Big Vision Podcast 2: Interview with Viet-Ly Nguyen

I put up my second Big Vision podcast on Sunday. It's an interview with a former co-worker of mine, Viet-Ly Nguyen, who is a teacher with Streetside Stories. She talks about her work at Streetside and as an arts educator.

A side note about using Gcast for podcasting. I still like it, but it was only when I loaded in my second podcast, that I realized that the cute little player that you see in the right hand column of my blog only shows whatever the newest podcast is, so to see older ones, you need to go to my Gcast page.
Enjoy!

podcast
arts education
streetside stories

Donate Books: Help Rebuild New Orleans' Libraries

So You Wanna Be a Domestic Goddess passed on info. this week about the New Orleans' Public Library's call for for any and all hardcover and paperback books for people of all ages. The staff will assess which titles will be designated for its collections. The rest will be distributed to families or sold for library fundraising.

Books can be sent to:

Rica A. Trigs, Public Relations
New Orleans Public Library
219 Loyola Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70112

According to the NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts) site,

If you tell the post office that they are for the library in New Orleans, they will give you the library rate which is slightly less than the book rate.



new orleans
katrina
library
donation

Art, Social Change & Young Women Bloggers

This week Beth Kanter and I finished our week being mentors for the Young Caucasus Women Project. Last Sunday each of us wrote a post to answer the question, “Who is your favorite artist (visual, dancer, performer, writer or musician) and why?” Here is Beth's post and here is mine. During the week the young women in the program from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia wrote their own posts answering the question, we commented on their posts and they commented on each other's posts. On Friday our mentor cycle ended and a new one will begin with a new mentor blogger tomorrow (Sunday). The project will continue through the spring and into early summer.

I am pretty sure all of the mentoring positions are taken for this project, but Ore, who was one of the mentors for this project, is going to be starting a similar project for young Nigerian women. If you are interested in getting involved you can email her at oreblogging@yahoo.com.

While writing my mentor post last Sunday I got to thinking about how artists use art for social change and accumulated a bunch of links for related projects, programs and organizations that I thought I'd share:

Change Me: The Power of Imagery to Create Change. This is a project of the Getty Museum. (I know I read about it in someone's blog this week, but now I've forgotten whose so my apologies for not giving a blogger out there credit for the find). Anyone can submit an image that inspires them and that they think will touch or affect the person viewing it. For every submission the Getty gets, they will donate $10 to Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, TB and Malaria.

California College of the Arts' Center for Art and Public Life "The Center for Art and Public Life creates community partnerships using the arts to address issues of social justice, diversity, community development, and education. Our programming is woven across disciplines at California College of the Arts and serves the diverse populations of the San Francisco Bay Area."

Institute for Social Ecology: "A ten-day program for artists, performers, activists, and media makers who wish to create and examine socially engaged art and media projects."

Film Your Issue This is a contest being sponsored by MSN Spaces, MSN Video, MSNC.com, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly and mtvU. They are looking for 30 to 60 second "issue films" (live action or animated) made by United States residents ages 18-26. I think we're going to see more and more corporations getting getting in on this action.

WITNESS: "WITNESS uses the power of video to open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses. By partnering with local organizations around the globe, WITNESS empowers human rights defenders to use video to shine a light on those most affected by human rights violations, and to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools of justice."

Fifty Crows Social Change Photography "FiftyCrows Foundation aims to bridge the gap between venues and distribution mediums for documentary photography, and encourage public dialogue on the issues raised through the photography."

Art Into Action: "Art Into Action is an international program of the Natural World Museum (NWM) designed to actualize sustainable culture using art as a catalyst to inspire, educate, and engage the public in environmental awareness and action."

If you know of more cool projects or individual artists using art for social change, I'd love to hear about them. You can put the info. in the comments or email me at britt AT brittbravo.com.

Thanks!


art
activism
social change

Five Resources for Nonprofit Volunteer Programs

Nancy White tagged me to participate in an interesting meme.

"What five resources - online or otherwise - would you point people to, if you wanted to give them an entry into your field of expertise?"

One of the aspects of the nonprofit consulting that I do is to help nonprofits to set up volunteer programs. Here are five resources I would recommend to someone who wanted to become a Manager Volunteers for a nonprofit:

Cypbervpm list serv An international discussion group for volunteer managers.

Jayne Cravens * Coyote Communications and Jayne's Blog. If you have a question about nonprofit volunteer management, Jayne has probably covered it on her site or blog. She helped to set up the United Nations Online Volunteering Program.


Service Leader ServiceLeader.org is a project of the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs of the University of Texas at Austin. It has tons of information about volunteering. I particularly like its virtual volunteering section.

VolunteerMatch If you only have time to list your volunteer opportunities in one place, list them here. I guarantee you will get takers.

Campus Compact Campus Compact is a national coalition of more than 950 college and university presidents - representing some 5 million students - dedicated to promoting community service, civic engagement, and service-learning in higher education. It is a great starting point for information about service learning and to find out what colleges and universities in your area have service learning programs. I love placing college students in service learning positions. It is a win-win situation all around.

Service learning is different than just volunteering (where the student is giving something to the client) or interning (where the organization is in many ways giving something (experience, resume item) to the student. Service learning is really a partnership between the student, the organization and the professor.

Here is a definition from the Campus Compact site:

Service-learning is a teaching method which combines community service with academic instruction as it focuses on critical, reflective thinking and civic responsibility. Service-learning programs involve students in organized community service that addresses local needs, while developing their academic skills, sense of civic responsibility, and commitment to the community

I hope that is helpful and now I would like to tag three women bloggers with three very different careers:

Abby to list 5 resources for becoming a school garden educator.

Jory to list 5 resources for being a freelance writer.

And Nedra Weinreich to list 5 resources for becoming a social marketer.

volunteer
nonprofit
volunteerism

REALLY Hot Women

While surfing for some more BlogHers to add to the Nonprofit and NGO BlogHer blogroll, I came across the REAL hot 100: See How Hot Smart Can Be.

The REAL hot 100 is a list featuring young women from around the country who are breaking barriers, fighting stereotypes, and making a difference in their communities or the nation.

The REAL hot 100 will compile a list of young women who are REALLY hot, and publish it, in magazine format, timed to coincide with Maxim’s release next year. Anyone can nominate a young woman who is REALLY hot, and The REAL hot 100 selection committee will choose 100 women that best represent the intelligence, drive and diversity of young women in the U.S.

Here are a few profiles of REALLY hot women :

Rachel Burton, 31, Pittsboro, NC:
What makes her REALLY hot? Rachel can teach you how to make biodiesel, how to convert your car to run on straight vegetable oil, and how to fix your car too. Rachel is a mechanic, former union organizer, belly dancer, and was one of the co-founders of the Chapel Hill chapter of Food Not Bombs. She has also taught automotive technology, and sustainable building and agriculture and has traveled to agricultural conferences and led workshops on cob/bale building.

Yas(min) Ahmed, 25, Chicago, IL
What makes her REALLY hot? Yas is the Director of Sisters Empowering Sisters (the girls program of Girl’s Best Friend Foundation). Yas defines her role in Sisters Empowering Sisters (SES) as adult ally to the dozen Sisters (ages 14-18) who’ve joined the program to make feminist social change, as grantmakers and as youth leaders. One of the projects she helped create was an investigation of the impact of images of women in popular music videos on young women and young men. Their findings are captured in a video they made last year with Beyondmedia Education, Respect Me, Don’t Media Me

Anne Elizabeth Moore, 35, Chicago, IL
What makes her REALLY hot? Anne publishes the independent magazine Punk Planet and also wrote a book called Hey Kidz, Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People (Soft Skull Press, 2004) and another called Stop Reading This: A Manifesto for Radical Literacy (Seattle Research Institute, 2004).

I think we all know a REALLY hot woman we can nominate

feminism
real hot 100
women
beauty

One Way to Create a Podcast

A while ago I posted an entry about how to Start Your Basic Blog. I don't have as much experience with podcasting considering I just put my first one up this week, but I thought I would share how I did it for anyone who was interested in producing their own.

Because of my husband's work, I had access to professional sound equipment: A Marantz PMD 660 Solid State Digital Recorder, (another professional option is an M-audio recorder), a dynamic microphone, Electro-Voice 635A, and a cable to connect the microphone to the computer.

One of the podcasters at NetSquared, where I work, uses the Olympus DM-20 digital recorder, which isn't cheap, but is more affordable than the options above, and I think it comes with a microphone.

After I did the interview, I was able to connect the recorder to the computer via USB and download the interview (which I recorded as an MP3 at 44.1K) into my iTunes. I edited the interview in GarageBand and exported it back into my iTunes. I converted the file back into an mp3 in iTunes (Garageband exports it as an AIFF file into iTunes) and uploaded it to Gcast. I chose Gcast because you can easily embed your podcast into your blog or webpage. This seemed like the most accessible option. I know that many people don't know how to subscribe using RSS feeds and/or don't have an mp3 player.

Audacity is another free software option you can use to edit podcasts.

When I wrote a similar post to this one on on Blogher, a reader wisely commented:

That's an awful lot of audio transcoding going on (at the very least, MP3 to uncompressed for editing, back to MP3) which will introduce a loss of quality. Since you're using the PMD 660, why not record uncompressed (as WAV, for example) and edit that? Then there's less transcoding going on.

Remember, MP3 is lost compression - when you uncompress (for editing) you lose stuff.

The final step that I need to do is to register it with podcast directories like Yahoo, Podcast Alley and Podcast.net. Gcast automatically submits it to the iTunes Music store.

I hope that helps aspiring podcasters. If I can do it, you can too!

podcast
podcasting

Green Emergency Shelter

My pops is on fire this week. Check out these cool emergency shelters being created by Cal-Earth. They're called Superadobes and they're made out of sandbags and barbed-wire, materials that would be available during a war.

Thanks for another great lead, Dad!






Cal-Earth
SuperAdobes
green
emergency shelter

Social Capitalist Awards

Big thanks to my dad for sending me a New York Times article about social enterprise that mentions Fast Company's 2006 Social Capitalist Awards.

Here are the 25 winners (I was going to include links to all the orgs, but something is wonky with Blogger today and it was taking FOREVER to create the links. If you click on the Fast Company article, they have links to all the orgs.).

ACCION International
BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life)
Citizen Schools
City Year
College Summit Inc.
First Book
Grameen Foundation USA
Heifer International
Housing Partnership Network
Jumpstart
Kickstart
New Community Corp.
New Leaders for New Schools
PATH
Pioneer Human Services
Raising a Reader
Rare
Room to Read
Rubicon Programs Inc.
Teach for America
Transfair USA
WITNESS
Working Today--Freelancers Union

social enterprise
social capitalist awards

Farm to School Programs

I was listening to the Bioneers podcast this weekend and particularly enjoyed a talk by Michael Shuman called Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities. He wrote a book by the same title. It was super interesting and I would definitely like to read the book.

One of the ideas he mentioned was farm to school programs that connect local farms with schools so that the students can have healthier meals. I had heard about this idea, but never realized that there was a National Farm to School Network. The Community Food Security Coalition and Foodroots.org also have a lot of good information about farm to school programs.

Seems like a win-win social entrepreneurship situation. Better food for young people and more business for local farms.

education
farm
school
social entreprener

The First Big Vision Podcast

I am VERY excited to announce the launch of my new podcast, The Big Vision podcast.

My first interview is with an old friend, Alli Chagi-Starr. Alli is an arts activist who is presently the Cultural Arts Director for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights’ Reclaim the Future Program. Alli is also the co-founder of Art and Revolution, and founder of Art in Action, Dancers without Borders and the Radical Performance Fest.

Alli talks about her work at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Art in Action, the roads that have led her to being an arts activist, how to keep going when times are tough, and what everyone can do to be an activist.

Big thanks to Corey at the 501c3Cast for his inspiring programming, to Kenya Masala for letting me use his music at the beginning and end of the program, and of course, to my husband for showing me how to use all this crazy equipment and believing in my accidental techie skills.

podcast
alli starr
ella baker center
art in action
activism

What We Focus on Increases

I recently pulled out The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change by Diana Whitney & Amanda Trosten-Bloom. I also came across this nice little piece about appreciative inquiry online.

The one anecdote that has stayed with me from when I first read the book, is how well appreciative inquiry works with young people who are failing school. In one study they sited, a three-week long summer camp was created at Shaw High School in Cleveland. 31 students attended. They all had to have failed the proficiency exam three times, have teachers who believed that they would never go to college and they had to choose to participate in the program.

During the camp, the students interviewed teachers, administrators, parents and other people who were academically successful. They asked them about how they studied and learned, what college was like and what jobs were open to them with a college education. After they completed their interviews, the students made presentations to the other people in the program and taught each other about what they had learned.

Of the 31 students who participated, 28 passed the proficiency exam at the end of the program.

It seems so obvious that people would be motivated by a positive goal (what life could be like with a college degree) rather than by a negative goal (if you study, you won't be punished and you won't fail).

We are always trying to convince someone to do something whether it is at work, at home, with family or friends, big things or small things, and most of all we are often trying to motivate ourselves. So I guess the trick when motivating yourself, or someone else, is to focus on the positive results of the change, like, if you stop smoking you'll be able to go hiking for longer without feeling tired, your skin will look better, your teeth will be whiter and you'll be able to see your grandchildren grow up, rather than, if you stop smoking, you won't get cancer.

We need to hold an image of what the best possible future looks like, and spend our time, like the young people in the study, learning everything about the circumstances that caused it, so that we are inspired by the possibility of joy, rather than the avoidance of sorrow.

education
motivation
appreciative inquiry

Sharing Nonprofit & NGO Tech Stories

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm the Community Builder for NetSquared, a project of Tech Soup that is helping to bring the social web to nonprofits & NGOs by sharing stories and building tools.

One of the things we're doing is asking nonprofits and NGOs to share their success stories and challenges about their use (or difficulty using) emerging technology like blogs, podcasts, wikis, RSS feeds, aggregation, social bookmarking, social networking, tagging, content management and cell phones/SMS.

If you know a nonprofit or NGO that is using any of these technologies, or is struggling to use them, encourage them to share their stories on our Community Blog, Net2 in Action success gallery or Net2 Ask challenges forum by sending them one of these pre-fab invitations to participate.

Also, if you live in the Bay Area, Mena Trott, co-founder of Six Apart, and nonprofit blogger, Seth Mazow, from Interplast will be speaking at NetSquared's monthly meetup, Net Tuesday tonight, February 15th. Last month 80+ folks showed up so come on over and join the fun. It's at Varnish Art and Wine Bar @ 77 Natoma in SF from 6-8 PM. I'm usually at the front desk when you come in so say hi!

net2
nptech
mena trott
six apart
interplast
nonprofit
technology

Photos for Social Change

Beth Kanter posted an incredible photo today on blogher and netsquared (click on one of them to see it) taken from the camera_rwanda blog. Camera_Rwanda is using photography to raise awareness and money to send Rwandan orphans to college. You must visit this blog and see the photos.

The photo above is from another beautiful photo blog called, Lives in Focus. They don't post often, but when they do, it is worth the wait. The photos are incredible. Right now they are documenting India's HIV positive population:

Using audio recorders, photographs and video, we plan to document the lives of families struggling to buy ARV drugs to keep a family member healthy; the challenges that stigmatized AIDS patients face in trying to earn enough money to buy the lifesaving treatment; activists desperately searching for new sources of inexpensive ARV drugs or lobbying the Indian government to grant compulsory licenses to continue producing cheap drugs.

Technorati tags:
social change
photography
net2
nptech
India
Rwanda

St. Wanda’s Day is February 13th

I’ve never been a big fan of Valentine’s Day (yes, I know, I’m not a big fan of Christmas either). If you’re single and don’t have someone to celebrate with, you’re bummin’ and spending a fortune on the 6 season Sex in the City DVD. If you’re in a relationship, but not married, Valentine’s Day is like some kind of litmus test for how your relationship is going. How meaningful is the card? How romantic is the dinner? Will he/she say the L word, or M word? And if you’re married, it’s easy to say, “Oh, we don’t need to celebrate, every day is Valentine’s Day with you,” or “I’m busy that night, howabout we do Valentine’s next week?”

So, on February 13, 1995 I created St. Wanda’s Day. Basically, it’s a day to do a little something nice for yourself so that when Valentine’s rolls around, and its not the incredibly romantic, meaningful, love-filled day that we know it can’t be, but secretly hope it will be, we don’t feel so badly, ‘cause we had a kick-ass time the day before.

So do a little something special for yourself on the 13th, or send your pal who is having the pre-Valentine’s Day blues a St. Wanda’s Day card and have fun!

Technorati tags:
St. Wanda’s Day
Valentine’s Day
love
relationships

Do Good Film Company

While working on a post for blogher this morning, I came across information about a do good film company that I wanted to share. Nedra Kline Weinrich's social marketing blog, Spare Change, has all kinds of interesting links, including one to Participate.net, the complementary action campaign and community building site for the film company, Participant Productions. Participant Productions was started by former eBay President, Jeff Skoll, who also started the Skoll Foundation (The Skoll Foundation helped to produce that PBS series I love so much, The New Heroes). All of the films that Participant Productions produces have a social action campaign component. Check out some of the great films they've produced:

Syriana
Good Night, and Good Luck
North Country
Murderball

I have to admit that I'm a bit behind on my movies, but all of the above are on my "to see" list, and now that I know about the mission behind Participant Films I'm even more inclined to make sure I see as many as possible in the theater, rather than wait for DVD, to support them.

It looks like they've got some good ones coming down the pike, too. I'm particularly interested in seeing Fast Food Nation and Luna when they come out.

Participant Productions
movie
film

Soup for the Super Bowl

My parents aren't exactly what I would call sport enthusiasts, which is why I was surprised when they said that they were going to a Superbowl party. Turns out it is a benefit for the Food Depot, Northern New Mexico's food bank, called Souper Bowl XII . Some of the best restaurants in Santa Fe cook up their tastiest soups for a soup cook-off and competition. All of the proceeds from the event go to the Food Depot.

Yum.

If you want to make soup on Super Bowl Sunday, here is one of my favorite soup recipes from a cookbook I use all the time, Vegetarian Soups for All Seasons by Nava Atlas.

Curried Red Lentil Soup with Sweet Potatoes and Greens
6 Servings

2 T canola oil or soy margarine
1 c chopped red onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
6 c water
1.5 c red lentils, rinsed (I use brown lentils)
2 large or 3 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and diced (I use yams)
1 t grated fresh ginger
2 t good quality curry powder or garam masala, more or less to taste
1/2 t ground coriander
1/4 t each cinnamon and nutmeg
1 6-oz. bunch Swiss chard, escarole or mustard greens
Juice of 1 lime
Salt to taste

Heat the oil or margarine in a soup pot. Add the onion and garlic and sauté over medium heat until golden brown, about 10 minutes. Add the water, lentils, sweet potatoes, and seasonings. Bring to a simmer, then simmer gently, covered, until the lentils are mushy and the potatoes are done, about 20 to 25 minutes.

In the meantime, wash the greens, remove their thick mid-ribs, then slice them into narrow shreds about 2 inches long. Stir into the soup along with the lime juice. If the soup is too thick, adjust the consistency with a small amount of water.

Continue to simmer gently until the greens are just done, about 10 to 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt. Serve at once, or let the soup stand for an hour or two, then heat through as needed.

Souper Bowl
Superbowl
soup
fundraiser

Seeds

When I was teaching young people for Streetside Stories, I worked in the classroom of this incredible teacher, Ms. Williams. Many of the public schools Streetside works in serve young people who are struggling academically, financially and behaviorally. When visiting these schools I would often notice that many of the staff had low expectations of the students, but not Ms. Williams, she always kept her expectations high. If a student was late for class or forgot their pencil, they were not allowed into class. You could hear her firmly and quietly telling the student at the door,

"Do you think when you get a job that they're going to let you keep that job if you're late or forget the things you need to bring to work? Come back tomorrow when you are on time and prepared."

I think she had been teaching for about 30 years. When I asked her how she had been teaching for so long without getting burned out she said,

"If an adult does me wrong, it takes me a long time to forgive them, but if a child misbehaves in my class or doesn't do well academically one day, I give them a clean slate the next day.

Children are like seeds. Some of them you'll see come up in the fall, some in the spring and some you'll never get to see come up at all. Your fulfillment has to come from planting them."

We planted a Ribes sanguineum in our front yard last May. I had just finished a Gardening with Native Plants class and was excited to plant some native plants in our garden, especially a Ribes sanguineum. I love hummingbirds and hummingbirds love Ribes sanguineum.

I took the photo in this blog post of a hummingbird in a Ribes sanguineum. See the whirr of wings towards the top?

Anyhow, we planted the Ribes and waited (they don't bloom until February or March). It grew, a little, and then started to get this brown stuff all over its leaves



I tried picking them off, but they just kept coming back brown.

A couple of months ago it looked so bad I told my friend Abby from Urban Sprouts that I thought it was dying and was going to pull it out.

"You haven't even had it for a year," she said, "Give it some time."

So I left it and then this week the most amazing thing happened, it started to bloom!



I'm so excited.

You just never know when or how the seeds you plant will grow.

seeds
gardening
education
youth
change

Four Things

I've never played a blog game before, but Beth Kanter tagged me to play, so here it goes.

I don't know if I'm supposed to do this, but I changed the questions up for fun

4 Movies I Watch Over and Over
LA Story
Philadelphia Story
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Creature Comforts

4 TV Shows I Love
The Daily Show
Grey's Anatomy
Monk
Columbo reruns from the 70s (nothing later!)

4 Songs I Listen to Over and Over
An Ending by Brian Eno
Today Has Been Okay by Emiliana Torrini
La Cucaracha by Lila Downs
Contra la Corriente by Marc Anthony

4 Guilty Pleasure Blogs I Read
A Socialite's Life
Pink is the New Blog
Cupcakes Take the Cake
Cupcake Bakeshop by Chockylit

4 People Bloggers I'm Tagging
Pause
Vale of Evening Fog
The Giving Blog
E M P A T H Y






4 x 4
4 Things
chain letter

Empowering Women Bloggers

Two projects supporting women bloggers launched yesterday, the new Blogher network and the Young Caucasus Women Project.

The new Blogher site features summaries of posts by bloghers in the following categories (click on them and check them out):

Blogging & Social Media
Business & Careers
Entertainment & Arts
Fashion & Shopping
Feminism & Gender
Food & Drink
Health & Wellness
Hobbies
Law
Media & Journalism
Mommy & Family
Non-Profits & NGOs (I'm one of the contributing editors for this one).
Personal
Politics & News
Race & Ethnicity
Religion & Spirituality
Research & Academia
Sex & Relationships
Technology & Web
Travel & Recreation
World

In addition, they have blogrolls of women bloghers in each category.

The Young Caucasus Women Project works with young women ages 15-19 from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia who are participating in the Future Leaders Exchange Program.

This week the adult mentor blogger, Joitske Hulsebosch posted her answer to the question, "Who in the World Would you Really Like to Send an Email/Letter to, or to Read Your Blog Posts and Why?" Joitske wrote her answer to the question and now this week the young women are writing their posts. During the process the women, including Joitske, will read and comment on each other's posts.

Here are a few excerpts to tempt you over to the site:

A young woman from Armenia:

I would like to write to Charles Aznavour. He is an Armenian-French singer-composer, who was born in Paris and he is often called “the international ambassador of French chanson”. I do love his songs and his amazing voice, but that is not the reason I would like to write to him. It took Charles Aznavour 20 long years to climb his way to the international mega-star, that he is now. I would write to him that I really admire his willpower and I am totally amazed. It is incredible. I think that willpower is one of the most important thinks, especially for youth, since we are the ones who carry that huge responsibility of making the future and the way we’ll handle it somehow depends on how much willpower we have and how willing we are to make changes in the world in order to make it a better place to live for all of us!

A young woman from Azerbaijan:

I would like to write a letter or an e-mail to the famous Brazilian writer – Paolo Koelyo. I have heard a lot about his tough life. . . .The most important thing I understood, reading Alchemist was that everyone should follow his or her dream. You should never quit following your dream. You should always believe in yourself. Whatever happens in your life, whichever obstacles you face in following your dream, never think that it all works against you. Always be positive and remember that what you thought were obstacles appeared to be just signs, which make you stronger and help you to achieve your dream.

A young woman from Georgia:

I want to write an e-mail/letter/blog to the officials in Belarus, who are responsible for not letting exchange students come to the United States. I remember being very upset when my local representative told me that these kids were denied this great opportunity. I asked if there was anything we could do about it, the answer was NO. If I could really e-mail the officials in Belarus, I would try to explain how beneficial this program is for their own country, how much knowledge, experience and opportunities it gives the exchange students. I’d try to describe every aspect of it and how it helped me. During my stay here I changed a lot, I became a more responsible person and started to actually care about people around me. I started to think of myself, as a part of a community, who can make changes for the better

I will be posting and mentoring along with Beth Kanter during the last week of February.

I am so thrilled to be a part of these projects, of these models of collaboration and of the power of circles of women.

blogher
Young Caucasus Women
women bloggers
net2

Feel Good Dance Fun

I read this article about gospel aerobics in the Oakland Tribune after Christmas and thought it was great. During a gospel aerobics class, the instructor plays gospel music (which I love), and makes connections for the women between their spiritual and physical health. As one student says,

"It's a whole approach that the body is your temple as opposed to 'Thin is in,'" John says. "It's not about being thin so you can fit into the latest fashions."

This is similar to the body-accepting philosophy I observed at a local belly dancing class last week at the Suhaila Salimpour School of Dance. The women taking the class were all shapes and sizes with varying abilities, but it was clear that the environment in the class made all of them feel positively about their bodies.

I really think exercise classes that reinforce positive body image should be a requirement for girls in school. Think about all the good that could be done if women took all the energy they spend worrying about how their bodies look and put it into making the world a better place.

* If you want to hear more about the belly dancing class check out Margaret Cho's blog. She was in the class (it was being filmed for a reality show pilot) so I bet she'll write about it, and of course, it'll be hilarious.


women
dance
Suhaila Salimpour
gospel aerobics
belly dancing

The Blogging Blahs

Do any of you blog readers or blog writers out there ever get the blogging blahs? Maybe its because its winter or because I'm busy or because I'm hormonally challenged (you know what I am talking about ladies), but I have been having the blogging blahs.

Maybe its because I am reading too many blogs (I have 92 feeds in my Bloglines account, eek) and am experiencing what sometimes happens to me when I go to a big bookstore and I think, is there really that much to say? Shouldn't people be spending a little more time outside?

Maybe its because I chose to write about Have Fun * Do Good and sometimes I feel like writing about Be Grumpy * Be Selfish.

The irony, is I have all these great projects coming up that I want to tell you about. Things are rolling along nicely at NetSquared and I'll have some new ways for folks to get involved with that to share soon. I am going to start blogging as a volunteer editor of nonprofit women bloggers at Blogher starting Monday along with Beth Kanter and Nancy White, which I am really excited about. If you are nonprofit woman blogger, please send us your URL so we can include you in our blogroll. Later next month I'll be mentoring some young bloggers along with Beth Kanter, as part of the Young Caucasus Women Project. Having worked with young people in a writing program for such a long time at Streetside, I am hankering to be doing that kind of work again. And I'll also be participating in a link exchange as part of the Nonprofit Blog Exchange next month as well. Lots of great stuff.

Now that I've told you about my blahs, I feel a little better and maybe I'll just have to mix it up with some Be Grumpy * Be Selfish posts to keep it interesting.

blogging blahs
blogging
nptech
net2

On Being Alone

We are cat-sitting a friend's cat, Laika, this week. She often stays at our house while he is out of town. We LOVE her. She is more like a dog than a cat in that she is super affectionate, wants to be with us all the time and follows us around the house. And she is an eater. She loves to eat. None of this, "cat's know when to stop eating" business.

There is only one thing that drives me a little crazy about her. She scratches on our bedroom door periodically during the night. I'm not a big fan of pets sleeping with you or animal hair in your sheets, so she isn't allowed in our bedroom.

Today, Saturday, was particularly bad. She started at 4 AM. So I got up, used the bathroom, gave her a pat and went back to bed. 6 AM. More scratching and mewing. I got up and decided that it was late enough for breakfast and filled her bowl. 8 AM. I got up and changed her litter hoping that was what all the mewing was about. I was awake at this point and my husband had left for work so I started reading Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama. I'd been waiting to have time to read it all week. More scratching at 8:15, 8:30, 9:00. I just want to read in bed (my favorite luxury), but she kept scratching and crying. I got up and showed her the pink spray bottle I use for such occasions and she ran away before I could use it. 9:30. I sprayed and she ran. 10 AM she started again. I called my husband.

"I think she is lonely," he said. Of course, her scratching never wakes him up.

I felt terrible. Mean old human being keeping love from a 13-year old kitty.

I got up and used the bathroom. She pushed open the bathroom door I'd left ajar and sat in front of the toilet with her back to me. Always polite.

I'd only finished the first hundred plus pages of Obama's book where he talks about his struggle during his youth to discover his identity as a person with a White American mother and a Black African father. Many times he felt very alone.

Feeling alone can bring the most excruciating pain. Even to an old cat.

I went in the linen closet, pulled out an old sheet and put it at the end of our bed. I picked up Laika and put her in the middle of the sheet. She promptly fell asleep.

Sometimes it takes so little to bring peace to another being.

loneliness
cats

Cause-related Marketing is on the Rise

While I was watching the Golden Globes last night, L'Oréal showed a series of commercials advertising their Women of Worth campaign, "a grassroots program and award that celebrates, recognizes and supports women who actively help others in their communities". You can nominate a "woman of worth" on their site between now and May 19th. One woman will be chosen from 7 US regions: New England, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, Rocky Mountains and Pacific. The winner will receive a $5,000 donation to the cause of their choice in their name, and a matching grant of $5,000 to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund in their name.

The site also includes a "get involved" page with a list of links to, "Ten Tips for Getting Involved in Your Community:

1. Research the causes or issues important to you.
2. Consider the skills you have to offer
3. Would you like to learn something new?
4. Combine your goals
5. Don't over-commit your schedule
6. Nonprofits may have questions, too.
7. Consider volunteering as a family.
8. Virtual volunteering?
9. I never thought of that!
10. Give voice to your heart through volunteering!

It occurred to me as they repeated this commercial during the night, and apparently it'll be shown again during the Academy Awards, that cause-related marketing is growing.

The Swedish clothing company, H&M, recently opened two stores in downtown San Francisco. I was looking on their web site for their addresses and was struck that one of the top menu options was, "H&M and UNICEF visit Cambodia." Apparently, H&M and UNICEF signed a three-year deal that includes, "an education project for girls in developing countries and a project to prevent the spread of HIV among young people in Cambodia."

This fall, St. John's Knits signed a deal with Angelina Jolie to be, "both the face of St. John the brand, as well as the voice behind a newly-formed charity created in support of children's causes."

I'm wondering if the big budget ad campaign and successful use of high profile celebrities by the ONE campaign, and the success of Live 8 has caused the growth or if it is still a reaction to the nation's conscious or unconscious post-September 11th reflection, "What really matters?" What I do find interesting is the investment in these causes by the corporations, rather than just the placement of their logo on a nonprofits' web site as a sponsor.

Obviously, the bottom line for corporations is to make a profit, but at least some good may come of this trend while it lasts.

women of worth
cause marketing
cause-related marketing

Three Do * Good Blogs

I came across two interesting blogs over the holidays:

World Changing: Another World is Here and Treehugger: The Future is Green. Find it Here.

World Changing is like the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer version of Treehugger. 21 contributing editors from all over the world post extensive articles about tools, models and ideas for building a better future. Jamais Cascio posted two posts recently that caught my eye.

One post was about an Islamic group that is proposing a sustainable mosque to be built for the 2012 Olympics in London. It would have wind turbines built into the minarets, a closed system for recycling the water used for ritual washing, a tidal power plant and solar panels. Pretty cool, huh? In the other post, Cascio posted info. taken from a Salon.com article, that you've probably already heard about, but I hadn't, that Sweden has created a commission to find ways to end the country's use of oil by 2020. Gotta love those Swedes!

Treehugger is chuck full of fun ideas, again from contributing bloggers all over the world: a lifestyle magazine for folks concerned about the environment, a Take Your (shopping) Bag for a Walk campaign and a cool looking bicycle parking unit made from recycled aluminum (pictured above). Treehugger readers can send in tips for posts.

Also, this morning, Pam McAllister was nice enough to send my a note to say she reads this blog (thanks, Pam!) and directed me to her blog, Tailwinds: Energy Sources for People Making a Difference. I haven't had a chance to read through many posts, but it seems like stuff that Have Fun * Do Good readers might want to check out.

green blog
sustainability
environment

Do Good Fraternity

I listen to a few podcasts, UNICEF, Barack Obama, Ebert and Roeper, the ONE Campaign and the 501c3Cast.

I missed the 501c3cast when they took a break over the holidays, but they are back full force with two great shows to start the new year. Their January 3rd show has an interview with Chad Coltrane of Push America. Push America provides ways for members of the fraternity, Pi Kappa Phi to work with and improve the lives of people with disabilities. Having particularly chosen a school with more women than men, and no Greek system, I have to admit that I have certain prejudices against fraternities. I was super impressed by this organization and the work that they do.

They have construction programs that help to build things like ramps and accessible fishing piers, boardwalks, pavilions and playgrounds for families, individuals, organizations and camps, and cycling programs that raise money, promote awareness and do accessible construction.

For every interview that Corey at the 501c3cast does, he ask his interviewee for a quote that keeps them going while they are doing their do*good work. During his January 9th interview with Stefan Ledinger of Kinderjugendkreis, Ledinger read an allegory that I liked a lot:

If you had a bank that would transfer $86,400 dollars to your bank account every morning and would cancel whatever amount was left at the end of the day, what would you do? Of course you would go the bank every day, withdraw all the money and spend it on something useful. Well, you have such a bank, its name is time. Every morning it grants you 86,400 seconds. Every evening, everything you have used for a good cause is cancelled. Nothing is left for the next day. If you do not spend your days' deposit, it is lost and can not be got back. It is up to every one of us to use this treasure of hours, minutes and seconds as good as possible for a high return of health, happiness and success.

501c3Cast
Push America
Pi Kappa Phi

A Beginner's Guide to Changing the World

I just finished a really great book called, A Beginner's Guide to Changing the World by Isabel Losada. If you live outside of the United States, you can probably find it under the title, For Tibet, With Love. It's a great book to start the year off with. Thanks to my friend Danny who gave it to me for Christmas.

A Beginner's Guide to Changing the World describes Losada's journey from navel gazer to activist. What starts as an Ask Jeeves query, "What can I do about Tibet?" leads her to demonstrating outside the Chinese embassy in London, traveling to Tibet, jumping out of a plane to raise money, organizing a 50-foot banner of the Dalai Lama to be unfurled from Nelson's column and meeting the Dalai Lama.

What I liked most about the book was that she doesn't make it seem easy, in a normal way. So many autobiographies of activists either make the story of their life seem filled with such tragic and extreme obstacles that you think, "I could never be as strong as them," or seem so easy and flowing you think, "I could never be as intelligent/talented/lucky as them." But Losada's book describes the kind of obstacles to changing the world that everyone faces--lack of funds, apathy, bureaucracy, stressed out co-workers and bad weather.

At first when I was reading it, I was sort of frustrated by reading about all of the small challenges, but then I realized that this is how it is when you want to create social change. Yes, there are big dramatic obstacles, but a lot of it is day to day difficulties.

And how does Losada move through it? She gets frustrated and annoyed like a normal person, and she focuses on her goal, gets support from friends, perseveres and repeats her mantra (the Serenity Prayer):

Grant me the serenity to know the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

At her interview with the Dalai Lama, she asks him how a person can know the difference between what he or she can change, and what they can't. He answered:

Through experiment. Research. Calculate whether you can achieve on mental level, then experiment. . . .from the Buddhist viewpoint the action, whether right or wrong, ultimately much depends on motivation. Result not very sure. Your intention, something good. Good purpose, good goal. But some other factors, conditions, results may not go that way. So it doesn't matter. Your motivation is very sincere. The result is not predictable. Difficult.

I wonder if as many activists, nonprofit workers, social workers and the like would get as burned out if they knew that their positive intentions and motivations, the fact that they tried to make a difference, is what really matters.

Tibet
Isabel Losada
social change

Bloggies

So . . . . the 2006 Bloggies has an award for best new blog (that was started during 2005) and um, this blog is new. . . . the nomination deadline is Tuesday, January 10th at 10 PM EST.

As their web site says:

Millions of blogs.
Thousands of nominees.
151 finalists.

But it can't hurt to try. Hee hee.



bloggies

Have Fun * Do Good iMix

I was searching through the iTunes Music Store's iMix section for new running music and thought I'd add my own iMix, so here is my 30 minute Have Fun * Do Good mix. If you go to the iTunes Music Store's iMix section and search by "iMix name" for "Have Fun * Do Good Mix" it should come up and you can hear bits of the songs.

Have Fun * Do Good Mix

1. Proud by Heather Small & Various Artists (from the Queer as Folk soundtrack).
I think this song is meant to be about living with gay pride, but for me the lyric, "What have you done today to make you feel proud?" is about living with integrity in all aspects of your life.

2. Where Is the Love? by the Black Eyed Peas & Justin Timberlake
Wow. I never realized Justin Timberlake was on that song. Scary. But it is still a great song:

Yo', whatever happened to the values of humanity
Whatever happened to the fairness in equality

3. Everyone Deserves Music by Michael Franti & Spearhead
Yay for Oakland native Michael Franti!

Everyone deserves music, sweet music
Even our worst enemies Lord, they deserves music, music

4. We Don't Stop by Michael Franti & Spearhead
Yes, I love Michael Franti:

They gotta war for oil, a war for gold
A war for money and a war for souls
A war on terror, a war on drugs
A war on kindness and a war on hugs
A war on birds and a war on bees
They gotta a war on hippies tryin' save the trees
A war with jets and a war with missiles
A war with high seated, government officials
Wall street war, on high finance
A war on people who just love to dance
A war on music, a war on speech
A war on teachers and the things they teach
A war for the last 500 years
War's just messin' up the atmosphere
A war on Muslims, a war on Jews
A war on Christians and Hindus
A whole lotta people just sayin' kill them all
They gotta a war on Mumia Abu Jamal
The war on pot, is a war that's failed
A war that's fillin' up the nation's jails
World war one, two, three and four
Chemical weapons, biological war
Bush war 1, Bush war 2
They gotta war for me, they gotta war for you!

5. Don't Give Up (Africa) by Alicia Keys & Bono
This is a remake of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush's,"Don't Give Up." It was released in honor of World AIDS day this year. 100 percent of the proceeds from iTunes' download sales of this song go to Keep a Child a Alive.

6. Wake Up Everybody, Pt. 1 by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes
The chorus says it all:

The world won't get no better if we just let it be
The world won't get no better we gotta change it yeah, just you and me.

7. The New Heroes, Pt. 2 by Christopher Hedges from the soundtrack of the PBS series about social entrepreneurs, The New Heroes

Please let me know if you have more songs to add!

iTunes
iMix
music

Doing is Faster than Dreading

When my husband and I bought our house around this time last year, it was staged, and the room that we wanted to use as a guest room/office for me was set up as a children's room with yellow walls (fine), dark royal blue trim on the windows, ceiling and floor (not fine), and a wallpaper border of bunnies, moons and stars (very not fine).

The first week we moved into the house we put white primer on the blue trim and then both preceded to get long, nasty winter flus and by the time we recovered, the holidays were over and we were back in the work grind with less time to spend on the house.

About once a month or so we would say, we really need to finish that room, but how are we going to deal with the wallpaper? We were both sure that peeling off the wallpaper would require us to repaint the yellow walls, so we put it off and moved very little furniture into the room because we knew we would be painting it "soon."

As the months passed, we asked friends about how to remove the wallpaper, apologized to guests staying in the room about the bunnnies, bought a special scraper and goo to take it off, shared an office because I didn't want to move my stuff in to move it out to paint, and generally avoided the prospect of taking down the wallpaper.

Yesterday, my husband announced that today was the day to take down the wallpaper, and guess what, when he started scoring the wallpaper with the special scraper to put on the special goo to use another special scraper, he realized that the paper was so thick and loosely adhered, he could just peel it off the wall.

It took 10 minutes, and it was down. Well, it took us one year and 10 minutes.

Why am I telling you about our wallpaper? Because as we stood there laughing at how long it had taken us to do this little thing, I thought about the career counseling clients I work with, and how I always tell them that if you are trying to figure out what you want to do with your life, or you want to reach a specific goal, talking about it is helpful, but taking action is the best.

So, when you begin working on your New Year's resolutions, whether they are to change careers, to have fun * do good or to lose five pounds, don't wait to take action 'cause it may be easier than you think.

New Year's Resolution
career change

Something is on the Rise in 2006

Yesterday my husband and I had a little New Year's Day get together with some friends and the night before I went to a New Year's dinner at my neighbors' house (my husband had to work). It was the first year that I felt like celebrating the New Year. I've always thought New Year's was an arbritrary, rather boring holiday--woo hoo it's January-- but for some reason this year I wanted to celebrate and interestingly I have talked to a number of people who feel the same way--something is on the rise in 2006.

I don't know if it is that we're halfway through the 00's, or that it is over 4 years since 9/11, or that Hurricane Katrina put extreme poverty on the evening news, but it feels like America is waking up from a long sleep and somehow becoming more conscious of the country that it needs to become . . .

Perhaps it is the Have Fun * Do Good lense that I filter the world through, but I think that part of the benefit of the many tragedies of the 00's is that many of them have been the kind of moments, for at least the American collective conscious, that life is short, it can change forever in one moment and that what we do in this moment does have a "butterfly effect" and can can change not only our individual futures, but our collective futures as well.

It feels like we are at that on the edge moment when either all of the predictions of global disaster will start to become true, or our world will take a different direction.

The blog HorsePigCow had an interesting post yesterday about how this has been a year of great change because of emerging technology:

We came together to create, break down, build up, and cause trouble. We saw the amateur rise and get redefined - not as the lesser opposite of the professional, but as the celebrated antithesis to the stuffy, top-down controlled corporate world. We started to see power structures crumbling, former 'respected institutions' baring cracks and the general shaking up of 'conventional wisdoms' and hegemonies. People as individuals are no longer powerless, mostly due to our ability to connect to others to form strong collaborative efforts against injustice.Yadda yadda yadda.

But I'm starting to see what could really throw a wrench into the growth of this hopeful revolution. It's the ugly head of co-optation. The corporate engine seems to be more well-oiled than ever.

I guess I feel hopeful from the co-optation of positive things. If we are what we eat, at least we're feeding the corporate beast that we've created good food.

My friend, Alli Chagi-Starr, reminded me of Margaret Mead's famous quote yesterday:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Perhaps if small groups continue to make choices to have fun and do good, larger groups will eat them up and the world will be transformed.

Jory Des Jardins writes in her New Year's Day post about 2006 being a year for her to sort through all of the ideas and opportunities that 2005 brought her way and to focus on the few that are the most important in 2006.

As Americans, we are so good at creating--products, ideas, work--but I think no one can argue that we have too much of everything. Perhaps 2006 is the year to focus on what matters the most.

2006
change