HumanKindMedia

Why the impossible needs to be considered in terms of steps, maybe 5 steps

If you haven't seen the Story of Stuff in Tuesday's post yet, or Liz's new column, check them out. Some of the ideas we've got for our upcoming posts are about sustainability--in the global citizen context. One of those ideas started way back when I got my Smile cards. When I was introduced to the giving economy through Charityfocus.org I had questions. It was so intriguing but seemed so impossible that we could shift our little human selves to a more equitable exchange of service, goods, resources, and caring.

One of the people I had planned to write about in the next few weeks is Mark Boyle, a former Glasgow business student who, after watching the movie Ghandi, was moved to study the man and his principles. Over the last few weeks his story has become even more compelling to me because, as is frequently the case with changing the world, it has become difficult--and touching--and I can't wait to share his story.

Many people we've covered have done this, created that or decided to change or are inspiring people to change. Mark has done , and created, has decided to change the world and is definitely inspiring people, but the most important thing about him is he's in the middle of doing it--not, "did it", yet, but in the mucky middle of doing the impossible, and it's gotten a little bumpy.

Mark started FreeCommunity at justfortheloveofit.org last fall as an experiment in making the transition from a money-based communityless society to a community-based moneyless society. Sounds impossible, yes? In his words,

Freeconomy is a manifestation of trust, kindness, community and love. Money and credit are a manifestation of fear, insecurity and greed. Freeconomy is the common denominator to all of its solutions; Money and credit are the common denominators of all the world's ills.

Right now freeconomies are the minority. This is unimportant. Soon they will be the overwhelming majority. Each one of us is a seed. The regenerative power of one seed cannot be underestimated. A forest can grow from the germination of a single seed, and similarly one simple act of generosity can give life to an infinite number of others.

Here's the 2-minute intro to Freeconomy--way cute and it made me sign up. :--)

Inspired by the work of Ghandi and longing to ease some of the suffering he could trace to economic systems, he wanted to create something different with more possibility for community and connection, less possibility for suffering and violence. Like Ghandi, he decided he wants his life to be his message. So, he decided to take a walk.

After setting up this amazing freecommunity web-based exchange, he embarked upon a pilgrimage to spread the word from England to India. The walking sounds impossible enough, but the condition is that no money exchanges take place.

On January 30, on the anniversary of Ghandi's death, Mark, aka Saorise (meaning Freedom in Gaelic) for the pilgrimage, began a 7500 mile trek from Bristol to Ghandi's birthplace in India. About 50 fans and fellow freeconomists saw him off. Here's a nice interview from early in the trek by the Guardian. Blogging along the way, he shared the horrendous initiation of foot problems, his recovery, his voyage to France and then there was a week of silence followed by an announcement that a big decision was forthcoming. The big decision ended up being that he returned to England last week. In spite of the difficulties and the big decision, all along the way Saoirse kept his focus on his message: do something for someone, offer a kindness. He had people writing in from everywhere.

What I find especially courageous is his heartfelt, honest blogging to thousands of fans, followers, and friends, some now "polarized" about his decision, which I imagine was similar to what Ghandi found to be true during some of his decisions and actions. Now, he's back in England, determined to continue via Plan B (which was originally Plan A to begin with) applying the same wisdom as the site's inspiration page, which holds enough encouragement to get anyone started (if you haven't taken today's step yet) and keep them going on their own impossibilities.

I am so excited about this whole venture, (easy to say from sunny California) that if I could, I'd be over there to cheer him along. The coach in me comes out and I want to tell him about the 5 steps I just made up today, for doing the impossible. Click continue to see these 5 steps and hear what movie they remind me of:

Foreign policy, environmental activism? What we call it: global citizenry

I'm so excited. This Saturday, March 1, we're going to be TypePad's featured site. I feel like we've won our own little Academy Award. For the past (almost) six months, we've been on one kick or another (anyone know where that phrase comes from?), from ending extreme poverty and helping women around the world, to peace and creating a world fit for kids, with a few tangents thrown in along the way (see list on lower right). And, we've had fun.

If you've been wondering why we weren't writing about the environment or about people and organizations doing work right here in our own back yards (or right there in your own back yard), we've had our reasons. One, everyone is writing about the environment, but more about that in a minute. Two, we feel strongly that one way to "heal the world" is for all of us to belong to the bigger world -- to raise our awareness about bloggers in Kenya, volunteers and organizations working with orphans in Rwanda or Zimbabwe, and the artists saving a village in Egypt.

Thanks to Al Gore and friends, and then, mainstream media, "going green" is a topic everywhere -- documentaries, advertisements, organizations, schools and corporate marketing. Everyone's going green. For the longest time, I've been wanting to add my two cents by writing about sustainability. But, though its a big buzzword, I wasn't so sure I knew what it really meant.

Then something funny happened. While I was trying to figure out what I meant by "sustainability," Liz was trying to figure out new ways to think about foreign policy. We're so cute. We independently came up with our "different way" of viewing our topics, but we arrived at the same phrase: global citizen. Sustainability makes sense when you think of it in terms of being a global citizen. Foreign policy sounds way more inclusive when you think of it from the perspective of a global citizen.

We probably like the phrase so much, as you may know, because it's part of our tagline: Media for the global citizen. But mostly we like it because it's not about what to do, or what to buy. It's about a new way to be in the context of a healed world -- a global citizen.

So we're going to write about the environment, but not in the way everyone else is writing about it (what would be the point of that?). We're going to keep our focus on the whole world, while talking about things close to home. In Liz's new column, you'll hear our reaction to the age-old idea of "foreign policy" (talk about language houses), and, beginning this week we'll share ways to get that "10% more media" with some wonderful ideas we've found about caring for the world in a "sustainable" way that you might not find in the mainstream.

So, to start, if you haven't seen this yet, let me introduce you to the fascinating, entertaining and wonderfully educating "Story of Stuff. This, like no other economics lesson you've ever heard, was created by Annie Leonard, an activist and expert on a new way of looking at being a global citizen in the context of sustainability. The video below is chapter 5, the "consumption" piece of the full cycle of the consumer-driven economy. This is a teaser. I really recommend everyone see the 20-minute show (your 10% more media about possibility for the day) here. I watched it again today and heard different ideas for the first time. If you can, watch it with a family member and later, share it. It's that good.

Over the next few weeks, we won't be looking at what to do so much or telling you what to buy to "go green." Instead, we'll be wondering what people and organizations around the world are doing to balance equity amongst one another and between us humans and the rest of the living planet. We'll find people making their way around guilt and gluttony and into global citizenry -- examples that can help us make new decisions and find our own way into our roles as global citizens.

"There are no easy answers," says me, the girl with a zippy little car, too many shoes and more than enough pairs of earrings. You and I are not going off to live on what we can eat in the woods anytime soon. But if it didn't seem impossible, we wouldn't be writing about it. The impossible just takes a little longer, as they say. Awareness is always the first step to change. We shouldn't let our guilt over our good fortune get in the way of our giving, sharing, and acting upon that longing we have to heal the world.

We can ask questions like my hero, Chris Phillips, the Socrates guy, does: How much is enough? Where does this come from and where will it end up? What do I need? How do I weigh my longing for a better world and the wanting of the next gizmo, gadget? What's my next step for me toward global citizenry? Here are just a few of Annie's tips and many interesting resources. So many possibilities to jump in and start where you are. Let us know your tips and next steps.

New to HumanKind Media? Check out what we're up to by clicking on the links on the upper right or peruse our categories down on the lower left. You can get our free updates here, and join our HumanKind Challenge #3 (put your mark on our map) here. Welcome.

A different kind of movie star

My earliest childhood memories are of lazy Saturdays down at the movie theater watching movies with my little sister when Mom would drop us off, back in the day when it was ok to do that, and the movies didn't need rating systems. Over the years films have thrilled me, scared me, informed me, and caused me to question. I know there are texts and tomes of research around the world examining the psycho-social impact of film, but for me, a good film moves me and often inspires me to think and do things in new ways.

Though I love films and many of the actors and actresses who bring them to life, I don't often love hearing about all the private details of their lives. One exception I take to that is reading about all the good they do in the world. I love that many actors and actresses choose to use their celebrity to call attention to causes, or to mobilize people and money toward efforts to help in every imaginable part of the world. So many examples of this, but recent ones Brad Pitt's Project Make it Right in New Orleans, and Ashley Judd for YouthAids around the world.

A few weeks ago I found my own movie star whom you won't read about in the entertainment magazines, but I wish you could. Stuart Farmer is my favorite latest example of someone who stumbled upon something they could help with, thought about what was possible and took action. Stuart's a leading man in the movies, but in the role providing stellar inflatable screens for FilmAid who provides entertainment and education films in refugee camps.

I first heard of FilmAid International back when we were writing about Karli's list and Braden's school. Until I was learning about African children and the people working to help them, I knew little about refugee camps. When I talked to Caroline Avakian, FilmAid Communications Director, she told me that over 33 million people are in refugee camps around the world, having been forcibly displaced by violent conflict. Of those 33 million, 80% are women and children. And, most amazing and heartbreaking to me, the average stay in a refugee camp is 17 years.

FilmAid was conceived by Caroline Baron, producer of Monsoon Wedding and Capote, who, in 1999, during the Bosnian war heard a radio program about the refugee camps in Macedonia. The doctor being interviewed was talking about the psychological trauma and boredom being the largest problems in the camps. Her immediate response: film. We've all be changed by film. After that Caroline mobilized friends and associates, they arrived in the camps and began showing entertaining films--Charlie Chaplin, at first. In addition, they did public service announcement films with critical messaging for the refugees: in this, case, land mine awareness.

Since then, Ms. Avakian says, they've learned a lot. In the past 7 years FilmAid has brought films for entertainment, inspiration, and information to millions of refugees in Kenya, Tanzania, Macedonia, Afghanistan and Lousiana. They have received recognition around the world for meeting this need for the refugee population.

Over the years and many refugee camps, FilmAid has developed a four-part, winning formula for the community: First, an evening screening of an entertaining film, usually with as many as 15,000 people watching, of an entertaining film. I wondered about the films: were we talking Disney or Die-Hard? Avakian says no, these films are selected by an advisory committee of community leaders, elders and underrepresented groups. The films are selected for appropriateness for the community and are frequently locally produced films featuring protagonists of their own ethnicity or from their region--empowered heroes and heroines. Also during the evening screening is a second part of the program: public service announcements. These are selected for relevance to the local communityand cover topics like cholera information, or hygiene, or HIV/AIDS prevention and gender-violence education. Third are the daytime educational screenings in small settings where "taboo" topics, such as domestic violence prevention, mostly targeted toward women and girls, can be presented and discussed openly.

Fourth, and most inspiring, is the PVP program which is the participatory video project, training community members to be videographers and create their own films, some of which have actually been featured in film festivals and later as evening features in their camps.

The actual showing the films is where Stuart comes in. In 2001, Stuart founded OpenAir Cinema via a business competition at BYU. OpenAir provides projectors and film equipment for outdoor movies anywhere using the latest technology in inflatable screens and digital projectors. In 2002, Stuart says, he was surfing the internet when he came upon FilmAid. "They were using old projectors and small screens. I knew I could help." Stuart placed a call the next morning and donated 3 screens, a 9' fold-out, a 15' and a 25' inflatable--that's screen size! Before he knew it he was in Tanzania, setting up for the largest outdoor cinema in the world, 15,000 people. He trained people to set up the equipment, and they trained people and off they went.

I asked Stuart what the personal impact of this experience was on him. He said he was "mostly incredulous that a majority of people live in near poverty in the world." He was also "blown away" by how effective the media is and what a nice gift psychologically this is for the refugees. When he returned to the US and "our consumptive dream" he vowed to participate more. Stuart hopes to continue donating a screen a year--he's talking about Burma and their refugee camps, next.

Read about FilmAid's mission and why it works or donate here.

For two inspiring, two-minute films about Stuart's gift and FilmAid click continue.

A Million Ideas for Peace...or the dog ate my homework

Today, I got up early so I could a) finish a really great post I was working on for you today, and b) make pancakes for the high school boys, who get really tired and grumpy by Thursday, so they need special attention, and c) put my exercise clothes on before everything started so there would be NO EXCUSES. But as they say, "The gods laugh when you make a plan."

I was just finishing putting in all the links on the post and making the pancake batter (yes, I can usually do things like this simultaneously -- I'm amazing) when boy A noticed I had a YouTube video running (I was getting the link). He sat down and watched the video. When he was done, while I was flipping the pancakes, he kindly CLOSED ALL MY LINKS. I was up early, I was focused, I didn't need to hit save every few minutes, did I? Well, so I thought. After the initial shock of losing the post, and as the pancaked boys headed to school, I asked myself, how can I make peace with this situation?

And, voila, "peace" was the answer. I decided to post today about A Million Ideas 4 Peace is the brainchild of Lucy Garrick, a management consultant in the Northwest. I discovered her blog last November when we were doing a series on Peace and Connection. As the blog says, "The heart of Million Ideas for Peace is about a new kind of activism based on change created by turning toward what we want rather, than opposing or fixing what is wrong in the world. We call it Active Peace." Standing for what we want not against what we don't want--that's our HumanKind mantra, so, of course, we love Lucy's blog.

When I first saw Million Ideas, there were six or seven wonderful entries. In her first entry, I read:

I began to wonder what it would be like if we humans, living in the 21st century, were able to see each other through the lens of peace-making, rather than defending ourselves against the fear of an uncertain future.

You are invited to share your stories about peace-making here. I hope you will join in and help us all to see how we are already making peace. And by seeing what we are already doing, we will be able to do more together. We may be able to find the inspiration and energy to pay a little more attention and invest a peaceful intention in what we do.

In January, when I went back the blog was up to #23. Yesterday she ran #53, an entry I wrote on Transforming your To-Do List. I can hardly wait to read to all the wonderful posts to come up to a million (or to infinity and beyond, as Buzz Lightyear would say.)

You can post to MillionIdeas4Peace, too, and check out the Million Ideas for Peace website, where you will see their own version of our Peace Map. (Put your alias and Pic on both maps for extra karma points.)

Now, I'm still in my exercise clothes and out of excuses...

Making cultural bonds with kites and tops

There was a huge story this past weekend in the Times about how important it is for kids to have creative play; I'm planning to read it next weekend when I'm all done with some work projects (yes, I think that's funny, too). In the meantime, it made me think this is a great time to tell you about an amazing Brazil-based team that builds cultural bridges between kids by sharing how they play.

Projeto BIRA is two researchers: Renata Meirelles and Dave Reeks. [Ed. note: I went to college with Dave; he met Renata on a trip to Brazil in 2000; now they're married and have a super cute kid. You can see their photo on our Peace and Love Map.]

In 2001, Dave and Re made connections with people working in the Amazon Region, packed up some camping gear, and embarked on an eight-month trip to introduce themselves to 16 riverside and indigenous communities. They met the kids who live there, played with them, learned about their games and how they make their toys -- you can see in the video kids making tops, boats, kites, and more -- and they shared games and toys they'd already learned about. Then, using video Dave shot on the trip, the team began sharing with kids in Brazil and the U.S. They opened up a cultural exchange among kids on an international scale.

Dave made a short and wonderful English-language video that shows what they do better than my words can ever say. And Renata published a Portuguese-language book about games and toys from the Amazon and the rest of Brazil just last year, called Giramundo. (By the way, they're looking for a U.S. publisher.)

Since that first trip, Renata and Dave have returned to the river communities, showing the short documentaries they put together (some have won film festival awards) and deepening the cultural exchange. Theirs is one of my favorite world-changing projects ever, not just because I got to meet some of the kids in the river communities when I went to visit Dave and Re in 2005, but because the project does two things I love most in efforts to heal the world: It demonstrates how important kids are in creating new bonds between cultures and countries, and it uses media -- the films -- to help make those bonds.

Now, go play :)

Love and hip hop

Happy day after Valentine's Day, everybody! I hope you're still feeling that warm glow. I love spending this holiday in New York City because I get to see all kinds of New York men, from the brusque Manhattan business suits to the toughest Brooklyn dudes, carrying flowers. Awww. It makes the city a much nicer place.

Yesterday, in honor of love and peace, we put out the call for Challenge 3.5 -- our Peace Map became the Peace and Love Map. Hope you check it out, say hi to HumanKind readers all over the world, add yourself if you haven't already, and pass it on to friends. We've loved watching the map grow.

So now for the hip hop portion of this post: I went to a show a couple of weeks ago and discovered something surprising: The story is in this new column, my post-Valentine's gift to you. Hope you enjoy.

Wishing you a peaceful and lovely weekend,
Liz

Loving the world like Socrates, and HumanKind Challenge #3.5

Photo by Quan Nguyen (Many thanks, Quan)

I've been thinking for a week about how to celebrate Valentine's Day the HumanKind way. We say HumanKind Media is about touching the longing in all of us to heal the world, but really it's about loving the world, and I somehow wanted to write about that. But most of my ideas were too corny or they were too trite. (Liz refused to let me put the Michael Jackson "Heal The World" video up, but you can find it on YouTube. Shhh!)

I had given up on writing anything and just leaving you all to your own devices for Valentine's Day when I serendipitously stumbled upon Christopher Phillips, author and founder of the Society of Philosophical Inquiry. Last night, crazy as it sounds, I had dashed into my local bookstore to find something to read, when I overheard him speaking to the largest crowd I'd seen for an author in that spot, on the subject of the five kinds of love identified by the Greek philosophers. Though I had no idea who he was or what he was talking about at first, what caught my ear was the phrase "loving humankind." He was talking about the fifth kind of love -- agape or unconditional love which, for our purposes, we will call loving the world. Yay! How cool was that?

Utne Reader dubbed him "Johnny Appleseed with a master's degree." Phillips and his wife founded the Society for Philosophical Inquiry, traveling and working with groups of people all around the world -- in schools, prisons, senior communities, on reservations, and in bookstores, gathering and asking questions. They created "Socrates cafes," enclaves of discourse encouraging dialogue based on the dialogues of the Greek philosphers (Socrates, especially). Many of these stories and the Greek philosophy that supports them are chronicled in his trilogy of books about exploring the Socratic method of questioning. His latest book, "Socrates in Love," is described on his website like this:

Taking as his springboard for modern Socratic inquiry the five traditional forms of love as practiced by the Greeks of antiquity -- eros (erotic love), storge (family love), philia (friendship love), xenia (stranger love), and agape (unconditional love) -- Phillips sets out to explore, in a wide variety of venues around the world, with people of all walks of life, how we can become a more loving world today, and how we can and even must learn about the wise, loving ways of the Greeks of old--particularly those of Socrates, who embodied all aspects of Greek love at a time when his own beloved society was in deep decline, seeking to resuscitate those loving practices that might once again set his society on an evolving course.

Since I was still in my workout clothes from the afternoon, and had a cap on to cover my hair, there was no way I was going to approach this fascinating author about his work, in spite of the fact that it was for a blog. (But I did e-mail him today). So, after the crowd dispersed (happily, a hugely diverse crowd and many young adults, too), I snuck up and read as much of "Socrates in Love" as I could before they kicked me out. It was filled with provocative questions and stories of thoughtful people of every kind imaginable wondering about those questions -- the scholarly, Socratic version of caring conversations.

Just with the brief sampling from last night and a jaunt through his website, I am left excited and hopeful now that I know about Christopher and the 300+ groups around the world who have followed his lead. In my coaching and my life, I am always amazed how everything comes down to how we converse and connect -- finding fulfilling work, starting social change, getting along with our teenagers, creating groups at work or in the community, and loving the world.

You can check out Christopher's site here and his non-profit, Society for Philosophical Inquiry, here (you can find or start your own Socrates cafe). Hopefully we will get him to talk to us or write us a blog, but in the meantime, I am inspired by his work and his conviction that we can connect and love the world like Socrates did.

For Valentine's day, I hope you'll consider loving the world by having a good, open, wonder-ful conversation with someone, and imagine it rippling out through the world.

And speaking of connecting -- this post to its title, and us to one another -- check out how our little map is doing! We've had visitors from all over the world to our blog -- Ceylon, Kenya, Mexico, and our dear but anonymous friends from Arhus in Denmark. Not everyone is on the map, though.

Our peace map, HumanKind Challenge #3, is slowly growing, but we could give it a kick. In honor of Valentine's Day, we're now calling it the Peace and Love Map, HK Challenge version 3.5, and we invite you to join. If you want your pin to stick (I want it to), you need to put your name or an alias on the pin, make sure it's moved to your real location, not Wichita or Dayton, unless you really live there, and we'd love it if you can upload a picture -- any picture: your dog, your car, your Mom or your swingset -- or a heart, hearts would be good. If you've got friends far away, now's a great time to send them a Valentine with this blog or our HumanKind Challenge #3 blog link, . I invite them to join you in this fun experiment on the map. Fun, free, and a great way to state our intentions for this world we love.

Click here to go to the map. Use the + and - to zoom in and out (you can almost see streets!) Click and slide the map to see our friends in Singapore, Connecticut, Australia, Canada, California, Minnesota, and more. But where are the Montanans, the Floridians, and the Peruvians? What about Greenland? and Italy? Tell your friends.

New to HumanKind Media? You can read about what we're up to by clicking the links on the upper right and you can scroll through our archives on the lower left. Get our free updates here.

A blog from Chris Coppola: a world fit for kids

At about the same time Liz and I began writing about creating a world fit for kids back in January, Liz stumbled upon Chris Coppola, a US military surgeon blogging in Iraq. Chris's posts were an engaging, realistic look at one individual's experience in the face of impossibility, and a mesmerizing portrayal of showing up, one day at a time, to do what's possible. (So engaging, in fact, that he and his wife got a book of his posts published; they donate the proceeds to Fisher House, a non-profit that provides support and housing for the families of injured troops.)

We wrote and told him we were fans and asked if he'd ever consider a guest blog for HumanKind, and oh, by the way, we're writing about creating a world fit for children. As a father, a pediatric surgeon, and someone who was seeing many Iraqi children casualties, he was extremely qualified to write about the topic.

Fast forward a month, and Chris is home again with his wife and children, back at his old hospital, and still blogging -- about pediatrics and Iraq, but also about sushi and choices of operating room music. We hadn't forgotten about him, but we hadn't exactly remembered him, either, when surprise! He sent us a wonderful blog about creating a world fit for children. Today, we are so pleased to bring it to you; click on "Continue reading" below this post for Chris's blog. To our readers, we hope you enjoy this post as much as we did. To our friend Chris Coppola, a million thanks for this offering and for the work you're doing in the world.

Mayange Village: A model for the millennium

It seems like yesterday but it was five months ago we began looking at the world's most impossible problems, and began meeting the people who were tackling them. We started with what seemed nearly as unattainable as world peace, the end of extreme poverty around the globe. We wrote this post about Jeffrey Sachs and the Millennium Goals, an initiative set by the UN in 2000.

Recently Liz got to talk to Karen Schmidt about the Millennium Village project in Mayange sector of Rwanda. Karen is deputy director for Access Project and Millennium Villages Rwanda, at the Center for Global Health and Economic Development (that's through the Earth Institute at Columbia University).

In 2005, Rwanda became the third of 10 sub-Saharan African countries to participate in the Millennium Villages project, meant to demonstrate that empowered communities can lift themselves out of extreme poverty within five years. The Rwandan government chose the first site, in Mayange sector, one of the poorest in the country, struggling not just with past violence but with drought and a small harvest.

Ex-pat aid workers got the program off the ground in 2006, but the projects are now run mostly by Rwandans, including a health care center that went from seeing very few patients to serving thousands. Recently, the Rwandan government announced that each of its 30 districts would implement the Millennium Villages model in their poorest sectors.

Millennium Villages is a very cool idea, one that hadn't been tried before. The keys to the model are integrated programs -- health, infrastructure, education, agriculture -- and local ownership: management of the programs is taken on by the government and by the community members who participate. "What's amazing, of course, is that for so many years, the health people would do this, and the agricultural people would do that, the education people would do this. They wouldn't work together," Karen says.

"I'm trained in public health, and we didn't learn anything about agriculture. When we started planting maize and fertilizer, I had never heard of this stuff, but it's pretty basic -- because with most childhood diseases, the reason they're so bad is because of malnutrition."

Each research village involves intense observation; up to 10 nearby villages clustered around each Millennium Village get the same interventions, but less observation. Some interventions, like the idea of planting maize in rows, have spread on their own, says Karen.

The program focuses on designing uncomplicated interventions and handing over management roles to local people. Those may seem like new ideas, but they're really no-brainers, Karen says. "The economy is not going to develop if everyone's sick," she points out. Plus, time has shown over and over again that programs have to have community buy-in if they're going to last. "That's the only way that something like this is going to continue and not just be something we did for five years," Karen says. "Ultimately, it comes down to the community, and if they don't think it's meeting their needs, then they're not going to be interested."

And interested, they are. Remember that health center that was serving almost no patients? "It wasn't because people weren't sick. It was because there was nothing there, and you had to pay for it," Karen says.

First, a medical student from Philadelphia volunteered to get the center on its feet, tracking down nurses, getting electricity and supplies flowing. He helped train a local coordinator and turned it over. Now, thousands of people come for treatment and for preventive care. "We're seeing a big drop in malaria cases, a big increase in utilization (of the center)," Karen says. "And a big increase in the number of women delivering at the health center," though some women choose to deliver at home.

Plus, the center makes family planning information available to every patient, even if they're just in for a routine vaccination for their child. "People say, you know, 'Rural people, poor people, they're not educated, they won't want to use these methods," Karen says. "We have seen that there aren't a lot of cultural barriers (to family planning). People want to be healthy."

But even more encouraging than this steady move toward progress, and the fact that 25,000 people are participating in this project after a genocide, a drought, and the impact of HIV/AIDS, is that Rwanda is now becoming a living model of what's possible.

Last year, former President Bill Clinton won a wish from TED, the social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, thought leaders, and visionaries from around the world who meet annually to incubate and nurture ideas that can change the world. (As a side note, for your 10 percent more media about possibility, TED has the full catalog of speeches by people you've heard of and people you've never heard of doing the impossible all over the globe here).

Clinton's wish was for help implementing a pilot health care program he helped start in Rwanda using Paul Farmer's successful model from Haiti and other countries Partners In Health have been working. "What we have been trying to do, working first in Rwanda ... is to develop a model for rural health care in a very poor area that can be used to deal with AIDS, TB, malaria, other infectious diseases, maternal and child health -- the whole range of health issues that people are grappling with in the developing world --that can first be scaled for the whole nation of Rwanda and then can be a model that can literally be implemented in any other poor country in the world."

Karen says, "In places where I've worked in Rwanda, most people want the same things we want. They want a safe place to live, they want to be healthy, they want their kids to be better off than they were." Now Rwandans are leading the way to achieving those simple things for more and more of their fellow citizens, showing the world what's possible, showing us ways that can work around the world to create a world fit for kids.

Speaking of kids, here's a wonderful clip from a video produced entirely by the students at the Mayange school during art classes with Karli. Yeah, making a world fit for these kids. Worth it.

Proposed Military Spending Is Highest Since WWII... or, Kenya is Blogging

Just kidding. I wouldn't write a post about military spending. You can find those everywhere if you want to read about that. I just wanted to write about the power of the media to evoke a response in us. If that headline elicited any kind of response from you, you know what I'm talking about. My headline should really read:

Can bloggers in Kenya help us go beyond headlines and tell a story that evokes possibilities?

Lately, as Liz and I have been writing about people and initiatives to renew the parts of Africa that are struggling, I have realized how little of the whole picture we get about anything that happens more than a few feet from our doorsteps. While headlines can be stirring and evocative, they do little to provide the kind of information that can open possibilities, or as Martin Luther King said, "Make a way out of no way."