I'd first like to start by saying that just a few days ago I celebrated yet another birthday. I have come to that stage already, when we all pretend that "I'm only turning 25" and "I'm still young, strong and handsome". I bet some of you know what I'm talking about :)

INTRODUCTION

Unfortunately, I've spent that special day in bed, recovering from my first European flu in several years (some of you already know, that I've been living in a tropical part of Asia for many years and have only recently moved back to Europe). Needless to say I have already recovered and have decided to take an opportunity and ask you all to give me a present :)

What present would I like to receive? Well. Your time and attention mostly (please read this entire post) and I also hope to receive your support with my latest non-profit Steemit project.

Did I get you attention? I can only hope so.

HOW DID "IT" ALL START

	For quite sometime now, I felt the urge to give my life some extra meaning. I'm not wealthy, but I love what I do, I adore my wife and generally speaking every day I see, I see it as a gift. And yet it's hard not to feel that something has been missing.

While living in Asia and witnessing the hardships of people from less developed countries, I realized at some point that my dream would be to change their lives for the better. At least lives of just a few of them. To know that I made their daily struggle more bearable.

Personally, I don't think it's a very unique feeling and I realized that even on Steemit we can witness many others who are doing their best to help those in need. And they try to achieve it one way or the other.

PROJECT #HOPE

This is the moment, when I will share some brief information, vision and goals of my latest project, which I would like to call "Project #HOPE". For those who will find this topic interesting and would like to read on how it all evolved, I would recommend checking out this link:

https://steemit.com/projecthope/@coach.piotr/project-hope-day-one

In short:

	The idea behind this project is quite simple and it follows one great saying: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime". I bet most of you have heard that sentence before and would agree, that educating people and helping them secure some income is the best way of supporting them.

Last month together with with @juanmolina I started mentioned already "Project #HOPE". Our goal is to "train" 3 carefully selected Steemit users (@lanzjoseg, @fucho80, @jadams2k18) to become marketers/influencers within blockchain community. Many of you know them already. Within the past few weeks they were committing an enormous amount of time and energy building their "follower base", engaging with people and curating quality content.

I strongly believe that the demand for online marketing services will grow sooner than later. And having an established position within the crypto community can only help all of them to secure decent jobs in the future. So I'm helping to promote their content, passing my knowledge and I even managed to find a "sponsor" who has decided to support this project for the first initial 8 weeks with 100STEEM a month to each of those 3 mentioned users.

On top of that my wife has agreed to help them improve their English language, which will only bring their value up on jobs market.

How does it sound so far?

THINK GLOBALLY ACT LOCALLY

	Cliche, right? And yet I love that saying! :) I would surely like to be able to help many people out there, but unfortunately it's outside my financial "reach" to support more.

I know each one of those guys for quite some time now and I value their enormous knowledge (two of them are/were working as university professors), plus they have all earned my respect, my friendship and my loyalty.

They also share one thing in common: we all are very passionate towards blockchain technology and they are all from Venezuela. It simply means, that with very little resources I can have great impact on quality of their lives.

It has been a month since we started and the results are already blowing my mind. All of them managed to grow their accounts quite rapidly and they are constantly supporting our little community here on Steemit. It's a win-win scenario so far.

At this point I would like to ask all of you: what do you think about this idea?
Would you perhaps have some suggestions or feedback you would like to share? Drop a comment below - I read all of them and upvote valuable ones.

FUTURE OF PROJECT #HOPE

	My dream would be to ensure that all those few Venezuelans can focus their efforts on that particular goal for next few months and then I would try to use my contacts to get them some jobs as a community leader/marketer or simply as a review writer.

It's a long way, full of many challenges ahead of us. But I cannot think of stopping what we started and risk losing all our current achievements.

And guess what? You can help to make our little dream happen :) You really can :)

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

	There is obviously few things you, my dear reader, can do to support this non-profit project. If you feel like buying me a birthday present then I already know what I would like to receive:) Instead of paying for expensive gifts, please consider supporting this project with some STEEM.

Right now I have secured some financial support until end of May and on top of that I already allocated 300STEEM from my own pocket to cover expenses for month of June. But that's the extent of my financial "freedom" at the moment.

Obviously I hope to be able to carry on with this project for much longer so if you feel that you can afford to support us, then I would absolutely appreciate your generous transfer (send a memo saying either "project hope" or "happy birthday Piotr"). Even 10 steem matters.

Other ways of showing support:

	I'm fully aware, that not everyone can afford to "chip in" but there are other ways of supporting our efforts.

Pe­rhaps you can consider visiting those few mentioned accounts and either delegating some STEEM POWER to them (which would help them grow) or simply following them (if you would think that their content interest you).

You can also simply RESTEEM this publication to help get some extra exposure, upvote it or simply show your support by dropping some encouraging comment :)

ps.
I actually wonder how many people will read this entire post. It's by far one of the longest I've ever published :)

Yours,
Piotr