A Vote for Virginie is a Vote for Burundi

Three beautiful young women are vying to become the Pantene (yes, the shampoo) Ambassador 2007 in Belgium. Well, many women tried, and now they are down to three finalists. The three are listed here.

One of them is Virginie. If she wins, she is going to donate the prize money to a humanitarian project in Burundi that our family and friends of our family have been deeply involved with creating and supporting. The project is basically building an entire village from the ground up for the Burundi people who have absolutely nothing. Called "Imuhira," meaning "home," the village will have an orphanage, school and health center among other things. They are using innovative energy sources such as a wind-generator and solar panels to boost the unpredictable national power grid. This report I found on the Internet is in English and explains it in detail (you can read the report as a pdf file by clicking here--it's easier to read with a nice layout, but takes a few seconds to come up). Several names listed as the organizational group are close, trusted Christian friends of the family with an incredible vision. We believe in this project.

Thus, I'm sure that the other two Pantene finalists are perfectly lovely, but if you vote for Virginie, you're also voting for much more than lustrous hair; with one click, you're potentially contributing to something that is changing a nation, improving and even saving precious lives.

You can do it in a matter of seconds, but let me walk you through it. When you get to the site, you'll see that it has one small challenge: the information is all in French!

Here are your simple steps to voting for Virginie and Burundi (If need be, open two windows and toggle back and forth to perform these simple steps):

1. Click here to get to her profile (For fun, click on any of the photos in her photo gallery and it brings it up in a new window. You can click on the arrow to see each one).

2. Click on "voter" and a screen comes up asking for your "prenom" (first name), "nom" (last name), and email address. The little square underneath is asking if you want more information from Pantene, and I left it blank.

That's it! A screen comes up thanking you for your vote.

You can only vote once a day...but you can vote tomorrow, and the next day, and so on. In one section, they warn you not to vote more than once a day or you could jeopardize future votes.

When I voted today, "Isabelle" was ahead of Virginie.

Wouldn't it be cool if we all pitched in and Virginie got to be the Pantene "Ambassadrice"? Wouldn't it be amazing if Virginie's money helped finish off a portion of the health center, where orphans could get some of the medical attention they desperately need?

Sometimes it takes only a few small things to bring about major change. As my sister-in-law has pointed out, achieving critical mass takes less than you think.


Link people to this one post so that they can follow the instructions and vote for Virginie, too.

Let's go for it. Let's reach critical mass and send Virginie's votes over the top.

Vote for shampoo and save the world!