Child’s i Foundation on Why Dreamforce is not to be Missed

By: Lucy Buck, Founder of Child’s i Foundation

I founded Child’s i Foundation after volunteering at an orphanage in Uganda. There are 50,000 children growing up in orphanages when the majority of them have families. Child’s i Foundation ensures children are reunited with their families or if we cannot trace their relatives we find them new adoptive parents in Uganda.

At Child’s i Foundation, we started using Salesforce to help with our fundraising, tracking donations, and making sure everyone was thanked for their love, time, and money. I returned to the UK after 3 years in Uganda, but I wanted to feel like I, and donors across the world, could see in real time the development of the project and provide skills and expertise to help the team realize their ambition in Uganda.

Every social worker and senior manager at Child’s i Foundation uses Chatter every day and we get to see all the children who arrive at our centre and also more importantly go into families. We have a fantastic group on Chatter of specialised volunteers in social work, design, and technology who can help our team and always feel part of the journey from the regular updates.

One of our biggest challenges was recording case notes of all the children. That led me to work with a Salesforce.org volunteer to develop a child case management system. I can now access Salesforce1 on my phone and find out the status of every single child to make sure they are safely in families. Salesforce truly underpins our organisation and that is why it was so exciting to go to Dreamforce in San Francisco last year to speak and meet and collaborate with others.

I loved the mash up of speakers at Dreamforce. I bought Adriana Huffington’s book, Thrive after seeing her talk with Eckhart Tolle. She got everyone to meditate and talked passionately about the transformative effects of meditation and mindfulness. I have been meditating a lot more since her talk and my life has been a lot calmer. Hillary Rodman Clinton’s talk with Klaus Schwab from the World Economic Forum was also incredibly inspiring!

At Dreamforce, one of my favourite people I met was Tessa Kipping from SolarAid. Since Dreamforce, she has given me tips for my Salesforce dashboards. Tessa and I originally bonded at Dreamforce during the most unique and amazing session with Tony Robbins. Screaming ‘I Own You’ at the top of our voices, beating our chests, and hugging each other and other attendees, Tessa and I became quick friends. Tony Robbins got every person in attendance feeling a state of invincibility. Everyone felt like they could take over the world!

From dancing the night away to Bruno Mars, Will.i.am, and MC Hammer to meeting brilliant people who all are passionate about Salesforce and seeing our huge potential in changing the world together, Dreamforce is not to be missed. It was the most remarkable experience and I loved every minute of it. Hope you can make it to Dreamforce this September!

About the Author
Lucy Buck is Founder and CEO of Child’s i Foundation. In her previous career Lucy was a Producer working on prime time TV shows including Big Brother and Hells Kitchen. After volunteering at a baby orphanage and seeing firsthand the damaging effects institutions had on young children Lucy decided to use her TV skills to prove that is was possible to find abandoned children families in Uganda. Lucy was awarded the Vodafone World of Difference award the Clarins Women of the Year award. Lucy is based in London and frequently visits the project in Uganda.