of the other annoyances of everyday life. But for some of us, sometimes, it balloons, perhaps under a stressful situation or depression into a sense of alienation that is all too clear and painful to ignore.

I hope that forming friendships and sharing experiences with other TCKs, we can laugh and commiserate about the negative aspects of being a TCK and celebrate the positive aspects too.

Ever wondered what TCK community leaders are up to? You’re in the right place. TCKID News is published by our team of community leaders in over 50 locations worldwide from Taiwan to New York City. You’ll find the latest meetup reviews, pictures, and important announcements.

Why this blog and not use TCKID forum?
TCKID forum is an open space for any members to post, but our team of community leaders had no platform to share news and connect with other leaders. TCKID News our attempt to give them a connection and open platform to share their news & discussions.

How does it work?

Are you a TCKID community leader?

Submit your pictures to TCKID using Flickr. Search for the TCKID group and upload your pictures in the group.
Submit your news. Register on this blog and start posting! You can submit news, requests, pictures & reviews.

Who on the Team can publish on this blog?
Teresa Aradhana Hinds – (New York City)
Lily Friend-Grover (Colorado Springs, CO)
Narges Bayat (Sweden)
….
Full List of our Team.

Questions? Email daniela@tckid.com or leave us a comment below!