TWLOHA founder Jamie Tworkowski: The Power of A Single Story

Jamie Tworkowski is the founder of a non-profit called To Write Love On Her Arms http://www.twloha.com aimed at helping high risk young people combat depression, self injury, and addiction by meeting them where they are, online.    TWLOHA started as a story and one-off t-shirt with aims of helping to pay for the much needed treatment of a friend.  TWLOHA quickly grew into something much larger.  Within three years time TWLOHA received over a half million on-line subscribers, directly responded and helped over 100,000 at-risk people from over 100 countries, and has invested over $600,000 into treatment and recovery.  The reach of how many people TWLOHA has helped indirectly is impossible to quantify.  Amidst this journey TWLOHA has also rallied support from popular musical artists and has received world-wide press attention.   In this video Jamie Tworkowski meets up with Sparrow Media to discuss his group, the ups & downs of starting your own non-profit, and the power of the written, screen printed, and sang words that started it all, "To Write Love On Her Arms."  Jamie's story is one that shows us that the smallest initial actions, in this case a story and t-shirt, can affect infinite lasting change on our world.  Jamie was recently nominated for an MTV "Good Woodie Award" for philanthropy & activism.  Voting is open every day online until November 16th at http://www.mtv.com/ontv/woodieawards/2009/good-woodie/ be sure to cast your vote!    Tworkowski remains humble, despite the enormity of his success and subsequent accolades.  As we met up with him at the CMJ music marathon in New York City last week we could not make it to the panelist's green room without stopping to talk to dozens of admirers.  Jamie and all of the TWOLA staff have become life preservers for thousands of sinking and at risk youth, with it has come some sort of philanthropic rock-stardom.  Perhaps it is well deserved.  The thought of a short story and slogan forever changing and in some cases directly saving the lives thousands of people is inspiring.  To learn more about To Write Love on Her Arms you can visit...  http://www.TWLOHA.com/vision http://www.myspace.com/towriteloveonherarms http://twitter.com/twloha http://www.facebook.com/home.php http://towriteloveonherarms.fancorps.com/  To learn more about starting your own non-profit organization visit...  http://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-501c3-Nonprofit-Organization http://www.idealist.org/if/idealist/en/FAQ/QuestionViewer/default?id=70-9&category-id=5-5 http://www.foundationcenter.org/getstarted/tutorials/establish/ http://nonprofit.about.com/ http://nonprofit.about.com/od/nonprofitbasics/u/startingup.htm