HumanKindMedia

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...

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.

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."

Shift happens: possibilities abound

Liz is off writing this week for a living, and I am editorially unsupervised. Consider yourselves warned for the week. Last week I found this video that, even if you saw it last year when it got a gazillion hits, is worth visiting again. It's amazing, alarming, intimidating, and exciting all at the same time. It also has that favorite quote of mine by Einstein.

There's a more updated, powerful presentation of facts here (but I like the music in the first one best). Also, you can read the wiki by the teachers who created it. The video inspires me because I can see the possibilities for becoming a global community to solve those problems Einstein was talking about in a new way of thinking.

This is why we blog.

WSF Global Day of Action Jan 26: Take a Step

While clicking around adding to my "topics" list (so many cool things to write about--we can hardly wait) I found the social entrpreneurial answer to the World Economic Forum--the World Social Forum. And, I found them just in time, because tomorrow, January 26 is Global Day of Action.

Make a way out of no way

It's Martin Luther King Day.

"When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. --Martin Luther King. Jr., Address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 8/16/67

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.-- Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize Acceptance, 1964

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: