HumanKindMedia

Hope

I get some notes and calls asking about the blog every once in awhile. There are many explanations for a 4-month lapse in blog-writing (too many to write about here) but mostly, what initially drove the blog was my feeling of a lack of hope in the world. As strange as it sounds, I felt like hope came back last year--in my life, in the media (well, some places in the media), and in the world. I may have quit writing because there was so much hope out there, I felt redundant.

Lately since my last post about "Yes We Can", I'm excited about vegetables, and I'm still exploring possibilities for my own version of Dave Eggars'826 Valencia to begin next fall to help ease the burden on teachers and schools in my community that are suffering severe financial cutbacks. Everything I want to do takes a community. I'd like to build a community of HumanKind writers (as you know I can't keep it up on my own :--), I'll be looking for a community of volunteers to implement my writing/tutoring group to support schools. Friends around me are losing loved ones, having illnesses, recovering from illnesses, and there is financial strain and worry everywhere. But, I find there is hope in coming together to solve the not-so-impossible problems if we're together.

There is nothing that cannot be helped by us creating, building, sustaining, and nurturing community in our lives, our regions and our world. This past week, Karen sent me the Stand By Me video by Playing for Change and I found the wonderful Antwerp Station video on You-Tube. If you enjoy them, share this post with your friends. I hope you're building your own communities around the things you care about. I'll be back soon. In the meantime, watch and enjoy these two (and, yes, if you feel moved to do so, dance!).

Now we can...or, after the mole attack

After my uncharacteristic political binge over the past few months, I've been going through a week of elated recovery, enjoying all the news (well, except some of the obvious poisons like talk-radio and Fox). It seems my adverse reaction to the media (which was the whole impetus for starting HumanKind Media) has dissipated. Now, (it's only taken a couple of years) I realize that my search for hope and possibility media, was really a search for hope and possibility, period.

Things have changed. Now, hope and possibility IS (are) the story du jour (or, hopefully, des toujours--all our days). For me, the most amazing part of the US election was the use of the media, particularly the internet, to galvanize, energize, and connect people toward a common goal in a way that hasn't been seen since the 60's. Many of us felt so galvanized and energized that we're now looking for something to do with all that galvanization and energy.

My new president even put up a website already where I can provide ideas, sign up to help, and eventually provide input to my government. People all over the internet, my media, are engaged and inspiring others to engage. (Check out this DailyKos diarist's lessons on the constitution). I'm jazzed. I'm starting to think of ways I can contribute that I never imagined before.

I decided my post-election post would be a "Yes we can" motivational piece, but the day after the election, Linda Bergthold, in the Huffington Post wrote this piece, and a day later Liz, my favorite accomplice, wrote this wonderful essay (below). So, yeah, I meant to say that...but they said it better (and faster).

So, I'll just say this about the mole attack. Yesterday--a beautiful, warm fall day in California--I finally approached my ravaged garden where the mole had had a free-for-all. Plants were uprooted, holes were everywhere, and though we had dis-invited the mole, the place was still a shambles. Once I got started, with my hands in the earth, a few packs of ground cover and some hardy annuals to spread around, I had transformed the devastation to something prettier than it was before, and possibly more easy to sustain in the future. Now, I feel better prepared to prevent moles in the future, and also infinitely satisfied at creating something beautiful out of a mess.

Those few hours of work in the garden made me realize that, though I would have preferred that the past 8 years had not unfolded as they did in the US and the world, I truly believe that we'll see how the devastation and the mess created possibilities we couldn't have envisioned otherwise. These are the stories I'm looking forward to writing about.

Here's Liz:

The 5% possibility shift Obama gave us

On election night, I was in a packed concert hall in Brooklyn, every single one of us nervous and excited, watching a gigantic screen tuned to CNN. When the polls closed on the West Coast, and CNN flashed the words "Barack Obama elected president," the room just exploded. Tupac's "California Love" blasted from the speakers, twenty-somethings jumped on stage and danced like crazy in front of a screenful of talking heads, and the rest of us jumped up and down shouting in absolute jubilation. Then CNN went live to people celebrating in the streets in Times Square, Harlem, Chicago, Kenya, Berlin -- literally, we were all celebrating together.

During Obama's acceptance speech, I wiped tears off my cheeks, but they kept coming. Over the next few days, I heard friends and media asking, Okay, so what happens next? What's Obama going to do for us now that we've elected him? What if he doesn't live up to all his promises?

I see it a little differently: We have a huge promise to live up to. Obama inspired a huge shift in what's possible. He did what we're always talking about here at HumanKind: He talked so much about hope and connection and possibility that almost everyone who heard him started believing in it, and then we all started living like we believe it. And then in the ultimate show of commitment, we elected him president. Not a day goes by now that I don't hear someone saying, with a smile or a laugh, "Yes, we can."

By electing Obama, WE made a promise. While we all have high expectations of Obama, we now also have much higher expectations of ourselves. It's scary to think Obama might falter, or might disappoint us in some way. But I think what's really scaring us is the fear that we might falter in our own promise, in our commitment to hope and change. We're human. We probably will falter. But we will get up faster and with more optimism than ever. That's a change Obama has given us already. And from now on it's not about what he'll do for us next -- it's about what we will do with all the hope and confidence and joy he inspired in us.

Yes, WE can.

Blog Action Day 2008: Revisiting my passion for the poverty fighters

Today, October 15, is Blog Action Day where the bloggers of the world promote a theme for action--this year it's poverty, the creative resolution of which is my most favorite blogging topic. In fact, changemakers in the ending poverty and disease arena, such as Paul Farmer and Jeffrey Sachs, were the original inspiration for my little blog about healing the world. I thought if they and Bono could get governments and people around the globe to imagine and begin the work to end extreme poverty by 2015, well, we humans could probably tackle anything. Over the past year, I've delved into poverty from many angles (scroll the whole list here), but always come back to Millennium Promise and The One Campaign as the most shining examples of what's possible, to inspire, organize, move to action, and achieve results.

You can see what I mean here:

A year ago, we asked our friends and readers to participate in HumanKind Challenge #1, to fight poverty by contributing a bed net. For Blog Action Day, I invite you to take some action. Buy a bednet here, sign the One petition here, learn how you can help a girl and contribute to an end to poverty, or visit the Millennium Project site and see what's possible within the next 7 years. We can do it.

Revisiting the Global Oneness Project

One of my favorite places to visit every once in awhile for inspiring videos is the Global Oneness Project. Yesterday I found so much, I just have to invite you to visit, too. Amazingly, as I was looking for this original post we did on them last year, I realized that it was almost exactly a year ago that I found them.

Much has happened on the Global Oneness Project front in a year. From The People's Grocery creating sustainable food sources for an impoverished community in Oakland, and Goonj using every scrap of cloth to help the poor in India to peace efforts in Israel and Palestine, Emmanuel and the Global Oneness Project team have been meeting people around the globe so we can meet them, our fellow global citizens, too.

I especially recently enjoyed this blog about their visit to Israel, and still love this interview with Nipun Mehta of the smile card revolution.

The Global Oneness Project mission is simply to create short films and interviews from around the world to explore how we are all connected. To that end, they offer their amazing videos free for downloading or you can order a free DVD for use in screenings for your neighborhood, your communities, your friends. I'd recommend a favorite video, but now I have too many to mention them all. Click here and watch for awhile. You'll see what I mean.

The New Orleans 100

On the anniversary of Katrina, there are probably more stories about new possibilities than there were about tragedy and devastation 3 years ago--probably thousands of stories about healing in New Orleans and the areas affected by Katrina.

Kudos to All Day Buffet for creating the New Orleans 100. In their words: " To combat top down media during the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we will leverage bottom up tools on the social web (email, blogs, twitter, facebook, digg, etc.), which can reach a combined audience of millions to raise awareness about New Orleans and inspire action to make a difference.'

From the high visibility stories like Brad Pitt's Make It Right Campaign to the RUBAR (Rusted-Up-Beyond-All-Recognition) project restoring bikes and helping the youth of the 9th ward and the Nola 180 schools project which I hope also finds its way to Dave Egger's list of stories about possibilities for schools. The New Orleans 100 has great links and great stories from great writers including a moving Sports article (I love moving sports articles).

Here's to a fine example for celebrating possibility and providing inspiration for the rest of us! Help spread the word!

Matt's back

Sometimes you know what someone is doing is important even though you can't describe it in words. Matt's back with his 2008 dance around the world--take a look.

Visit Matt's site here for his story, the 2006 and 2007 versions, the equally wonderful outtakes and his blog. Watch. And, try the dance yourself. If you can find words for what happens when you watch, let us know.

If you're a new reader, welcome to HumanKind. You can get free updates here. Wonder what we're up to? Click on the links on the upper right, or scroll through the topics and archives on the left. If you're a regular, thanks for your support! Let us know what HumanKind can do to keep the media you'd like to see coming your way. You can e-mail me at chris (at) humankindmedia dot com. And please do share HumanKind with your friends.

Concerned about our global footprint? Help educate a girl

In an unusual and inspiring conversation hosted by Swissnex last week in San Francisco, Mathis Wackernagel, founder of Global Footprint Network, was not talking about increasing food production, reducing carbon emissions, or lowering consumption. He spent most of the evening talking about co-presenter Ann Cotton's work at The Campaign for Female Education (Camfed) in Africa.

Cotton and Wackernagel came together as part of Swissnex's ongoing program for "connecting the dots" between science, higher education, art and innovation for exchange and collaboration between innovators in Switzerland, the US and other countries.

In this conversation, the two described their first meeting at the Skoll World Forum (both have received Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship). After a chance seating arrangement next to Ann, Wackernagel realized a connection between the outcomes Ann was describing and the goals he was looking at for sustainability. Since then they have been looking at ways to work together to educate leaders, countries, communities, and NGO's about this correlation.

Ann Cotton and Camfed have been HumanKind Media favorites since this interview Liz did with Ann and Camfed graduate Fiona Muchembere. Fiona, you may remember, is now a human rights lawyer, and serves as director of Camfed’s alumnae network of 8,000 African women as well as being a big supporter of those girls herself (she sponsors 22).

Wackernagel is a Swiss native and PhD in community and regional planning from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, where he created the Ecological Footprint, a science-based sustainability tool that measures how much of the Earth's resources we use, how much we have and who uses what.

In 2003, he and Susan Burns co-created Global Footprint Network with a mission to work with countries and cities, companies and individuals to monitor current ecological resource balances and to plan for the future, with the ultimate goal of reducing humanity's worldwide use back down to a "one planet" footprint. Check out the link to see when we passed the "one planet" mark (meaning we exceeded the Earth's bio-capacity.) You can assess your own footprint if you haven't already, here, or for eye-opening world footprint data click here.

Global Footprint Network aims to make the Ecological Footprint as prominent a metric as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to help countries begin to plan for sustainability. By 2015, through its flagship Ten-In-Ten Campaign, they hope to have ten countries managing their ecological wealth in the same way they manage their finances. To date, the list of countries, companies, NGO's and collaborators is growing and the case stories are impressive.

Last month on their 5th anniversary, GFN released their Africa report which examines the possibilities for managing African resources to advance African goals for ending poverty and disease within a sustainable development model. In spite of the fact that individual Africans' resource consumption is extremely small - in many cases not enough to adequately provide for
themselves and their families - rising population is bringing the region close to its ecological limits, according to Global Footprint Network's report.

Using scientific standards for the footprint to measure a country's bio-capacity combined with the UN's Human Development Index as an indicator of socio-economic development, Wackernagel is an evangelist for female education as a way to ensure Africa’s growth and development within the one-planet sustainability window. He says, "For $2 billion a year, just by investing in girls, you could transform all of Africa. This is one of the best investments we could make to achieve human development goals that can persist in the face of, and even help alleviate, resource constraints."

The pair make a compelling argument for the direct impact of female education on Humanity's Ecological Footprint: Girls who receive an education and can make decisions regarding their lives have a higher likelihood of marrying their peers at an appropriate age; they have fewer and more healthy children, are more likely to positively affect the health and education of their children, and contribute to their communities. They also earn significantly higher income than their peers--15 to 20% more per year of high school education.

As an illustration of this, last year Camfed and its alumae organization, Cama, supported more than 408,000 kids in school, had amassed 2,700 partner schools, and developed 380 community health care workers. The over 8,000 alumnae of the organization are sponsoring schooling of over 25,000 African children themselves.

Among the alums are filmmakers and program managers for Camfed in their countries; there are also assemblywomen, physical therapists, doctors, nurses, human rights lawyers, and business owners. In the UN Chronicle Ann says, "For the Millennium Development Goals to become a reality rather than just a broken promise, the rights—and dreams—of rural girls and women must remain at the forefront of policy planning and strategies. The education of girls and young women—with its dividends of poverty alleviation, gender equality, HIV/AIDS reduction—is the single most effective means by which so many of the problems blocking Africa’s development can be overcome."

In March, Goldman Sachs announced their 10,000 Women initiative which includes a partnership with Camfed to provide rural girls with post high school education in business, financial management, and entrepreneurship in a "summer school" program beginning in December.

Today, in my 29-Day Giving Challenge Day 3, Round 2, I added my support of a Camfed high school student, which I can now see not only as an investment in a girl's future, but in the future of a continent and a planet, too. Not bad.

You can help a woman heal the world by donating here. You can contribute to the important work Global Footprint Network is doing around the globe here.

If you're a new reader, welcome to HumanKind. You can get free updates here. Wonder what we're up to? Click on the links on the upper right, or scroll through the topics and archives on the left. If you're a regular, thanks for your support! Let us know what HumanKind can do to keep the media you'd like to see coming your way. You can e-mail me at chris (at) humankindmedia dot com. And please do share HumanKind with your friends.

Community

Some of our friends have huge extended families, from full compliments of grandparents, aunts and uncles, to swarms of cousins, in-laws and people to whom they know they're related, but don't know exactly how. When a big event comes up for our family, I feel particularly wistful for my kids who have a total of 7 of us family members that we can conjure up to celebrate (and that involves lots of miles and airfare). So, for my son's graduation, I did what I always do. I called upon the "relatives" we've germinated the past 20+ years-- the friends we've made from babies through high school, our neighbors who have watched us grow as a family, the teachers we have loved, and dear friends we made through our kids along the way.

When we were all in a room together last week, celebrating my son for his graduation, I realized what community means, in the deepest way I have ever understood it. It's how we honor our collective past, how we create possibilities for the future, how we send our kids off, how we help each other grow, and how we support one another beyond the family unit.

When I was writing about sustainability, I watched the film, The End of Suburbia, an alarming but informative look at post-oil America, which was an eye-opener for me. After the End of Suburbia I fretted for a few weeks until I noticed what communities do when they need to: Iowa, New Orleans, China, Indonesia. Now, I see strong communities as an even more important link in our survival and evolution.

All along at HumanKind Media, we've been looking at communities--local, international, on-line and on the front lines--for what they offer for healing the world. From the Millennium Villages to the U.S. community Braden's building for a school community in Zimbabwe, from Cami's and Nipun's giving communities, to Dave Egger's pirate supply grassroots education community, I have seen what's possible when people come together around a common bond.

In 1993, John Kretzmann and John McKnight's groundbreaking study of communities, Building Communities from the Inside Out, A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets, proposed a move from focusing on a "community" or region's problems (the deficiency model) and focusing instead on developing and using the unique skills, and assets of the community members (the asset-based community model).

I have been appreciating the on-line communities I belong to more because of the assets people bring--the vast burgeoning community of new media bloggers, change makers around the world, our 29-Day Giving Challenge group, and especially our little band of HumanKind Media readers. And, I've also been paying attention more to the communities I am physically, locally part of--a neighborhood, a small unincorporated town, a school district, a community of parents and kids of my kids' ages, a coaching community, a meditation community.

In this recent post, I talked about the human universals--commonalities all of us humans on the planet share. Among the human universals are: collective identity, coalitions, reciprocal exchanges, food sharing and gift giving.

I've been actively imagining the community I could live out my post-oil days in, with a community garden, tutoring centers for kids near every school, multi-media library centers, and local music spots for spontaneous jam sessions and concerts that everyone can walk to. I've been thinking of that asset-based model, where everyone contributes their own unique skills and assets, and the whole is better than the sum of its parts.

I have some plans for the next few months to explore communities around the world that are creating and building new possibilities for a future worth passing on. As you can tell by the delays in my recent posts, I can use all the help I can get. If you have ideas for posts on cool communities, please e-mail me or leave a comment. Stay tuned.

Tuesday Links: Little blogger goes to the big media conference

Well, if you're still with me, thanks for your patience. We have proven that I can't write blogs and attend conferences at the same time.

Last week I was like Charlie at the Chocolate Factory of new media, having attended a Journalism That Matters conference put on by Media Giraffe at UMass and then the very amazing National Conference on Media Reform put on by freepress.org. Now I am suffering from an embarrassment of riches in the arena of people doing great things against what seems to be the impossibility of recapturing the media for the public.

Local place-bloggers, traditional journalists, policy makers, Senators, new media mavens and scholars all came together to represent thousands upon thousands of grass-roots and alternative media proponents around the US. Among revered reporters (Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, and Phil Donahue were speakers) and internet media experts were hip-hop bloggers serving marginalized youth, new media filmmakers, local youth radio supporters and on-line journalists and bloggers like me. We all shared a common intention: representing the voices of all the people--the raucous, cacaphonous, dissenting, diversified public the way that the American forefathers envisioned in the First Amendment--in media.

Though our constitution is faded, it's still a great set of guidelines for a thriving democracy. I love that so many people care so much to travel to a conference to learn more about how they can contribute to a free press remaining free, and how we can use stories to transform our society towards its full promise.

I heard later that Bill O'Reilly, a main face of Big Media, called our gathering "fringe left lunatics". I've never subscribed to labelling people right and left, blue and red, right and wrong, (or sane or lunatic for that matter) myself, but it's kind of fun to see how threatening a group of 3000+ who want to read and see news that's relevant, varied, and informative can be to the likes of O'Reilly.

In January I wrote a piece about what I was learning about the media and being the change in the media that I'd like to see. I hope we "new media" people can remember that all "media people" are people. I hope we can steer away from the pitfalls that have turned so many of us off to fear-driven, celebrity-filled infotainment as our primary media diet.

I hope we can remember that even mainstream media, for all its flaws, is filled with people like us who deserve respect even if we disagree with them. I hope we as readers and writers can choose against the pundits who are bent on right/wrong, left/right, red/blue, safe/threatened, with/against polarities in their reporting. I hope we demand of our media to hear more sides than one side, more stories about problems and people fixing them, less about what we should be afraid of or hate.

The conferences were filled with people just like you and me trying to make a difference in the world. It was fabulous. I have a long list of stories I hope to share over time if changing the media to change our world is as interesting to you as it is to me. In the meantime, watch this video now or save it for some quality viewing. It's a compelling explanation by Bill Moyers about "communitainment", why we should care about what's happening in the media, and what we should do about it.

Theme Tuesday: Giving Community Links

(Writing to you, late, from rainy Minneapolis) I'm starting to think that when we shift our media to stories about people helping people, giving is naturally invoked in us. Just as our fears, cynicisms, frustrations, and disappointments can be triggered by mega-media and news entertainment, I think our best selves are summoned by the changing-the-world stories, and we become more connected to our generosity.

We've been telling a lot of those stories the past 9 months, so for Theme Link Tuesday, I cavalierly thought I could come up with a "quick" list of cool links to give our 29-Day Challenge participants for ideas for places to spread their money, their time, or just to share with others. But, I can't top the ideas and touching reflections on giving that you'll find if you flip through the blogs and the forum on the 29-Day Giving Challenge community page. It's so fun to be part of a virtual giving community.

In fact, my hopes for the world rest largely on the phenomenon of virtual, web-based communities of smaller physical communities--groups of like-hearted clusters banding across the airwaves with other similar groups to create critical mass in healing the world...like you and me, joining the 29-Day Giving Challengetogether.

Change.org, Care2, Dollar Philanthropy, and, our friends at helpothers.org are just another few giving/changemaking communities I'm aware of. What are some of your favorite on-line giving communities?

It's officially Day 3 of HumanKind Challenge #4, the 29-Day Giving Challenge. People are starting every day, trying to help Cami get to her goal of 2000 participants. It's not too late for you to jump in. Here is where you sign up and here is our group page (please sign up here, too) and I'm posting my updates to the challenge on my page. Please join us. Did I mention it's so fun to be part of a virtual giving community?

If you're a new reader, welcome to HumanKind. You can get free updates here. Wonder what we're up to? Click on the links on the upper right, or scroll through the topics and archives on the left. If you're a regular, thanks for your support! Let us know what HumanKind can do to keep the media you'd like to see coming your way. You can e-mail chris (at) humankindmedia dot com. And please do share HumanKind with your friends.