About Epic Thanks

“But listen to me. For one moment quit being sad. Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you.”

-Rumi

So often, we focus on all that’s wrong in our world, all we want, and all we lack.  What if, instead, for one week, we shifted global attention - and intention - to the many things that are so very right?  What if the simple act of gratitude could change everything? 

Epic Thanks is a global celebration that aims to change the world through the power of gratitude.  Scheduled for November 21-25, 2011, this year we aim to build a blog filled with grateful images from across the globe and to build a school out of gifts given in honor of all we have to be thankful for.

Originally founded with the name TweetsGiving in 2008, in its first year, the event built a classroom out of gratitude in Arusha, Tanzania, and became the #1 trending topic on Twitter as grateful tweets from across the globe filled the stream.  Over the past three years, from the gratitude of thousands, Epic Thanks has invested in changemakers from Tanzania, Nepal and the US, building classrooms, a library, a temporary home for disabled veterans and more.

But it all began to honor Mama Lucy Kamptoni, a woman in Tanzania who used to sell chickens and saved her shillings as the seed money to build a school in her village.  When Epic Thanks founder Stacey Monk met Mama Lucy, her life was changed forever.  Epic Thanks was created as a way to say “thank you” to Mama Lucy and to all the hopeful changemakers who pour their hearts into our world & teach us how to hold onto hope.

This year, Epic Thanks returns to its roots by once again focusing on Mama Lucy’s work in Arusha.  The students who went to fifth grade in the original classroom built from gratitude, since dubbed “the twitterkids of Tanzania,” have just graduated from the seventh grade, and are now ready for secondary school.  The classrooms at Mama Lucy’s primary school are now packed with over 500 younger children - so she needs to build a secondary school where her students can grow up and continue their educations in her loving care.  Our goal this year?  To build Mama Lucy’s secondary school out of pure gratitude.

As one of the first successful global efforts to harness to power of Twitter for good, TweetsGiving/Epic Thanks is often presented as a case study in the use of social media to create social change, and has appeared in/at  the Huffington Post, Forbes.com, TEDx, Mashable, Nonprofit 2.0 the Chronicle of Philanthropy and more.

Founder Stacey Monk has been named one of 10 Essential Entrepreneurs to Follow on Twitter by Mashable, and our most recent social good campaign, To Mama With Love, appeared at the top of Mashable’s lists of 9 Creative Social Good Campaigns Worth Recognizing” and 4 Innovative Social Good Campaigns for Education.

About Epic Change

Epic Thanks was created by Epic Change, a 501c3 US nonprofit that amplifies the voices and impact of grassroots changemakers by sharing their stories in ways that raise visibility and funds to support their extraordinary efforts to create hope in our world. More information is available www.EpicChange.org.

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