Have Fun • Do Good

What Does Doing Good Mean to You?

2009-07-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned on Wednesday, I've been thinking about how to spend the 40 days before my 40th birthday in a have-fun, do-good way to celebrate this particular aging transition.

It's pretty easy to come up with ways to have fun, but I've been thinking a lot about what it means to "do good." Here are some of the way Merriam-Webster's online dictionary defines it:

As an adjective it can mean virtuous, kind, benevolent, and true. It is also defined as bountiful, suitable, fit and fertile like "good land" and "good to eat." It can also mean right, which is where it gets tricky, because we all have different versions of what we think is right.

As a noun it can mean, "something conforming to the moral order of the universe," (again, tricky, since different people have different morals), and it can also mean, "something that has economic utility or satisfies an economic want," which I think is interesting because sometimes things related to money and economics aren't associated with being good.

To me, "doing good" means:

Using your gifts and talents to their fullest.
Using your gifts and talents to help others.
Caring for yourself so you can care for others.
Being respectful of all people (even if they annoy you--tough one for me)
Enjoying your life as it is, even it's not how you want it to be at the moment.
Making choices and taking actions with the needs of others in mind, as well as your own.
Making choices and taking actions as if we are all connected.

How Do You Have Fun and Do Good on Your (Gasp, 40th) Birthday?

2009-07-08T09:51:00.000-07:00

People have started to ask me how I'll be celebrating my 40th birthday next month: Will I be having a party, or a day of solo contemplation? Will I go on a fabulous trip, or stay home with friends? And what would I like for gifts, or do I want gifts at all?

I haven't entirely decided how to celebrate the big day, and would love your ideas about how to celebrate your birthday in a way that is fun and makes a difference.

In his post, What Should I Do On Your Birthday? Seth Godin writes:

"With all due respect to Hallmark, the idea of sending people cards and presents on their birthday seems both selfish and small-minded. It seems to me that we could think bigger. . . .

. . . On my birthday, it would make me really happy if people started a project, launched an idea or engaged in a difficult interaction that made something good happen. Make a difference day."

I know a lot of people have been using the Causes Birthday Wish Facebook application to ask friends to donate to their favorite nonprofit. I may go that route, but I have to tell you, it kinda gets on my nerves when I receive an email every time my friend receives a donation. On the other hand, the application seems to be making a difference according to Susan Gordon's post, $1 Million Donated Through Birthday Wish! on Causes Exchange.

Thing is, I feel like I should be doing something to have fun and do good on my birthday, not necessarily asking other people to do something in honor of my birthday.

For example, Adrian Reif chronicled his "birthday challenge" on his blog, aptly named, Adrian's Birthday Challenge. Inspired by an article about birthday fitness challenges in Backpacker Magazine, Adrian decided to celebrate his 24th birthday with a physical and mental challenge, and a fundraiser for the Nashville Rescue Mission. During the 24 hours of his birthday he challenged himself and his friends and family to:

24 miles of bike riding
24 kilometers (14.9 miles) of running
24 boulder problems (rock climbing routes without a rope)
240 total of push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups - (100 sit-ups, 90 push-ups, 50 pull-ups)
240 Frisbees caught and thrown (it takes two! i need your help)
8,760 seconds of reading (1 for each day I’ll have been alive)
24 songs listened to from 1985
24 - # of strangers to meet and learn their names
24 hugs to different people (this means you, too!)
24 spoken Chinese phrases (leaving for China in February)
24 cupcakes shared with friends

He also raised over $1,000 in donations.

What ideas do you have for how to celebrate your birthday in a way that is fun and makes a difference?

Flickr Photo Credit: Happy Birthday to ME! uploaded by *spudballoo*
Cross-posted from BlogHer.com.

birthday
forty
causes
challenge
nonprofit

Let's Connect: Twitter, Facebook, Ning & Podcasts

2009-07-07T14:09:00.000-07:00

Hello Have Fun * Do Gooders!

I'm back from a relaxing vacation and feeling energized. One of the things I wanted to share with you is other places that we can connect online:

Twitter
I get lots of requests to post about things, but don't always have time so lots of times I "tweet" links to stuff. I use the Facebook Twitter application so my tweets also show up in my news feed on . .

Facebook
You can friend me and join the Have Fun * Do Good Facebook Page. It is a bit barren at the moment 'cause I just set it up and am moving folks over from my old Have Fun * Do Good Facebook group.

Changeblogger Ning Network
I've also set up a Ning network for Changebloggers, people who use their blogs, podcasts and vlogs to make positive change. We've got 172 members at the moment. Join us!

BlogHer
I've been a Contributing Editor, along with Beth Kanter, for the past 3.5 years of BlogHer's Nonprofits and Social Change section. They have recently added a social networking component, so feel free to friend me there as well.

Big Vision Podcast (subscribe via iTunes)
I think most of you already know this, but in addition to Have Fun * Do Good, I also produce a podcast where I interview people who I feel have a big vision for a better world. If you have suggestions for people I should interview, let me know. I also host the Be Bold Podcast: Create a Career with Impact (subscribe via iTunes) and produce the Arts and Healing Podcast (subscribe via iTunes)

See ya around online!

Did I Like The Philanthropist? Not So Much.

2009-06-26T14:08:00.000-07:00

I wanted to like NBC's new show, The Philanthropist, but I didn't.

What I did like is that The Philanthropist's website has a resource page with links to organizations like the Nigerian Red Cross, CARE, and the International Crisis Group. That's about all I liked.

The show's premise is that a wealthy businessman, Teddy Rist, has a transformational experience during a business trip to Nigeria and helps save a young boy during a flood. (We later learn that his own young son is dead). Although his company has a foundation, giving money doesn't feel like enough now for Teddy, and he returns to Nigeria to single-handedly deliver vaccine to a village near where the boy he rescued lived.

The problem is, Rist is a jerk. He clearly goes on this one-man mission to assuage the pain of his son's death, which is somewhat realistic since we are often drawn to causes in an attempt to heal broken parts of ourselves. Thing is, he fails to return his ex-wife's emails or phone calls when she asks him to help move everything out of their dead son's room, and then gets angry at her when she does it without him. In my book, being a jerk to your ex-wife who is trying to get over the loss of your child doesn't get balanced out by delivering vaccine to a remote village in Nigeria.

Oh, and then there are all of the women he sleeps with. While working with a Nigerian drug dealer to get the vaccine released from the airport, a group of beautiful women are brought to Rist's hotel room. "They are all orphans," the dealer says. And then there is the Nigerian woman doctor who he delivers the vaccine to who asks, "How will I'll ever repay you?" Oh, he found a way. Not to mention the woman bartender he gives a $1,000 check to listen to him tell his story (the voiceover for the show).

I'm not saying Rist has to be perfect, but appealing would have been nice. The characters of Simon Baker on The Mentalist and Michael Weston on Burn Notice have more integrity than Rist.

Finally, why does The Philanthropist have to be a white man? Why couldn't it have been a woman, like the Miranda Bailey character on Grey's Anatomy, a tough, smart, problem-solver with a soft heart?

Hey, if the show takes off and inspires people to become involved in international development and philanthropy, great, if not, I hope next time a character will be created who, although not perfect, has as much wealth of character as wealth in his or her wallet.

Here's what some other bloggers are saying about The Philanthropist:

Council on Foundations Statement on The Philanthropist by Sean Stannard-Stockton on Tactical Philanthropy.
The Philanthropist by Artemis on Gotham Nights
The Philanthropist: An Englishman in Abuja by Drake Lelane on Film.com
The Philanthropist - An early look by Kona Gallagher on TVSquad.com
Did You Watch 'The Philanthropist' Last Night? by Joanne Fritz on Joanne's Nonprofit Blog

Cross-posted from BlogHer.com.

television
The Philanthropist
philanthropy

How You Can Participate in United We Serve This Summer

2009-06-25T11:21:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in my Monday post, First Lady Michelle Obama and United We Serve, June 22nd was the first day of United We Serve, the Obama Administration's nationwide summer of service initiative that will run until September 11th, which will be a National Day of Service and Remembrance.

While I was at the 2009 National Conference on Volunteering and Service this week, I went to a session about United We Serve with Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director, White House Office of Public Engagement, and Carlos Monje, Senior Policy Advisor, White House Domestic Policy Counsel.

Wicks and Monje outlined the 3 goals of United We Serve:

To bolster civic engagement nationwide.
To better our communities in 4 priority issue areas: energy/environment, education, health care, and community renewal.
To develop creative, sustainable partnerships with nonprofit organizations, faith-based groups, issue groups, labor unions, educational institutions, business corporations, foundations, and all levels of government.

They also talked about ways individuals and organizations can get involved with United We Serve:

Register your projects(s) on Serve.gov. You don't need to be an organization to do this. Any individuals/group/family can register their project. They have toolkits available, and will be building more, to help you create your project.
Find a volunteer opportunity on Serve.gov using the search engine powered by All For Good.
Share your story about your summer service project.
Email your email lists, listservs and social networks directing people to register and search for projects on Serve.gov
Link to Serve.gov on your blog or website (Digital badges are available here)
Think creatively about how to collaborate with other organizations, businesses, foundations, etc.
Contact the Corporation for National and Community Service about how to get engaged by emailing serviceinitiative@cns.gov.

I'm probably going to be spending my summer of service setting up a blog for a grassroots program in my neighborhood, called Reading Partners, that I volunteer with during the school year. What are you going to do?

volunteer
United We Serve
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service

Social Innovation: Harnessing What Works to Address Critical National Challenges

2009-06-24T11:54:00.000-07:00

I've been hearing a lot about the Social Innovation Fund lately, an element of the Serve America Act. A May 6th White House blog post by Jesse Lee, What is the Social Innovation Fund? says that the Fund will, "identify the most promising, results-oriented non-profit programs and expand their reach throughout the country."

To learn more about the Fund, I attended a panel called Social Innovation: Harnessing What Works to Address Critical National Challenges at the 2009 National Conference on Volunteering and Service.

The discussion focused less on what the Fund will do, and more on best practices it should adopt, and challenges it will face once it is up and running.

Michele Jolin, Senior Advisor for Social Innovation for the Domestic Policy Council at The White House was the panel moderator. If you would like to watch the video from the session, click on this link for the Social Innovation Forum. You will have to fill out a form, as if you were registering for a live webcast, to access the video.

Cheryl Dorsey, the President of Echoing Green, a nonprofit that provides seed funding and support to social entrepreneurs, talked about how providing capital for social innovation can:

Provide incentive for individual and collective engagement around social problems.
Engage people who are closest to the problem.
Create a competitive marketplace that showcases a variety of ideas.
Give voice to new and alternative actors.

Some factors she feels can support social innovations' success are:

Engaging the crowd and using the wisdom of the crowds to facilitate innovations coming through the pipeline.
Trusting in the importance of new ideas.
Accepting and championing failure and the learning that comes from failure.
Using open source innovation platforms (she mentioned something about Kellogg, that I didn't quite catch--maybe the Kellogg Innovation Network?).
Developing social innovation leaders.

Sarah Di Troia, Partner at New Profit, a nonprofit venture philanthropy company that provides multi-year financial and strategic support to social entrepreneurs, talked about the importance of funding not only program innovation, but also organizational innovation. She emphasized that when great programs are housed in bad organizations they die.

She encouraged focusing on what facilitates the building of strong organizations that can house successful programs, and "raising up patterns" of what is working operationally for organizations, and disseminating that information.

Steve Goldsmith, Vice Chair for the Corporation for National and Community Service, the Daniel Paul Professor of Government at Harvard's University's Kennedy School of Government, and the Director of the Innovations in American Government Program, addressed some of the challenges that the Social Innovation Fund will face:

Political economy: In politics, people get funding through manipulating relationships and protecting their turf.
Barriers to entry: The government prescribes a lot of requirements (i.e. teaching credentials, MSW's)
Curse of professionalism: A bunch of smart people get in a room and decide that they have a solution to a problem when the answer actually lies somewhere between that room and the people affected by the problem.

He would like to see the Fund support new models that disrupt the system, focus on results, and challenge other aspects of how government works. He also noted the need for an innovative way to capture ideas from the bottom up, and cited Apps for Democracy as an example.

Check out what the bloggers listed below have to say about the Social Innovation Fund, and tell the White House what you think about the idea on the Corporation for National and Community Service website.

Fed's Office of Social Innovation is Sooo 1998 by Allison Fine on A.Fine Blog
Why the Social Innovation Fund is On Track by Andrew Wolk on Andrew Wolk
Government-Driven Social Innovation: Caution Advised by John Cleveland and Peter Plastrik on nuPOLIS' Social Innovation blog
Digging Deeper on the Social Innovation Fund: An Interview with America Forward Coalition by Nathaniel Whittemore on Change.org's Social Entrepreneurship blog
A Look at the Social Innovation Office by Amanda Adams on the OMB Watch blog's The Fine Print.
The Social Innovation Fund & Philanthropy Performance by Sean Stannard-Stockton on Tactical Philanthropy

Full disclosure: I host Echoing Green's Be Bold podcast and have done social media consulting with them.

Cross-posted from BlogHer.com.
Top photo: Michele Jolin and Steve Goldsmith. Second photo: Cheryl Dorsey, Sarah Di Triola, and Ian Hardman (President of Management Leadership for Tomorrow).

social innovation fund
social enterprise
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service

First Lady Michelle Obama and United We Serve

2009-06-22T20:32:00.000-07:00

"It's been said that our true calling in life is where our heart's greatest gladness meets the world's deepest need."
--First Lady Michelle Obama at the 2009 National Conference on Volunteering and Service.

It was pretty darn exciting to be a member of the press for the opening plenary of the 2009 National Conference on Volunteering and Service where First Lady Michelle Obama gave the keynote address today.

Last fall, I had the opportunity to attend and cover the September 11th Presidential Forum on Service during the Service Nation conference in New York City. During the conference, Senator Orrin Hatch and Senator Ted Kennedy, represented by his niece, Caroline Kennedy, announced that they were introducing the Serve America Act of 2008.

Nine months later, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act has been signed, and last week President Obama announced the launch of United We Serve--a call for all Americans to serve in their communities starting today, June 22, until September 11th, which will be a National Day of Service and Remembrance. Americans are encouraged to go to Serve.gov to find a service opportunity.

"This, more than anything, is the key point I want to make today," said the First Lady," that this new Obama Administration doesn't view service as separate from our national priorities, or just something in addition to our national priorities--we have an administration that sees it as the key to achieving our national priorities.

We believe that the only way to build that new foundation for our economy is to establish a new role for service in this country."

The First Lady talked about how so often there is, "a sense that service is helpful, but not essential--that it's something folks should do occasionally, particularly around the holidays; something you do to fulfill a requirement, or fulfill yourself. . . . Service is just a little something extra - the icing on the cake, but not part of the cake itself."

The Obama administration wants to make service and volunteering the icing, and the cake for everyone.

"The story of progress in this nation has always been the story of people who chose - in times of trial and struggle - to serve it. . . . Our history is one long testament to the fundamental truth that real change doesn't come from the top down from Washington, it comes from the bottom up - from citizens organizing and mobilizing and serving the nation that they love."

The First Lady also announced that the Entertainment Industry Foundation will be working with ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC to create a "week-long television event in support of national service" the week of October 19, 2009. During that week, the networks will include service-related themes in some of their programming.

I'll be going back to the National Conference on Volunteering and Service tomorrow, and will share more notes from the workshops on Tuesday and/or Wednesday.

Michelle Obama
First Lady
service
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Empowering Refugees: Interview with Kjerstin Erickson of FORGE

2009-06-19T06:45:00.000-07:00

Kjerstin Erickson is one of those "shiny" people who lights up a room. After meeting her at the Global Engagement Summer last spring, I knew I wanted to grab her for an interview before she became too famous.

Erickson founded FORGE (Facilitating Opportunities for Refugee Growth and Empowerment) in 2003 when she was a 20 year-old junior studying public policy at Stanford University.

FORGE serves 60,000 refugees in three different refugee camps in Southern Africa, and is an official operating partner of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Now 26, Erickson is still FORGE's Executive Director. She has been named a Haas Public Service Fellow at Stanford, a Top 10 College Woman by Glamour Magazine, and a Person You Should Know by CNN.

FORGE uses a collaborative, rather than top-down model, to serve refugees' needs, and much has been written in the blogosphere and media about Erickson's "radical transparency" around the organization's financial challenges.

Saturday, June 20th is World Refugee Day, and this year's theme is "Real People, Real Needs." If you're inspired after listening to the interview on the Big Vision Podcast, or reading the edited transcript below, take a browse through FORGE's gallery of projects created by refugee social entrepreneurs.

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Kjerstin Erickson: FORGE is an international nonprofit organization that works with refugee communities in Africa. What we do is essentially support social entrepreneurship within refugee communities. We work with about 60,000 refugees from across the continent. We bring communities together to identify their top problems, needs, and priorities, and solve them internally.

The projects can range from preschools, to libraries and computer training centers, to women empowerment programs. It runs the gamut based on what the needs of the community are, and what they're most passionate about solving at that time.

You use a process that on your website was described as the, "collaborative project planning process."

Yes.

Can you talk about how that works, and what the pros and cons of that process are?

The "collaborative project planning process" is a mouthful. We like to refer to it as a "people-powered" development process. It's really designed to make sure that all solutions are both emerging from the local community and tailored to the community's needs, and are developing the leadership skills of the most promising and emerging leaders at the same time. This process emerged based on working for four years in a more traditional development organization sense, in which we were bringing in international volunteers. We would look at a community and say, "This community needs a library, " or "You don't have enough kids in preschool." Then we would design the projects and implement them top down.

We had a lot of great results there, but we realized that something was missing and that the individuals that were involved on our side were getting so much learning experience and leadership experience by creating these projects, but we weren't designed to create those learning experiences from Americans. We wanted to ultimately empower the refugees as much as we could. We radically transformed the way that we did our business, and designed a process through which the refugees themselves would get all of that experience.

At the same time, we would be creating projects that were more locally tailored and more specific and impactful, and allowed a community and a set of individuals to be able to repeat that process, and learn all of the important skills of how to create community change.

What have been the challenges of using that process? I mean, obviously people haven't been using that other process for so long if it is completely ineffectual.

Right.

Obviously, what's good about it is that you're empowering people. You're hopefully meeting the needs that they have determined. They're walking away with skills. Hopefully the project continues. What's the dark side? What's the challenge of using that process?

Well, it's scary because you have no control. You walk into a community, and you have no idea what they're going to say, and what they're going to need. Sometimes from our perspective we might think, "That's not what you need," or "That's not a good idea," or "That's never going to work," or the community might elect some leaders that we don't think are the best leaders.

You really have to trust the process and go with it, and that takes a lot of restraint. It takes a lot of training on behalf of the project managers that oversee the process.

Ultimately, it takes a willingness to allow some failures to occur, but allow those failures to be educational for a community. I think that is something that we all learn growing up. We have the opportunity to fail. We have the opportunity to make mistakes, and learn from those and recover. It's the same thing in a development context.

What's one of your favorite FORGE success stories?

The model that FORGE takes is really a long-term impact framework. We are focused on preparing individuals to eventually return to their home countries and to help rebuild, and that's human capacity building. It's one of the hardest things to measure, and it's probably one of the hardest things to do. It does take a long-term framework, in terms of being able to view results. Fortunately, we've been around for about six years now. We can look at some of the people that we most immediately, and most originally started to work with. One of those individuals is Paul Ohisa, and he's a refugee from Sudan.

He was actually on a business trip, on his bike, to Uganda. He was coming back to his village, and he found that his village was in flames. It had been bombed. He just had to drop everything, turn around, and run.

He had no idea where his family went. He ran into Congo. He was there for about a month, and then war in Congo was breaking out. He ended up running for about 1,500 miles all the way to Zambia, arriving with nothing but the clothes on his back, about 90 pounds, and showing up at a refugee camp where he knew nobody.

He was able to get some work digging pit latrines to put himself through one semester of his remaining high school education, and then he ran out of money.

He was the first person that we sponsored to our High School Education Program, and he was able to complete his education. He was the head boy of his school, and then he was one of our first employees leading the largest library in a refugee camp in the world, the Meheba Friendly Library.

He showed so much leadership and promise that we ended up sponsoring him to a university through our FORGE education fund. His dream was to go back to Sudan, and to contribute and help rebuild. He did his degree in NGO Management, and will be graduating this coming June.

And he's come up with his plan, his social entrepreneurship plan, to bring attention to the refugee plight and also to contribute to rebuilding in Sudan.

His idea is that he wants to recreate, in reverse, the walk that he made from Sudan all the way through Congo and into Zambia. Along the way he will stop in at villages, tell his story, talk about African unity, and talk about the way that wars are so destructive, but in a way that refugees can be powerful forces for change. Eventually, he will get back to his small little village in southern Sudan, present himself as the first university graduate from the entire village, and start to implement some of the skills he gained.

We have told him that unfortunately we don't have the funds to support such a walk, but he is so committed to it that he is already doing his fundraising and trying to find radio stations that will follow him.

It's an empowering and inspirational story about how ultimately an organization doesn't have to create all the changes themselves. They can create the change makers.

They can facilitate that change or create the structures to help that along.

Exactly.

What's the path that brought you to this work? You started very young. It's not something that everyone wakes up to do. "Oh, I think I'm going to go work in refugee camps." What brought you here?

It wasn't something I woke up thinking I was going to do either. Mainly it was luck. I was in high school, I was 17 and my first trip to Africa was to Kenya with my family, just on a picture safari. That's when I think my worldview was originally rocked. I knew I was going to Stanford, and I was on top of the world. And at that time I really believed that if you worked hard enough at something you could achieve it.

It wasn't until I got to Kenya and saw how many kids were just dying to go to school and would do anything that I realized that that's not true all over the world.

There are people who will work as hard as they possibly can, but because of structures, and because of systems that I had access to that they often do not, it just seemed to shake my vision of what's right in the world.

I committed to learning more, and I went to Stanford and started studying Swahili and African studies. The first opportunity that I had to go back was to work in a refugee camp in Botswana.

Completely random. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but when I arrived on the ground, it became pretty clear quickly that this is what I wanted to dedicate myself to. And from there the rest is a blur, but it ended up in an organization a few years down the line.

Can you talk a little bit about the development of the organization? Why did you decide to create your own organization rather than working for another organization? What are the benefits of that, and the challenges of that?

I'm actually not the typical, at least in the way that we talk about it now, picture of a social entrepreneur because I actually didn't set out to create an organization at first. I was inspired by the possibilities that I saw in the refugee camp environment, and the possibilities for using refugees as agents of peace and change, and training them to be that, but I didn't think that I would be doing that on any kind of organizational level.

I just really wanted to learn more after my first trip, and ended up talking to a lot of other individuals about the situation in camps and how it could be changed and transformed, and ended up inspiring a lot of other individuals to get involved. We just started doing what we could on a university basis, and one day looked around and realized that this was a full-fledged organization.

I was not spending any time on schoolwork anymore. We had people that were depending on us on the ground, and it was time to drop out of school and run the organization full time. I was just finishing my junior year.

Haven't you changed the model some, because it was a fundraising model through students fundraising, and now it's a little bit different? How has that changed?

The first four years, because I was a student at the time, there's no good way to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars when you are 20 years old and have no experience or results besides to get a lot of people to raise money individually. So, that's what we did. We would bring students. We would train them for about seven months in the States, and then they would go to the ground during the summertime for two to three months and implement projects that they had been planning.

And that worked great, but as I mentioned earlier when talking about the importance of locally derived projects, we were not empowering people to the level that we could, the refugee community itself.

Four years in, that's when we decided to change the model to essentially eliminate our dependable revenue stream, but to do it for the sake of creating maximum impact by turning over the responsibilities of the American volunteers to the refugee community itself.

Losing some, a lot of fundraising in the process, but gaining more than we could ever have imagined in impact and long term change.

So, now people can go on the site and support projects. Is that how it works?

In order to try to replace some of that revenue, we built a state of the art Web 2.0, Web 2.5 website that allows individuals in the western world to connect directly with our projects on the ground. The biggest problem with international development is that people don't know where their money is going. They don't know if it is going to be used the right way, or if it just going to be going into some big organization's coffers.

We wanted to use the power of the Internet to try to connect people to the causes that they were serving, and to bring maximum transparency to the international development world.

Now we have thousands of donors from across the United States, across Europe, and all over the world who are able to select projects and refugee social entrepreneurs that they are the most passionate about and give directly to them through our website.

Last year you got lots of media attention because you blogged on Social Edge about some of the organization's financial struggles. And then just last week, I believe, you wrote about things you suck at, like multi-tasking and managing people who need a lot of structure. Talk about why you have chosen to be so transparent, and how that has helped, or not helped the organization.

Starting an organization at 20, the top job that I held before becoming the Founder and Executive Director was cleaning tanning beds in a tanning salon in Santa Rosa. I had a lot to learn. I knew nothing about people management. I was learning how to effectively manage an organization of 160 employees across five different offices on multiple continents in different time zones with different currencies, and it's a big challenge.

I think that the only way that I got by was to be open and honest with myself about mistakes that I, or the organization, had made along the way and lessons that we had learned; and through that process, cleanse yourself of the guilt of holding it all in.

And to also ensure that the lessons that are learned stay learned and are passed down, that we can be very clear about the things that we have done wrong so that we don't do those things again.

We found that it became an organizational culture in many ways. When we train staff members in project management we focus mostly on things that can go wrong, things that we've done wrong, lessons that we've learned, and it works very well for us because we find that too often in international development you hear about the rosy stuff.

But what anyone who has actually been on the ground knows is that it is hard. Things go wrong all the time.

We found that the only way to really be constantly improving and growing is to be open and clear. I am sure that there are people that look at a post on "Things I Suck At" and say, "I'll never donate to an organization whose Executive Director sucks at multi-tasking," or whatever it might be.

But then there are others that get that too, and can see those things in themselves. I think that is ultimately, I guess, our target audience.

What advice do you have for students either who are in college like you were (all the poor young people who have graduated in this crazy world right now), and they have an idea for how they want to create a career, organization or project with social impact? What advice do you have for them?

Don't compromise would be the first one. There was a moment when I was first starting out that I thought, "Perhaps the best way to do this will be to go to grad school, get a hundred degrees, wait until I am 35 and can be respected, and then jump in." Yet, there was something in me that knew I had found something special by finding something that I cared about, and a point of intervention that I thought could really work. I think that that is one of the things that, especially my generation, is seeing more and more around them.

We are in a time where unprecedented change is possible. Having the opportunity to be involved in that in any way is very, very special. I'd say if you ever get that spark to say, "Wait a second. I can do something here. I see something different." Don't wait. Just go for it.

You'll learn more along the way than you would ever learn in ten PhD's. You will probably effect more change as well.

How can people who are listening to this show, or read the transcript on the blog, get involved with FORGE? How can they help?

That's the best question! Our website is at forgenow.org. As I mentioned, it is wonderful for connecting people to the exact types of work that they are interested in, and to allow them to support the particular refugee social entrepreneur that they find a connection to.

And is there anything else that you wanted to talk about FORGE's work, or philanthropy, or international development that you didn't get to cover?

Well, I think one of the biggest things that crosses people's minds when they hear "Africa," particularly Africa and refugees, is, "Oh my God. It has been going on my whole life. There are always wars over there. It is never going to end. Why are we going to just throw more money into this sinkhole when the continent is just in disarray?" I get that. I think that I had a lot of those reactions early on, like, is this ever going to be solved, or are these problems intractable? But after spending the years on the ground that I have, I'm absolutely convinced that the problems that Africa faces are 100% overcomable with investment; investment in root causes rather than symptoms.

The first time I went to Africa I was 17. I love shoes and I had 30 pairs of shoes at home. I was shocked when I saw that kids weren't wearing shoes, and that they were walking to school. It was appalling.

My first reaction was, "Well, they need shoes. I am going to send it to them." I was able to collect 2,000 shoes, and everyone told me I was such a good person. I sent them over.

It wasn't until a few years later when I learned more about development and how important it is to carefully consider interventions that I realized that that was probably doing more harm than good.

Who knows what happens when kids who haven't worn shoes are suddenly wearing them. Then their feet get tender again, and what happens when they grow out of them? Are they going to have to spend more of their money on shoes?

There are all kinds of issues there and what root problem was actually being solved? That is the question that I think the international community needs to look at more, because if we invested the same amount in root causes, like human capacity, education, and economic systems, that we do in the symptoms of no shoes, no shirt, needing balls to play with, or whatever it might be, I think the issues that Africa faces can be solved within our lifetimes.

Cross-posted from BlogHer.

refugees
Kjerstin Erickson
development
international
UNHCR
social entrepreneur

A Little Shot of Inspiration: 2009 Echoing Green Fellow video

2009-06-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

Want a little shot of inspiration during your lunch or coffee break? Take 3 minutes to watch this video of the 2009 Echoing Green Fellows:

These 17 social entrepreneurs were selected from 1,000 applicants. Each Fellow will receive up to $90,000 over two years, plus comprehensive technical assistance, consulting support, and other organizational benefits.

Full disclosure: I have done social media consulting for Echoing Green and host their podcast, the Be Bold Podcast.

social entrepreneur
echoing green
philanthropy
nonprofit

More Do-Good Gifts for Dad

2009-06-12T14:34:00.000-07:00

Father's Day is next week (June 21). Do you know what you're getting your dad?

Below are a few gift ideas to add to my Do-Good Gifts for Dad list from last year:

1. In her post, Feel Good Father's Day Gifts, Bargain Babe suggests using GoodSearch to find and purchase your gift. According to the GoodSearch site, up to 30% of your purchase goes to the cause of your choice.

2. Like last year, the Charity Navigator Blog suggests purchasing a Good Card, a gift card that your dad can use to donate to the nonprofit of his choice.

3. In her post, Green Deals and Giveaways, Miss Malaprop.com suggests getting your dad a pair of TOMS Shoes. For each pair you buy, TOMS will give a pair of shoes to a child who can't afford them.

4. The IE Mommy has a list 5 gift ideas in her post, Make a Difference on Father's Day. One of them is to support dads in the military by making a donation in your father's honor to the USO, Operation Home Front, or AnySoldier.com.

5. In the post, Get Fit for Father's Day, That's Fit points to the American Council on Exercise's article about giving your Dad the gift of exercising together by going for a hike, working out at the gym, or playing golf--without the golf cart!

6. On Twitter, @maggieleithead (Maggie Leithead) writes that she gave her dad a CPAWS (Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society) donation last year. You can also Adopt an Acre in your Dad's name through Nature Conservancy.

7. Also on Twitter, @jcwiley (Jesse Wiley) suggests checking out the green clothing buying guide on Treehugger, purchasing a Taste of the Nation ticket to help end childhood hunger, and giving a loan to an entrepreneur through Kiva.org in your Dad's name (gift certificates are available too).

What are some other do-good gifts for Dad?

Cross-posted from BlogHer.com.
Photo of my Dad and I going for a walk last weekend taken by my camera's timer (:

Father's Day
gift
present
nonprofit
green

I Made My First Kiva Loan to an American Entrepreneur Today

2009-06-10T16:23:00.000-07:00

Today I used Kiva.org to loan $25.00 to Elizabeth, a beauty salon owner in Queens, New York who needs $6,000 to purchase new chairs, hair dryers, and other items for her salon. This is the fourth loan I've made to an entrepreneur using Kiva, but the first one to an entrepreneur in the United States.

Kiva facilitates regular people, like you and me, making micro-loans to entrepreneurs who aren't able to get a loan from the bank. In the past, Kiva only worked with entrepreneurs outside of the U.S., but today they extended their services to American entrepreneurs.

Check out Good Morning America's story today about Kiva, and their interview with its President, Premal Shah. Shah explains how to be considered for a loan, and how to be a lender.

So far, Kiva has a 98% repayment rate. Once the entrepreneur you've helped pays back your loan, you can either get your money back, or reinvest it in another entrepreneur.

I'm excited about this new service first, because I'm sure more American entrepreneurs than ever could use help getting their businesses started, and second, because it makes the program less one-sided--Americans helping people in the developing world--to people helping people, wherever they live. Someone in Kenya could loan to an entrepreneur in the States, and vice versa.

I'm also hopeful that Kiva will find some microfinance partners who work specifically with American Indian, Alaskan Native and Hawaiian Native entrepreneurs like I proposed in my March post, A Kiva.org for Native American Entrepreneurs?

Kiva.org works with microfinance institutions to help identify entrepreneurs, and to distribute loans to them. They are working with ACCION USA and the Opportunity Fund for the new U.S. program. If you know of any microfinance institutions that serve Native Americans in particular, let me know.

You can read more about the launch of Kiva's U.S. program on these blogs:

Kiva's First US Loan on Kiva Stories from the Field
Kiva in the US on the Kiva.org Blog
Kiva Brings Microlending Home to U.S. Entrepreneurs in Need by Leena Rao on TechCrunch.
Kiva Now Allows You to Invest in US Small Businesses by Steven Walling on ReadWriteWeb.
Kiva Brings Loan Program to the US by Nathaniel Whittemore on Change.org.
More Microlending Comes to the US by Leigh Graham on Change.org.

Cross-posted from BlogHer.com.

kiva
loan
entrepreneur
United States

Add Your Cause-Related Blog to the List of Change

2009-06-05T14:27:00.001-07:00

Livingston Communications has launched a new ranked list of cause-related blogs called List of Change.

If you are using your blog for social impact, you can submit your site to be included on the List by filling out this form.

The List of Change was developed by programmer Shannon Whitley and Geoff Livingston, and co-facilitated by changeblogger extraordinaire, and my co-Contributing Editor of the Social Change section of BlogHer, Beth Kanter.

Eventually the List will be moved to the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s site after its redesign.

Each blog's ranking is established by statistics: Technorati ranking, Technorati inbound blog links, Bloglines subscriptions, Alexa rank, Google pagerank, and Yahoo! inbound links.

You can read more about the List of Change on these blogs:

Introducing the List of Change by Geoff Livingston on The Buzz Bin.
The List of Change by Beth Kanter on Beth's Blog.
New List Ranks Blogs About Nonprofit Causes by Peter Panepento on Give and Take

Cross posted from BlogHer.com.

nonprofit
social change
list
rank
cause
activism

Join Beth & I at Craigslist Foundation's Nonprofit Boot Camp

2009-05-29T15:56:00.000-07:00

Are you thinking about starting a nonprofit, or just want to learn new skills to make your present job easier?

Come check out the Craigslist Foundation's Nonprofit Boot Camp on June 20th in Berkeley, CA. The day includes workshops, one-on-one coaching sessions, and keynotes by Arianna Huffington, Randi Zuckerberg and Craig Newmark.

The registration fee is $75, but if that's a little steep for you this year, you can attend the event by volunteering for a shift through One Brick.

Beth Kanter, my co-Contributing Editor for BlogHer's Social Change and Nonprofit section, and I will both be speaking about how nonprofits can use social media.

Beth's session will be, How To Think Like A Social Media Marketing Genius - 8 Principles for Success Inspired by Einstein. My session, which I'll be co-facilitating with Eric Leland of Eric Leland Design, is, Get Started Using Social Media - Today!

It really is a fun event for meeting people in the nonprofit community, and for gaining new skills. Darius Dunlap went to Boot Camp for the first time in 2004, the year he and his wife and founded the Square Peg Foundation. He writes on his blog,

"That first Boot Camp was an amazing experience for me, and since then I have only missed one. . . .If you work at a non-profit, volunteer, serve on a board, or have always dreamed of starting something that really matters, you should join us . . ."

Elliot Harmon of TechSoup went for the first time last year and says,

"The networking opportunities alone are well worth the price of admission, not to mention the excellent speakers and panels."

You can listen to sessions from past Boot Camps on the Craigslist Foundation Podcast, and listen to Craig Newmark talk about the event on KPFA's Morning Show with Aimee Allison.

Full disclosure: I spoke at Boot Camp last year and have worked on their podcast in years past.

Photo credit: Photo of me writing on a flip chart at last year's Boot Camp by Jon Bauer. Photo of Beth speaking at the BlogHer Conference last year by JD Lasica.

Cross-posted from BlogHer.com

nonprofit
skills
conference
craigslist
social media

3 Answers for a Young Activist

2009-05-27T16:10:00.001-07:00

Once or twice a month I get an email from an aspiring activist, social entrepreneur, or nonprofit professional who has just moved to the Bay Area and wants to set up a phone call to discuss the Bay Area's, "social change scene." I usually agree to the calls. My one requirement is that they send me 3-5 questions beforehand that they want to discuss during our half hour chat.

Recently, a young woman sent me questions that were different than the kind I usually receive. They went beyond, "Where can I find a job?" to, "How do I live my life?" I thought I'd share some of my answers with you, and hope you'll add yours in the comments as well.

1. What are the 3 most common mistakes (the kind that serve as a barrier in achieving your big picture dream) you see people making?

a. Not realizing that "for sure" doesn't exist.
There are very few things in life that are 100% guaranteed, which is scary, but if you have a big dream for your future, chances are achieving it will involve taking some risks and leaps of faith. There will never be a guarantee that you will succeed, but on the bright side, there will never be a guarantee that you will fail! Even if you feel like you need more experience, more skills, more time, more money, more confidence, more whatever before you can pursue your dream, take a step, even if it is a small one, towards your dreams.

b. Not breaking big dreams down into small actions.
People can feel so overwhelmed by their big visions that they become paralyzed. Breaking down what you want to do into small, manageable actions can help you move through your paralysis. Also, taking action often provides answers to questions that thinking will never provide. I thought I wanted to be a massage therapist, until I took a class and realized on the first day that I had to touch hairy, naked people I didn't know! Needless to say, I did not pursue that path.

c. Not balancing planning and flexibility.
Some people are very flexible. They live on intuition and instinct and can change their plans on a moments notice, but if you don't mix some planning in with instinct, you'll spend all of your time putting out fires and taking opportunities that may not ultimately lead you to your goal. Other people are planners. They map out every step that will take them to realize their vision. Unfortunately, things don't always go according to plan, especially if you are starting something new, and you need to be able to come up with alternative solutions and course corrections, or you'll become frustrated and burned out very quickly. To succeed, you'll need to balance flexibility and planning.

2. What are the fundamental rules you live by (the ones that make someone successful) And/or what are the important practices every successful changemaker incorporates into their daily routines?

I can't speak for other people, nor can I say that I do all of these things, but I aspire to follow these "rules."

a. Family and friends come first.
When you are on your death bed, will you be thinking about how you wish you had written more emails, or went to more conferences, or wrote more reports? I doubt it. The call to, "make the world a better place," can be exciting, energizing, and all-consuming, but don't forget the people in your life who mean the most to you. How you live your personal life can be just as world changing and impactful as how you live your professional life.

b. Make time for the three R's: rest, reflection and recreation.
Social change work happens over the long haul. You may not see the results you want to achieve in your lifetime (i.e. the end of poverty). Most people who do social change work do so because they are emotionally connected to a cause. That emotion can give you energy, but it can also exhaust you. It's important to make space for regular (daily, weekly, monthly) times to reflect, rest and recreate to keep you fueled for the long-term.

c. You have to take care of yourself as well as take care of the world.
How many people do you know who work in the social change field and are doing incredible work, but are unhealthy either physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually? Just like giving to others can cheer up a self-absorbed person, giving to yourself can energize someone who is always giving to others. As Seane Corn said in my interview with her about Off the Mat, Into the World:

"We use the analogy like when you are on an airplane and they say, 'If there is ever a problem and the pressure drops and the oxygen masks drops from the ceiling, put it on yourself first, and then put it on your child or friend.' It is the same thing. You have to nurture and nourish yourself before you can truly be active in the world in a sustainable way."

3. What promising and exciting trends in the social change space do you see developing in the next 5-10 years?

a. Collaboration.
Whether it takes the form of social media tools, like wikis, or a conference, like Opportunity Collaboration, or a generation, or an economic necessity, I think collaboration is going to be one of the hot trends within and outside of the social change field.

b. Truly sustainable organizations.
With thousands of nonprofits and NGOs already in existence, and new ones starting each year, even without today's economic difficulties, something has to change to keep all of these organizations afloat, not to mention effective. Unfortunately, some programs won't survive these challenging times, but the ones who do will have used new, innovative models like the ones described in A Hybrid Strategy for Tough Times. I believe the result will be more sustainable and healthier organizations than we have today.

c. Truly sustainable activists.
Not only is the way organizations sustain themselves going to change, so is the way social changemakers sustain themselves. Members of Generation Y are looking for jobs with a work-life balance. Organizations like the Seasons Fund for Social Transformation are funding programs that, "couple the expansive power of personal transformation with the public work of repairing societal ills in the United States." Programs like Off the Mat, Into the World are providing tools for people who are, "interested in conscious activism and service." Hopefully, the activist as martyr archetype will be replaced with the activist as well-rounded citizen.

Cross-posted from BlogHer. Britt Bravo is a Big Vision Consultant.

nonprofit
social entrepreneur
career
advice

Be Bold Podcast: Create a Career with Impact Episode 11

2009-05-26T14:31:00.000-07:00

Question 1: I'd hibernated for twenty years as a home maker and due to changed circumstances that I found myself in I had to pursue a career to bring up my children all by myself. I was successful in this endeavor and have also completed an eight year stint in the social sector. I now want to set up my own nonprofit organization that will create resources for women, as well as help them set goals for themselves and become self-reliant. Where can I seek start-up funds for such an organization?
Question 2: Does an organization have to be nonprofit, or not-for-profit to be considered a social entrepreneurship project?

career
advice
nonprofit
social enterepreneur

Jobs for Change: Nonprofit & Social Enterprise Jobs

2009-05-21T11:09:00.000-07:00

search more nonprofit jobs »

The folks at Change.org rolled out a super useful mini-site last week: Jobs for Change.

You can use Jobs for Change to find and post jobs, ask career guides a question, and read advice on career advisors' blogs.

Check out their Vision Statement too. I signed it (:

Change.org
job
employment
nonprofit
social enterprise

Submit Your Children of the Recession Story to Katie Couric

2009-05-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I represented BlogHer on a conference call with bloggers from the Silicon Valley Moms Blog, and Katie Couric. Couric wanted our help getting the word out about the issues being covered in CBS Reports' new series, Children of the Recession.

According to Couric's post, Katie Couric's Notebook: Children of the Recession:

"Since the recession began, more than one million children have lost health insurance as their parents lose their jobs.

One in 50 American children is homeless, and as more homes go into foreclosure that number will rise."

The series will features stories throughout the year on The CBS Evening News, The Early Show and Sunday Morning about the impact of the recession on children. So far, they've reported on Safe Families for Children in Need, Teens Bring Economic Stress to School, and How to Address Your Kids' Recession Fears.

Couric and the producers hope that the series will motivate people to act, give, and get more involved to solve the problem. You can find info about How to Help or Get Help on the series' landing page.

When Kim Tracy Prince, of Los Angeles Moms Blog, asked Couric during the call, "How do you and your producers deal with it emotionally? You are emersing yourself in all this heartbreak. How do you handle it?"

Couric talked more about her hopes for the series:

"I truly feel this is critically important, and I kind of feel it's a higher calling for all of us. And yes, it's very upsetting, and heartbreaking, and depressing, but the only way that we're going to get these families help is to expose the problem. And so, I think we feel like there's a purpose here, a higher purpose if you will, not to sound too weird about it. And that's why I think we feel really motivated and really excited.

I haven't felt this proud about my work in a long time because I feel like we can really have an impact, but that's why we're looking to you all for help because we can't do it alone."

If you know any children who are suffering from the effects of the recession, email their story to recession@cbs.com with the subject line, "CBS REPORTS: Children of the Recession." Young people can submit their story about how the recession is impacting them via video.

Upcoming "Children of the Recession" stories this week include:

Wednesday, May 20
The Evening News: Abuse and neglect

Thursday, May 21
The Early Show: Child abuse
The Evening News: Homeless kids

Friday, May 22
The Early Show: School for the homeless

Sunday, May 24
Sunday Morning: 5 kids, 5 stories, 5 films about the recession

For more coverage of the call check out:

Katie Couric and Children of the Recession by Pundit Mom
Katie Couric and Children of the Recession by Connect with Your Through Pop Culture and Technology
CBS Reports With Katie Couric - Children of the Recession by NYC Moms Blog
Tweets with the hashtag KatieCouricSVMomsGroup on Twitter

Cross-posted from BlogHer.com.
Britt Bravo is a Big Vision Consultant.

Katie Couric
CBS News
children
news

5 Podcasts That Keep Me Company

2009-05-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

I listen to podcasts while I cook, garden, walk, commute, and travel. They keep me company, and they keep me they informed.

Although podcasts haven't reached the same popularity as blogs and online video, their audience is increasing. According to Podcasting News, a recent Edison Research report found that podcast audiences are up 22% since last year.

Five shows I listen to fairly regularly are:

501c3Cast with Corey Pudhorodsky
Corey's shows are a great resource for nonprofit professionals, and anyone interested in nonprofits and social change. He starts most shows with a few minutes of news from the nonprofit and philanthropic sector, and then transitions into an interview. During most interviews, he ask his guest if they have a quote, saying or mantra that keeps them going. I recommend you listen to his December 22, 2008 show where he created a montage of his favorite quotes from guests.
Listen/subscribe on iTunes.

Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett
American Public Media's, Speaking of Faith, is a public radio show which is also available via podcast. Interview topics range from religion, to ethics, to spirituality. I've been enjoying the interviews in their relatively new, "Repossessing Virtue," series where they, "search for fresh ways to think and talk about the current economic crisis."
Listen/subscribe on iTunes

Tranquility du jour with Kimberly Wilson
Kimberly Wilson, author of Hip Tranquil Chick: A Guide to Life On and Off the Yoga Mat, interviews artists, creative entrepreneurs, yoga teachers, and other hip tranquil chicks. I particularly liked her January 25, 2009 interview with Leigh Standley, creator of Curly Girl Design (maybe that's because I am a curly girl myself!).
Listen/subscribe on iTunes.

UNICEF Podcast
I mentioned in my post on Wednesday that I've had to cut back on some of my donations this year, but UNICEF is one of the organizations I'm still giving regularly to. The shows are usually brief, as short as three minutes, and focused on news from the field as reported by UNICEF correspondents. They often interview children as sources for their stories. Some shows feature young "digital diarists" sharing their opinions and ideas.
Listen/subscribe on iTunes.

Voices on Genocide Prevention by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
I realize that listening to interviews about genocide and human rights isn't everyone's idea of background sound while making dinner, but because I'm interested in these issues, I appreciate having a place where I can find the niche news I'm looking for. The blog, that goes with the podcast, also has links to transcripts of each show.
Listen/subscribe on iTunes

If you want to find podcasts to keep you company, search on the iTunes Music Store, or on one of BlogTalkRadio's Top 5 Podcast Directories.

Cross-posted from BlogHer.com

Britt Bravo is a Big Vision Consultant who produces the Big Vision Podcast and Arts and Healing Podcast, and who hosts Echoing Green's Be Bold Podcast.

podcast
nonprofit
human rights
spiritual
UNICEF

Interview with Zainab Salbi, Founder of Women for Women International

2009-05-13T11:32:00.000-07:00

With finances a little tight this year, I've had to reduce the number of organizations I'm donating to in 2009. One of the ones I am continuing to support is Women for Women International.

This is my second year as a "sister," which means that I pay $27 a month to support one woman for a year while she goes through a program to help her rebuild her life after war. I also write a letter to her each month; sometimes she writes back. At the end of the year, if I'd like to continue being a sister, I am matched with a new woman. I was thrilled when Zainab Salbi, Women for Women International's Founder and CEO, agreed to an interview with me for the Big Vision Podcast. (edited transcript below).

During our conversation, I was particularly moved by her revelation that she started Women for Women International not only to fill a social need, but also for her own healing. Her personal story is chronicled in the memoir, Between Two Worlds: Escape From Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam.

Our conversation began with Zainab describing how Women for Women International serves women survivors of war. Please note that there is a graphic description of what one women endured, but the rest of the interview is very uplifting--I promise! You can also listen to the interview on the Big Vision Podcast site, download it from iTunes, or play it on the little player below:

Zainab Salbi: Women for Women International aims at helping women move from victims, to survivors, to active participants. The way we do that is by asking every single woman around the world to sponsor one woman at a time by sending her $27 a month, along with a letter to start a communication link between the two women. You get her picture. You get her letters. You get to exchange as many letters as you want with her. It depends really on both of you, how much you want to do that.

This is our own form of public diplomacy, where women are reaching out to each other despite all of their boundaries, or their differences, or whatever, and looking at their connections and similarities.

Once the sponsored woman gets into the program - and she usually is one of the most socially excluded women in her own community within a conflict or post-conflict area - she is grouped with a group of 20 other women in what's called a "women's circle."

She goes through an intensive training program in an educational track, that teaches her about her rights as a woman in health, economy, society, and politics, among other things. She also goes through a vocational skills and business skills training track, where it ends up giving her tangible skills, so she can get a job.

It's a one-year program. The women meet every other week in the women's circles in what we call, "safe havens." These are our offices where, literally, there may be fighting outside, or just instability outside.

The women are meeting inside. There is a group of women discussing women's rights, and another group is discussing their bodies. Another group is discussing their legal rights, and another group is learning organic farming. Another group is learning how to make tiles or bricks.

Literally, the safe haven for women is the only space where they can go, and learn, and share their stories. At the end of the year, upon their graduation, the goal becomes, how can we help them get a job? So, we do different things from microcredit lending, to commercial organic farming, to social enterprises, where the job becomes, how do we help her get a job?

I just came from a meeting where I was told that the women we are servicing in Southern Sudan are earning double the per capita income in that country. The women that we are servicing in Congo, where, if they are lucky, they get $0.20 to $0.30 a day before we get them - these are the most socially and economically excluded women - now they are earning $140 a month.

So, there are lots of tangible results from what we are doing, and that's how we measure our success.

That's the story of Women for Women. We work in countries like Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, among others. We started from, in 1993, helping 33 women, to 16 years down the road, we have impacted 172,000 women directly and distributed $79 million to them. Right now, we are working with 53,000 women on a monthly basis in eight conflict areas.

Wow. 53,000, that's amazing! Do you have one or two success stories about individual women that are some of your favorites who have gone through the Women for Women International program?

Well, I'm looking at the picture of one them, Honorata, who is one of my best teachers in this world and a hero for me. Honorata was a high school principal. She speaks three languages fluently, Swahili, English, and French, among many other local languages.

She was a sexual slave. One day, after she left her school, she was kidnapped by the rebels. The first thing they did when they kidnapped her, was they took her to the forest, sawed her wedding ring off of her finger and paralyzed her finger in the process. The first thing they told her is, "You are no longer one man's wife. You are every man's wife right now."

In the year and a half that they had her, they violated her in so many different ways. That included forcing her to cook for them, to clean for them, to carry their ammunition for them, and to get raped by them every single day. That even included being pinned on a cross and gang-raped as men were drumming and dancing in a circle around her.

She finally managed to escape, and in her escape, she had to go through the bush and eat grass and leaves. It was a very harsh journey, and so she got into a safer place only to be gang-raped again, and this time, in front of her daughter. When she talks about the experience she says, "The rape in front of my daughter was more painful than when I was pinned on the cross."

When we met her, Honorata was homeless. Her family had abandoned her. She had not seen her family for a long time. She literally was disoriented, something that is perfectly understandable when life is swept from underneath your feet in a matter of seconds for no reasons you know of.

Within only a year, she had gained her confidence. She started a business with her women's circle that does batik fabric. She started her own trading business on the side, immediately earning her economic power, basically, with her income.

But, she realized that this is not enough. She was saying, "Surviving, alone, is not enough. I really have the responsibility to speak out."

For a year and a half, she volunteered every single free minute that she had. She would go to women and advocate that they had to vote in the election, and they had to speak about what happened to them. They could not keep their silence.

She once took a microphone in a big celebration on Women's Day that we had at our office there, and she addressed a group of men who are the governor, and the mayor, and different government officials. She said, "You need to know that pain has an eye that sees, and pain has an ear that hears. Today, pain has a mouth, and it is speaking to you."

She told them the details of her rape. She told them, "You've got to take responsibility for stopping that. You cannot look in the other direction while this is happening to our country."

Her courage is absolutely magnificent. It is inspiring. For someone to know that my responsibility is not only to survive, but to break my silence, and to speak out, and to encourage other women to speak out, is . . . I am in awe of her courage.

Without her, I wouldn't have my own simple and small courage of speaking my own truth. She is absolutely my teacher. She has since joined Women for Women International staff in Congo, and she is one of the best staff that we have, the most inspiring one because when she speaks with the women, she tells them, "I was where you were; where you are today. And I'm telling you it is possible to rebuild your life, and it is possible to dance and to sing again."

I just came from Congo and met with her, and a lot of other women in Congo and Rwanda and I am constantly amazed. Just absolutely amazed at every single meeting I have with women who have gone through so much horror and through - not only in terms of their rapes; not only because they saw their houses being burned and families being pillaged in front of them. Not only because they are living in refugee camps where the living conditions in these camps are so horrible and miserable. But, despite all of that, they started every gathering of women with singing and dancing. And they ended every single gathering of women with singing and dancing.

They are all really teachers for us that life may be really hard in so many different ways, and really cruel in many other ways, but it is also beautiful. That human spirit and resilience will always triumph at the end of the day. They are teachers, and Honorata is a teacher for me.

Women for Women International has been around for 16 years. Why do you think it succeeds and thrives and continues? What is the secret sauce?

I've spent years trying to identify the secret sauce actually. You know what? As goofy as it may sound, it is love. [laughs] Honestly.

It is the sincerity and the authenticity in what we are trying to do. And doing what we are saying, and saying what we are doing. The agenda here is not to, "stay in business."

I always say the day we run out of business is a good day. The agenda here is to really deliver. This is not about anything else, but doing the right thing for the women and serving them. And the day we lose that I am convinced we will lose everything about us. We will lose our success. We will lose our growth, whatever it is. Whatever all the metrics of success that people use to measure themselves; the day we lose our love, and our authenticity and sincerity towards the mission of the organization, we will lose much more than that.

Every single staff member; every single leader in the organization - You know, we have 600 staff members, 540 of them are of the countries that we are working in, and led by a woman leader of the country that we are working in. Every single one of them has a story. They are not from the elite. They are not people who have never seen pain and have not triumphed from it. Every single one.

Our country director in Rwanda was a refugee all her life. Our country director in Bosnia was a survivor of the four-year siege of Sarajevo. The country director in Kosovo was a refugee during the war in Kosovo, etc. It moves on and on and on. Every single one of them is about their own life's mission, and it is about their own healing.

The sincerity and the authenticity towards the women we serve is the core of who we are.

What is the path that brought you to this work? You started describing it a little bit in the beginning. Where did this idea come from, and what brought you here to starting this organization?

I think there are two ways to answer this question. On the one hand, the formal way to answer this question would be: I was 20 when I arrived in the U.S. I grew up in Iraq during Saddam's time, and during the time in which we had the war with Iran.

I grew up seeing injustice all around me in Iraq, and not being able to say and utter a word about it, a) because it is dangerous in a dictatorship, and b) because my family was actually close to Saddam, and the fact that my father was his personal pilot meant that we were watched that much closer. Seeing injustice and being aware of it, but knowing that I cannot say anything about it because that could kill my own family.

When I came to the States, it was my first time learning about the Holocaust. I had never known about it, and that same month that I was taking a class about the Holocaust was when I learned about the concentration camps, and the rape camps in Bosnia.

I was innocently saying, but we said, "'Never again' so how come there are concentration camps now? We need to do something about it." That is how the journey started.

Honestly, it was starting first with wanting to volunteer with any women's group that was helping women in Bosnia and none existed at the time.

Then, I wanted to donate anything I could for women in Bosnia. Again, I could not find any group. Finally I said, "Well, I'm going to do it." And that is how it started. It started from a very simple effort of being frustrated that there weren't many services.

There were rape camps and concentration camps in 1993, and we were not outraged about it and doing something about it. And that is how the story started. That is the formal story.

The informal story; it took me years to recognize it; is that at the end of the day, and this is my own personal acknowledgement, at the end of the day, it is my own healing. I honestly believe that if I don't acknowledge, and if each one of us doesn't acknowledge our own personal incentive for what are we seeking when we are trying to do something of value and charitable, and that feels good and right. What is it that we are seeking for? What is our personal incentives?

For me, it was my own healing. My growing up in war shaped the way I look at the world and I see the world. We only look at war, from an American perspective; from a front line discussion. We don't look at it from a back line discussion, and that has everything to do with, not with the soldiers, but with the civilians and with the mothers, really, who are running life in the midst of war.

It was my own story of wanting to understand why my mother sent me to America all of a sudden in an arranged marriage that I document. I document this whole story in my memoir, Between Two Worlds. Why would my mother betray me? It took me years to understand that my mother was no different than the mothers that I am working with in Bosnia or Kosovo or different countries, or Congo, who often offer me their children; hoping that I will give them a better life, and get them away from the injustice that is happening in their own countries.

More than that, I was raped also myself, and I was so shy and ashamed of even acknowledging that. And to go out and tell everyone, "You have to break your own silence," but the truth is, I didn't break my own for a long time. People like Honorata were the ones who gave me the courage to speak about my own story and to document my own story.

It was their courage and perspective on life, and understanding that we need to break our silence. Unless we do that we cannot stop that vicious cycle where women are often stuck in the injustice that we often see.

It is a long answer but it is the most truthful answer I can give you.

I think that often times, people who find themselves drawn to work to change something about the world don't recognize that somehow it is reflecting something, like you're saying, that they want to heal or change about what is going on inside them.

Some folks are very involved in their inner healing, and don't realize that if they did something out in the world they would feel better. There are folks who are very focused on changing their outer world and don't realize that they need to work on some stuff inside so that they can do better work out in the world.

I appreciate your telling that story and illuminating that connection, which I think sometimes is not discussed enough in the social change field.

Also, in the social change field I think we often - the sector has a sense of self-righteousness and heroism. You know, the truth is there isn't such a thing as a hero. We have our weaknesses and our strengths, and it is so much easier to point the finger outwardly and say, "I am here to save her, or save these other women."

The truth is we are trying to save ourselves. And saving yourself is important enough and we do it in different ways. Saving ourselves is part of saving humanity and saving the world, I feel, especially with the discussion of women because it is such a global issue. It is not a third world issue or a conflict issue.

The discussion of women is a global issue and we need to look at our global sisterhood, our unity, the common stories between us, and how we can save each other and ourselves in the process, and not make it a savior-victim dynamic.

I also appreciate your explaining that, yes, you founded this incredible successful organization, but that process isn't always as straightforward as one might think, and it can be kind of messy.

What advice do you have for people who have the idea, "I want to start an organization, or project, or social enterprise to make the world a better place"? What advice do you have for them as they are starting out?

Many. [laughs] One is A.) and this is not by priority, one is humility. We start a journey thinking that we know all the answers. Really, it is a long journey and everyday is a humbling day of knowing, "Oh, I may know some of the answer, or half of the answer, or none of the answer, but I have to listen, and I really need to listen to the very people that I am intending to help."

I am convinced that half of the solutions are already with the very people we are trying to serve, but we need to listen first. So, one is humility; that we don't know it all.

Just to give you a short story on that. One time I was helping a Bosnian woman on her business plan. She wanted to have a small chicken farm. She wanted to buy 20 chickens, and I was trying to help her by asking What is the inoculation and what is the cost of each chicken? And all of these things. Finally, I asked her, "Well, how many eggs does a chicken give a day?" And she looked at me and said - well, she didn't tell me that I was stupid, but I really felt it from her look, and I deserved that. It was one egg, one egg!

It was as simple as, here I am, with my degrees and you know, a worldly person, traveling the world and da-da-da,and I didn't know the most simple answer to life. A chicken gives one egg a day.

So, humility, humility, humility; we do not know all the solutions.

B.) It is painful. You know, it is not luxurious and lavish, and here is the hero going to the field, and all of these things. It is a very painful journey. Painful in the fact that there is a large business aspect to it.

One of my colleagues was telling me, she said, "I'm here because we are helping women survivors of wars. What people don't know is that I work on HR issues and finance issues and budget and all of that every single day." That has nothing to do with women survivors of wars directly, but obviously it is part of the business.

There is all the un-fun aspect of it, and that part of it. The other part of it is it takes a sacrifice. It is a huge sacrifice. Not only the amount of work you put in, but if I am to tell the story - The first three years, I had no money whatsoever, whatsoever. Absolutely not even knowing how to survive. So, it takes a while.

All my friends were buying their cars and houses, and lots of them were making fun of me. "Oh, Mother Teresa, wanting to save the world." The truth is, it is a big sacrifice, and it is not always a fun ride, but it is worth every single minute and every single drop of it.

I wake up every single day and I say, "It is a good day to fly because the world is such a beautiful world despite the misery that I witness in it." And I say, "It is a good day to die," because if I die today I am telling you for the record; I will die a content woman because I will die a woman who has been true to my beliefs and my values.

Yes, this wasn't an easy journey. Yes, it is painful both because of all the nitty gritty stuff that you have to do. But, also, meeting a woman who has gone through such horrible stories and sometimes you can help her, and sometimes you cannot help her. It is a very painful thing. You go through your own trauma, your own second-hand post-traumatic stress. You go through all of these things and it is worth it. It is a beautiful journey and I regret none of it.

I think everyone needs to have their own journey where at the end of the day it makes life worth it and beautiful.

And for listeners who would like to get involved with Women's for Women International work, how can they do that?

Please, please, please help [laughs]. Go to womenforwomen.org and I say please because I really worry that in this particular economic crisis and circumstances that as we are all cutting our own expenses and our own funding, it is the one thing that I so worry if people start cutting giving to causes, charitable donations and generosities. The impact of that is so magnificent. We are talking about people who are really struggling to eat one meal a day, and the goal is to help them eat two, let alone three meals a day.

The impact of cutting our own donations to make the world a better place; it is significant not only on the lives of the very women that we are trying to help today, but frankly speaking, I think on our own lives a few years down the road.

I just really worry. I don't know how much it is being addressed out there in the world, but of all the cuts that we need to do in our spending, this is the one area that I feel we need to increase because of, not only the moral values, but the practical values in investing and stabilizing the world. Women are the best way to make that investment possible and feasible, and with a great outcome.

Is there anything else that you didn't get to talk about that you wanted folks to know about Women for Women International's work?

This is one experience in which, as we were talking about, you think that you are helping someone, but in the process, you get helped. How? In so many different ways including by getting a humble and very simple letter from someone who is saying thank you for your sacrifice.

If there is one investment you need to make, honestly - I just really hope that everyone gets to go and see their sisters, but also the work that we are doing. It is the most tangible work I can promise anybody. The most tangible outcome that you can ask for in terms of every dollar really helping them rebuild their life.

Related blog posts

Interview with Zainab Salbi, Founder and CEO of Women for Women International by Kristin Ivie on the Case Foundation Blog.
Mojo Mom Podcast with Women for Women International by Amy Tiemann on MojoMom.
A Call to Action: Defend Women's Progress, Human Rights in Afghanistan by Zainab Salbi on the Huffington Post.

Cross-posted from BlogHer.com

women
war
Zainab Salbi
survivor

Be Bold Podcast: Create a Career with Impact Episode 10

2009-05-04T09:51:00.001-07:00

A new episode of Echoing Green's Be Bold Podcast: Create a Career with Impact is up for your listening pleasure. Lara Galinsky, the Senior Vice President of Echoing Green offers advice to two listeners' with questions about creating a career with impact.

I'm the show's host (:

You can listen to the program online on Echoing Green, subscribe via iTunes, or listen to it on the little player below.

Send in your questions about how to create a career with impact to bebold@echoinggreen.org

Question 1:

I've been a development professional for 3 years (1.5 in membership and 1.5 in grantwriting). I would like to move out of development and into programmatic work, but am having no luck. I've tried to highlight the skills I've gained that would be valuable to program work (communication skills, research, project management, etc.), but I'm worried that they're just not perceived as good enough (i.e., related enough) to qualify me.

I've heard that most development professionals have a hard time breaking into program work. Is this true? What can I do?

Question 2:

How do I overcome hesitation and fear of public speaking? I feel like this is holding back my career.

career
advice
nonprofit
social enterepreneur

Mother's Day Donation Ideas

2009-05-01T15:50:00.000-07:00

If your mom is the kind of person who prefers a donation to a physical gift, below are a few ideas. Please feel free to add more do-good Mother's Day gift ideas in the comments.

* Room to Read's Girls' Education program. During the month of May, all donations made to the Girls' Education program will be matched (up to $100,000) by an anonymous donor.

* U.N. World Food Programme to help a mother feed her child. Create an interactive card for your mom on the U.N. World Food Programme's Wall Against Hunger. If you have trouble opening the donate link in Firefox, like I did, try it in another web browser.

* Women for Women International to support women survivors of war. Your mom will receive a a handmade card made by a woman in their program in Rwanda. Donate before May 5th to make sure she receives her card on time.

* Sierra Club to support wilderness areas like the Giant Sequoia National Monument, Grand Canyon National Park, Everglades National Park and the Arctic National Refuge.

* Oxfam America Unwrapped and fund virtual gifts like a pair of school uniforms for $20, or planting 50 trees for $30.

* One of GlobalGiving's "Mom Knows Best" projects like Education for 900 Rural Girls in Burkina Faso or Fast Tracking Education for Women and Older Girls in Afghanistan.

* A Kiva.org gift certificate so your mom can choose a woman entrepreneur to give a loan to.

* A Good Card from Network for Good your mom can use to donate to the nonprofit of her choice.

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Related Blogs
Women for Women International's blog
Sierra Club's The Green Life
Oxfam America's blog
GlobalGiving's Global Goodness
Kiva's Inside Kiva

Full disclosure: I have donated to Women for Women International, made loans through Kiva.org, and received a Good Card.

Cross-posted from BlogHer.com

Mother's Day
gift
donation

List of Changebloggers from NTC Meetup

2009-04-30T15:09:00.001-07:00

Last Sunday at NTEN's Nonprofit Technology Conference, I facilitated a meetup for Changebloggers: Blogging, Podcasting and Vlogging for Good.

We started with some structured networking, and then shared changeblogging tips, resources, and success stories. My favorite story came from an organization who had a frequent, angry commenter who disagreed with their cause. They engaged with him, and in the end he became a member of their organization. To me, that is a quintessential example of why nonprofits should embrace comments, rather than fear them.

Below is a list of some of the folks who attended the event. Send them a little link love and give their sites' a click. Also, you can find more Changebloggers on the Changeblogger Network.

Amazee.com

Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology

ArtSake

Black Rock Arts Foundation

Case Foundation

Civic Actions

Cross-Cultural Solutions

Digital for Good

Foglio's Field Notes

Interplast

In the Hand of Dante

Janet Fouts

Kentuckians for the Commonwealth

MeshugAvi

Native American Public Telecommunications

OceanHealth.org

Pathfinder International

Social Citizens

Volunteer San Diego

Zanby

blog
podcast
vlog
changeblogger
nonprofit
activism
ntc09

Off the Mat, Into the World: An Interview with Seane Corn

2009-04-29T12:29:00.000-07:00

"We want to support anyone who is interested in engagement, but we want to help them do it in a way that is healthy for them, creates community, and creates longevity, so that everyone wins, and no one gets burnt out or sick. That is not what service should be about. It should be about joy, on every level."
--Seane Corn, co-Founder, Off the Mat, Into the World.

Off the Mat, Into the World is an educational, experiential and motivational process for people interested in conscious activism and service.

On March 5, 2009 I interviewed yoga teacher and co-Founder of Off the Mat, Into the World, Seane Corn, for the Big Vision Podcast shortly after she returned from a trip to Cambodia with participants from Off the Mat, Into the World's Seva Challenge.

Seane has been featured in commercials and has appeared on the cover of Yoga Journal, Fit Yoga, and many other magazines. She utilizes her national platform to bring awareness to the HIV/AIDS crisis.

During our conversation, Seane talked about what inspired the creation of Off the Mat, Into the World, her trip to Cambodia, the connection between your inner work and your outer work, and the tools Off the Mat, Into the World uses to help people determine how they are being called to be of service.

Below is an edited transcript of our conversation, which began with Seane talking about Off the Mat, Into the World's origins, and the Seva Challenge. You can also listen to the interview on the Big Vision Podcast.

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SC: I'd started working with an organization called YouthAIDS which provides services and products to children worldwide who are affected by the HIV/AIDS crisis. I came up with the slogan, "Off the Mat, Into the World," and put that on a T-shirt, which I sold to benefit YouthAIDS.

I raised a lot of money. I targeted the yoga community. I realized I had a platform where, for whatever reason, people would pay attention to me. I just thought, "I wonder what would happen if I made this shirt, sold the shirt and put the money towards YouthAIDS?" We raised around $60,000 doing very little. It was an effortless effort for me. It got the seeds planted in my head that this is an altruistic community, it's an educated community.

According to Yoga Journal, the average household that practices yoga earns about $72,000 a year. This said to me that the average practitioner has some disposable income. I thought, "What would happen if we began the process of aligning our heartfelt intentions, our energy, our time, and also our money to be able to benefit some particular causes?" I started working with other grassroots businesses, like Energy Muse Jewelry; for example, and Spiritual Gangster to create different kinds of products, and then tie those products over to benefit YouthAIDS.

It really became a win-win for everyone, because I won't sponsor an organization, or a company unless they're willing to tie the money to a cause or crisis. It benefits the grassroots business, it benefits me, it gives me an opportunity to sell and talk about the crisis or cause that I'm backing and, it also benefits the organization that I'm supporting. It seemed to be a really good and sustainable model, and we raised around $300,000 doing that kind of work.

Then, I started going around the country teaching workshops around spiritual activism: why it's important to take your yoga off the mat and into the world, and the different ways that we can get involved. The idea is now that we're getting stronger and more flexible, more conscious, more patient, and more aware, we need to take those very qualities that we're learning in the yoga room, and begin to truly apply them in our families, in our local community, and into our global family as well.

I knew that the work that I was doing was effective. I knew that I was getting everyone really excited and inspired and motivated. But every time I would leave a workshop, I would leave with this haunting feeling of, "Now what?" Now that everyone was all rallied and all inspired, it felt like I was just dropping the ball. There was nothing in place to help get these people into the place where they could best be of service in an organized way. It just felt like my efforts would fall flat.

The answer to my prayers showed up through The Engage Network. The Engage Network and Julia Butterfly Hill and Marianne Manilov and Alissa Hauser, they came to me with the solution to my problem. They came to me with the, "now what." They asked me to come on board as a social champion, and to take Off the Mat, Into the World to another level by creating a leadership training program that trained people through a process of self inquiry on how to first find their own purpose, and then how to activate that purpose through outreach and service oriented projects in an organized, and therefore sustainable way.

I went into partnership with Suzanne Sterling and Hala Khouri, we're the co-creators of Off the Mat, Into the World. We put together a week-long curriculum to really help people do just that: find their purpose and then give them the skills. We weren't interested in supporting just one crisis or cause, we were interested in helping people find what their passion is. It could be the environment, it could be educational issues, political issues, international, national. It really didn't matter to us.

We didn't want to micromanage someone's passion. We wanted to encourage them to find their voice, and to become leaders in their own right in their own local community. We were starting to build small circles within the local communities that are all doing really magnificent work in order to create change.

On one level, Off the Mat, Into the World is bridging the yogis and activism through training programs. The other thing that Off the Mat, Into the World does is that we create and model our own outreach projects, but on a grander scale. It's a model to show other people how to work together in community, how to collaborate ideas, how to create a vision, and then how to work towards that vision coming more from a truth and love aspect, than from fear and attachment.

For example, we put together the 2008 Seva Challenge. It's called the Bare Witness Humanitarian Tours. This challenge benefited the Cambodian Children's Fund out of Cambodia. The challenge was this: anyone who could raise $20,000 over the course of one year through outreach, or service oriented projects in their own local community, I would reward them by taking them with me to Cambodia where they would engage for two weeks in some very intense humanitarian efforts with the Cambodian Children's Fund, and the children that they educate, support, and house.

I wasn't really sure how this project would fly. $20,000 is a lot of money to raise. Twice a month we would get on conference calls with all the participants. We'd send them a tool kit and work with them fairly closely on how to raise the money, and stay engaged to keep them inspired and motivated. We had 100 people sign up for the Challenge. Of those 100, 20 people actually raised the $20,000, but those 80 people, who didn't raise the $20,000, still raised significant funds so that all together we ended up raising $524,000 that benefited CCF.

For me, it's a really exciting model because it wasn't me who raised $524,000, but I set that goal for myself. My goal, as Seane Corne, was, "I want to bring 20 people to Cambodia, and I want to raise $500,000." How do I make that happen? I looked towards my community. I talked about it. I got people excited, inspired, provided information, and encouraged them to break that money down to $20,000 chunks or less, and for them to work in their community to get their friends and families to do creative projects, and engage in raising the money.

We had over 2500 donors all together who participated in raising this $500,000. It was very sustainable for everyone involved. Essentially, it's raising small of money to create big money.

The people who came with us to Cambodia, they got to do some of the most intense work I think they've ever done in their lives. Because of my association with YouthAIDS, I have to access to NGOs, (non-governmental organizations), and got them to permit us to do volunteer work. Normally, unless you go to a country and are willing to volunteer six months to a year and have a viable skill that they could use (i.e. doctor or a dentist), these organizations don't want you, because you actually get in the way of programming. To come out for two weeks, everything essentially has to stop to cater to the individual.

We asked the organizations, what would make it worth your while to take us for two weeks, to get us in the trenches, to work closely with the children and their families? Of course, it came down to, as it should, funding.

I thought, "Great. We'll supply the funding. You create the opportunities. Let's leave a legacy behind in Cambodia, but also really affect the people's lives of the people who go out there."

The first couple days in Cambodia we learned about the culture, which was very important, but also very challenging for the participants. We brought in survivors of the genocide. We visited the prison camp, the Killing Fields, and explored the dark history of Cambodia because it's impossible to truly be empathic to the circumstance, as it is today, unless you understand how the culture and its people got to be in this position.

We learned about the genocide. We learned about the violence and the torture and the trauma. We also got to learn about what was not being done for the trauma, for the families and the people who did survive. As a result, you have a culture of post-traumatic stress disorder. When you're not dealing with trauma, it's not surprising that people would turn to drugs, to alcohol, and to abuse. It was important for us going in there to separate our judgment. It's easy for us to come in and say, "You shouldn't drink. You shouldn't do drugs. You shouldn't beat your wives and your children."

But, when you understand where they've come from, and what's not being done to deal with the trauma, you begin to understand why people will turn towards substances to anesthetize, or numb themselves out, or why they will act out with violence because of the violence that's been perpetuated. We had to really retrain the people in their natural thought process, so as to be able to work with the men and women in a more compassionate and loving way, and a less judgmental way, although it's very difficult.

We spent the first few days really understanding the culture. Then, we went into the garbage dumps. Cambodian Children's Fund works directly in an 11-acre garbage dump-- that's 100 feet deep, and the families work and live directly on the dump for their survival.

You can't even imagine how toxic it is. While we were there, the methane fires were burning in abundance, and you're inhaling toxic waste and garbage, everything that goes along with being in a garbage dump, plastic, etc. It's quite horrifying to be in it. Imagine living in it. It's so toxic that rats can't even thrive. You won't see a rat in this environment, but God knows you do see and experience flies. It's just devastating.

The children work. They earn about $0.30 a day. They live there directly on the dump. Only, I think, 25 percent of the children who work there actually survive, because of diseases like hepatitis and tuberculosis, and also by getting killed by the garbage dumps. That happens; unfortunately, too frequently.

CCF works directly in the dump to get the children out of this environment and bring them into one of five orphanages where they live, get educated, and get medical attention. It's not an orphanage where they're being taken from their families, and then adopted out. You can't adopt in Cambodia. It's really an educational facility, but they're never again allowed to work. They can choose to sleep there with their families, if they want to. Not many of them do. Many of them choose to stay at CCF at night and visit their families on the weekends.

CCF has managed to take 450 children out of the dump, and into these facilities. Not only are the kids getting educated, but they're also being introduced into their cultural arts again. The genocide selectively targeted the educated: doctors, lawyers, and scientists, but also artists and poets were all annihilated so as to make room for this zero culture, people with no expression, no personalities, no agendas. CCF's intention is to help this evolving culture by helping to create the next generation of doctors, lawyers, scientists, artists and poets.

It's an incredible organization that has done so much, not just for the children, but also for the families of these children because Scott, who runs CCF, recognizes that you're taking away income from the family by removing the children from this environment. Even though it's in the best interest of the children, it could impact the family. He makes restitution by providing health insurance, paying their rent, and even, in some cases, providing jobs, so that everyone is benefiting from the opportunity of the children being taken out of this environment.

We worked in the garbage dump meeting the children, talking to the families, watching the process of removing a child from the dump, and going through the whole interview process to see if they are eligible to go into CCF.

Then we also worked directly in CCF, which was the most fun ever. We brought skills in which included things like yoga, of course, and puppet-making, frame-making, dance, and teaching skills such as English and phonetics. We brought in our own skills, but we also participated in the different classes that CCF offers like social studies, Khmer, English, storytelling--typical classes that you'd find in any public school system. It was so fun. These kids want to learn. Even in their break time they're on the computers practicing their English skills. These kids want to be there, they want to learn, and are so excited for the privilege.

We spent a few days working with the children in that capacity. Then, we also worked in a different capacity working the land. CCF has acres of rice fields and a village where they take some of the thriving families off the dump and they put them into the village where they work the farm. They work in a very different way so that the family unit stays intact. Very often they take women to this village, away from the dump, who have been severely beaten and abused, by their husbands. The children and the mother are removed from that environment, and are brought to the village where they can work together more effectively in communities.

We went out to the village and we fertilized the rice fields, which was the craziest experience. Such intense, hard work. The rice is used to help feed the children at CCF. We also planted, I think it was morning glory and corn and squash. We built garden beds, again to help make it more sustainable. We worked in a variety of ways. It was really hands-on, working on an educational level, a physical level and a historical level.

I can safely say that every person who went out there --it happened to be all women by the way-- showed so much courage, intentionality, and real bravery, because everyone went outside their comfort zone. There wasn't a single day where someone was not absolutely at their edge, on many levels. Everyone thrived and we left a legacy behind, real relationships.

Sixteen children were sponsored while we where there. That means that the participants pay $100 a month to be in a relationship with a child. Meaning that 100 dollars goes towards their education, their food, and their medical services. You get to write back and forth, and basically be like a big sister or big brother to a child. I have two children and it's a joy to have watched them grow and thrive over the years.

It was an incredible success. Now that we're back, we're onto the next project which is the Uganda Seva Challenge where we will be building a birthing center. We will be building a school in a village that doesn't have access to education. We will be working on a permaculture farm. We'll be working in a series of orphanages with HIV/AIDS street children, as well working with YouthAIDS to learn more about the HIV/AIDS crisis in Uganda, and in Africa in general. We're hoping to take two trips and raise over a million dollars, that's my personal goal. I'm pretty confident we can do it.

BB: For listeners who are either involved with activism or nonprofits, and maybe they're not involved with yoga, or people who are involved with yoga, but who aren't really being of service, what is the connection between the inner and outer work? Why do you think yoga can help people be of better service to the world. and what do you think being of service brings to one's yoga practice?

SC: It's a big question. I'll talk from my own experience. The mantra I have when I go into a circumstance is, "Experience something as it is, with no attachment to the end result. And dignify the human experience with love."

Now, that being said, that's very difficult for me when I'm working with children who are severely abused. I'm very attached to the end result. But, I also have to believe that in this lifetime for all of us, no matter our culture, our color, our sexual orientation, or our circumstance, there is a certain amount of karma that's at play. There are certain challenges that we will have to face, and opportunities that can arise from those challenges. I have to hold that deep within my heart; otherwise, I can't do the work that I need to do. I recognize it's my dharma. It's my great work in this world to serve someone else's karma, not from judgment, but from love.

I recognize that someone else may have to learn certain lessons, and there are certain challenges that they have to face. I'm not there to judge it. I'm there to hold the light for them, to provide energy, food, time, or money so that I can help support them in their evolution. But, if I get caught up in trying to change, then I'm coming at it from my fear, from my ego, and not from my faith. I have to recognize that there is something bigger at play that I can't possibly understand, nor is it possibly any of my business. That doesn't leave me exempt from wanting to make a difference.

I also recognize that when there is karma at play. Sometimes for us to learn our own individual lessons, we will draw to us the thing that we most resist. My history is one of sexual molestation. It wasn't a big surprise to me that the first time that I got involved with service was with adolescent prostitutes. Children who had been severely sexually abused. When I first went into that environment, I was totally triggered. I didn't realize this until later. When I went in to meet these kids, I thought I'd teach them a little bit of yoga, help them out. I assumed they had some troubles.

Well, I met 15 girls and boys that were so defiant and angry and judgmental and rude. Just rude. I walked out of that environment thinking, "These kids are messed up. They'll never be able to get help. They're lost." It took me a good hour of projection before I realized that I had just walked into a room with 15 of my disowned self. I'm defensive and defiant and angry, and in my lifetime certainly have been shut down and rude. Everything that I had experienced in these children is everything that I've experienced in myself that I haven't been able to deal with. I am those kids.

I realized from the practice of yoga that if I really wanted to heal and grow and evolve, then I had to go back into that environment and meet myself, and love myself. Otherwise, I knew that I was never going to be able to evolve, or transcend these fears, unless I went back to understand them. Meaning that to understand and really respect the power of the light, you've got to understand and respect the power of the shadow. and all that it has to provide and teach you. I was resisting the shadow. Once I met these girls, I realized that was my shadow self, and I ran from it. I knew that for me, I needed to run towards it to understand it, its power and its lesson.

I went back to that shelter. Instead of trying to teach these kids, I just started to share, and breathe and connect, and use the practice of yoga as a way to develop a relationship. I wasn't really interested in getting these kids to learn about Triangle Pose, but I knew that in teaching them Triangle what I was able to develop was a conversation and a relationship. We had fun, we played. And once we played, and we made eye contact, and we breathed together, the kids started to trust me more. Then we could begin to do deeper work. I was able to see that their defiance was just a manifestation of their fear; what was underneath their fear was deep grief.

By experiencing the children's deep grief, I was able to experience my own deep grief in a way that was very healing for me and truly unifying. When I understood about spiritual activism it all came full circle. I do not think for one second that any of the service that I've done over the years is selfless. Meaning that the gifts that I have been given, both spiritually, energetically, and emotionally have far outweighed any of the time, energy, effort, or money that I have provided to the people, the children especially, that I have worked for.

It's me who has gotten served, always me. When I try to go into an environment to fix them, then I have an agenda that's attached to it. Meaning that I have a judgment that there is something good or bad, right or wrong happening. My ego is attached to my being right; therefore, someone else has to be wrong. It's not sustainable. It can only lead to burn out. I had to really shift the paradigm in my own head about what service was.

As my service in the world has evolved, and as I've begun to work more and more, it hasn't changed for me. I recognize that every time I'm in an environment, it's only because I'm about to meet with the shadow parts of myself, and I'm going to have an opportunity in that moment to either come from fear, or to come from love. Every opportunity that's provided to me I have a deep respect for, and I try to approach the situation humbly.

The children I work for, they are my teachers. Their parents are my teachers. The pimps, their clients, the prostitutes, all of them are my teachers. I know in my heart I cannot get fixated on the story, I have to experience the soul. To me that is what the yoga practice has brought me. It's allowed me to see the deeper connection.

The hardest relationship I have is working with pimps. It's very hard for me to understand that they too are burning out karma, that they too are working and operating from their pain, from their suffering, from their education or lack thereof. It's very difficult for me to be empathic or compassionate, but if I'm not, then I am part of the problem. If I'm not, then I am continuing this perception that there is separation and otherness. That's what's causing all the problems in the first place.

Yoga teaches us that there is no separation, that everything is connected, that everything is manifesting as a result of our projected thoughts. It's our projected fears that are continuing to create this level of dysfunction. If we can begin to connect from a place that is based on love, then we can actually heal this planet. I believe that.

I have to keep myself in check. Every time that I'm in judgment, every time that I'm projecting fear, every time that I'm creating separation, I know that I am participating on a level of dysfunction that is creating dis-ease on a planetary, and on a psychic level. In all of these environments, I go in there knowing that my own stuff is going to come up, and I have an opportunity to go back to my room to deal with my own fear, my own trauma, my own anger, to breathe into it and not act from it.

If I go to try to talk to a pimp, and I'm in my rage, there's no way a conversation is going to be possible. But if I can go to that pimp and remember to see the soul, and to breathe deep, and to make eye contact, and to try to find the connection, then maybe possibly there's an opportunity for a relationship, and therefore a real conversation that might create healing.

This is the way that Off the Mat, Into the World operates. It's a new model of sustainable activism that's intending to come more from love and compassion, than fear and anger. Whether or not it's effective, I have no idea. I do know, that I can not choose to do it any other way for myself, because I've seen the results of when you try to create change from fear.

Just recently I saw the greatest picture of myself, which unfortunately is an old picture. I just had it developed. It's from 1984 and I had it developed six months ago. I just found this random roll at the bottom of the drawer, and it's a picture of me standing on a platform at a pro choice rally. I've got a megaphone in one hand, and I've got my left hand in a fist, kind of pumping up at the air. My chin is tilted up and my mouth is wide open and my eyes are closed. In front of me are all these pro life activists. They're holding signs, and Bibles, and fists up at me. Their mouths are open, and half of them, their eyes are closed too.

I thought, "This is perfect." We're both screaming at each other, not looking at each other. I was the most ineffective activist because I was coming from my unresolved anger. It felt good to scream. It felt good to tell someone else how to live their life, but nothing was really being done. After the rally was over, I felt better energetically because I had moved the anger, but I didn't really make any change.

I look at that picture often because it's a perfect example of what I never ever want to do again. I only want to stand eye to eye with someone, never above them. I always want to keep my eyes open and I want to listen more than I speak. I think that, ultimately, is a good model for me to be an effective activist in the world.

BB: People should know that in addition to the Seva Challenge, Off the Mat also has workshops that people can attend. In the workshops, you're helping people make the connection between their yoga, and how they are being called to service.

What tools do you use to help people find that connection, and what it is that they're called to do to be of service?

SC: Well, one of the first things that we do is we talk about the mind/body connection. If you're holding onto perceptions like hate or blame or victimization or shame, those emotions are an energy. Those energies, when they're not being processed, through truth and love, through therapy, through the program, through some kind of a tool to move the energy out, if you're harboring or repressing those emotions, they're as toxic on our physical body as drugs, as alcohol, as a poor diet, and as inertia.

They manifest as tension, stress, and anxiety creating more shutdown, more dis-ease, and more dysfunction. The practice of yoga helps to, first; access the deeper layers of tension where these deeper layers of emotion reside. It's through the practice of yoga that we're able to deal with the first layer of repression, which in terms of your physiology, is tension. Then, trying to get people to understand, how did that tension get there in the first place? What is the addiction to the tension? How have they used their tension to sabotage their choices? How has it impacted their relationships, their sexuality, etc.?

There is a real investigative process that happens through yoga, self-inquiry exercises, journal writing, dyads, and conscious conversation, which also could be called satsang. These are some of the processes that we work to get people to uncover what their deepest purpose is, because we often see that their deepest purpose is also in alignment with their deepest fear or wound.

Meaning, who better to serve another alcoholic from compassionate empathy, than an alcoholic. Who better to serve someone who has dealt with domestic violence, than someone who has also walked that path of abuse. Your experience becomes your wisdom, your wisdom becomes your empathy, and your empathy becomes the tool that you use to connect with people on a soul level.

I am not feeling sympathy towards someone who I am working with, let's say in an at-risk environment, I don't feel sorry for them, I am not pitying them, I get them, and when I get them, that exchange allows us to be able to work on a deeper level.

In the process of Off the Mat, Into the World, and these leadership training programs that we give, these intensives, we take people on this journey, clear some of the resistances, and the old limited beliefs that they have. We help them to shift these limited beliefs into a conversation of empowerment, and understand how ego has impacted some of the choices they make, even around service, and how, very often, we will want to serve our environment, and fix or change other people, so as to avoid having to deal with our own issues.

These are some of the conversations that we have only because, if you are not dealing with you, working in some of these environments will trigger your own trauma. You will then want to act out by overeating, or indulging in cigarettes, or even sex, or drugs, so as to not feel, or, you will just start to withdraw and separate.

We want people out there in the activism world doing their work for long periods of time. We want to make sure that they are nourishing and nurturing themselves, on every level, mind, body, and spirit. Through the program, we discuss this a lot and give people specific tools on how they can take care of themselves so as to take care of the world in which they are living.

Then, after that process happens, we begin to work more practically, starting to vision. What kinds of projects can you do? What skills do you already have? What are your resources? Where are your weaknesses? Is it easy for you to ask for five dollars, but not five hundred dollars? How do you develop skills so that you can effectively use your voice in fund raising, so that you don't feel like you are asking for a favor?

We talk about how to do consensus training in groups. Who is the note taker? Who is the stat keeper? Who is the vibe watcher? How do you delegate responsibility? How do you shift roles? All of these things get very important when you are working in collaboration.

We also talk about how collaboration is probably one of the single most important things in sustainable activism because what we find is that the rate of burn-out just multiplies when you try to do it on your own. When you work with other people, you are challenged to step up in a different way, use new skills for communication. Also, how do you surrender your vision for a collective vision? We have found that a collective vision is often more powerful then the individual.

These are some of the things that Off the Mat, Into the World provides, both spiritual applications, as well as practical applications, so as to take a thought into form and bring an intention out into the world. Basically, it is like bringing heaven into earth. Bringing the metaphysical into the physical, so that activism becomes an act of love, an act of transcendence that impacts you and every person that you touch equally.

We use the analogy like when you are on airplane and they say, "If there is ever a problem and the pressure drops and the oxygen masks drops from the ceiling, put it on yourself first, and then put it on your child or friend." It is the same thing. You have to nurture and nourish yourself before you can truly be active in the world in a sustainable way. I have learned this the hard way.

I have been the worst activist, and I have been a really good activist. Being a really good activist has been because I have taken care of me, my health, my wellness, and my inner life. It has made me much more patient, much more effective out in the field. I am able to see the bigger picture better. I don't get triggered as much, even when I am in circumstances that are horrifying, it doesn't impact me in the same way.

I am able to hold my center. I may go back to my hotel room later and cry, and scream, and beat up a pillow, just to move the energy out of me, but that energy is not what is being brought into my work, and it makes me much more effective. It's what I recommend to everyone. You have got to take care of yourself if you really want to do this work in the world.

Is there anything else that you want folks to know about Off the Mat, Into the World, yoga, your work, or whatever you are working on in the future?

If people are interested in getting involved in Off the Mat, Into the World's Uganda Challenge, they can go to offthematintotheworld.org and click on "Seva Challenge" to learn more information. If they want to come and do an intensive with us, they can also go to offthematintotheworld.org and look at our workshop schedule.

We do four intensives a year. We are also training people how to be leaders, so they can run their own groups, not to the same intensive level that Susan, Hala and I do, but it is a seven-week program that they themselves initiate once a week for three hours. They invite their friends and we give them a whole curriculum. They follow the curriculum, and at the end of the seven weeks, they put together their own project. We give them support along the way on this. We are hoping to have hundreds and hundreds, thousands actually, of small groups like this, all across America, doing service-oriented projects, but in a sustainable way, in community.

My hope is that anyone who is interested in getting involved in service, or who is already involved in service, and want to find a more sustainable way to do it, will reach out to us. We want to provide these tools. We want to support anyone who is interested in engagement, but we want to help them do it in a way that is healthy for them, creates community, and creates longevity, so that everyone wins, and no one gets burnt out or sick. That is not what service should be about. It should be about joy on every level.

****************************************************************************

For more information about Off The Mat, Into the World and The Seva Challenge, go to offthematintotheworld.org. You can learn more about Seane Corn on her website, Seanecorn.com, and you can experience her yoga teaching on one of her DVDs, Vinyasa Flow Yoga or Seane Corn: Yoga from the Heart.

Bloggers who are participating in this year's Seva Challenge:
Tal from The Yoga That Reconnects
Katie of Being the Change
Andrea of Seva Challenge: UGANDA 2009 Andrea Pepper, Amalayoga.com
Beth of Yogini for Uganda
Tina of Yogini with a Twist
Allison of Alison Seva Challenge 2009

Britt Bravo is a Big Vision Consultant.
Cross-posted from BlogHer.com

yoga
activism
Seane Corn

Hugh Jackman Makes $100,00 Donation Using Twitter

2009-04-24T12:41:00.000-07:00

On April 14, Hugh Jackman (aka @RealHughJackman) announced on Twitter, a microblogging social network, that he would donate $100,000 to a nonprofit organization based on recommendations written in 140 characters, the character limit for a single post on Twitter.

Today, after going through thousands of entries with his wife, actress Deb Lee Furness, he announced the two winners who will split the donation (he wasn't able to decide between the two):

• charity : water, a nonprofit that brings clean and safe drinking water to people in developing countries.

• Operation of Hope, a nonprofit whose all-volunteer medical team donates surgeries to children in developing countries born with facial deformities.

While announcing the winners on Ryan Seacrest's radio show today, Jackman said,

"It's amazing to me that Twitter has now become a way for people to start talking about things that are really important to them and making a difference."

Seacrest responded,

"It started out a toy, as this little thing you do for fun, and then you realize the power that it has if you can do some good with it."

What are you favorite ways that people are doing good with Twitter?

Related posts

Hugh Jackman Splits $100,000 Between Two Charities by Sadao on Ryan Seacrest's blog, What's Happening. You can listen to the whole radio interview on this post.

Twitter on the Radio: Hugh Jackman Reveals $100K Charity Donation by Pete Cashmore on Mashable.

Hugh Jackman Chooses Winning Charities For $100K Twitter Donation by Michael Andre d'Estries on Ecorazzi.

Britt Bravo is a Big Vision ConsultantCross-posted from BlogHer.com.

Hugh Jackman
donation
Twitter
Ryan Seacrest

Changeblogger Meetup at NTEN's Nonprofit Technology Conference

2009-04-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

Will you be at NTEN's Nonprofit Technology Conference April 26-28 in San Francisco?

On the first day, Sunday, April 26, I'll be leading an Affinity Group meetup for Changebloggers: Blogging, Vlogging and Podcasting for Good from 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm. I hope you'll stop by if you're at the conference. We'll just be chatting and socializing. No super formal agenda.

During this year's NTC, over fourteen hundred nonprofit professionals will gather to learn about the newest trends and tools in nonprofit technology, and of course, to network and socialize.

The event is sold out, but you can be a part of the conference online. Just go to www.nten.org/ntc-live to find out how to follow along on Twitter and Flickr, and for information about the webinars, streaming video, and liveblogging happening during the event.

09NTC
nonprofit
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