HumanKindMedia

Cool combinations, jaunty juxtapositions, and rippling care-versations

I love unpredictable combinations. I like to have three or four ideas in my head and see how they come together into something new. I'm still pretty jazzed about the cool combination that is Rocky Road ice cream -- chocolate, marshmallows, and almonds -- now we take it for granted, but in 1929 it was a jaunty juxtaposition of flavors, a bold idea soon to become a standard.

According to the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, "language is the house of being." When we humans create some cool new combination with language, we have a new house to be in, a new possibility. Though Rocky Road ice cream is right up there as far as cool combinations go, some other recent combos are: Internet cafe, eco(ological)-tourism, carbon footprint, and social entrepreneur -- all new language houses opening up new possibilities for individuals and for humankind.

After a week of looking at the possibilities for a whole world fit for kids, I've been searching for conscious, simple acts we can each do, right here, right now to create such a world. As if by magic, three ingredients bubbled out of my personal and electronic interactions, and by the end of the week, presto! I had a combination nearly as interesting -- but possibly not as delicious -- as chocolate, marshmallows, and nuts. Here's what happened:

What if we decided? Creating a world fit for kids

Watch the video first -- I'll wait ;)

I'm willing to bet there isn't anyone on the planet who wouldn't want to jump out and do something for children somewhere, any way they could after watching this video. In fact, I'm fairly confident that even without watching the video, there aren't many people who wouldn't love to see a world fit for children. As I realized while I was stripping wallpaper last weekend, you can't talk about orphans for long without including them in the greater context of vulnerable children everywhere. No single NGO, government, or group has more experience looking out for the children of the world than UNICEF.

Karli's list

Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen. --Leo Tolstoy

What do a fishing village in Egypt, a community in Capetown, South Africa, a school for orphans in Zimbabwe, and a village school in a Millennium village in Rwanda have in common? Artists. These are my favorite stories -- about people who just start where they are with whatever they have, using their talent and their connections to create, connect, and contribute.

Meet Karli, who, at only 22, is an example of why we have big hopes for the Y generation. Through a Millennium Village contact, Karli organized a project to teach art to kids at the Millennium Village in Mayange sector in Rwanda, near the epicenter of the 1994 genocide. Last summer, after graduating with honors from Parsons School of Design, she found sponsors, raised money for supplies and equipment, loaded up "a
ton of suitcases filled with supplies," and traveled to Rwanda to spend an unforgettable week teaching art to kids.

Six things I realized about using media to heal the world while I was stripping the walls

... and why I still have hope after an eye-opening week.

I spent most of my free time last week talking to people about the media, Africa, orphans, and children. All that thinking spilled over into my weekend in an unexpected way. My husband was out of town for his mother's birthday, and I wanted to surprise him by getting the hall painted and the wainscoting finished by the time he got home.

Saturday morning, I called him up to ask casually about a technical detail of the job, and was dismayed to realize I had forgotten about the other hallway, which has to be stripped before any painting is done. Argh. So, because my sons were out skiing that day, I took the opportunity to stay in my nightgown, crank up a "classics" station on XM radio -- which I'm never allowed to listen to when people are in the house -- and get to work.

All of this is pertinent (maybe the nightgown part was too much information) because while I was pulling tiny pieces of wallpaper off with my fingernails and a putty knife (we spent $20 on tools that turned out to be useless for the job), all the things people told me this week about orphans, healing the world, and journalism started spinning around in my head. As I stripped the wall, I realized six things about the media and healing the world:

Making a difference: One surgeon's blog in Iraq

There's this great blog I've been reading, Made a Difference for That One, by a surgeon stationed in Iraq. The blogger's name is Chris Coppola, and he's generously agreed to write a guest blog entry for us. Stay tuned for that! In the meantime, check out his blog, where he's so prolific you wonder when the man sleeps. (Forty-six posts in November!)

Chris gives you a perspective on Iraq that you're not going to get anywhere else -- not in newspapers, not on TV, not in the movies. Plus, he's the doctor you would want for yourself or a loved one if, heaven forbid, you needed a surgeon (in Iraq or anywhere). He's open, he's honest, he cares.

16 million African orphans; Braden takes 1,600

Last fall, my book club read There Is No Me Without You, Melissa Fay Greene's story of the beginning of the AIDS pandemic in Africa, and of the ensuing orphan crisis. It had the kind of impact on me that Mountains Beyond Mountains did a few years ago. Anything I thought I knew about Africa, AIDS, and orphans was challenged by Greene's account of one woman trying to do her part in the midst of a tragedy that will leave a continent reeling for decades or more. When I read it, I experienced a sense of shame: I had misunderstood what was happening there, to my fellow humans. I also felt disbelief that so many parents could die, and so many children be left alone in our world of advanced medicine, new technology, and relative wealth.

While reading "Without You," I kept hearing Bono's words, from the video in this post: "Where you live should not determine whether you live." That's when the status of children everywhere went onto the list of HumanKind topics.

Media can save the world: YouthAIDS

It's not often I read something on CNN that makes me want to jump out of my seat and cheer -- actually, that would be never -- but today, it happened!

The site published a story today about Kate Roberts, a young advertising executive who realized that while she was an expert at selling stuff to kids, she was only selling things that hurt them, not helped them: gum, soda, cigarettes. Junk. It was, in short, a colossal waste of global media -- and of her own unique talents and abilities.

So Kate ditched that lucrative career and founded YouthAIDS. Now she builds media campaigns "that use pop culture, corporate America, and celebrities" to get life-saving information to people all over the world.

It might seem a little weird to you that I'm writing about this on HumanKind. And pointing you to the mainstreamiest of mainstream media sources, no less. But I was so blown away to see one of our core messages -- the incredible power of global media can actually be wielded for good -- appear so explicity on a web site that gets millions of hits every day, and I wanted to share it with you as an example of what good media with massive reach can do.

Just don't click on the gossip headlines. (Hah!)