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Mike Wilson
Founder/CEO @ myLIFEspeaks
Mike Wilson is the co-founder and CEO of myLIFEspeaks, a nonprofit ministry based in Neply, Haiti.1 He founded the organization alongside his wife, Missy Wilson, with the goal of developing a Christ-centered culture in Haiti, one life at a time.12
The inspiration for myLIFEspeaks came from Mike and Missy's personal experience with their son, Lane Wilson. Lane was born prematurely at 22 weeks gestation with severe cerebral palsy and blindness due to a stroke before birth. Despite doctors' predictions, Lane survived, which became the driving force behind the organization's mission.1
Organization's Mission
MyLIFEspeaks focuses on:
- Empowering Haitians to help other Haitians
- Celebrating Haitian culture while investing in local leadership
- Providing opportunities for abandoned or orphaned children in Haiti
The organization emphasizes sustainability and change from within, rather than imposing American culture on Haiti.12
Mike Wilson's Role
As CEO and co-founder, Mike Wilson:
- Leads the organization alongside his wife, Missy
- Works to create opportunities for abandoned or orphaned children in Haiti
- Strives to see change happen both inside and outside the organization4
Mike describes himself as a husband and father who is living his calling and enjoying every minute of it.3 He maintains connections to Tennessee while working in Haiti and is also a supporter of Crystal Palace Football Club.3
Highlights
You know LEAPING for Love isn't easy!! If you support any nonprofit organizations, you have undoubtedly learned nonprofit fundraising is a true challenge.
With needs constantly growing but resources scarce, each donated dollar is stretched to its limit. It's a daily high-wire act to deliver critical services while keeping the lights on.
Marketing budgets are slim, yet spreading their mission is paramount. Creativity, dedication, and word-of-mouth are often their greatest assets.
While their work uplifts societies most vulnerable, the behind-the-scenes grind isn't always visible. Proposal-writing, impact-tracking, compliance - it's relentless.
No wonder inspiration from caring citizens means the world. Simply sharing their story or giving what you comfortably can eases their load immensely.
This Leap Day, I hope you'll consider LEAPING for LOVE with myLIFEspeaks.
Orphanage or Family-based care ministry in Haiti? Orphanages are much more common and (in reality) much easier. It's an all-in-one compound where kids are cared for in big groups. Most often supported by foreign outsiders and usually through churches, it's a way to "see" the benefits of donations. But, the data doesn't agree that it's the best way to do things. If it was truly better for the children, why are poorer third-world countries where you find orphanages? Why don't we have them set up at every church in America?
Here are just a few benefits of family-based care:
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Emotional and psychological well-being: Growing up in a family environment allows children to develop strong emotional bonds, experience love, and build a sense of identity and belonging.
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Continuity and stability: Family-based care provides a more stable and consistent living arrangement, which is crucial for a child's overall development.
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Individual attention: In family-based care, children receive individualized attention from caregivers, fostering their cognitive, emotional, and social development.
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Cultural preservation: Placing children in family-based care ensures they can grow up within their own cultural and community context, maintaining their heritage and identity.
For those looking for data, here are a few findings on the benefits of family-based care vs. orphanages, or institutions.
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Neurodevelopmental differences: Studies have shown that children who have experienced early adversity, including institutional care, may exhibit differences in brain development compared to those who have grown up in family-based care. For example, reduced brain volume in areas associated with cognitive functions, such as the prefrontal cortex, has been observed in children who experienced early institutional care.
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Emotional and social development: Research suggests that children in orphanages may have altered brain responses related to emotional and social processing. This can manifest in difficulties with emotional regulation, attachment, and social interactions. In contrast, children in family-based care tend to show more typical brain responses in these areas.
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Sensitive periods: The brain undergoes significant development during sensitive periods in early childhood. Lack of consistent, nurturing, and responsive caregiving during these periods, as can occur in institutional care, may impact the formation of neural connections and affect various aspects of cognitive and emotional development.
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Potential for recovery: Some studies have found that children who transition from institutional care to family-based care may experience improvements in brain development and related cognitive and emotional functions. This suggests that the brain has a degree of plasticity and can recover to some extent with more nurturing and responsive caregiving.
If you're investing in one or the other, which is helping the child both today AND in the future?
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
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Mesh offers several powerful features including:
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Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
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Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
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Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.
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