The Global Mom Show: The Podcast for Moms with Global Worldviews

Today on the show, I talk with Christa Jimenez about the commitment she’s made to raise her children to be bilingual. She is living in the US, but she is doing a lot of things to keep her two girls connected with their heritage, since her husband is from Costa Rica. Christa is the founder of the blog Pura Vida Moms. She’s a former Spanish teacher, and she’s also the host of an online vlog called BilingualWe. She and I talk about some of the common methods of teaching children another language and how even learning a few phrases can transform a child’s brain.

Links mentioned on the show:

Spanglish Baby

Three methods of language learning:

1. Minority Language at Home
2. One-parent, One-language
3. Situational, contextual

Great quotes from the show:

“Mothering is its own language.”

“Bilingualism is a spectrum. It can look like different things.”

“As soon as kids start hearing a second language…their brain is re-wired in a different way.”

“As far as bilingualism…nothing is too little.”

I hope you gleaned some ideas from this that will inspire you to at least attempt to get some second language exposure in the life of your child. If you want to listen to another episode about language learning and raising bilingual kids, check out episode 26, Bringing Up a Bilingual Child with Rita Rosenback.

Find Christa:

Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter |BilingualWe

Find Mary Grace:

Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

We would love to hear from you, so please leave a comment below, or find us on social media.

FEATURED RESOURCE: This is for you moms who may be living away from your home country or who have lived overseas in the past and are seeking ways to build community and gain knowledge about some of the issues affecting families who are expats, missionaries, diplomats, service workers and so on. The resource is the Families in Global Transition Conference, which is happening this week in the Netherlands. You can go on the website and follow them on Twitter. Follow the hashtag #FIGT17NL to hear about everything that is going on at the conference this week. You can also look up all the presenters and speakers and get an idea of some of the issues they are talking about. The theme is Building on the Basics: Creating Your Tribe on the Move, and the keynote speaker is Naomi Hattaway, who runs the I am a Triangle platform, and she is going to be on the show in a couple of weeks.

SPONSOR: The Global Mom Show is supported by fans and listeners who want to keep the conversation going. If you would like to support the show, one of the easiest ways is by doing your regular shopping on Amazon using The Global Mom Show’s link. Just go to www.theglobalmom.com/amazon whenever you shop, and you won’t be charged anything extra, but the show will get a tiny commission for every purchase. If you want to find out more ways to support the show, go here and you’ll find a variety of simple ways you can support they show—without it costing you anything.

SPECIAL THIS WEEK: Have you seen Tea Collection’s cute, fun, well-made, globally-inspired clothes? We have a few of these items in my boys’ closet, and they always wear well and look great. They are offering a special sale from March 21-March 25th!  Use code KOALALOVE receive 15% off any 3 items, 20% off any 4 items, or 25% off any 5 or more items when purchased together. Offer available online only and valid through 3/26/17 at 11:59 PM PT.  Purchase here: Tea Collection

Fine print: Excludes all 3rd party (non-Tea Collection) items, Everyday Playsets, and Global Shop items. Cannot be combined with other promotions. No adjustments on previous purchases. Not redeemable for cash. Limited to stock on hand. Discount taken will be pre-tax and before shipping. Discount applied at time of purchase will be taken off each item returned. Cannot be used towards the purchase of gift cards.

Would you like to hear more from me in your inbox? If you sign up to get regular emails from me, I’ll send you my guide: 10 Ways To Make Your Home More Global–No Matter Where You Live.  Just text GLOBALMOM to 444999. Or sign up here. 

Thanks for listening today, Have a great week, and remember, you can live a global life wherever you are, and teach your kids to do the same.

The post The Many Ways to Be Bilingual, with Christa Jimenez (TGMS 32) appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

Several months ago, I came across an article by Sonia Smith-Kang on The Mash-Up Americans website titled: How to Talk to Your Mixed Race Kids About Race. Sonia’s steps were straightforward and accessible, and I knew I wanted to have her on the show to talk about her background and how she’s raising her own mixed-heritage children. Sonia is the creator of Mixed Up Clothing, a fantastic clothing line full of patterns and styles from all over the world. She is also a writer and blogger and a contributor for Babble, Huffington Post, and Mash Up Americans. Sonia and her designs have been showcased on NBC’s Today Show, The Real, Latina Magazine, Huff Post Live, CBS Los Angeles, popular magazines Celebrity Baby Scoop and Babykins Magazine, and at cultural events across Southern California. She is the co-founder of Mixed Heritage Day at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, and she is married, has four children, and lives in Los Angeles, California. Sonia herself comes from a mixed heritage, and she wants all mixed race children to know that they don’t have to explain themselves to anyone–they are whole, complete, 100% people who can identify with all of their heritage at once. Listen in as she shares her tips and conversation topics for talking about what can be a taboo subject.

Links from the show: 

Dr. Maria Root: Bill of Rights for Mixed Heritage

Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage

I HAVE THE RIGHT…

Not to justify my existence in this world.

Not to keep the races separate within me.

Not to justify my ethnic legitimacy.

Not to be responsible for people’s discomfort with my physical or ethnic ambiguity.

I HAVE THE RIGHT…

To identify myself differently than strangers expect me to identify.

To identify myself differently than how my parents identify me.

To identify myself differently than my brothers and sisters.

To identify myself differently in different situations.

I HAVE THE RIGHT…

To create a vocabulary to communicate about being multiracial or multiethnic.

To change my identity over my lifetime–and more than once.

To have loyalties and identification with more than one group of people.

To freely choose whom I befriend and love.

Quotes from the show: 

Each person of mixed heritage should be reading this and have it posted. It gives you the right to be who you are and not have to justify your existence.”

To say you are colorblind is not okay anymore. What folks want you to do, is they want you to see them…it’s what you do while you are seeing them that’s the issue.”

Find Sonia: 

Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Find Mary Grace:

Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

We would love to hear from you, so please leave a comment below, or find us on social media.

SPONSOR: The Global Mom Show is supported by fans and listeners who want to keep the conversation going. If you would like to support the show, one of the easiest ways is by doing your regular shopping on Amazon using The Global Mom Show’s link. Just go to www.theglobalmom.com/amazon whenever you shop, and you won’t be charged anything extra, but the show will get a tiny commission for every purchase. If you want to find out more ways to support the show, go here and you’ll find a variety of simple ways you can support they show—without it costing you anything.

GET MY FREE GUIDE: 10 Ways To Make Your Home More Global–No Matter Where You Live.

The post Talking to Your Mixed Race Kids About Race, with Sonia Smith-Kang (TGMS 31) appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

Anjelica Malone and I just kept talking, and we thought we would share the rest of our conversation with you. We touch on the refugee ban, books we want to read, how we’ve developed an understanding of our global identity, and things we are loving right now.

Here’s the show notes:

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Poke

Sorta Awesome- Refugee episode

Hidden Figures

Homegoing by Yaa Gayasi

Americanah

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria

Born a Crime

Fresh Air with Trevor Noah

Misunderstood: the impact of growing up overseas in the 21st century

The Screwtape Letters

Texture app

Dwell

Clean Eating

A Farm

Domino

Essence

National Geographic

Time

Chineasy

The post BONUS Episode: Mom Chat with Anjelica Malone appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

Have you ever met someone and immediately connected? That’s how it was with me and Anjelica Malone. She started listening to the podcast after the first couple of episodes last summer, and soon she was sending me voicemails (using the tool on the right side of this page) to tell me about what she liked about the show, what she learned, and who she was. We ended up communicating back and forth, and I came to learn that she has her own blog, website, shoppe, and global motherhood story. Since then, we’ve started chatting on Voxer and we’ve been tossing around ideas for ways to collaborate. In this episode, I got to ask Anjelica some questions about her background as a third culture kid, military kid, global nomad, and mom.

Anjelica currently lives on Guam, but is moving back to the US in a few weeks. She’s a mom of two little girls, and she and I talk a lot about developing our own version of motherhood, one that allows us to be ourselves and not get sucked in to the waves of culture all around us. Anjelica is also a lactation consultant with a new book coming out soon. (Read about it here.)

In this week’s episode we talk about Anjelica’s background, her philosophy on motherhood, how she met her husband, how materialism affects us, how we understand our place as third culture kids and adults, how she sources items for her shoppe, and so much more. We talked so much we had to continue the conversation in a couple of bonus episodes!

Here’s a picture of one of the tote bags that Anjelica designed and now has made in Guatemala.

Here’s where you can find Anjelica: Blog | Instagram |

Anjelica’s Instagram account is filled with beautiful photos of her island life, as well as inspiration about motherhood and life.

Find Mary Grace:

Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

We would love to hear from you, so please leave a comment below, or find us on social media.

FEATURED RESOURCE: My featured resource this week is for all you mamas planning adventures with your little ones. If you need trip planning ideas, packing tips, or any of the nitty gritty details about taking a long overseas trip with kids, Stephanie Langford is your girl. A homeschooling mom of five, a serial entrepreneur, blogger, and round-the-world traveler, Stephanie is an expert at how to get your family moving around the globe. Check out her website www.entrefamily.com or her Instagram account for lots of photos and tips!

SPONSOR:

This episode is sponsored by Around the World Stories.

The Global Mom Show is sponsored by Around the World Stories. These audio stories capture the adventures of kids from around the world and will introduce your kids to different countries and cultures, as they travel with the characters to new parts of the world. Each story is about 25-30 minutes long, and right now the authors are traveling around Europe with their children gathering information to write more stories. They take place in Denmark, Ireland, The Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain. You can get a story a week for $9.95 a month, or get a membership for a year’s worth of weekly stories for $99. Download the stories and take them in the car or play them at home or from your phone. This is a great and easy way to introduce your children to other cultures. Head to theglobalmom.com/stories to give them a try.

Would you like to hear more from me in your inbox? If you sign up to get regular emails from me, I’ll send you my guide: 10 Ways To Make Your Home More Global–No Matter Where You Live.  Just text GLOBALMOM to 444999. Or sign up here. 

Thanks for listening today, Have a great week, and remember, you can live a global life wherever you are, and teach your kids to do the same.

The post Living Your Own Version of Motherhood, with Anjelica Malone (TGMS30) appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

If you live in the United States, you know that this past year has brought to the surface lots of racial tensions. We’ve seen racism on the news and in our classrooms. And many of us have had to re-evaluate how we are thinking about and talking about race and discrimination. Now, if you don’t live in the US, you might be wondering why we are talking about race on The Global Mom Show. And that is because every country in the world has some sort of history with race—through slavery, colonialism, and now globalization, and immigration, all countries deal with racism or colorism in some way, so investigating it can help us better understand one another both in our own country and around the world. You’ve also asked for this discussion, so those are a few of the reasons that we are having it today.

Today, I’m talking with Lucretia Berry, co-creator (with her husband Nathan) of Brownicity.com, which provides resources and discussion opportunities for families wanting to learn more and talk naturally about race. Lucretia is a wife, a mom of three girls, a speaker and teacher, and she has a PHD in curriculum and instruction from Iowa State University. She is passionate about helping people overcome boundaries through spiritual and social consciousness. She is the author of  What Lies Between Us: Fostering First Steps Toward Racial Healing.  Brownicity promotes ONEness among people who have historically been divided by the lie, ideology, and legacy of race.

Lucretia and I talk about here story of understanding race, how she ended up marrying a white man when she never thought she would, and how she and her husband talk with their children about race and discrimination.

I really love Lucretia’s emphasis that we are all created in God’s image and that man created race. If man created race, then we can undo it. That gives me a lot of hope in the midst of some of the crises that are happening right now.

If you are interested in learning more about this topic, really delving into the vocabulary and some of the resources that can be helpful in talking about race with our children, I’d love to offer a workshop for you about this. We would have it online so anyone could attend, and it would be a great way to dive deeper and get some real instruction. One of the things we mentioned in our conversation is that people of color talk to their children a lot earlier about race and racism than white people do. I even said that sometimes ages 6 or 7 can feel too young to talk about some of the atrocities of slavery and injustice. But, especially if you are a white parent, and you have been taught the colorblind mentality, then maybe talking about race to your kids or even among your friends or relatives still feels like a taboo subject. But, it really doesn’t have to be. So, if you would like to learn more, sign up here to show your interest. If we get enough interest, we will put together a workshop and let you know when it is available.

If you have questions about this episode, head over to The Global Moms Network Facebook Group to ask them this week, and I’ll be there along with some other moms who can chat with you about when and how to talk to your kids about race. Lucretia may even be around to answer some of your questions as well!

Find Lucretia:

Brownicity | Facebook | Instagram

Find Mary Grace:

Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

We would love to hear from you, so please leave a comment below, or find us on social media and let us know how you are talking with your kids about race.

SPONSOR:

This episode is sponsored by Around the World Stories.

The Global Mom Show is sponsored by Around the World Stories. These audio stories capture the adventures of kids from around the world and will introduce your kids to different countries and cultures, as they travel with the characters to new parts of the world. Each story is about 25-30 minutes long, and right now the authors are traveling around Europe with their children gathering information to write more stories. They take place in Denmark, Ireland, The Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain. You can get a story a week for $9.95 a month, or get a membership for a year’s worth of weekly stories for $99. Download the stories and take them in the car or play them at home or from your phone. This is a great and easy way to introduce your children to other cultures. Head to theglobalmom.com/stories to give them a try.

Have you joined my email list? If you do, I’ll send you my guide: 10 Ways To Make Your Home More Global–No Matter Where You Live.  Just text GLOBALMOM to 444999. Or sign up here. 

Thanks for listening today, Have a great week, and remember, you can live a global life wherever you are, and teach your kids to do the same.

The post Talking to Your Kids About Race, with Lucretia Berry (TGMS#29) appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

Reading to your kids is a fantastic way to teach your kids about anything. It only follows then that multicultural children’s books would be an excellent way to teach your children about other cultures. But despite the number of mixed-race families and immigrants increasingly growing in the United States, the number of multicultural books being published is not growing. Four years ago, Mia Wenjen and Valarie Budayr (who I interviewed in Episode 17) decided that needed to change. So they founded a holiday, and made an effort to bring the need for diverse books to the forefront of the publishing industry. The mission of Multicultural Children’s Book Day (the holiday they started) is:

To not only raise awareness for the kid’s books that celebrate diversity, but to get more of these of books into classrooms and libraries.

Multicultural Children’s Book Day has grown to a massive event; last year’s day resulted in 96 million social media shares! Woah! (I guess some of us ARE interested in having diverse books!)

In this episode, I chat with Mia Wenjen, one of the founders about why it’s so important for people to see themselves in the pages of books and to see people different from themselves in the pages of books.

Multicultural Children’s Book Day is January 27th. Follow the event on social media at #ReadYourWorld.

Here are the show notes: 

Mia Wenjen is a mom of three, an entreprenuer, and the co-founder of Multicultural Children’s Book Day. She blogs at Pragmatic Mom. Her co-founder, Valarie Budayr, blogs at Jump into a Book.

Books mentioned:

Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming

Debbi Michiko Florence, Jasmine Toguchi series

Uegaki, Suki’s Kimono

Adam Gidwitz, The Inquisitor’s Tale

Wisdom Tales Press

Laurie Halse Anderson

Kwame Alexander, Crossover

Great quotes from the show: 

“It is so important for EVERYONE to read about things that we are not familiar with.”

“Maybe the last barrier that I see that my kids face is understanding special needs.”

“Isn’t it even more powerful to read books about people and places that we don’t have access to?”

“If we are to overcome racism and other prejudices as a country, our best hope is to expose children…and let them see the whole vast world that they may not see in their communities.”

“What kind of training of education do these kids have about racism…? It’s as if racism doesn’t exist at all, if you look at our school curriculum from kindergarten through high school.”

Take a look at the multiple book lists Mia and Valarie have curated. Here’s one mentioned in the show: Diversity is in KidLit Presented as Everyday: This is a book list of books that show diverse characters, cultures, or celebrations, without making those things the theme of the book.

Snag the book for FREE on January 27th, and purchase it after that: Read Your World, A Guide to Multicultural Children’s Books for Parents and Educators, edited by Mia Wenjen

Find Mia online: 

Pragmatic Mom | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Multicultural Children’s Book Day | Facebook 

FEATURED RESOURCE:

This week’s featured resource is Barefoot Books. A multicultural book publishing company that’s dedicated to promoting diversity and understanding. The Barefoot Book of Children is a beautiful way to introduce your children to people around the globe and to what it means to accept everyone. Check out all their books at Barefoot Books.

SPONSOR:

This episode is sponsored by Around the World Stories.

The Global Mom Show is sponsored by Around the World Stories. These audio stories capture the adventures of kids from around the world and will introduce your kids to different countries and cultures, as they travel with the characters to new parts of the world. Each story is about 25-30 minutes long, and right now the authors are traveling around Europe with their children gathering information to write more stories. They take place in Denmark, Ireland, The Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain. You can get a story a week for $9.95 a month, or get a membership for a year’s worth of weekly stories for $99. Download the stories and take them in the car or play them at home or from your phone. This is a great and easy way to introduce your children to other cultures. Head to theglobalmom.com/stories to give them a try.

Have you joined my email list? If you do, I’ll send you my guide: 10 Ways To Make Your Home More Global–No Matter Where You Live.  Just text GLOBALMOM to 444999.

Thanks for listening today, Have a great week, and remember, you can live a global life wherever you are, and teach your kids to do the same.

The post Why Multicultural Children’s Books Are so Important, with Mia Wenjen (TGMS28) appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

I wanted to say a quick hello to you all and pop in you podcast players to let you know what is happening with The Global Mom Show. Last year, I launched the show in May, and produced 27 episodes! I had so much fun connecting with global moms and starting to build a network of global moms who want to raise kids who love the world. I want to thank all of you for making that first year such a great success. Now, as we enter 2017, I’m even more excited about where the Global Mom Show is headed.

This year things are going to be a little bit different, instead of doing a show every week, and taking a few breaks in between, the show is going to consist of Seasons. Next week, Season 2 will be launching, and it will have ten episodes, released every other week for twenty weeks. Then, we will take a few weeks off and start in on Season 3, with another 10 episodes. In the meantime, I’ll be keeping you updated through email and Facebook, and will be sharing more blog posts and tips for how to connect with like-minded women and how to create a global worldviews in your home.

The upcoming season is full of some great guests talking about some really interesting topics. We are going to be focusing a lot about race and identity as well as some language learning and travel tips thrown into the mix as well. Next week is Multicultural Children’s Book Day, and my first guest is Mia Wenjen, co-founder of this international day that celebrates and advocates for more diverse, multicultural books. I had the other co-founder, Valarie Bydayr on Episode 17. That episode drops on Tuesday, January 24^th! So watch for it.

After that, I’ll be talking with Lucretia Berry of Brownicity about dismantling racism, and I’ll be talking with Sonia Smith-Kang of Mixed Up Clothing about how to talk to your mixed-race kids about race. If you are not subscribed to the show, now is a great time to do that, just head over to itunes and look for The Global Mom Show.

If you are new here and this is your first time listening, we are glad to have you. You can check out past episodes on the website or through iTunes, there’s some great information there! If you head over to my website theglobalmom.com, you’ll see two buttons in the middle of the page, one says get the newsletter, and one says subscribe to the show, if you click on both of those and follow through with those, you will be all set to get connected with the podcast, my weekly emails, and information about how to join my private Facebook group for global moms. If you want to get in touch with me directly, tweet me at the global mom, or email me at [email protected], and I will respond to you! Get ready for the spring season, season two of The Global Mom Show. I will be back next week, Jan. 24^th, with Episode 28! Have a great weekend, and remember, you can live a global life wherever you are, and teach your kids to do the same.

The post Get Ready for Season 2 appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

Merry Christmas everyone! Thank you all for a fantastic first year of The Global Mom Show (we’ll it’s not really a year, since we just started in late spring…). This week’s show is a fun chat with my friend Lizzy, who lives in South Asia with her family. We share silly stories from our time in India, and she tells me about how she celebrates the holidays now. I also talk with my sister Ellen about keeping Christmas traditions in Musoma, Tanzania. And, my kids had to get in a little Christmas song for you at the end.

Thanks for listening!

Notes:

Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist

Alton Brown’s Sugar Plum recipe

Thanks to friends for sharing their favorite multicultural traditions:

Lisa Ferland, Anjelica Malone, Lauren Mokasdar

The post An Expat Christmas: Multicultural Traditions and Celebrating Holidays Abroad (TGMS 27) appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

Today, I talk with Rita Rosenback, author of Bringing Up a Bilingual Child, How to Navigate the 7 Cs of Bilingual Parenting. Rita is a full time writer, speaker, trainger and coach, and she maintains a blog that serves as a resource for bilingual families, Multilingual Parenting. Rita speaks Swedish, Finnish, English, German, and some Punjabi, and has worked as a language teacher, interpreter, translator, and manager of multinational teams.

Rita and I talk about her the 7 C’s of Bilingual Parenting, which you can read more about on her blog.

The post 26:Bringing Up a Bilingual Child, with Rita Rosenback appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

Monica’s Bio: Monica Olivera is a homeschooling mother of two and a freelance education writer. Her site, MommyMaestra.com, helps Hispanic parents get more involved in their children’s education by providing resources, tips, and opportunities. She is also the co-founder of Latinas for Latino Lit and the content creator of the Latino Children’s Summer Reading Program, the first national, online program designed specifically for Latino families. Her education articles have appeared in numerous online sites such as NBCNews, latinamom.me, and PBSParents.

The post 25:Passing on Latino Culture to Your Kids, Hispanic Heritage, and Day of the Dead, with Monica Olivera appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

It’s no secret that traveling with your kids is one of the best ways to expose them to the world and all its cultures. But for some of us, that just doesn’t always seem possible. We have financial challenges, scheduling challenges, limited vacation days, and on and on. There are many reasons why traveling just doesn’t seem practical or possible. Our guest today never imagined herself as a world traveler. She was stuck in a cycle of living paycheck to paycheck and being unable to ever get ahead. That’s when she heard about a job overseas that might allow her to live a little more freely.

Tanai Benard is a mom of three kids who lives in Abu Dhabi in the UAE. She calls her family 4 Deep Around the World, and they spend as much time as they can exploring new places from Paris to the Philipines. Tanai has found a way to live her dream and change her life, and now she’s encouraging other moms to take the travel plunge. But she doesn’t say you have move around the world to do it. Even traveling up the road to a nearby city or natural landmark is okay by her. As long as you are exploring, you are learning and growing, and that’s what travel is all about.

Listen in as we talk about how she made the big move overseas, what her family thought about her move, what a day looks like in Abu Dhabi, how her kids have reacted to the move, her philosophy on travel, and where she’s been lately. You’ll also find out more about her Facebook Group: The Wandering Moms, and where she’s headed next.

Here are some links from the show: 

Secret Flying.com

Wandering Moms Facebook Group

Connect with Tanai: 

Blog | Facebook |

Today’s sponsor for the podcast is Thrive Market. Thrive Market is a wholesale buying club for healthy and organic food. The company is committed to the highest quality products at 20-50% off regular prices! Head HERE to get a one-month FREE TRIAL! 

Did you know you can also shop at Amazon and have a portion of your purchase go to support The Global Mom Show? Just head to www.theglobalmom.com/amazon and do your shopping there–at no extra cost to you! Thanks!

Thanks for listening! As always, you can find Mary Grace on twitter @theglobalmom or on Facebook and  Instagram at The Global Mom Show.

To subscribe to my e-newsletter:  Text GLOBALMOM to 444999 

The post 24: Moms, You Can Travel the World, with Tanai Benard appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

Ocotber 16 is World Food Day, a day when the world stops to raise awareness about hunger and food security worldwide.

Today, I chatted with Angela Schug about World Food Day and the Hunger Free project at World Vision USA.

Angela Schug is a product team leader in the product marketing division at World Vision in the United States.  In this role, she engages Americans to provide resources that support World Vision’s work in hunger, health and disaster response.

Angela has been with World Vision since 2004.  She began her marketing career at the DLR Group, an architecture firm in Portland, Oregon.  She also served with the Peace Corps in Niger as an environmental educator, training Nigerien farmers on improving the care and management of their land, using better tools and technology to increase crop yields and accessing better quality seeds.

Angela has a bachelor’s degree in international studies and French from Whitworth University . She is married, has three children and lives in Portland, Oregon.

Angela shares about her own experience in the Peace Corps in Niger. We talk about the statistics surrounding hunger worldwide, and we talk about what World Vision is doing to make a difference in communities around the world.

I’ve been a supporter of World Vision for many years, so it seemed natural for me to contact them to find out more about World Food Day. However, there are of course many organizations dealing with this issue, and you can find more of those here:

www.worldfooddayusa.org 

Today’s sponsor for the podcast is Thrive Market. Thrive Market is a wholesale buying club for healthy and organic food. The company is committed to the highest quality products at 20-50% off regular prices! Head HERE to get a one-month FREE TRIAL! 

Thanks for listening! As always, you can find Mary Grace on twitter @theglobalmom or on Facebook and  Instagram at The Global Mom Show.

To subscribe to my e-newsletter:  Text GLOBALMOM to 444999 

The post TGMS #023 What We Can Do for World Food Day, with Angela Schug appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

Mothering changes us. For my friend, Ludmila, it has made her more empathetic to children, more open to relationships, and it has intensified just about everything. Ludmila is a friend from my graduate school days (as are many of my guests on this show). She and I shared an apartment with Katie Chandler (from TGMS #03), and the three of us spent many hours discussing international development and ways we could impact big things like poverty, literacy, and human rights. Today, the three of us are moms, and I think we’ve realized that as much as we can do on a big scale, what matters equally as much is what we do in our own homes. Raising kids who embrace others and seek to create positive change in the world is one of our deepest desires.

Ludmila and  I talk about her multicultural background, her studies in the US, and her work in Moldova as a lawyer and development worker. In the second half of the episode we talk more about how being a mother has changed her and what she hopes for her son, Bogdan. Why she and her husband decided to stay in Moldova when many have left the country. And we talk about why she chose to wait to travel with her son until he was three years old.

Ludmila’s Bio: Ludmila Ungureanu is a development professional from Moldova, a small country located in South Eastern Europe. Ludmila is the founder and CEO of the Center for Social Excellence from Moldova, a start up non-profit organization that will help vulnerable families, children, and youth break out of the cycle of poverty and build a sustainable future for themselves. Before founding the Center for Social Excellence, Ludmila worked with development organizations that focused on human rights, justice sector reform, and poverty reduction. These included United States Agency for International Development and the American Bar Association and their rule of law reform programs in Moldova, Catholic Relief Services and their poverty reduction programs, and the RADA Institute, a local organization that worked on building capacity of non-profit organizations. In the last 15 years, Ludmila worked in Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Kirgizstan, and Belarus. She speaks three languages, has a law degree from the State University of Moldova and has a MS in Management from the SIT Graduate Institute in the United States. Ludmila has a six-year old son – Bogdan and is married to Sergiu Talpa, an economist working in the private sector.

 Ludmila at an outdoor cafe.

Don’t forget to share your birth stories with us! Whether at home or abroad, birth stories connect us. We’d love to hear your story, and you can share it in two ways:

1. Head over to The Global Moms Network and post a picture or story of something that happened during your birth experience.
2. Call in and leave a voicemail with a birth story that might be featured on a special epsiode of The Global Mom Show. Call 657-GO-GLOBE (this is a US number).
3. If you have a story under 90 seconds long, you can leave it as a voicemail on this page. Just click the “Send Voicemail” button on the right side of your screen and record!

Today’s sponsor for the podcast is Thrive Market. Thrive Market is a wholesale buying club for healthy and organic food. The company is committed to the highest quality products at 20-50% off regular prices! Head HERE to get a one-month FREE TRIAL! 

Thanks for listening! As always, you can find Mary Grace on twitter @theglobalmom or on Facebook and  Instagram at The Global Mom Show.

To subscribe to my e-newsletter:  Text GLOBALMOM to 444999 

The post TGMS #022 Mothering in Moldova with Ludmila Ungureanu appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

Birth stories are so much fun, and today we get to hear from Lisa Ferland, the editor of two anthologies of birth and parenting stories, Knocked Up Abroad and Knocked Up Abroad Again (currently available on Kickstarter ). Lisa is a US citizen who has lived abroad in Sweden since 2012, working as a writer, editor, publisher, and public health consultant. She is currently raising a Lego lover and a Pippi Longstocking fanatic who enjoy behaving like Swedish children with the added bonus of American Thanksgiving holidays.

Today Lisa and I talk about her experience of giving birth and parenting in Sweden. She shares her amazing birth story, and how she got the idea to edit an anthology of birth stories from expat moms around the world. She and her contributors are in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign for the Knocked Up Abroad Again book, which runs until October 17, 2016.  The book shares stories from 26 mothers around the world who talk about birthing and parenting in different cultures.

Links from the episode: 

Knocked Up Abroad book

Knocked Up Abroad Again book

Childbirth Wisdom

How Much Do Parents Matter?, the Atlantic

Connect with Lisa: 

Website | Facebook | Twitter

To subscribe to my e-newsletter:  Text GLOBALMOM to 444999 

Would you like to share your own birth story? Whether at home or abroad, birth stories connect us. We’d love to hear your story, and you can share it in two ways:

1. Head over to The Global Moms Network and post a picture or story of something that happened during your birth experience.
2. Call in and leave a voicemail with a birth story that might be featured on a special epsiode of The Global Mom Show. Call 657-GO-GLOBE (this is a US number).
3. If you have a story under 90 seconds long, you can leave it as a voicemail on this page. Just click the “Send Voicemail” button on the right side of your screen and record!

Today’s sponsor for the podcast is Thrive Market. Thrive Market is a wholesale buying club for healthy and organic food. The company is committed to the highest quality products at 20-50% off regular prices! Head HERE to get a one-month FREE TRIAL! 

Thanks for listening! As always, you can find Mary Grace on twitter @theglobalmom or on Facebook and  Instagram at The Global Mom Show.

The post TGMS #021 Birth Stories from Abroad with Lisa Ferland appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

The post A Little Announcement appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

The post TGMS #020 Raising TCKs, writing, and having a career in your suitcase, with Jo Parfitt appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

This is a solo show today, where I dive in to the world of being an expat. I give you a little glimpse back into my own expat experience, and I share some resources to help you through all the transitions.

Links from the show:

Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds

Summertime Publishing

Expat Book Shop

The Expatriates

The Expats

Once Upon an Expat

Knocked Up Abroad

Wall Street Journal Expat Book List

Global Living Magazine

Tandem Nomads

Parenting Abroad

Small Planet Studios

Re-Entry: Making the Transition from Missions to Life at Home

Rocky Reentry blog

Velvet Ashes

Relocation Health Coach, Kylie Bevan

Naomi Hattaway- I am a Triangle and other helpful thoughts for repatriation

Additional Helpful Links: 

Parenting Abroad in an on-demand world

Telegraph Expat News

Connect with me:  iTunes | Stitcher |Facebook | Twitter

The post TGMS #019 Resources and Good Reads for Expats with Mary Grace appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

Have you ever browsed your library’s new releases or searched the displays at bookstores wondering which book is right for you? After I moved back to the States after several years living abroad, many of the titles I came across simply didn’t resonate with me. Even books recommended by friends seemed shallow and one-dimensional. There are a few really good books that I’ve connected with in the past few years, and those were hard to find. I have a theory, that global moms like different books! It may be because our personalities seek out adventure and are already drawn to complexity. Or, it may be that after experiencing travel, cultural differences, and real international issues, we can’t identify with books that only tell a simplified story. Anne Bogel is a book lover who hosts the podcast What Should I Read Next? Each week, she listens to readers’ picks for three books they love, one book they hate, and what they’ve been reading recently. Then, she complies a list of three literary suggestions based on their current choices. She calls it “Literary Matchmaking,” and it’s so much fun. When I discovered her podcast a few months ago, I knew she could help me hone in on some global-mom book choices that I would want to curl up and read right away. And she did! Listen in on our conversation as we discuss why global moms are looking for something different, what they are looking for, and what ideas she has for how to find the perfect book.

You can find out more about Anne on her blog Modern Mrs Darcy, and you can listen to her podcast there or on iTunes or Stitcher.

Great books often have a richness that the not so great books lack. They have complex characters…they are often deeply rooted in the time and place they are set in…If you find a good book, you are halfway there–maybe 70%”

Books, Blogs, Talks, and Movies Mentioned in this episode: 

Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese

The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri

The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri

In Other Words, Jhumpa Lahiri

Before We Visit the Goddess, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

The Wednesday Chef, Louisa Weiss’ blog

My Berlin Kitchen, Louisa Weiss

In a French Kitchen, Susan Hermann Loomis

Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi

The Upstairs Wife, An Intimate History of Pakistan, Rafia Zakaria

The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseni

The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We Should All Be Feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

TEDx Talk We Should All Be Feminists

TEDTalk The Danger of a Single Story

The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

Ghana Must Go, Taiye Selasi

TEDTalk Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From, Ask Where I’m a Local

At Home in the World, Tsh Oxenrider

Give Your Child the World, Jamie Martin

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Isabel  Allende

Esperanza Rising, Pam Munoz Ryan

Echo, Pam Munoz Ryan

The Motorcycle Diaries (movie)

The Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner

Life from Scratch, Sasha Martin

Global Table Adventure, Sasha Martin’s blog

Bill Bryson

Thanks so much for listening! If you liked this episode, please share it! Also, leave us a voicemail (see the red Send Voicemail button on the right hand side of the page?) We’d love to hear from you.

The post TGMS #018 Books for Global Moms with Anne Bogel appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

This marks week two of our series on BOOKS! I’m so excited about this episode, because my guest, Valarie Budayr, offered us lots of ideas for books and extension activities to do with our kids. Valarie is the daughter of Swedish immgrants who grew up in Portland, Oregon. She married an Arab Muslim from Lebanon, and together they’ve built a multicultural family based on give and take, sharing, and prioritizing global learning. Books have always been a big part of Valarie’s life, and today she’s a children’s author, book publisher, and the co-founder of Multicultural Children’s Book Day. (With Mia Wenjen of Pragmatic Mom). She blogs at Jump into a Book, where she offers book lists and reviews as well as fun activities you can do with your kids. We talked about so many books today, that I might have missed a few below!

Links from today’s show:

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie

Pippi Longstocking

Starry River of the Sky, by Grace Lin

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin

Grandfather Tang’s Story

Jason Lee, Lee & Low Books

Kid Lit TV

Multicultural Children’s Book Day

The Wild Book, Margarita Engle

The Firefly Letters: A Suffregete’s Journey to Cuba, Margartia Engle

Esperanza Rising,  Pam Munoz Ryan, with extension activites

The Dreamer, Pam Munoz Ryan

Latin American Month (Hispanic Heritage Month Booklist)

Pragmatic Mom, Mia Wenjen

Jump into a Book

Multicultural Children’s Book Giveaway

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

Mama Panya’s Pancakes, published by Barefoot Books

Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

The Story of Ruby Bridges

She Stood for Freedom:The Untold Story of a Civil Rights Hero, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland

Brown Girl Dreaming

Red Kite, Blue Kite

World Diverse Book List

India book list

Navajo Code Talkers

Audrey Press

Dragons are Real

A Year in The Secret Garden, by Valarie Budayr

Connect with Valarie: Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

The post TGMS #017 Jump into a Multicultural Book with Valarie Budayr appeared first on The Global Mom Show.

This week Mary Grace starts a new series on books! She talks with the founder and CEO of Barefoot Books, Nancy Traversy, about how the company began, and how it has changed over the years. Nancy shares her kids’ favorite books as well as gives us a sneak peak into a new book that’s coming out soon.

Check back for more show notes to come…

The post TGMS #016 Living Barefoot with Nancy Traversy appeared first on The Global Mom Show.