Blogger’s Note: World Vision is launching a push, email newsletter for our radio station partners. Each month, I will contribute some observations about how to best communicate about World Vision and the children on air. Here’s the first installment.

Jim Hutto was (and still is) my radio mentor. This 50-year broadcasting veteran taught me how to build my Rolodex, brand a station, and most importantly, how to connect with my audience. One morning after my shift, we met in his office. He told me to bring a photograph of my wife to work with me the next day. He said, “Tape it to your copy stand in front of your mic. When you open the mic, talk to her and her alone.”

This was my first lesson in the “power of one.”

You know as well as I do that radio is the most intimate of the communication media. Your listeners wake up with you, take showers with you, invite you to lunch, pull up a chair for you in their cubicles, and sit with you in traffic. You are their friend. You make the day shorter.

When you engage your listeners for World Vision, embrace “the power of one.” You’re talking to just one person at a time—even if you have a weekly cume of three-million.

I’ve worded “the power of one” like this:

One person can change the world.
You are that one person.
One person can make one call or one click.
For one dollar per day, you can change the life of one child for a lifetime.
All it takes is one decision.

If you can harness “the power of one”, you’ll recruit thousands of sponsors for World Vision children.