Way back in March, for World Water Day, we wrote this post about Scott Harrison, founder of Charity:Water, and his dream to build wells around the world to provide clean drinking water for those who still go without. His Tap Project and many other events are an amazing example of how someone tackles "the impossible".
But, he hasn't stopped with World Water Day. Using his birthday (and the anniversary of his founding of Charity: Water) as a fabulous excuse for a new campaign, he provided a well for a hospital in Kenya last year with gifts from 90 friends. Today, on his 33rd birthday, he drilled a well in Ethiopia , the first of the 333 he hopes to drill (it's his 33rd birthday). More here!
Kudos to Cammi Walker, Founder of the 29-Day Giving Challenge, who invited all of her fellow Challenge givers to contribute to Charity: Water for her Dad's September birthday. How could anyone turn down such a triple whammy way to give: safe drinking water for people who don't have it, a Dad, and the Giving Challenge all at once? I signed up. Then, I sent the links to my college son who's birthday is in September (and he may be receiving a gift receipt for a donation, also). You can donate through the 29-Gifts site here or at Charity: Water, here.
If you are a September birthday, or know someone who is, here's a chance to celebrate with Scott:
If you're like many people I know, you can tell a story at the drop of a hat about an adult that influenced, inspired, or encouraged you as a teen -- that special English teacher, or the shop teacher, or a coach. Maybe it was a local business owner who gave you a job, or maybe it was your friend's mother. I always love those stories (in fact, I'd love it if you'd share yours in the comments -- they're just the best stories).
When I think of Alison's definition for sustainability, "not marring" but also "making it better," I have to think of today's kids, and the kids they'll have someday. My greatest worries when my country initiated a war five years ago were of the generations of affected children here and there who will not get their everyday needs met -- for food, shelter, education, and love -- and how that will affect the next generation after them. When I think of handing down something good, I think of handing something good to a child, something of value -- like trust, the value of relationships and learning, and love of beauty and our world.
That's why I was thrilled when Dave Eggers made his TED wish (you can view the whole rollicking, funny, heart-warming speech here at the end of this post). What a great thing to ask: "I wish that you -- you personally, and every creative person and organization you know -- will find a way to engage with a public school in your area, and that you'll then tell the story of how you got involved so that within one year we'll have 1,000 examples of transformative partnerships, profound leaps forward."
Here I go again, naively thinking that we have enough people with some longing and some time to help every kid, and every community that needs help helping kids. In the video, Eggers provides an entertaining and compelling story about how we can all change the world with just a few hours a month devoted to mentoring and tutoring pirates, superheros, and time-travelers (you'll see what I mean).
In My Wish for Will Part I, I introduced you to my own brand of superhero: Chicago teacher, photographer, and sometimes NY Times columnist, Will Okun. Pouring his heart, soul, precious time, and love into some kids who might not have such a superhero in their corner otherwise, Will is one of the millions of teachers Dave Eggers is talking about helping.
When I wrote Part I, I asked Will about what he would wish for, and he sent me this story of Nicholas Bounds, one of Will's students whose life has been dramatically affected by the kind of support Dave Eggers talked about in his TED Wish. Will's wish wasn't that much different from Dave's: that every kid could have what Nicholas Bounds had -- an adult who takes an interest.
As usual with Will's articles, his story about his student, Nicholas, is a different story than I'm used to about kids and school; it's shocking and heartbreaking, but hopeful and inspiring, too. Most of all, what comes through in his stories is his wish for more possibilities for the kids he works with. "Behind most great students are loving and supportive adults. Unfortunately, too many students do not benefit from positive support, and these are typically the children who have so much difficulty in our school. I agree with Nicholas that the long-term support of just one positive adult can make all the difference in the lives of children," Will says.
In his most recent article on what a difference One Class could make for teens in his school, he asks a good question: "Why should students on the West Side of Chicago not have access to the same resources, technology, and programming that is certainly offered at our nation’s 'Top 100 High Schools?' Engaging technology programs like Hoops High demonstrate that attendance and (thus) academic performance will greatly improve in urban schools that are able to offer a range of exciting extracurricular classes directed at both the needs and the interests of the students."
Already Once Upon A School has 20-30 of the 1,000 stories of these kinds of programs -- just what Dave Eggers asked for at TED 2008. My wish for Will is Dave's wish -- that anyone listening, reading, finding themselves longing to help, but not knowing what or how -- find a project or a school, a tutoring group or an after-school program, or start something of your own -- find a way to help a kid. We can buy all the green gizmos in the world, and cut our carbon emissions in half, but if the next generations are crippled by ignorance and a sense of impossibility, sustainability will be just another elite concept.
You can start your own 826-like organization with your company, service organization, or local community. Or, if you're near one of the Once Upon A School Projects that are being added every day, you can volunteer. But it doesn't even have to be that big a deal: you could just call a local school or local teacher tell them how many hours you've got to help some kids. Here are some ideas and here are some Frequently Asked Questions.
I don't have a clue as to how I, a mom/coach/blogger in California, can help make Will's wish for programs like this in his area, West Side Chicago, and his school, Westside Alternative High School, come true. But I have hope in possibilities. If you know someone in Chicago, please forward this to them. If you are affiliated with a corporation that has an office in Chicago, or any organization that might want a service project in Chicago, please let them know about Dave Eggers' wish, and about Will's school and neighborhood schools. If you have an idea how to help me take some steps towards my wish for Will, e-mail me at chris at humankindmedia (add the dot com).
"I wish that you -- you personally and every creative individual and organization you know -- will find a way to directly engage with a public school in your area and that you'll then tell the story of how you got involved, so that within a year we have 1,000 examples of transformative change." --Dave Eggers
When I read Britt's recent post in Have Fun Do Good about last week's TED Award to Dave Eggers, the first person I thought of was Will Okun. I've been sitting on an interview with Will for several weeks, because at some deep level I knew I wanted to talk about sustainability and teaching and I knew Will's story would help me do that. Then, Hooray! Dave Eggers makes his big wish for public schools and teachers, and I knew I couldn't wait. (Here's a summary of the TED Award and Dave Eggers wish.)
While I was researching Africa and our pieces about coming to the aid of children around the world, I found Will, winner of the 2007 New York Times Trip to Africa (read his winning essay). Columnist Nick Kristof selected Will, a Chicago teacher, and Med student, Lena Wen, to go on a trip to Africa with him. You can see the video the MTV interview after their trip here. Will, Lena and Nick traveled in 3 African countries, met the President of Rwanda, visited a school (where Will has the previously unheard-of experience of having 40 kids listen quietly and intently) and played some basketball.
When he returned, he continued writing as a guest blogger on Nick's column about that other foreign country, high school--at a West Side Chicago "drop-out" high school, a last-chance program for kids who have excessive absences or are failing. Will's posts paint a picture of the dedication and the difficulty experienced by one teacher, but also illuminate the hopes for possibilities paired with the frustration at some seemingly insurmountable obstacles. His stories also provoke questions we need to answer as a global citizenry about how we will provide relevant, meaningful learning at the community level to contribute to the creation of a sustainable future.
I started to try to sum up what had affected me from his stories about teaching, but I realized every story had affected me. To keep this from being a 20-page post, I'll let you get your own glimpse. So, before I continue on to Part II next week, take a stroll through Will's posts and read about a teacher, the kids he wants to help, and the challenges that Dave Eggers, with his wish, has asked us all to join in to address. Will's topics range from the first day of school to reading and relevance and a love letter to basketball and a sad dirge for the loss of "one of our own". This week's photo-essay, "Amidst", is a beautiful testament to his appreciation for his students. His blogs offer a view you've never had before of what many communities are grappling with and why Dave made his wish for public schools.
Perusing Will's photos (more about his photography later) and reading his NYT blogs are enough to make you wish we could make a million Wills, but I'm pretty sure there are many out there, equally dedicated and passionate about their students.
I must admit that reading some of Will's posts, I was caught up in a sense of overwhelm about the issues, the difficulties, the enormity of change that will have to occur to retool our educational system, get communities involved in supporting schools, and teachers like Will. But, I should have remembered--there will be many people I haven't discovered yet, working on possibilities.. The solutions always come from somewhere you'd least expect--like a novelist and a wish for more support for those dedicated teachers. I love it.
Part II of My wish for Will coming next week. Stay tuned.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Every so often I get completely sidelined by life: Work seems all-encompassing, sleep becomes optional, and I lose all motivation to do anything but keep my head above water and hope that if I just keep going, sooner or later I'll hit dry land.
But often I don't hit dry land -- something rescues me instead. Lately, it's almost always something related to HumanKind. It happened last Friday: I was sick with a lingering cold, I was stressed out over work, and I had a 5 p.m. phone appointment to interview a human rights lawyer for Camfed, Campaign for Female Education, an organization that helps girls go to school in rural Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana, and Tanzania, and expanding soon into Malawi. I didn't think I had the brain power to make intelligent conversation, but I called her anyway, hoping she'd forgive me if I asked any dumb questions.
Less than five minutes into our conversation, I was practically soaring with joy, typing as fast as I could, so excited that a person like this is out there working for good, every day. My own work headaches vanished, and by the time we got off the phone, I couldn't believe I'd ever felt anything but hopeful and energized.
We're getting excited about college at my house. The first son has some applications out, and any day now the mail will come and there'll be drama, excitement, maybe some disappointment, but no matter what, he will get to go to college somewhere. We are so lucky.
Last November, that same boy and I went to a fundraiser for Orphans for Rwanda, an organization founded in 2004 by Dai Ellis and Oliver Rothschild. The two met while working on related projects with Columbia University’s Center for Global Health and Economic Development and the Clinton Foundation on HIV/AIDS programs . They realized there was a need going unfilled: orphans and other socially vulnerable young people in Rwanda needed help if they were going to pursue a university education and ultimately become leaders in economic development and social reconciliation in Rwanda.
Children and teenagers who had lost their families in the 1994 genocide or were losing families to HIV/AIDS needed more than secondary school if they were going to help rebuild. In Rwanda, only 1 in 200 are college graduates -- mostly wealthy, and mostly men. Standardized exams tend to skew for education and background, so the very poor are less likely to go to a university. ORI seeks to change that, to "transform the pool of intellectual capital." (I love thinking about it that way.)
Whenever there's a debate about "man's innate nature" and whether it's possible or impossible for our species to turn from conflict and violence into care and benevolence, you can guess which side I'm on in the discussion. I have hope. But until the internet, I didn't see "how". I often tell my clients, "If you hold the vision--the 'what'--steady, the 'how' will appear." And, voila, a few years ago when I noticed that my kids were communicating with other kids all over the world, I saw the "how" for creating a different world: our newest evolutionary tool--instant global communications.
Saturday, January 26, is the World Social Forum's Global Action Day 2008 (it takes a minute for the map to load), a confluence of hundreds if not thousands of groups, organizations, and people looking to act on their longing for a different world--and they're all connected on the WSF site, working locally, connected globally for their tagline: "another world is possible".
Stumble It!
