It’s been a full week since the grand launch of my debut book, Lead Without Followers: How to Save Our World by Radically Redefining the Meaning of Leadership.

Many reflections, lessons and blog posts will follow on what I’ve learned and how it’s all panned out.

But today, I’m really excited to tell you about my small self-funded book tour and its IndieGoGo fundraiser with a very big cause: providing 10 educational scholarships for at-risk school girls in Sierra Leone, West Africa, through an amazing nonprofit organization called One Girl.

As of last week, I had a goal of raising $3,500 on IndieGoGo for my multi-city, cross-country book tour.

However, thanks to some travel hacking and frequent flier miles, I realized that I could book most of flights from Rhode Island through Los Angeles on around $300 — leaving quite a bit left over!

What I decided was to make my book tour about something bigger than the book itself.

Now, I’ve teamed up with my friend Chantelle Baxter — who I met when we went skydiving together in Portland, Oregon at the World Domination Summit last June — a co-founder of the Australia-based One Girl nonprofit organization that provides educational scholarships for young girls in one of the most impoverished nations in our world:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyMELxYqLCk[/youtube]

Visit the fundraising page now »

Young girls in Sierra Leone are at risk for forced-marriage, teenage-pregnancy, resorting to prostitution and contracting HIV/AIDS:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e8xgF0JtVg[/youtube]

Visit the fundraising page now »

One Girl reverses this terrible trend by helping provide educational opportunities to young girls who can create careers and genuine change in their communities.

Remember that $3,500 fundraising goal?

Over 70% will be donated to One Girl.

That means we can provide 10 or more educational scholarships to children in Sierra Leone.

The remaining $800-$900 will help me with airfare, hotel stays and other travel costs (which I’ll share in full for the sake of transparency) as I embark upon a 10+ city book tour from the East coast to the West coast and back again.

When you donate to the cause, you get excellent perks and thank you gift, including my book Lead Without Followers in a variety of formats. You can even pony up and have me visit your city for a special speaking engagement!

Visit the fundraising page now »

Why One Girl? Why the Donation?

Lead Without Followers is a book about leadership. Leading everyday. Even through small, seemingly commonplace and humble ways. And what we learn is that being a quiet leader gives you the genuine capacity to profoundly change the world.

Raising money to help these young school girls in Sierra Leone falls right in line with how the small stuff adds up and can literally change the lives of these children forever.

Better yet, One Girl and my friend Chantelle are actually featured in my book as a case study in Chapter 10 on “How to Make Giving Your Own”! :)

Check the fundraising page for full details, share with your friends, and please consider donating a few dollars to this great cause!