Making that one-to-one connection

Check out our interview today with Trish Tobin, chief marketing officer for Women for Women. Before Trish took that job, she went on a trip with Women for Women to Rwanda, where she met women who were participating in the program. Looking back, she calls that making "the ultimate connection." She was so surprised by how she and the women she met related to each other that she ditched her corporate job and hasn't looked back.

Now, she's using her amazing marketing skills to try to create those moments of connection with people all over the world -- those of us who can't necessarily meet a Rwandan woman in her home, but who can connect with her another way: through global media.

Did you see the New York Times column about saving the Darfur puppy? It says our brains aren't wired to respond to the suffering of millions, we're wired to respond to one individual at a time. We want to help one person who is suffering, but a huge crowd of people? We burn out.

Understanding that burn-out or overwhelm can change the way organizations devoted to healing ask for support and donations. Women for Women International does this to some extent already -- pairing each sponsor with one woman survivor of war in a kind of long-distance friendship -- and now it's experimenting with marketing that way, too.