A Holiday Wish from the TCKid Team
No matter where you are in the world and what traditions you and your loved ones hold dear, we wish you HAPPY HOLIDAYS and BEST WISHES FOR THE NEW YEAR!
As we wrap up another awesome year, we hope that TCKid was there for you, as a resource or as a community. Â We are thankful that we could play a part in your journey by providing opportunities to share stories, meet new friends, and learn more about our identities.
We want to make your experience with TCKid even better! Â But, we cannot do it without your help. Â Without your active participation, there is no TCKid. Â We hope you continue to walk with us and add your voice to the community.
Currently, the TCKid team is made up of hard-working volunteers, who are dedicated to helping TCKs and CCKs, but otherwise are unable to financially support our operations, including our web presence. Â If you believe in our TCKid community or if you or someone you know has benefited from the community and resources we have cultivated for over 4 years, we would like to ask for your help in fulfilling our one holiday wish: to sustain this community and make it even better for you and other TCKs and CCKs in the future.
If you are willing and able, please click on the Donate button below and help us to continue making TCKid an awesome community for TCKs and CCKs everywhere. Â Thank you for your contributions to our community!
TCKid Broadcasts Live Panel Discussion of First TCK Film Screenings
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: June 29, 2011
Contact: Myra Dumapias, Executive Director, TCKid at Manager@tckid.com, ExecDirector@tckid.com,
or Erin Sinogba, Executive Assistant, TCKid at Erinsinogba@tckid.com
TCKid Broadcasts Live Panel Discussion of First TCK Film Screenings
(International) – TCKid, a non-profit organization that serves as an active global community of third culture kid (TCK) adults and youth across geographical boundaries, will broadcast live on its community forum website the panel discussions for the First TCK Film Screenings. Coordinated by Alaine Handa’s Dance Company, the First TCK Film Screenings and Panel Discussion will be held at No One Writes to the Colonel, 460 College Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Saturday, July 9, 2011 4:00-7:00pm Eastern Time. TCKid welcomes those who are not able to attend to view selected film segments of the three TCK films that will be shown as well as view and participate in the panel discussion with each film maker following each segment.
There are several TCK films that have been created in the last decade. The film screenings will share three films, including:
Alaine Handa’s “I am a TCK”, 30 min.
Rahul Gandotra’s “The Road Home”, 21 min.
Aga Magdolen’s “Les Passagers”, 8 min. trailer
TCKid invites its members to participate in the event and discussions by logging onto the http://my.tckid.com community forum website on Saturday July 9, 4:00pm Eastern Time. The live broadcast can also be accessed by clicking: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tckid
Non-members are encouraged to register to become a TCKid member for free at http://my.tckid.com to participate in discussions about the films after the July 9th panel discussion and continue to interact with other TCK’s in various forum groups. The panel discussion after each segment will accept comments and questions from the live broadcast audience through a chat feature that will coincide the live broadcast.
Following the film screenings and panel discussion, TCKid welcomes continued dialogue about the films and topics covered during the panel discussion at its community forum on http://my.tckid.com, as well its facebook group, “TCKid: Third Culture Kidsâ€
A.H. Dance Company is a multicultural modern dance company based in New York City and performs work that reflects the diversity of the cast and various collaborators. Founded in December 2007, A.H. Dance Company has performed in various theaters, studios, community centers, conferences, and festivals in the United States. A.H. Dance Company’s mission is to present and support independent contemporary artists and companies in New York and worldwide. Through collaborations with local dancers and artists of other mediums, A.H. Dance Company strives to share modern dance with communities that lack exposure to it. Through the work of Ms. Handa and the company members, A.H. Dance Company aims to present work that is engaging to a vast range of audiences. For more information visit www.ahdancecompany.com
TCKid’s mission is to increase and support the individual and general awareness of the TCK experience and unique gifts by facilitating connection and community engagement. In existence now for over four years, TCKid has grown to include local chapters around the world in addition to its central virtual community. We have been featured on the BBC, ABC News, The Telegraph, the U.S Department of Defense and Education Week.
TCKid encompasses its home page at http://tckid.com, its community forum http://my.tckid.com (for members registered on the home page), TCKid Counseling referral database, followers on Twitter (@tckid), and over 50 local chapters around the world. TCKid also has a joint venture with http://TCKAcademy.com to offer more resources that increase the understanding about the TCK experience. For more information, please contact Myra Dumapias at manager@tckid.com or see http://tckid.com.
(News) Statement by TCKid on the Earthquake in Japan (March 2011)
Statement by TCKid on the Earthquake in Japan (March 2011)
On behalf of TCKid, I would like to express our support to those who are affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan on March 11, 2011 and other repercussions that are still unfolding. As a global nomad community, this disaster in Japan hits home to many of us, whether Japan was at one point or currently is home to us or our loved ones. Any displacement of a community somewhere in the world is as an upheaval to members of our TCKid family.
TCKid urges all its members to help credible local and global organizations bring necessary assistance to those who have been directly impacted by the March 11 Japan earthquake. TCKid will, as much as its current capacities and resources allow, assist with humanitarian relief efforts for Japan in some way.
Loss and grief know no nationality, it is with this Third Culture understanding that TCKid extends its warmest hopes, wishes and prayers for recovery to people in Japan and those who consider it part of your global home, where ever you may be.
Myra Dumapias
Executive Director
TCKid
March 12, 2011
[More information will be posted later.]
(News) TCKid Founder Announces Departure, New Leadership And TCK Film
After 4 wonderful years of starting and heading up TCKid.com, Brice Royer turns it over to an advisory board to head up and introduces a new Executive Director for its future direction as a non-profit organization.
Click “Play” To Watch the video below to learn more.
Before leaving, here are the gifts Brice mentioned in the video:
We have exclusive news about an upcoming TCK Film for TV (yes, the rumors are true!), useful videos & resources from Ruth Van Reken, and other surprises to help you and your family.
Just click on the link below to get them:
Click Here to Get Your Free Gifts (And Exclusives News on the First TCK Film!)
P.S: Want to get in touch with Brice or the advisory board? Leave us a comment on the blog post below and we’ll respond to you. You can leave Brice your farewell comment below. Thanks!
Introducing Myra Dumapias
Myra Dumapias
Tckid Interim Executive Director
November 2010
Email: execdirector@tckid.com
Myra is a multi-talented manager, energetic teacher, creative guitarist, and the queen of “getting things done”. She understands what it means to live a full life. While working as a teacher and Executive Director in a non-profit organization, she still manages to find the time to raise her teenage son, listen compassionately to frustrated members with technical problems, and keeping staff morale high. Perhaps what is most extraordinary about Myra is her willingness to do ordinary things like pursuing her childhood dream: helping cross cultural people belong.
Myra is currently the manager and Interim Director of TCKid. She was a professor at San Antonio College and has several years of experience in the non-profit sector. She understands what it takes to keep the mission of an organization going, and has a knack for solving problems fast.
What People Say
“Myra is awesome!”
Myra is so easy to work with and talk to. Â She will always check up on you and make sure things are clearly understood. Â She does it in a way that’s easygoing and isn’t nagging at all. Â She also always makes it a point to talk to you on a personal level, so you feel like you’re talking to a friend. Â Myra is awesome!”
– Erin Sinogba
“She truly is a blessing in the TCKID community.”
“Myra has been very welcoming and understanding of her staff. For instance, she would ask how I am doing and offer emotional empathy and support to the challenges I was facing, having recently quit a job and in a difficult transition to the next step. Myra has also been very welcoming to the TCKID community, opening her arms to anyone who needs support. ”
-Michelle Kim
“Myra is the perfect person to be leading TCKID.”
“Myra and I spoke on the phone once and we hit it off right away.  What was supposed to be a 10 min conversation turned to an hour conversation.  Worldly, grounded, energetic, open to new ideas and extremely committed to leading the third culture kids community.  I could hear the enthusiasm in her voice when she talked about the big vision for the tckid: the outreach programs and fundraising ideas. She has proven to be extremely reliable well organized and very easy to get long with.”
– Aga Magdolen
“Myra is just like me, but better. She definitely spells better than me, I can’t even understand my own handwriting! She has a big heart for TCKID.. and after meeting her face to face with her teenage son, also a TCK, I feel confident she’s the right person to represent this community.”
– Brice Royer
(VIDEO) Can You Say "Compassion" In 100 Languages?
Can we say “Compassion” in 100 languages?
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.
(news) 40th Anniversary of the term 'Third Culture Kid"!
Happy anniversary! 2009 is the 40th anniversary of the term ‘Third Culture Kid”.
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!
(Winners announced!) Third Culture Kids Charter of Compassion
(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!
The issue is Compassion in all contexts: in schools, in our homes, family, political, ethical, religious and non-religious contexts.
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).
- VOTE FOR THESE SUGGESTIONS: (Share your ideas).
[poll id=”3″]
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!
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.
(Book revision) Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds.
by Ruth E. Van Reken
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.
(News) Third Culture Kids Organizing Pledge
On September 5th, 2009, TCKID has been under attack from hackers. We have temporarily shut down the community to protect members security. It may not be back up and there’s a possibility that the content may not be retrieved.
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?
[poll id=”2″]
DEADLINE TO VOTE: SEPTEMBER 25TH MIDNIGHT PST
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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. – Scottâ€
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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