Great article about Will Farrell and his work with Cancer Survivors. Shows that everyone, from the poor to the famous, can make a difference
Great article on CNN today about New York Says Thank You, a nonprofit organization that sends volunteers from NY to disaster areas across the country. This article shows the power of paying it forward; always be grateful for what you have and help others in every way possible.
Tonight we announced that we have selected seven terrific students to go on a “trip of a lifetime” this summer, 5 girls and 2 guys. We had the strongest applicant pool in our history and as a result had to make some really difficult decisions. Our decisions do not reflect the type of person these students are or the hardships they endure but rather who we thought would be the best fit for these trips and would use the experience to give back to their communities
Putting the decision envelopes in the mail today was truly a moment I will never forget. I was filled with a rush of emotions: anxiousness, relief, and pride. Finally sending those envelopes marked both an end and a beginning: the end of a tiring application process but the beginning of a life-changing experience for seven worthy individuals. Although I spent countless hours during the past four weeks making sure everything went flawlessly, I would gladly do my job as chairman year after year. The feeling of accomplishment is truly extraordinarily.
On behalf of the entire organization, I would like to thank our partner, American Trails West teen tours, for all of their support throughout the year.
In addition, I would like to extend a special thanks to all of the members of the organization and my parents, Helene and Sam Rosenberg, for helping me ignite the passion I have for this organization. Without any of them, the charity would not be where it is today.
- Stan
Yesterday, I saw Elie Wiesel speak at NYU as part of the Catherine Reynolds Distinguished Speaker Series. As a someone who is Jewish, I always respected the work Mr. Wiesel has done as an author, noble laureate and Holocaust survivor for the oppressed but nothing could prepare for listening to him firsthand.
Throughout his half hour speech, Wiesel pointed to many personal anecdotes and gave advice to the student body. His strongest message was about the power of love. When people love each other and what they do, oppression can never happen in the world. Dedication, knowledge, and commitment are the first steps towards embracing a loving attitude. For more about Wiesel’s speech, check out this great article in the Washington Square News.
Wiesel is one of my greatest moral heroes and I have been trying the best to embody his messages and spread them through my work with Trip of a Lifetime
Check out our Spring Auction items. The auctions will begin within the next two weeks
Please check our website in the next few days for information on how to prucahse our tshirt.
Hey everyone.
As many of you already know, we are in the middle of reading all of the applications and deciding upon scholarship recipients. We have received many amazing applications and will have a difficult time choosing students. In an ideal world, we would be able to take every student that applies but this is unfortunately not feasible. Maybe this is something for us to work on for next year.
We are on track to make our decisions within the next seven to ten days. Once we make our decisions, we will be notifying the students, their parents, and their guidance counselors (or organizational liaisons) and sending the students a trip selection survey. We are very grateful to continue our terrific relationship with American Trails West Teen Tours and its partner company, Rein Teen Tours, for the third straight summer and are able to provide selected students with multiple trip options. Students will have the option to choose between two and three week trips, east and west coast experiences, and have multiple departure dates to pick from. After we receive all of the completed surveys, we will place students on trips and send them the teen tour paperwork!
Besides selecting and placing the students, we will be closely working with them and their families throughout the next ten weeks to make sure they understand the trip and have filled out all of the paperwork correctly. We are also planning to give the students some TOAL apparel and continue our “Flip Spotlight” partnership, providing every scholarship recipient with their own flip camera to document their journey.
This is truly an exciting time for us and we can’t wait to get to know the students we select better as the trip approaches. I am even jealous of the “trip of a lifetime” these students will experience this summer
- Stan
Check out one of Stan’s favorite blogs about social innovation: Good
Did you know all accepted applicants are given a Flip Camera to document their experience? Check out our website for some of the videos recorded by students in the summer of 2010!
As a sports fan, I am anxiously counting down the minutes until March Madness, the 68 team NCAA College Basketball tournament, begins. There is no better tournament in sports than March Madness; every team truly has a chance to win it all. Whether a game goes down to a last second shot or a team upsets the perennial favorite, the event always creates such a great adrenaline rush.
Besides college basketball, I am excited for another March Madness: the Trip of a Lifetime Application deadline. Every year, we spend at least three or four months trying to recruit students. We believe that having passionate and motivated students is the key to our organization; without students eager to share and learn from their trip of a lifetime, one trip won’t have the ability to impact many lives. This year, we expect to have a record number of applicants from a variety of schools and organizations and are eager to read their amazing stories. I can guarantee the next four weeks will be extremely busy and crazy for the organization, paralleling the March Madness of College Basketball!
If I could sum up my day in one word, I would say “community”. Sure, many people feel a sense of community but today, I felt like I was apart of a different community: a community of passionate people, eager to change the world. I was able to meet two very different members of this community today: students at Cristo Rey High School and the Mayor of Newark, NJ: Cory Booker.
One of my favorite parts of Trip of a Lifetime is meeting with prospective students. Many of the students I meet remind me of how I was as a freshman and sophomore; these students are passionate about their schoolwork and activities and are eager to learn more about themselves. It was great simply talking to them and learning more about their school. Students were so interested in our opportunity that we ran out of paper copies of our application. I guess sometimes killing trees isn’t so bad after all (only kidding). As of now, we expect to get between two and five applications from the school. Pretty good for one day’s work!
In addition, I got to meet one of my moral heroes today: Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark NJ. For the past six years, Mayor Booker has been pushing the envelope of politics, defying inefficient standards and promoting social change. His policies have transformed the way governments, non-profit organizations, and corporations cooperate and collaborate with each other. Cory is a fantastic speaker, meshing analytical insight with personal experiences and plenty of light-hearted humor. I highly recommend everyone, regardless of their party lines, to follow his progress in Newark. He truly is an inspiration to us all.
Stan Rosenberg and Josh Kogan, two of Trip of a Lifetime’s co-founders with Cory Booker
- Cory Booker
Mayor of Newark, NJ
We realized on a few of our documents, our email address has been cut off. For general inquiries and questions about the application process, email us at webmaster@projecttoal.org. The deadline is only 2.5 weeks away!
Many people have asked us recently how they or their student can be selected for our scholarship opportunity. Like many things in life, there is no concrete answer but here are five suggestions we have for all prospective applicants.
1) Tell us a story: Make sure your essay is captivating and provides a glimpse into your life. What are some qualities that make you unique? This should resonate throughout the entire application.
2) Be open to discussion and communication: Before selecting any applicant, we conduct a short, informal interview with them. In your interview, be talkative, enthusiastic, and passionate. There is no reason to prepare for difficult questions. It is simply an informal conversation where we put a face to your application. We also encourage plenty of student questions and feedback in the interview.
3) Get everything in on time: If we receive a late application, there is still a good chance we will read it and take you into consideration but we will give more preference to students who followed directions and made the deadline. If you think your application will not be in on time, please email us at and we won’t penalize you, as long as it is a valid excuse.
4) But it is not a race to get yours in first: We wait until the deadline before we analyze all of our applications. As long as you submit it by the deadline, there is no difference if you get it in first or fifth.
5) Be an ambassador: The power of your trip of a lifetime experience will not be the trip itself but how you grow from the experience. We are looking for students who will use the trips to be catalysts for change and continue what they have learned during their travels. Students who like to take pictures (we supply you with a flip camera) and are good at creative writing should emphasize these skills in their applications.
Hey everyone. Hope you are all enjoying the break from the snow. It has been a brutal winter and hopefully spring is right around the corner.
For my post, I wanted to post an article I found about St. Jude’s Children Hospital. During my second semester, I have spent most of my time participating in many marketing projects including Marketing Society, Do Good Project, and I am even overseeing a new micro finance initiative at New York Universty. Nothing is as important for a business these days than marketing. Marketing is gaining more and more influence in society, even having the power to make or brake a company’s bottom line.
St. Jude’s childrens hospital has done a terrific job with its marketing. With the help of celebrity support, social media, and dedicated supporters, the one hospital organization has become the 18th largest nonprofit in the world. Any company can learn a lot from St. Jude’s terrific story.
Hey everyone. Next week, we will officially begin our “Tumblr Tuesday” series. Every Tuesday, me or one of the co-founders of the organization will blog about our freshman years and our experience juggling Trip of a Lifetime with our other obligations. Unlike most of our posts, these will carry an air of informality. Our goal is for all of our readers to feel closer with the Trip of a Lifetime members by the end of the series.
Look out every Tuesday for new and exciting content!
How would you like to win some awesome Trip of a Lifetime prizes while helping out a Great Cause?
During the month of February, “This Could Be You”. Here is what you can do to win…
1) If You Get Ten of Your Friends To Join Our Facebook Page, Ten Friends To Follow Us On Twitter, Or Five Friends To Follow Us On Tumblr, We Will Send You A Free Trip of a Lifetime Silicone Bracelet
(this is as simple as inviting all of your friends and adding a quick message to the invite)
2) If You Get Twenty Five Friends To Join Our Facebook Page, We Will Send You A Free Trip of a Lifetime T-Shirt!
Once you have completed either of these two tasks, please email your address to webmaster@projecttoal.org so we can confirm the result and award your prize
3) If We Reach 400 Fans By The End Of February, One Of Our Supporters Will Be Randomly Selected To Win An American Express Gift Card To Use Towards Their Own Trip of a Lifetime
4) If We Reach 500 Fans By The End Of February, We Will Give Out Not One But THREE American Express Gift Cards
More Information Will Be Posted Shortly
Please tell all of your friends about this campaign!
