I received a text Sunday night asking me to help promote a special event at Stuff Christians Like the following day. Jon and the SCL community wanted to raise $30,000 to build a kindergarten school in Vietnam. I love getting behind projects like this so I confirmed that I would help promote it on my blog.

We took a last-minute trip with the girls on Sunday afternoon to go hiking in Turkey Run State park and ended up spending the night so I was offline most of the day yesterday. I planned on writing a post to share about the Vietnam school project this morning but when I went to check on the progress I was blown away. The $30,000 needed to build the school was raised in 18 hours! I was out just one day and I missed the opportunity to be a part of that outreach.

Online communities like SCL are changing the game. People are organizing behind causes wherever they find it – through their church, city or even blogs that they follow. When vision is cast and people believe in a cause they get behind it in a big way. So big in fact, that if you don’t jump on the train early you’ll get left at the station.

Some of us were barely making it through the Monday blues and were complaining about the start of another week while others were giving $5, $10 or $20 to build a school in Vietnam.

I’m so excited to know that there are online communities like SCL that are using their resources to change the world. I may have missed the boat yesterday but I’m still going to give anyway.

Don’t underestimate the incredible resources that are available to you through your online network of friends.

** Update: SCL is working on raising another $30,000 to build a second school in Vietnam. Read more about it here and donate towards it here.