On Our Radar

Meet Ashoka Fellow Cindy Kaplan & Trend Spotter John Ordway

Tue, 28 May 2013 14:00:00 -0400

We’re thrilled to introduce you to Ashoka Fellow Cindy Kaplan who is improving the nutritional outcomes of children living without permanent families by recognizing that trauma changes their nutritional needs and by focusing on both what they eat and how they are fed. Cindy is advancing this idea globally, and she is Ashoka’s first Fellow whose impact extends to Kazakhstan.

We interviewed her last week about her path as a changemaker and her main motivations for co-founding SPOON Foundation.

Read all about it on Forbes.com.

Q & A WITH TREND SPOTTER JOHN ORDWAY

John is a retired U.S. Ambassador who spent 33 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, and who served as U.S. Ambassador to Armenia and Kazakhstan. His other Foreign Service assignments include eight years in Moscow, as well as Director of African Affairs at the National Security Council. Since retiring, he has had several short-term assignments temporarily heading U.S. Embassies in Europe and Asia. He is also the head of the U.S. delegation to the New START Treaty’s Bilateral Consultative Commission that meets periodically with the Russian Federation. He sits on the Board of SPOON Foundation.

What social issue most motivates you and how do you make change in your community?

My biggest concern has always been for those who, through no fault of their own, are victims of circumstance with limited or no means to change their prospects and future. As a career Foreign Service Officer with the State Department, much of my work and career has been as part of institutional efforts to address these frequently tragic consequences abroad — from Africa to Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Living abroad, we had to make our own communities but there were ways of helping make change in local communities, ranging from Habitat for Humanity projects to food and toy drives.

How did you start engaging with Ashoka?

In my case, it was the nominee that led me to Ashoka rather than the other way around. I had become engaged with Cindy and SPOON Foundation, and became very excited about the work she was doing. I started looking around for ways to get broader recognition for the groundbreaking and unique work she was doing and realized that it was a perfect fit for Ashoka.

Where did you meet the Fellow you nominated?

Meeting Cindy was pure serendipity. I was at a college reunion and ended up talking with a friend I had not seen in over 30 years. After reminiscing about our time together at Stanford-in-Italy, she said that her niece had just started an NGO that was trying to work in Kazakhstan, which was where I was ambassador at the time. She said, “why don’t you get in touch with Cindy and see what she’s up to?” I did and, as I would with any U.S. NGO working in Kazakhstan, offered to be of help. I gave her some advice on some people to approach and a few tips on operating in Kazakhstan. When I retired, I got more involved in the advice business, and quickly ended up on SPOON’s Board.

What struck you most about her work?

I was really impressed by Cindy’s strong personal commitment and the impressive skill set she brought to the task she had set up for herself. More important, however, was the ability to shift and focus her efforts, and those of her organization, as she came to know more about the nutritional problems of institutionalized kids and the most effective and efficient ways to make a real, long-lasting and global difference.

Meet Ashoka Senior Fellow Susan Sygall & Trend Spotter Al Etmanski

Tue, 28 May 2013 12:14:00 -0400

We’re thrilled to introduce you to Ashoka Senior Fellow Susan Sygall, co-founder of Mobility International USA.

She is reimagining the meaning of full citizenship for people with disabilities by moving people from the concept of inclusion to infiltration in the context of international development.

In her one on one interview with us, Susan shares her vision for a world where people with disabilities shape international development agendas by becoming leaders of change and by literally showing up to existing programs. She also shares some words of wisdom about the need “to be surrounded by people who believe in your dreams, who will work with you for however long it takes and those who know how to celebrate victories.”

Read her full interview with Ashoka on Forbes.com.

Today, we also take a moment to hear from her trend spotter Ashoka Fellow Al Etmanski.

Q & A WITH TREND SPOTTER AL ETMANSKI

Al is the co-founder of Planned Lifetime Advocacy Network, an organization focused on alleviating the financial and social challenges commonly faced by peoples living with disabilities by weaving networks of families and friends around them. He is an author, blogger, advocate and social entrepreneur specializing in innovative, multi-sector solutions to complex societal challenges.

What social issue most motivates you and how do you make change in your community?

I’m most interested in how we take care of each other. The majority of care (80 percent) is provided by family, friends, neighbors, co-workers. They provide it freely, voluntarily, and out of love and commitment. The paid care system receives almost 100 percent of the resources even though they provide only about 20 percent of the care.

How/when did you start engaging with Ashoka?

I was one of the first two Fellows elected in Canada in 2002, when Ashoka opened its doors there. Ashoka reached out to me after learning of my work as the co-founder of Planned Lifetime Advocacy Network. I have been very engaged with Ashoka ever since.

Where did you meet the Fellow you nominated?

I’ve long been an admirer of her work but met her for the first time about a year ago.

What struck you most about her work?

I love how she turns the tables on our set of assumptions. Susan is pioneering a new approach to international development that happens to be led by women with disabilities. We know we will have arrived at an inclusive society when people with disabilities are seen for their contributions not for their condition. That’s where Susan is leading us.

The maturity of her vision is sublime. There’s nothing rhetorical about Susan. She has her head up as she wheels forward attracting allies from inside and outside the disability sector to shift institutions and culture, not only globally but also here in North America. She’s an expert at tackling both the visible and invisible variables of complex change making.

The real issue is “What kind of world do we want?” Susan will elevate the so-called “disability agenda.” She will inspire and propel our collection action. By doing so, she will teach many of us how to be successful at moving our agenda in a complex, turbulent environment. We, North Americans export the social technologies we’ve discarded at home to people with disabilities in developing countries. Susan has a proven antidote to this perversion of international development. In my view, Susan is pushing beyond disability rights – the next stage people would often describe as inclusion. She’s reinventing that and calls it infiltration. That’s a really critical shift.

Meet Ashoka Fellow Kevin Kirby & Trend Spotter Jim Sturdevant

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:33:00 -0400

We are thrilled to welcome Kevin Kirby, co-founder of Face It TOGETHER as an Ashoka Fellow. He is building the infrastructure for a chronic care model of addiction recovery that engages communities and employers alike, breaks down silos between the two, and de-stigmatizes this age-old disease.

In a one-on-one interview with Ashoka published on Forbes.com, Kevin shares how he came to realize he is no different from anyone else, where his sense of purpose comes from and how the idea for Face It TOGETHER came about.

It would have taken us a few more years to find out about Kevin’s work in Sioux Falls, SD had it not been for a serendipitous phone call from Trend Spotter Jim Sturdevant. People often ask us if they can nominate their founders or nominate themselves. Here is proof that you absolutely can!

Let us know if you have a social entrepreneur or a trend you’d like to bring to our attention. We’re always eager to learn!

Q & A WITH TREND SPOTTER JIM STURDEVANT

Jim is Director of Strategy at Face It TOGETHER and serves as a Board Member of Face It TOGETHER Sioux Falls. He shares his leadership passions as an adjunct professor at the University of Sioux Falls Vuchurevich School of Business.

What social issue most motivates you and how do you make change in your community?

I have always been motivated to help remove barriers that keep people from fully using their gifts. As a manager in the federal and private sectors for 34 years, I focused my passion on improving work environments for employees. I worked to create and nurture employment practices that helped people to grow and thrive. Also, I enabled other managers through leadership workshops, mentoring, and coaching. Last year, I earned a Doctorate in Leadership, with an emphasis on transformational leadership. I am now a leadership consultant, and I teach leadership and organizational development at a university.

How/when did you start engaging with Ashoka?

I started engaging with Ashoka just a few months after I began working with Face It TOGETHER. At that time, the Face It TOGETHER team was coming to understand that their vision and mission were primarily about broad social change, and not only about change in the addiction treatment and recovery fields. We began to study the field of social entrepreneurship. We began reaching out to social entrepreneurship organizations. Ashoka rose to the top of our list.

Where did you meet the Fellow you nominated?

Kevin Kirby and I have lived in the same community our entire lives. While I knew of Kevin for decades, I finally met him in May 2012. That meeting coincidentally occurred when I began consulting and teaching. I was introduced to Kevin as a potential client, and I immediately became a passionate supporter of Kevin and his organization, Face It TOGETHER.

What struck you most about his work?

Courage. Courage to tackle what I believe is our nation’s largest and most complex social problem. Courage to tackle it in the face of massive, deep-rooted institutional and societal barriers. Addiction to alcohol and other drugs is a chronic disease that can be difficult to identify—-even difficult to define. It is shrouded in stigma. People with the disease often experience fear and shame, and many avoid seeking help. Those who seek help from health providers most often receive acute care rather than chronic care. Face It TOGETHER is working to change hearts, minds, and systems across all community sectors. The Face It TOGETHER model brings value to employers, health providers, and whole communities. Braced with enormous courage, Kevin is leading a social movement—not unlike the civil rights movement. It’s about transformational leadership.

Meet Ashoka Fellow Pamela Cantor and Trend Spotter Susan Stevenson

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:19:00 -0400

Join us in welcoming Pam Cantor, founder of Turnaround for Children, to Ashoka’s network!

Pam is reengineering public schools to respond to the recurring challenges to teaching and learning that stem from the traumatic impact of poverty.

In her one on one interview with us, Pam shares how the idea for Turnaround for Children came up and how her background as a psychiatrist shaped her path.

Read her interview with Ashoka on Forbes.com.

It is thanks to Susan Stevenson that we initially learned about Pam & Turnaround for Children. We’re so grateful for the tip!

Q & A WITH TREND SPOTTER SUSAN STEVENSON

Susan Stevenson is Executive Director of Flamboyan Foundation’s Washington, D.C. office. She shapes, implements, and oversees all aspects of Flamboyan Foundation’s strategy and manages the team in Washington, D.C.

What social issue most motivates you and how do you make change in your community ?

I work on improving education for all children, focused in Washington D.C. When we started Flamboyan Foundation we knew that we wanted to improve education in Washington DC and talked to a lot of people about levers of student achievement that weren’t adequately pulled. Many people talked about family engagement. We did a lot of research to find out first if it’s true that family engagement makes a difference for children, and secondly what is being done about family engagement in the country. What we found is that most engagements are focused on fixing parents so that they will engage with their schools. but until schools are welcoming and willing to give parents the information they need to engage in the education of their children things won’t change. The first effort needs to be on building the capacity of teachers and schools to reach out to parents. We also surveyed the higher education schools of ed and found that only one of the top 10 schools that provides teachers to DC schools offers any training to teachers about family engagement. There is very little training of teachers - so we designed our own training. We work with 28 schools in Washington DC and we build the capacity of teachers and school leaders to do effective family engagement. We help them build relationships with families through home visits and help them learn how to share the right information with families about their children’s academic progress and how they can support that learning at home.

How did you start engaging with Ashoka?

I worked at Ashoka for seven years. After working there, along the way, whenever I meet somebody who I think meets Ashoka’s criteria I send them Ashoka’s way. I’ve nominated two other Ashoka Fellows in the past: Aleta Margolis and Maurice Lim Miller.

Where did you meet Pam?

About 2 years ago, Catherine Bradley from the City Bridge Foundation, also an Ashoka nominator and friend, brought Pam from NY to DC. She brought together a whole bunch of education people and funders to meet her and hear about her work.

What struck you most about her work?

I was struck by the fact that she realized that many of the children in high poverty schools have experienced severe trauma and are extremely stressed out. They have mental health issues as a result and often aren’t getting the help they need. So they act out their trauma in their every day lives, which happens to be at school. She identifies the most troubled children and gets them what they need. It’s incredible that helping the five percent of children that need help can improve the entire school dramatically. The ripple effects are really quite extraordinary.

Meet Ashoka Fellow Cristi Hegranes and Trend Spotter Ryan Blitstein

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:13:00 -0400

We are pleased to introduce you to Ashoka Fellow Cristi Hegranes, founder of Global Press Institute.

Cristi is developing a new, better quality, and more sustainable model of international journalism that is rooted in the perspective of local communities – and especially women from those communities.

In her one on one interview with us on Forbes.com, Cristi shares how she tosses and turns thinking about the dangerous blend of a flimsy media and a tumultuous world. Instead of dwelling on the problem, she made it her mission to revive the field of international journalism. She left her role as a foreign correspondent in Nepal to pursue a crazy idea. She says:”I am grateful for the naïve inspiration that propelled me to follow my dreams.”

It is thanks to Ashoka trend spotter Ryan Blitstein that we first heard of Cristi’s work. Today, we take a moment to learn more about him and what struck him about Cristi and the Global Press Institute.

Q & A WITH ASHOKA TREND SPOTTER RYAN BLITSTEIN

Ryan is the President & CEO of Change Illinois, a coalition leading systemic political and government reform in the state. Ryan also serves as a volunteer member of the Chicago Committee of Human Rights Watch and as board treasurer of Global Press Institute. He advises dozens of local, national, and global non-profits and is a frequent speaker and writer on impact and social innovation.

What social issue most motivates you and how do you make change in your community ?

I am a strong believer in equality of opportunity. Every baby born into this world should have the chance to live out his or her potential as a human and a citizen. Unfortunately, that’s far from today’s reality. We can see sharp differences in the lives of haves or have-nots in a place like rural Ghana where Global Press Institute reports, or right here in Chicago, where just a few miles from gorgeous, bustling boulevards and skyscrapers, children are going hungry and living in fear of violence every day. These are structural, societal issues, and right now I am making change in our community by concentrating at the system level, building up the fundamentals of democracy in our state. At CHANGE Illinois! we are working toward a vision of an Illinois that is a model for fair, honest, open, effective government.

How did you start engaging with Ashoka?

I had been hearing about Ashoka for years, because many of the change agents I knew and respected most had been on staff or become Fellows. I first engaged with the organization in 2010, when Marjorie Craig Benton, a true giant of social change in the Midwest and far beyond, insisted that I meet Bill Drayton. The U.S. program asked me to be on the lookout for social entrepreneurs, and I’ve been looking ever since.

Where did you meet the Fellow you nominated?

Cristi and I once worked side by side at San Francisco Weekly. I remember when she told me about the concept that would become Global Press Institute (GPI). I tried to be supportive, but I was thinking, “This’ll never work.” I am so glad she proved me wrong, and I am so proud to have been one of the people who helped her succeed.

What struck you most about her work?

A few years into GPI’s development, I began to see the organization evolve and expand to something much more ambitious and systemic than the original vision. It was suddenly, simultaneously addressing so many problems—economic development, women’s empowerment, community change, the decline of international news. And all in a financially sustainable way. I still don’t know how Cristi figured it all out and made it happen. It’s brilliant.

Andrew Mangino on building the next generation of dreamers

Mon, 13 May 2013 01:47:00 -0400

In early May, Ashoka teamed up with the team at Wondros to bring together a handful of amazing thinkers and doers from both the social impact and creative worlds, to examine what it takes to advance an idea in place of a program, and to identify the ingredients of modern-day movement-building. What follows is a transcript from a talk given by Andrew Mangino, Co-Founder and Executive Director of The Future Project.

***

We started The Future Project about two and a half years ago. I was in Washington, DC as a speechwriter. Like a lot of young people in my generation, there was a lot of excitement after the presidential election—seen in things like the “Yes We Can” video created here—and many of us went to DC. I went to be a speechwriter to Joe Biden. And by the way, if you’re thinking about storytelling, Joe Biden is the best storyteller you’ll ever encounter.

I was in DC and felt this incredible sense of possibility, like so many people. But I started talking to my friends, and we all felt a certain lack of fulfillment. There was all this amazing energy, but we were wondering what’s the common purpose: what’s the call to action that’s going to drive our generation to change the world, not just win an election? Many people had been fired up by the election not because of any particular policy, but because there was this new sense of possibility in America.

The point came up earlier about the interplay between things happening by accident versus planned change, and it’s one that we’ve been wrestling since Day 1. I was mentoring a student in a DC school at the time. Judging by the statistics, it was one of the most struggling schools in America, just a few blocks from where I was living in DC. There was a complete disconnect between that school and the community and the energy that I, and so many people I knew, felt.

I was speaking to that student, and we were talking about his college essay. I asked, “What’s your passion? What do you care about?” And he said that he had never been asked that question before. It struck me that there was a real opportunity to use the passion of this generation to ignite the passion of the next generation.

We came together and starting asking our friends if they’d be interested. On a Sunday afternoon, about 95 people came together to start The Future Project. We didn’t know what it was exactly; at that moment, it was more a set of questions we had than anything else.

What emerged was that there were three things that were driving us that we wanted to solve. The first was that—just as there’s this narrative about unmet student potential—what if we were to think about schools as having potential that’s not being met? I don’t mean that they’re failing to reach their current appointed set of metrics: I mean a deeper level of potential. Think about schools for a moment: they’re most extraordinary places on Earth if you think about it. When it comes to high school, you have all these young people in a confined environment for four years. What can we do with that? What if schools were to become true engines of human possibility? Engines where young people think about what they’re passionate about, and use that passion to change their world, change their schools, and change their lives. We wanted to figure out how to truly transform high-school at the most formative moment of a student’s life into an extraordinary and inspired place to be: one that can light a fire underneath everyone in it.

The second thing was a question of scale. I’d spent a lot of time with social entrepreneurs in the education world, and we were constantly wrestling with the fact that while we have these amazing models, we have yet to create something that can ultimately get to—say—all high schools, or all elementary schools within a reasonable amount of time. We wanted to create something that could reasonably meet that goal within 20 years.

The third thing that was on our mind was a question of not just schools and scale, but service. We have tens of millions of people who want to do something. The challenge is how do we get them to do something that’s actually meaningful?

So we started The Future Project. We started in three cities, and we were working with about a thousand people in the beginning, with the help of a volunteer team of about a 100-200 people who were helping to start it up.

We started to ask students how they would create The Future Project. What emerged really became our model.

We’ve created this character who works with students called the Dream Director. The Dream Director is an entrepreneur who goes into a school, partners with all of the principals, teachers, and students, and helps to create a cultural phenomenon in that school, where it becomes an incredibly inspiring and imaginative place to be.

The second thing they do is to work individually with students until they’ve reached every single student within a school, helping them take on this new identity of a dreamer, and to launch a project and use it to in some way change the world. In doing that, we’ve been very inspired by what Peace First does. You have as a result these incredible, imaginative projects that begin to emerge. There have been more than 700 examples so far of students exercising and fulfilling their passions. I don’t necessarily mean passion for social change.

There’s one student who has a passion for coffee, and is using that passion for coffee to begin to raise awareness for his other passion, which is swimming. He’s working to somehow combine those things to create a coffee-swimming club at one of the lowest performing schools in all of Connecticut. Students come up with the most amazing, crazy ideas, but the key is that they’re taking on this identity of what it means to be a dreamer.

It’s been a fascinating experience, because we’re starting to get teachers and principals asking for this, saying that they’re sick of the school reform efforts that are telling them that they’re wrong, that they have to change everything. We’ve had 1,000 principals and educators across the country reaching out to us. Just the other day, on Sunday night, the Mayor of New Haven got up and declared New Haven a Dream City, and closed the streets of New Haven to a parade of dreamers.

We recently purchased the url “dream.org”. An astrology company had gone defunct, so we swooped in and got a 90% discount because of our cause. We own that site, and we’re trying to figure out what exactly we’re going to launch on August 28th, which is the 50th anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech. We’re thinking about how to put that call to young people and say, “You have a dream,” and, “What will you do about that?”

Since I’m young in this and we’ve only been going a year and a half, I don’t think the question at all is what I, or The Future Project, would do. Someone recently said to us as we think about this campaign that if we’re really real with ourselves, what we want—not just we as The Future Project, but everyone in the social change sector—is to reach billions of people. That’s the scary thing when it comes to knowing whether we’re ever successful, because there are always more people to reach, always more minds to change, more norms to change.

And we thought about that for a second: billions of people. Who’s done that before? When you look at it, you realize there are only three entities in the world that have reached a billion people, in terms of creating a common sense of identity: Christianity, Islam, and Facebook. Consider it for a moment: Mark Zuckerberg meets Saint Paul.

Of all the questions that are on our minds right now, there are four questions that I want to pose to the group, because we don’t have the answers. What we have is an intention, and an understanding that there’s this incredible opportunity to create a common call to action, and to get young people, and all people, to begin to realize that they have this extraordinary potential to reshape their present reality and create a future that begins right now.

As we think about storytelling, the first question is, “What would Ben Franklin do?” I don’t think we have to look much further than Ben Franklin to figure out how to change the world and to change the norm. If you think about that image in history class or high-school of the “Join or Die” snake—thirteen colonies and the words, “join or die,” and that says it all. There are so many things that come up when you consider how Ben Franklin made change, starting with the fact that he knew how to use an image. It was Ben Franklin who mastered what it takes to create a common identity, who defined, with an image, what it is to be an American. He drove forward the concept that what tied us together as colonies was our identity as Americans, and which had a profound impact on our winning the Revolutionary War.

The other part about Ben Franklin that’s interesting to think about is the way the he told stories. He was a storyteller. Twenty-five years of his career were spent as a journalist before he went on to do everything else. He paid close attention to what was being said to, and by, the “middlings”: ordinary people leading ordinary lives. What was being spoken about at the pig roast? What are people thinking about and saying to each other as they wake up in the morning? In the school context, what’s being said in the lunchroom and the hallways? How do you reach those people, and at the same time, reach those who are influencing policies? He established a common thread that allowed him to speak to both audiences simultaneously.

Question 2 is, “What would Saint Paul do?” If we really want to think about something that has lasted beyond itself, that’s bigger than the organization, look at how Saint Paul managed to market Christianity. Religions have branded themselves extraordinarily well; what are religions but a set of beliefs and values and stories? It’s all about narrative change.

The third is, “What would Steve Jobs do?” When it comes to social change, there’s something we can learn from Steve Jobs about creating solutions and ways for people to take part that are sexy, easy, simple, and magical, and that aren’t in any way cumbersome. It’s about putting the burden on the design team, and the creators to figure out how to make it incredibly easy to engage, to figure out how to transform your school into a place of dreamers, or any cause. When it comes to developing a product, how do you create the one thing everyone can gobble up, that’s a Trojan Horse for everything else, and that allows us to avoid dwelling in the world of abstractions?

And finally, “What would Bob Dylan do?” How do we create something that makes it cool and revolutionary? How do you create that phenomenon not through traditional means, but through organic means: music and the kind of things that come from the spirit.

So that’s what I’ve got: questions, not answers. Underlying this entire issue is how we bring a sense of common purpose to all of this: rather than having a thousand different causes, what will it take for all of us to unite behind one cause? We’re talking about dreamers, Peace First is talking about peacemakers, and others have their own language, but what we’re all really talking about is the same thing. How do we seize the momentum we’re all feeling, and catalyze a real paradigm shift by finding a singular way to redefine possibility: one that doesn’t have any sacred cows? If we can do that, we can do anything.

***

Andrew Mangino is the co-founder and CEO of The Future Project, a fast-growing national education initiative to unleash a generation of dreamers—young Americans who are using their passions to change the world and transform their own lives and schools. Named one of Forbes “30 Under 30” Social Entrepreneurs and a Draper Richards Kaplan Fellow, Andrew worked after college at Ashoka, where he helped launch Start Empathy, as the speechwriter for Attorney General Holder, and as a speechwriting intern to Vice President Biden. He graduated in 2009 from Yale University, where he covered the New Haven and education beats, served as the 130th Editor in Chief of the Yale Daily News, and won the Marshall Scholarship to study education and social innovation at Oxford. Passionate about the intersection of social entrepreneurship, movements and messaging, and American history, Andrew and his team at The Future Project are preparing to launch dream.org on the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech to call upon Americans to take action to re-imagine education and transform the fate of a generation.

Ashoka Fellow Tim Carpenter on changing how we look at aging

Mon, 13 May 2013 01:34:00 -0400

In early May, Ashoka teamed up with the team at Wondros to bring together a handful of amazing thinkers and doers from both the social impact and creative worlds, to examine what it takes to advance an idea in place of a program, and to identify the ingredients of modern-day movement-building. What follows is a transcript from a talk given by Ashoka Fellow Tim Carpenter, Founder and Executive Director of EngAGE and host and producer of Experience Talks.

***

I founded EngAGE 15-16 years ago now, and I worked in senior healthcare for ten years before that, so I’ve been basically working with older adults since I was four years old.

I’m Irish, so I’m kind of genetically disposed to storytelling: we’re the world’s greatest liars, and storytelling was a competitive sport in my family that usually happened at the dinner table. I learned very early that older people told the better stories, so I ended up at that end of the dinner table, in part because that’s also where the dessert went.

We provide programs primarily in independent, low-income senior housing communities. And when I first walked into my first one, what they had on the wall to look forward to every week were two things: one was bingo, and the other was donuts. And I thought, “I’m going to be a genius in this industry if that’s the bar that I have to jump over.”

I looked for a model for how to change it, and there wasn’t really anything cool going on. So I thought, “What’s another model that I could apply to this?” And I thought about college, because if you look at college through the right sort of goggles, it’s a similar sort of launching-off point. In college, you’ve gone from high school to a new place, a new community, and there’s this sense that, “I can do anything with the rest of my life”. Somebody hands you a catalog, and you start picking which kinds of things you want to be doing each week, and who you are, and what you want to become.

The moment we meet people is often a moment of loss. People tend to move into senior housing communities because they’ve lost someone, or they’ve been moved across the country to be closer to some family member. Chances are they haven’t lived in a congregant setting in a really, really long time, so they have no idea what to do.

So I thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if some tall, strapping, good-looking guy like me handed that woman a college catalog and said, ‘this is what the rest of your life can look like.’” That’s what we modeled it after. The programs are college-level courses taught by professors. They operate on a semester basis. We use culminating events at the end of every semester to help people utilize skills in real-world ways. So our arts classes are not gluing popsicle sticks together, or sticking macaroni on paper. We teach oil painting, and life-drawing, and filmmaking, and digital photography.

We also have changed the built environment, because once I started going into these places with this dream, what I realized is that the setting where all of this happens sucks. We started meeting with developers, and getting them to look at what these places should be. We started designing classroom spaces, and theatres, and media labs, and art studios, and gallery spaces, and gyms, and wellness centers.

Our classes operate basically in strands, like wellness and art, with a focus on intergenerational programming, lifelong learning, and community-building.

About 8 years ago, I had this idea for this place in Burbank. We had a piece of land that we were looking at, and I thought, “I really want to do something different.” So we created this idea called the Burbank Senior Artist Colony. It’s a 141-unit senior apartment community, where arts is the glue.

I grew up near an artist colony in upstate New York, and used to watch James Baldwin and Pablo Picasso, and all these amazing artists walk in and out of there. I knew that they went there for a little while, and they got their minds reshaped and they worked on their art, and everything was raised up because they had this connectivity, this feeling of community with other artists. And I thought, “What if you created a place like that, but no one ever went home?”

That became the concept. We put in a theatre and created all these spaces, and we thought if we build it, they will come. The community has now been open about eight years. When we first started doing it, the LA Times put it on the cover. My picture was there, and it was this genius idea about reshaping aging, and it’s going to be about the arts, and isn’t this amazing. So this woman calls me up in my office one day, named Suzanne Knode, who was 67-years-old at the time: that’s a very young age for our population. But she’d been in a traumatic accident, and was having trouble with pain killers and chronic pain and depression, and she was a total mess. She’d been a single mom, and put two kids through school, and had never done anything for herself.

She calls and says, “You know, I read this article about this place, and I’m not an artist. I’ve never been an artist, but I think I might be a writer, and I’ve got these stories I’d like to tell.”

So I said, “Well move in.” She moves into this place, and her first order of business is to go to a creative writing class downstairs, and the assignment for the first class is to write something about conflict, which is fairly wide-ranging and God only knows what we’re going to get.

She writes this screenplay, which for the filmmakers in the room, is insane: choosing filmmaking as your first order of writing is terrifying and not for the meek. So when I got the script, I thought, “I’d really like for this not to suck,” basically.

I saw “Bandida” by Suzanne Knode and opened it up, and was just shocked. It was this funny, cool, touching, real story about this older woman who takes public senior transportation across town, is lowered on her walker with tennis balls on the front, saunters into this liquor store, dons a mask, pulls out a pistol, and starts to rob the place. In the course of the robbery, she becomes friends with the older Armenian gentleman behind the counter to the point where he lets her get away with the crime in the end.

And so I thought, one, I can’t believe this woman has never written anything and wrote this as her first thing moving into this community. And then I did the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I thought, “You know, I’m going to start a production company and make this movie.” We started having casting calls in our communities and we hired this older director, and this woman who used to do Joanne Woodward’s hair, and an older make-up artist. Everybody was like 70, 80-years-old, so it was like this geezer production. We called it Last Gasp Productions, and the tagline on the poster read, “A pistol, a plan, and sensible shoes.”

I loved what she was saying about dignity and respect, but one of the things that we chant over and over again is that I don’t actually believe you should respect your elders. I think your elders should actually still have to earn respect. There’s this thing about aging services—this idea of “deficit” and “problem”. Aging is not a deficit and it’s not a problem in the first place.

So we make this movie, and the first thing that happens is that Suzanne enters the film into the Valley Film Festival, and wins the competition. The first time she sees the film is in the El Portal theatre in the NoHo arts district, before an audience of 350 people where she got a standing ovation and won the audience award: the first time she’d seen the film, weeping on stage in front of an audience.

I also produce a radio show. We created a radio show called “Experience Talks”, about 8 years ago, which was picked up nationally a couple years ago. I’m in the “radio business” quote-unquote. I knew Ira Glass, so I called up Ira, and said, “You know, we’ve got this story that’s kind of “This American Life” that you might like.”

I wanted it to be on the radio. I love the radio. So Ira says, “Oh man, we’re about to make this television show for Showtime.”

So he flies out, and they film the first episode that they ever filmed for the television show to be about the making of Suzanne’s movie. Suzanne ends up on national television now, and is stopped in the grocery stores all the time to people saying, “Oh my God, I’ve got to know: did your film make it into the Sundance Film Festival?”

What we’re trying to do is to, one, change the way people actually age by being onsite, and changing their behavior and having them take their own responsibility for their own aging process and age in a more healthy and independent way. But then we’re also trying to change the way people think about this. So the large story is what I tell when I tend to speak in front of audiences: it’s large, but accessible. And again, this is a woman who never did anything for herself, dusted off her dreams in retirement, took a shot, took a risk, and hit it out of the park.

And since, her health has turned around. There’s an at-risk school next to the artist colony where she started an intergenerational program, where we match fifteen older crazy artists with fifteen messed up teens next door who’ve been kicked out of the traditional education system for drugs and crime and all kinds of stuff, teetering on the edge of disaster. These are kids who could end up spending the rest of their lives in correctional facilities.

It started it about six years ago, and we’ve graduated 98% of these kids from the program. Last year, we actually made 15 two-minute claymation videos with the kids and the seniors working together to tell their stories.

So these are the ways that we’re trying to change not just the environment of what these retirement communities look like, but also in general the way that people think about it, while keeping it real.

We have such a bizarre culture around aging and death, it’s unbelievable. I speak in front of large audiences all the time, and I’ll start my conversations with, “How many people in the audience would like to grow older?” And I average about 50%, and a third of them are looking around trying to figure out which one the lemming is: “I think I want to grow older?”

You don’t want to grow older? You understand what the alternative to that is, right? We demonize aging so much that end of life doesn’t actually seem like such a bad idea. “Wait a minute, let me think about that…”

So that’s what we’re doing. We’ve got 32 sites in four counties in Southern California now serving almost 8,000 seniors. We’re going outside the area: we’re doing pilot projects in three cities—three expansion projects: the Research Triangle of North Carolina, Portland, OR, and Minneapolis, MN. Those were the first responders. I mentioned sideways in a Huffington Post interview a couple years ago that we were thinking about going out of state, so we got a lot of first responders that were exactly the right kind of cities to look out our model, because they’re all mid-size cities, university towns, places where I would like to travel to and retire frankly. Although I was in Minneapolis in January, and now I’m rethinking that one.

***

Tim Carpenter founded EngAGE in 1999 and is the host/producer of the EXPERIENCE TALKS radio show. EngAGE is a nonprofit that changes aging and the way people think about aging by transforming senior apartment communities into vibrant centers of learning, wellness and creativity. EngAGE provides life-enhancing arts, wellness, lifelong learning, community building and intergenerational programs and events to thousands of seniors living in Southern California. Experience Talks is a radio magazine that shines a light on the value of experience in society, airing for 250,000 listeners on Saturdays at 8 a.m. Pacific on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, 98.7 FM in Santa Barbara and streaming live worldwide on the web at www.kpfk.org. The show is syndicated by the Pacifica Network to up to 100 cities nationwide. Tim catalyzed the creation of the Burbank Senior Artists Colony, a first-of-its-kind senior apartment community with high-end arts amenities and programs. The NOHO Senior Arts Colony and the Long Beach Senior Arts Colony opened in 2012. Tim serves on the board of the National Center for Creative Aging. In 2008, Tim was elected an Ashoka Fellow for his work as a social entrepreneur, and in 2011 he received the James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award.

Ashoka Fellow Ai-jen Poo on building the caring economy

Fri, 10 May 2013 19:50:00 -0400

In early May, Ashoka teamed up with the team at Wondros to bring together a handful of amazing thinkers and doers from both the social impact and creative worlds, to examine what it takes to advance an idea in place of a program, and to identify the ingredients of modern-day movement-building. What follows is a transcript from a talk given by Ashoka Fellow Ai-jen Poo, Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) and Co-director of the Caring Across Generations.

***

I wanted to start by introducing you to my grandmother. She’s 87-years-old, and she lives in El Hambre in a retirement community for Chinese American retirees. And she lives a really good life. She lives independently in her own apartment, and she watches kung fu soap operas, and she goes to church twice a week, and she plays Mahjong–she’s an incredible Mahjong shark; don’t take her on. She really does live a good life. She taught me most of the things that are valuable and useful to me in my life today. She potty-trained me, and that was useful, and she also taught me most of the values that I hold true. And one of the things that she always used to say is that we should always appreciate the people in our lives who take care of us because care-giving is life’s greatest gift. So one of the things that I wanted you to do as we go through this presentation is to call up someone in your life who’s taken care of you, who you really appreciate, and just think about the value of that relationship in your life.

Let’s take a moment to think about those people. Now let’s give a round of applause to the people in our lives who play that role.

My grandmother lives a great life, and she’s fully independent, and the secret to her independence is this woman named Mrs. Sun, who is her care-giver, and comes to her house three times a week to help her with the things that she can no longer do on her own: cooking, heavy lifting, taking her to some appointments, washing—some of the stuff that’s just harder for her to do on her own. Mrs. Sun also took care of my grandfather before he passed away. He had a stroke which left him paralyzed on half of his body, so she actually used to come seven days a week for 12 hours a day to support both of them. Needless to say, Mrs. Sun has played an incredibly important role in our family’s lives, and in our community, and really in the economy.

Millions of domestic workers like her are doing that work, supporting American families, every single day. At least 2 million workers are going and taking care of the most precious elements of our lives every single day: our children, our aging loved ones, our homes, so that we can go to work knowing that the things we value most are in good hands.

And despite this really, really important role that domestic workers play in our communities and in the economy, they’re among the most vulnerable workers in the economy. We see all kinds of abuses: everything from human trafficking, to not being paid for years on end, to sexual assault and violence. And there’s the whole spectrum: there are some employers who are really wonderful, and then you get the whole end of the spectrum, in which there’s nothing mediating that relationship. We compare it to the Wild West, because you never know what you’re going to get.

That’s why I started an organization called Domestic Workers United in New York. We’ve grown to now becoming a national alliance of domestic workers, and our mission is to raise the level of respect for this work, and to bring dignity to this work, including protections: domestic workers are still excluded from almost every major labor law in the country, until women like Marlene Champion started coming together in states across the country. We had a major breakthrough in 2010, when we passed the very first Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights in the state of New York, covering about 200,000 domestic workers for the first time with basic labor protections. Just last night, the state of Hawaii became the second state to pass the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, which we’re very excited about. There are seven states where similar bills are pending, so we’re making progress.

But something very interesting started happening a couple of years ago, which is that a number of people started asking us for training in elder care. More and more, housekeepers and nannies were suddenly being called upon to take care of the aging relatives of their employers. It was such a phenomenon that we decided to take a step back and understand what was happening, and what we found is that domestic workers are experiencing the rumblings of a tremendous demographic shift that’s happening in this country, where on the one hand, immigrant communities and communities of color are growing at a rapid pace, to the point where by the year 2040 we are going to be a majority minority country. And then on the other hand, we are experiencing a tremendous age wave, where the Baby Boom generation is starting to turn 65 at a rate of a person every eight seconds. Ten thousand people per day—four million people per year—turn 65. And because of advances in medicine, people are living longer. So we’re about to have the largest older adult population in the history of the country.

Take Ohio, for example. Ohio is racially 84.2% white, 12% African American, and 5% immigrant, including Latino.

This is Ohio in the year 2000, and the orange counties are the counties in which 22-25% of the population is age 60 and older.

This is Ohio in 2010, and the red counties are the counties where 25-35% of the population are over the age of 60.

And this is Ohio in 2020. The demographics in places like Arizona and Florida are forecasting what’s to come for the whole country.

But the truth is we’re all already feeling it. Every one of us probably has someone in our lives who’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, or someone we’re concerned maybe shouldn’t be driving anymore, or operating a stove on their own. And we’re stressed about it. How are we going to afford the care that they need? What are we going to do when they’re 3,000 miles away? How do we know that they have the right caregiver? Is caregiver the way to go or nursing homes?

We’re all already experiencing this age wave already, and we’re mostly experiencing it in isolation. Millions of families are grappling and struggling, and we’re all doing it alone. And this is why we started a movement called Caring Across Generations: to deliver care, support, and dignity to every single home in America, by bringing the interests of the millions of women like Marlene and Mrs. Sun and their families, together with those of all of our families who have aging loved ones and people who are going to need care, support, and services. We’re uniting them behind one voice—one vision for a more caring economy that works for all of us. We’re bringing together organizations that work on disability issues, aging issues, women’s groups, immigrants’ rights organizations—all kinds of organizations—and all kinds of everyday Americans who are grappling with these issues in their day-to-day lives.

We have policy solutions that we’re proposing, starting with job creation and homecare, because most people want to stay in their homes and communities as they age. We’re talking about 2 million new jobs in homecare, and making sure that those jobs are quality jobs that you can take pride in and support your family on. At the same time, we want to make care more affordable and more accessible to everyone.

But it’s actually much larger than these solutions. We believe that this moment is an opportunity for all of us to transform the future according to our values: values that are about empathy, that are about care, and support, and democracy, and dignity—the stuff that our grandmothers teach us. And we believe that ultimately, our job as a generation is to articulate a vision for the country that truly does have a place for all of us, from the aging white seniors in Ohio, to the young person of color in Arizona, to the immigrant domestic worker in Los Angeles, and that our task is to figure out a vision for this country that has a place for all of us, and that supports dignity, respect, and opportunity for all of us.

What’s at stake if we don’t do that is actually increasing polarization along the lines of race and generation. In fact, these kinds of demographic changes in this economy, combined with unprecedented levels of inequality and an on-going jobs crisis, means that we could easily be pitted against one another. Our interests could be completely polarized. What we want to do is actually lean in, and try to put forward a vision for the future that actually transforms that, and creates opportunity and connection for all of us.

We want to do that by really promoting the values that our grandmothers taught us: respect, opportunity, democracy, participation. But ultimately, it’s going to be powered by the power of story.

What we’ve been doing is essentially organizing gatherings across the country called Care Congresses, where thousands of people have come together in multiracial, intergenerational town-hall-style gatherings. There we’ve been doing story-sharing—care story-sharing—where people essentially tell the story of the people in their lives who’ve taken care of them, and what the value of those relationships has been in their lives, as the basis for conversations about the future of the country—the kind of future that we want to see going forward. So far, we’ve had about 40,000 people participate in some form of care story-sharing. It’s created a totally different context for a conversation about a range of social policies—everything from Medicare to immigration has been on the table, but from a totally different entry point of personal stories: what is your real life experience with people like Mrs. Sun, and what are your hopes and dreams for your grandmothers and for your grandchildren?

Care story-sharing is what we’re trying to scale and drive, to help build this movement in the context of policy change and civic engagement work. Last year, we engaged more than half a million senior voters in five swing states with this notion that we should be a country that takes care of each other across generations.

That’s the beginning, and we’re hoping to continue to power the growth of the movement through the personal stories each of us share.

***

Ai-jen Poo, Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) and Co-director of the Caring Across Generations campaign, has been organizing immigrant women workers since 1996. In 2000, she co-founded Domestic Workers United, the New York organization that spearheaded the successful passage of the state’s historic Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in 2010. In 2007, DWU helped organize the first national domestic workers convening, out of which formed the NDWA. Ai-jen serves on the Board of Directors of Momsrising, National Jobs with Justice, Working America, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, and the National Council on Aging. Among Ai-jen’s numerous accolades are the Ms. Foundation Woman of Vision Award, the Independent Sector American Express NGen Leadership Award, Newsweek’s 150 Fearless Women list, and TIME’s list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Ashoka Fellow Eric Dawson on unleashing young people's moral imaginations

Fri, 10 May 2013 18:43:00 -0400

In early May, Ashoka teamed up with the team at Wondros to bring together a handful of amazing thinkers and doers from both the social impact and creative worlds, to examine what it takes to advance an idea in place of a program, and to identify the ingredients of modern-day movement-building. What follows is a transcript from a talk given by Ashoka Fellow Eric Dawson, Co-Founder and President of Peace First.

***

I founded Peace First almost 21 years ago. I’d been a sort of pissy kid, and founded it around this idea that we have a narrative about young people in this country—and I actually think it’s global—which is that we tend to think about young people as the future. “You’re going to be a great artist someday,” or a great writer or a great whatever, which is sort of like saying you’re not a great writer or a great artist now. So we have a potential narrative for young people.

We have a victim narrative for young people, so young people are things we need to protect or keep safe. We have a lot of resources in keeping kids safe and protecting them and keeping them healthy. And then we have a narrative around perpetrators: young people are violent. They’re dangerous. They’re black and brown, they have AK-47s. So we incarcerate young people. We medicate young people. We turn our schools into prisons—literally, with metal detectors and police officers, or spiritually, with these sort of deadening, zero-tolerance policies: don’t talk in the halls; sit in your seat.

We’ve been really interested in this question of how we create a counter narrative. One part is this idea that young people are the present: they’re leaders, they’re organizers. The other is that they’re powerful: that young people can effect change. And the third is that they’re positive. They’re hungry to be called to something. That’s language for us around peace-making—so when we talk about peace-making, we’re talking about the critical skills of social-emotional learning—empathy, perspective-taking, conflict resolution—married to the critical skills of creativity and civic engagement. How do we unleash young people’s moral imaginations?

For 20 years, we’ve been a pretty typical nonprofit. We’ve run programs in schools. We start working with kids when they are in pre-school and we work with them every day, every week, every year until they’re in the 8th grade: ten years of integrated curriculum, where students learn the skills of peacemaking. We spend the first half of the year developing the skills—cooperation, communication, conflict resolution—and during the second half of the year, they have to create something that makes their schools or communities safer.

We have kindergarteners who start recycling programs. We had a group of third-graders who were being picked on by the 8th graders in their school, so they researched this and they decided the 8th graders were stressed because they were trying to figure out where they were going to go to high school. So their solution was to create a yoga program for the 8th graders. Every day for their last period of class, these third graders taught the eighth graders yoga.

We had eighth graders who basically thought their teachers were sexist. Their beef was that eighth grade teachers would ask the boys to move boxes and desks but never the girls. And if you know anything about 14-year-old girls, they’re about four times the size of 14-year-old boys, and they thought this wasn’t fair. So they developed a workshop for their teachers around Title IX, gender discrimination, and they put together this mural at their school of boys and girls doing non-traditional gender activities. You have a girl playing football and a boy holding a baby.

So that’s been our core program for the last 20 years. And we’ve done this in New York, LA, and Boston. We’ve done some light-touch training in 32 states and 23 countries, all around this idea of, “How do you unleash young people’s moral imagination, and how do you prepare them to be peacemakers?”

The problem was we couldn’t scale that. It was too expensive. It was too time-consuming. We had 50 staff people; we’d need to double it, and triple it. So we had to figure out what are other ways you can think about scale?

We got very interested in this idea about storytelling as a vehicle for scaling. It’s not about scaling our program; it’s about scaling the idea of youth peacemaking.

I grew up in the “just say no” generation. Remember when Nancy Reagan went on Different Strokes and told Arnold not to use drugs? And then they had that damn commercial with the frying pan and the egg and one is your brain, and the other’s drugs, and the frying pan was smashing things in someone’s kitchen. And now we’ve got this zero-tolerance/don’t-be-a-bully/don’t-be-a-mean-kid message.

The problem with these memes, with these PSAs, is that we don’t call our young people to anything. As a country, we don’t. We don’t invite them in—we don’t invite them into greatness.

And so we got to thinking: what would it look like to take this idea of peace-making—that’s positive, right? Who doesn’t want peace-making? But it’s soft—it’s holding hands and singing songs, or it’s esoteric—it’s Gandhi and Dr. King. What if we could create something that’s much more muscular and much more accessible for young people? So when your daughter comes home, the first thing you ask her is, “how were you a peacemaker today?” And she knows what that means.

So in January we launched basically a “Nobel Peace Prize” for kids. The idea was to invite young people, just within the US, to try on this role of being a peacemaker. We were looking for young people between the ages of eight and 22—little ones up to bigger ones—who’ve done three things, which encompass how we think about peacemaking. They’ve demonstrated compassion: they’ve crossed some line of difference to connect with others; courage, they’ve taken personal risk and shown perseverance; and collaborative change. They need to have mobilized other people: they have to become organizers, and gotten other people to do good work.

We’re not looking for the kid who runs into a burning building to save a family, or the kid who raises a million dollars for schools in Haiti. We want the young person who brings together rival gangs in her public housing development for a lasting peace treaty, or whose best friend gets the shit beat out of him, and starts a Gay-Straight Alliance to change the culture of the school. Those transformative, courageous, but relatable acts of peace-making.

And it wasn’t just us. We did this with the Girl Scouts, and Boys and Girls Clubs, 4H, and Teach for America, and City Year, and we had 1,200 colleges and universities through Campus Compact, and Ellen Degeneres was tweeting about it, and the cast of Modern Family and Parks and Recreation, and Family Circle—which by the way has great macaroni and cheese recipes—was spreading the word. We had the Superintendents Associations working with the teachers’ unions.

We rolled out to about 50 million young people, and we just closed nominations a couple weeks ago. We got 658 applications from 48 states and the District of Columbia.

What’s interesting about them is that only 1.5% were ineligible. I expected we’d get people who’d say, “I walk my dog, I’m a peacemaker,” or “I said hi to my neighbor, ‘wassup?’” Only 1.5% didn’t do some sort of project, or didn’t fit into our age group or requirements.

So now we have these stories—these amazing stories. The idea behind the Prize is to do three things: to use this as a catalyst. The idea isn’t just to give a Prize out. The Prize is big: the young people are going to get $50,000 to support their peace-making work, plus a two-year fellowship. So it’s a not a one day, “Congratulations, you’re a peacemaker, looking good,” but a two-year intensive development of them personally, and of their organizations. But the key purpose is to send them out as sparks: for people to see that work and say, “That’s pretty cool, I want to do that too.”

The first piece is identifying this really exciting, extraordinary group of young people, and the second is to give them this two-year fellowship, and then the third piece is to use those stories to engage and inspire a million acts of peace-making, which we don’t know how to do yet. We’ll announce the winners in October, so our work between now and then is to figure out how we translate stories into action. Stories can move us, but if we don’t give folks a place to move to, they’re sort of just great stories.

And so that’s what we’re trying to figure out. I’m going to show a couple of quick stories, so you get a sense of what we’re talking about. What we’ve begun to do is to pull some of these stories: these are all self-created, young people with a webcam talking about some of their work.

Meet Earth Saver Girl. This is a young girl: she’s 10. Her name is Brooklyn, and she’s created a super-hero to teach other kids about peace-making.

We have someone like Brooklyn: at 10 years old, she’s already done workshops and presentations. We have 12-year-olds who’ve written books. And then we have a young person like Nicholas, who’s 14, and at the age of 12 for his Bar Mitzvah project, he was volunteering at a homeless shelter, and he met this kid who was six years old, and the only shoes he had to wear were his mother’s fur-lined boots: these women’s boots that didn’t fit him, and had fur around the trim, because that’s all they could grab as they were leaving their abusive situation. And he wouldn’t go to school because he was so ashamed of what it would be like to go to school in women’s boots. So Nicholas talked to the Director of the shelter, and said, “why aren’t there shoes here for kids?” And she said, “well, people donate shoes, but they’re used, and they’re often formed to someone else’s foot. They don’t fit.” And he said, this isn’t right. So this kid, now two years later, has donated 8,000 pairs of shoes to homeless shelters.

What makes the difference between a peace-making project and a really cool service-project is that justice-seeking component. Young people who understand the underlying institutional issues that they want to shift.

There was another 10-year-old girl, a relatively local one, who was adopted from an orphanage when she was five. And her parents had abandoned her, and she talked about the shock of coming to a new home when you’re five years old. So she’s gotten every single first responder in San Diego County: police, fire trucks, EMTs, to have bags of teddy bears in their vehicles. So when they show up to respond to a problem, whether it’s a domestic violence issue, or a fire, these big dudes with hats and gear bring teddy bears to the kids who are at the scene. Small, delicate, but really inspired, because she connected to that experience of what it’s like to be a kid in some sort of trauma and what could help them.

The idea is that we’ve got these stories now, and we have 658 of them from all over the country. How do we use those to turn it into a call-to-action, so that when you see Earth Saver Girl, the campaign idea is, “What’s your peace? What are you going to do?” Maybe it’s not a superhero, although I can see it— “Workers’ Rights Woman” —but how do we use these stories to do the three things we want to do? First to inspire young people—maybe they won’t be Prize winners—to go out and do their own projects. How do we connect them to each other? One of the threads that came across is that they all talk about being lonely: “I’m different from the other kids in my class.” There’s this sense of wanting to change the world, and not knowing how. How do we connect young people and how do we give them tools? How do we help them walk through their own process of creating their own service projects, how do we connect that to creating peacemaking projects, and how do we connect that to justice-making?

***

Eric Dawson is the Co-founder and President of Peace First, an organization he helped launch as an 18-year-old. Peace First works on the twin challenges of youth violence and disengagement by preparing children with the skills to be peacemakers. For close to two decades, Peace First has taught conflict resolution and civic engagement skills to young people ages 3 to 14. The organization has taken its message to areas as diverse as New York; Los Angeles; Fairbanks, Alaska; Colombia; and South Africa. Peace First recently began an ambitious growth plan in conjunction with the Peace First Prize, modeled as a Nobel Peace Prize for young people. Dawson got his professional start directing a summer camp in Boston’s public housing complexes and promoting disability awareness. A program evaluator at heart, Dawson is particularly interested in the intersections of social change, social services and movement building. Dawson attended Harvard College, where he earned an M.Ed and M.Div. He is an Ashoka, Echoing Green and PopTech fellow.

Meet Ashoka Trend Spotter Alexandra Kent

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:24:00 -0400

This week, we introduce you to Saru Jayaraman’s work. Saru is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder of ROC-United. With her team, she is reforming the restaurant industry’s employment practices by aligning worker, employer and consumer interests.

We got up-close-and-personal with her in a recent interview published on Forbes.com. Saru recently released a book Behind The Kitchen Door to spread awareness about this work. Check out if she’s passing through your town soon.

We’re also putting a spotlight on Alexandra Kent, who brought Saru’s work to our attention, eventually leading to her election as an Ashoka Fellow. Thanks, Alex! We need more trend-spotters like you.

If you know someone who is tackling an important social problem with the same sort of innovative outlook and entrepreneurial strategy, let us know!

Q & A WITH TREND-SPOTTER ALEXANDRA KENT

Alexandra Kent is a Program Director at the Insight Center for Community Economic Development.

What social issue motivates you most?

Over the past year, I have been conducting research on ways people discuss, measure and promote economic security and mobility for all. I’ve been really excited about innovators who work to help low-income workers and families become upwardly mobile, gain access to career ladders and improve the future prospects of their children.

When did you start engaging with Ashoka?

I started working with Ashoka Fellows in my last job when I was director of The Purpose Prize, which offers older adults in encore careers $100,000 and national recognition for putting their lifelong experience and passion to work for the social good. A few Purpose Prize winners became Ashoka Fellows and vise versa, and once I learned about Ashoka I kept my eyes peeled for people I could nominate from my community in Northern California.

Where did you meet the Fellow you nominated?

I sat in on a telephone interview with Saru the first month I started my new job–she is a member of two networks Insight runs that aim to close racial wealth gaps and reduce racial employment and income disparities– and I was blown away by her passion and vision. She is a very creative social entrepreneur who helps improve conditions and career ladders for people working all along our food chain. Her mission resonated on a personal level. When I met my partner, he was a recent immigrant working in a restaurant and I was dismayed when I would hear how rampant wage theft and discrimination were within the restaurant industry. Hearing about Saru’s work made me realize that there are solutions and ways to lift low wage restaurant workers’ voices.

What struck you most about her work?

She is versatile. Her organization uses a variety of strategies to get the job done: research, organizing, advocacy, consumer education, storytelling, and inventing new tools, even apps, to spread the word and engage the public.

Meet Ashoka Trend Spotter Alexa Clay

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 01:18:00 -0400

This week, we spent some time with Catherine Rohr, one of our newest Ashoka Fellows who is helping former prisoners harness their entrepreneurial talents by pairing them with business leaders to create new businesses. She talks to us about how being the first girl on the boy’s high school wrestling team taught her important lessons in resilience and the importance of giving people first chances, let alone second ones. Read her interview on Forbes.com.

Our team learned about Catherine and her work at Defy Ventures thanks to trend-spotter Alexa Clay. Keep reading to learn why Alexa is so intrigued by the importance of misfits in society.

Q & A WITH ASHOKA TREND-SPOTTER ALEXA CLAY

Alexa describes herself as social entrepreneur, a poet, a collaborator, a dreamer, and an economic historian. She is currently writing The Misfit Economy, which explores stories of innovation from the world’s informal and black markets.

What social issue motivates you most?

I’m most motivated by the power of misfits. The kind of change we can all achieve when we are deeply connected to what makes us unique and authentic.

When did you start engaging with Ashoka?

I first learned about Ashoka through Ashoka’s Changemakers work with Nike. I then started working for Ashoka to see if a network for changemakers could be created within corporations. How could we do for social intrapreneurs what Ashoka has done for social entrepreneurs?

Where did you meet Catherine?

I met Cat in New York when I interviewed her for the Misfit Economy. A few months later I attended a weekend for their first graduating class of ex-cons and was blown away by the energy and excitement in the room. Not only did the entrepreneurs have great pitches, but it was clear that they had really taken themselves on through this process. Many were graduating as different men. And it was exciting to see them being recognized by family and friends for that.

What struck you most about her work?

What I love about Cat and her work is how human transformation cuts through the Defy program. You’re not just teaching entrepreneurship to ex-cons. You’re acknowledging these guys for where they’ve come from - and what they’ve achieved by being gangsters and drug dealers. You’re taking their street talents and helping to direct those skills into the formal world of entrepreneurship. It’s deeply humanizing to recognize that these guys already have talent and then work to give them opportunities to compete in the formal economy.

Trend-Spotter David Lubell Shares His Story

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:13:00 -0400

As part of our five week spot light on newly elected Ashoka Fellows and their Trend-Spotters, we invite you to learn about Seth Flaxman’s motivation behind founding Turbovote: simplifying the voting process and revitalizing American democracy. Read his one-on-one interview with Ashoka on Forbes.com.

Below you’ll also learn about David Lubell who brought Seth’s work to our attention, eventually leading to his election as an Ashoka Fellow. If you know someone who is tackling an important social problem with the same sort of innovative outlook and entrepreneurial strategy, let us know!

Q&A WITH ASHOKA FELLOW DAVID LUBELL

David founded Welcoming America, a national grassroots collaborative, to create a welcoming atmosphere – community by community – in which immigrants are more likely to integrate into the social fabric of their adopted hometowns. He was elected as an Ashoka Fellow in 2012.

What social issue motivates you most?

The issues of immigration and inclusion motivate me most. We need to radically change the way we think about immigrant integration in this country. For too long, we’ve forgotten about a critical part of the equation when we think about integration - the receiving community. Addressing the fears and concerns that some native-born residents often associate with rapid immigrant growth must be part of the process if we want to build the welcoming atmosphere needed for inclusion. Figuring this out is what I work on and think about every day.

When did you start engaging with Ashoka?

I first learned about Ashoka through the David Bornstein book “How to Change the World”, about 10 years ago. I knew I wanted to be an Ashoka Fellow from the first chapter of the book. In 2012, I heard from Hanae Baruchel, on Ashoka’s team. The Fellow selection process was stimulating and thought provoking and the same has been true since I’ve become an Ashoka Fellow. Ashoka has helped us in a lot of different ways since 2012 by connecting us to people, ideas and resources and acting as a megaphone for our work.

Where did you meet the Fellow you spotted?

I met Seth at the Draper Richards Kaplan retreat in May 2011. The Foundation supports social entrepreneurs that want to take their work to scale. Seth and I really connected and I decided to nominate him for an Ashoka Fellowship.

What struck you about his work?

I’ve worked at the intersection of community organizing and civic participation for a long time and I have been consistently surprised by how untouched by technology voter participation efforts remain. The voting process is confusing and looks different from precinct to precinct. It kind of baffles me that we’ve been able to put a man on the moon but can’t figure out how to vote. When I met Seth it was immediately clear that he understood the gaps in voter participation systems really well. He has figured out an effective way to unlock the power of technology to address these gaps.

Ashoka Trend-Spotter Jim Greenbaum Shares His Story

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:47:00 -0400

As part of our five week spot light on our newly elected Ashoka Fellows and their Trend-Spotters, we invite you to learn about Kendis Paris’ motivation behind co-founding Truckers Against Trafficking on our blog. With thousands of truckers around the country, she is turning the trucking industry into a critical force against human trafficking – a model replicable across transportation modes. Read her one-on-one interview with Ashoka on Forbes.com.

We also invite you to learn about Jim Greenbaum who brought her work to our attention, eventually leading to her election as an Ashoka Fellow. If you know someone who is tackling an important social problem with the same sort of innovative outlook and entrepreneurial strategy, let us know!

Q & A WITH ASHOKA TREND-SPOTTER JIM GREENBAUM

Jim is a serial entrepreneur and founder of the Greenbaum Foundation. A long-time Ashoka supporter and trend-spotter, he was the first to flag Fellow Kendis Paris’ work to us.

What social issue motivates you most?

My motivation stems from my philosophy that being a bystander to suffering is not an option. When I first learned of the existence of Modern Day Slavery/Human Trafficking, and the fact that so few resources were being directed towards rescuing victims, I knew I had my work cut out for me. The same later held true when I learned of female genital cutting, and the successful work of Tostan to end the practice and transform social norms throughout communities in Africa. Next came awareness of the high infant and maternal mortality rates in many regions of the world, and some amazing underfunded social entrepreneurs working to save lives.

When did you start engaging with Ashoka?

I first learned of the amazing work of Ashoka at a Renaissance Weekend event in 2006 when I happened to become acquainted with and extremely impressed by Andy Kuper, then the Managing Director of Strategic Partnerships at Ashoka. Not long after, I met Bill Drayton at the Clinton Global Initiative. With my having been a long time member of YPO (Young Presidents Organization) and also an active member of its Social Enterprise Networks, it only took a few minutes of talking with Bill before I committed to work to create a YPO Ashoka Network. The rest is history.

Where did you meet the Fellow you spotted?

I first met Kendis Paris in May, 2011 at a law enforcement training conference on human trafficking. I listened to her presentation to the attendees. Her vision, drive, and ability to succeed in her passion of combatting human trafficking in the trucking arena were clear to me. I immediately began funding her work, and a year later, I nominated her for an Ashoka Fellowship.

What struck you most about her work?

Kendis created a low cost, highly effective approach to combat human trafficking in the trucking arena with her organization Truckers Against Trafficking. Kendis’ determination to succeed was clear from the start. It has been 20 months since I first met Kendis, and her work and success has impressed me more and more every single month. The numbers of young trafficking victims who have been rescued directly as a result of Kendis’ work grows every week. Kendis made a commitment, and she continues to deliver.

Welcoming Ashoka Fellow Sarah Hemminger - Stories from our Trend-Spotters

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 17:39:00 -0400

This week, we welcome five new Ashoka Fellows to our network of more than 3,000 social entrepreneurs and every Thursday for the next five weeks, we will be featuring each of these Fellows on our blog hosted by Forbes.com.

You can read about our first featured Fellow, Sarah Hemminger here. Below, you can also learn all about Lennon Flowers, who was among those who helped us spot Sarah in the first place.

Q & A WITH ASHOKA TREND-SPOTTER LENNON FLOWERS

Lennon serves as the Community Director for Ashoka’s Start Empathy initiative, where she leads our efforts to find the next wave of “Empathy Fellows,” and to distill and share the key principles and practices that underpin their work with educators looking to follow their lead. She is the co-founder of The Dinner Party, a collective of men and women out to change the way we approach life after loss, through candid conversation and the art of breaking bread.

What social issue motivates you most?

I can’t say there’s a single issue. If anything, it’s our tendency to conflate circumstance with a lack of potential: to condescend or outright dismiss people because we believe them less than capable, when the reality is we’ve simply failed to create systems through which anyone, at any age, can thrive. So it’s efforts to unlock agency that inspire me most.

When did you start engaging with Ashoka?

I first joined Ashoka in the Fall of 2007, having graduated from college that May. At the time, it was the only place I knew of that could capture a vision as grand as “everyone a changemaker,” while simultaneously taking a very hard look at what real impact actually looks like, and the need to invest both money and trust not just in academics and policy wonks, but in the people who very often lived the problems they sought to address.

Where did you meet the Fellow you spotted?

Our friends at Echoing Green gave me the first tip-off: Sarah became an Echoing Green Fellow in 2009, just after formally launching IMP. I spend much of my time scouring the US in search of what we call “Empathy Fellows”: systems-changing social entrepreneurs who’ve uncovered a powerful means of cultivating empathy, or creating the kinds of conditions in which empathy can thrive. That’s not something you can easily Google, so we tend to find those Fellows the same way we find all Fellows: by relying on our network to surface game-changing ideas in a variety of fields, and then unpacking how they do what they do. I’d worked with Johns Hopkins during the early days of Ashoka U’s Changemaker Campus Initiative, and a few conversations with alumni and faculty still there confirmed our suspicions: Sarah was on to something big.

What struck you most about her work?

It was so simple: Sarah proved that turning around the lives of the kids who’d been virtually written off since birth didn’t require a clinical degree, or the creation of an entirely new school system. What makes IMP work — the commitment to do whatever it takes, to never give up, to, quite simply, love more — are principles that anyone can put into practice. The last cohort of students had an average GPA of .8 upon entering IMP. To date, every single kid has gone on to college, and among the oldest cohort, 66% are due to graduate from college this year. You simply don’t find those kinds of statistics elsewhere. What Sarah’s done is to create a model for how to mobilize an entire community behind a shared challenge: a model for transforming not only the lives of the students they serve, but of every volunteer, and the very communities in which they live.

Aaron Swartz - tech prodigy largely responsible for developing...

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 14:01:00 -0500

Aaron Swartz - tech prodigy largely responsible for developing the code behind RSS and parts of Reddit, “Open Access” advocate – took his life on January 11, 2013.

To honor him, friends have launched an awareness campaign about Open Internet and Open Access principles called #pdftribute.

RIP Aaron Swartz.

(picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Ashoka Seattle introducing themselves on our bi-weekly team...

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 14:23:00 -0500

Ashoka Seattle introducing themselves on our bi-weekly team meeting :-)

When you talk to an Ashoka Fellow candidate & it turns out he/she is as awesome as you’d hoped.

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 16:11:50 -0500

How will you be celebrating Internet Freedom Day on January 18?

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 23:01:00 -0500

How will you be celebrating Internet Freedom Day on January 18?

Real Life: I'm a Principal

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 11:58:00 -0500

Real Life: I'm a Principal:

Want to know what it’s like to sustain a school culture of empathy? In ”Real Life: I’m a Principal,” Michelle Hughes takes us behind the scenes of High Meadow School, a school that strives to build empathy, teamwork, leadership, and problem-solving skills in its students and staff.

With the Ashoka US offices spread out coast to coast and north...

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 09:39:00 -0500

With the Ashoka US offices spread out coast to coast and north and south, I thought it might be a fun idea to create a virtual tour of each of our spaces. Check out Seattle’s “ballroom” or the historical remnants of the old grain exchange where Twin Cities now calls home. Enjoy!