This is an unbelievable company with a fantastic mission. It all started when the founder took a trip to Argentina and saw that few of the children had shoes to wear. By the time he got on a plane back to America, he had already decided that he had to do something and he was going to do it by selling shoes. This company is a great testament to the fact that you cannot wait for someone else to create the change that you see is so desperately needed. Definitely an inspiration for any entrepreneur or anyone who wants to make a difference.
The arts, and in particular, music, help stimulate creativity. They help foster great ideas. So when my company set forth in aligning ourselves with nonprofits I did not think twice about supporting The Music National Service Initiative and their mission to launch MusicianCorps. MusicianCorps is an international youth service music movement that expands the use of music in: 1) Underserved schools and communities to develop more successful students and youth; 2) Health care and therapeutic settings for recovery and improved functioning; 3) the public domain for increased civic engagement, advocacy, volunteerism and diplomacy.
I have the great fortune of calling one of the founders of the Music National Service Initiative, Jim Kurtz, one of my friends. His passion for music is infectious and his vigilance towards raising awareness about the importance of music is second to none. Jim and I once attended an event for social entrepreneurs and his eyes lit up with delight when he talked about his passion project. He told me that President elect Obama and other leaders in Washington had supported projects for the arts and he was confident in its ability to achieve the desired results. I have absolutely no doubt that it will.
The numbers don’t lie. Schools with music programs have significantly higher graduation rates than those without programs – 90.2% as compared to 72.9% (Harris poll of high school principals, 2006). Nearly nine in ten people (88%) with post-graduate degrees participated in music education. Further, 83% of those with incomes of $150,000 or more participated in music (2007 Harris Poll). Not only does music increase graduation rates and lead to an increase in annual salary but it also builds self-confidence. For at-risk youths, the arts contribute to lower recidivism rates for crimes; increased self esteem; the acquisition of job skills; and the development of much needed creative thinking, problem solving and communication skills (Impact of Art Ed, on Workforce Prep., 2002, NGA).
Service is the way of the future. National Service attracts energetic and talented young people at a fraction of the cost. Approximately 8% of the graduating class of Yale, Dartmouth, and Harvard apply to Teach for America. National Service develops long-term resources and leaders. 72% of AmeriCorps members continue to volunteer after their formal service periods end. 90% go on to pursue careers in public service (S. Sagawa, Center for American Progress, Sept. 2007).
Given our country’s current economic malaise, fostering creativity is possibly more essential now than ever before. The Peace Corps has had tremendous success since its inception in the 1960s and MusicianCorps can spawn positive results this century. The Millennials are highly motivated and they are quick to mobilize. They are the perfect agents for the innovative change that we seek. “America needs a workforce that is flexible, adaptable, and highly creative; and it needs an education system that can develop these qualities in everyone. The arts teach many of these skills, aptitudes and values that are at the heart of America’s growing ‘creative’ economy and beyond”, says Sir Ken Robinson, Senior Advisor of the Getty Foundation. I could not agree with Robinson more. Music encourages participation in groups and teaches kids the importance of collaboration. If we are to succeed in the future then we will need to nourish these characteristics. I am not blessed with much musical talent but I love music and hope that one day other people will see it for what it is: a creative refuge that can help stimulate positive emotions. John Logan once said that music is medicine for the mind. I agree. So lets do our part and make sure that we give everyone a chance to receive his or her necessary dosage by supporting MusicianCorps.
When we at Worthy Fashion came up with our new campaign to allow our customers to choose their preferred charity, we agreed that it only made sense for each of us to choose a charity that was close to our own heart. Today, I’m going to talk about the charity I chose, which is meaningful to me because my grandfather passed away from Alzheimer’s a little over a year ago.
My poppop was one of the most happy-go-lucky people I’ve ever met. He was the type of man that was happiest when everyone around him was laughing. At his funeral, going through the pictures of his life it was difficult to find any photos in which he wasn’t smiling, making a face or turning anything he could get his hands on into an opportunity for some ad-lib prop comedy. He was goofy in the best way and that made him an unbelievably lovable grandfather because he was so comfortable slipping back into the role of his inner child when he was with his grandkids. I know that he passed away having brought as much joy into the world as any human being could ever muster. The memories of that man are the ones I’ve chosen to remember because the man that Alzheimer’s eventually turned him into was quite different from the one I grew up with.
The jokes about grandpa looking for the glasses on his head or grandma putting salt in the recipe instead of sugar are simple facts of old age and are best taken with a laugh and a smile, but Alzheimer’s is so much more devastating than mere forgetfulness. It takes your zest, your personality and your emotional connections along with your memories. We don’t really know how much this affects the patients themselves because as the disease progresses communication becomes increasingly difficult. No one can know if they’re depressed or angry except for the cues we read on the outside. All you can do is make sure they’re as comfortable as possible and hope they don’t realize too intensely what is happening to them.
What I do know, however, is what this disease does to the people that love that person. It’s a strange, somewhat surreal experience talking to someone with this disease because you’re always expecting them to pop out of their chair and yell “Gotcha, I was just fooling ya”. They never do, of course, but for some reason you still think it might happen every time. It’s incredibly difficult to look at a person you’ve known so long and process the fact that you are now a complete stranger to them. The twinkles of sudden memory that I saw on my poppop’s face from time to time that seemed to indicate some part of him still knew me were always bittersweet and faded away as suddenly as they had come on. It was difficult for my family to watch someone so unabashedly gregarious become quiet, reserved and confused. The emotional toll of watching his exuberance and vitality slowly float away from him until he sat alone most days staring out the window eventually led to a very cathartic experience at his funeral for my family. We were sad, of course, but in a strange way I got the sense that we all felt he had been freed from his prison. I could feel the sense of relief that somewhere the man we always knew and loved was smiling and laughing the way he was always meant to be. It was a happy death in its own way because we knew the disease couldn’t hold him back anymore.
That experience was very meaningful to my family and I and it’s why I think the work that the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research is so important. Led by Nobel Laureate, Dr. Paul Greengard, the center is confronting the myriad of problems facing Alzheimer’s patients today with groundbreaking research into therapies to slow and prevent the disease and are getting closer to finding a cure. Another reason that the Fisher Center is at the vanguard of Alzheimer’s Research is that 94 cents of every dollar donated goes directly to the lab. Directing only 6% of their donations towards administrative costs is an incredibly low number which demonstrates the admirable level of dedication they posses to eradicating this disease.
My poppop’s experience taught me just how valuable and critical our memories are to keeping us connected to our loved ones and I’m hopeful that the Fisher Center will soon achieve the breakthrough that will allow future generations to hold onto that connection as long as possible.
“Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” Everyone’s heard this old adage before and it’s pretty self-explanatory. The question most people don’t ask is, “Why did one man know how to fish and the other didn’t?” I know that this little nugget of wisdom is supposed to be a lesson on education and self-sufficiency, but it does create a bit of a chicken and the egg situtation. Who teaches first? And what if no one is there to teach at all? I suppose this is why we built the first cities that grew into civilizations - because it increased our ability to share wealth and knowledge, precisely so that everyone would have an opportunity to know how to fish so to speak. The only problem is that these days the global society is a lot more complex and we still have major problems making sure everyone has opportunities to access wealth and knowledge.
If someone is struggling everyday to feed their family, how can they possibly focus on building their career? If there’s no time to start a career, how can trade thrive? If trade can’t thrive, how can a society become prosperous and if a society is poor how can it take care of its disadvantaged people? It’s a sad feedback loop that seems built into the poor societies of the world. Poverty is not just a matter of not knowing how to fish (although that would help), but a symptom of poor structural integrity in the poorest societies. For too long we thought the solution to poverty was just more food (I guess we ignored the proverb) and then we realized teaching agriculture is even better. The best thing of all, however, is to create a society where outsiders don’t need to come in to do either of those things. The ultimate solution to poverty, though, is to create societal structures which prevent or lessen poverty in the first place.
Enter Oxfam. They recognize that poverty is more than just lack of resources, it is a structual problem; a system of inequality and access denial. As their website states, they understand that:
Poverty is a state of powerlessness in which people are unable to exercise their basic human rights or control virtually any aspect of their lives. Poverty manifests itself in the inadequacy of material goods and lack of access to basic services and opportunities leading to a condition of insecurity.
All poverty is almost always rooted in human action or inaction. It can be made worse by natural calamities, and human violence, oppression and environmental destruction. It is maintained by entrenched inequalities and institutional and economic mechanisms.
On a human level, they understand that lack of resources can lead to a sense of powerlessness and inaction. But, helping these same people find a sense of power helps them take action and claim the resources that they need. Lack of resources is not just a physical problem, it’s a mental setback.
What really sets Oxfam apart for me, however, is their understanding that just because some nations are rich does not necessarily mean others must suffer. Prosperity is not a zero-sum issue. Everyone’s basic needs and liberties can be achieved all over the world. Our failure to provide this is not for lack of resources, but for lack of action.
The reason they do the work they do is because they understand that poverty is not just physical lack, but lack of freedom and control over one’s own life. By helping the poorest peoples find good health and education, their chances of overcoming poverty are substantially increased because of the fact that they have the strength and the means to overcome the barriers to prosperity.
This deep understanding of the root causes of these problems is why we think Oxfam is a worthy cause.
When I was ten years old I landed myself in the emergency room with a forearm full of glass shards sitting just millimeters away from my ulnar artery. The glass was there because my brother and I were tormenting each other in the house and the chase ended with my arm going through a window. Luckily, my mom was in the house and whisked me off to the hospital. In the waiting room, I sat with my feet dangling from the chair while my mom simultaneously filled out insurance forms and held my arm in the air with a bloodsoaked rag, telling me everything was going to be okay. As it always is with mothers, she was more terrified than I was.
When it was my turn to be seen, I laid on my back and calmly watched as the doctors pulled pieces of glass out of my open flesh, washed the blood out with water and went in for more before finally sewing me up with over twenty stitches that zigzagged across my soft forearm. The doctor and nurses kept me going by telling me how tough I was for not crying when a soldier on the bed next to mine was bawling. Even now, my mom often recounts how incredible it was that I just sat and watched my ragged arm being fixed as though it belonged to someone else. I wasn’t tough. If that happened to me today, I’d probably react far more frantically than I did back then. I was just too naive to believe anything but what I was being told - “stay calm, you’re going to be fine, you’re a tough boy”.
At that age, you take everything for granted. I couldn’t comprehend that my mom wouldn’t be there to take care of me or that we wouldn’t have a car to drive to the hospital in or that competent doctors wouldn’t be on duty ready to put me back together. There isn’t even the tiniest sliver of doubt in a ten year old brain that if you get hurt someone will be there to fix you. Looking back, I wonder how different that situation would have been if I had happened to grow up in a warzone, a genocide or had just been unlucky enough to get trapped in a natural disaster. The medical care I thought was a natural right is unfortunately a luxury to many people in those situations. The certainty I had that everything was going to be taken care of and all I had to do was sit and wait for things to get better, is something every child should have, but doesn’t.
This is why Doctors Without Borders was formed. This amazing organization was founded on the belief that medical care should be offered with total neutrality to people of all races and backgrounds in all parts of the world. Their pledge of impartiality is part of what makes them such an amazing group of people because it ensures that their only concern is providing medical care to people who are suffering. Because 89% of their funding comes from private sources they are able to act totally independently of any political, religious or military agendas. As it says on their website, “MSF is neutral. The organization does not take sides in armed conflicts, provides care on the basis of need alone, and pushes for increased independent access to victims of conflict as required under international humanitarian law.”
Their impartiality doesn’t make them push-overs though. They always enter a new territory solely to offer medical assistance, but what they bear witness to on the job often compells them to act as whistle-blowers as well. Again, their website says, “In 1985, MSF spoke out against the Ethiopian government’s forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of its population; took the unprecedented step of calling for an international military response to the 1994 Rwandan genocide; condemned the Serbian massacre of civilians at Srebrenica in 1995; denounced the Russian bombardment of the Chechen capital, Grozny in 1999; and called for international attention to the crisis in Darfur in 2004 and 2005 at the United Nations Security Council.”
Doctors Without Borders truly gets it. They are human beings out to help other human beings. In an age where wealth distribution is becoming increasingly uneven, the selflessness of those lucky and wealthy enough to have gone to medical school putting their lives at risk for others is truly inspiring. No one wants to grow up in a place where there aren’t enough hospitals for everyone. Thank God that Doctors Without Borders is willing to try to fix that.
This is a great video put out by CI that really highlights how they are problem-solvers at heart, finding solutions that attack the problems we face from multiple angles. It’s only about a minute, but it’s well produced and worth a look.
I missed a couple promised blog postings about charities because we’ve been furious at work spreading the word about our new campaign, but I’m back to talk about another great cause.
History has been made between my last post and today - an African American man has been elected president. This is a major turning point for the black community, whose mothers and fathers can now tell their children with confidence for the first time that they too can rise to the top office in the land if they work hard enough. Obama’s victory came on the heels of a slew of images of shameless wall street investors defending their insanely generous paychecks as they were dragging American workers into the mud. In this context, Obama’s victory seems just as relevant to the middle and lower classes. It’s not only Obama’s race that is significant. The fact that he grew up in a middle income family with an immigrant father and was raised with the help of his grandparents says just as much. It signals that even in an era in which the gap between rich and poor is as great as ever, the belief that America can be a meritocracy still has a leg to stand on. The opportunity divide has long been an invisible issue in this country because of a persistent belief that success in America was solely determined by work ethic, when one glance at the economic backgrounds of our nation’s leaders demonstrates anything but that. If you don’t agree with the last statement, I highly recommend reading the eye-opening book “Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich.
Year Up is an unbelievable organization that was created because of this opportunity divide. As their website states, “To help address these challenges, Year Up was founded in October 2000 by Gerald Chertavian as a one-year intensive education and apprenticeship program for urban young adults aged 18-24. Year Up’s program recognizes that both job skills (technical and professional) and higher education are necessary to provide a viable path to economic self-sufficiency. Our mission is to prepare these young adults for successful careers and higher education.”
Recognizing that success depends on more than just technical training, Year Up places an emphasis not just on technical training, internship and apprenticeships, but also emphasizes support and guidance. They understand that a head filled with knowledge is useless without developing confidence, strong work ethic and a desire to achieve. These are the character traits that are the engine of success. One on one learning, inspiring advisors and personal connection are what really set Year Up apart.
What the American dream really means has been hotly debated for years and, while to some it will always only be an ideal, it’s reassuring and touching to know that groups like Year Up are doing all they can to help it become a reality. We are very proud to offer Year Up as a donation option to our customers.
In my last post, I wrote about my company’s new campaign to create a totally new and unique customer experience that seamlessly integrates philanthropic donation into the purchasing process. Every customer is able to choose the charity that speaks to their heart as they click their way through checkout. We give more with each item added into your cart and the donations come straight from our wallet, not the customers’. We’re confident that the power of our customers’ charitable passions will help us become the sort of new breed of business that puts social improvement right next to profit on the bottom line.
To help introduce this new campaign, I thought it would be a great idea to feature one of our charities each week on this blog. We’re passionate about every one and we’ve looked long and hard to find a range of charities that we think includes something for just about everyone. This week I’ll be writing about Conservation International.
This was one of the first charities that we absolutely knew we had to get behind. Most people have images of dreadlocks, granola, and some kind of hemp running through their heads whenever they hear the words conservation or environmentalism. You don’t get that with these guys. In fact, Conservation International is the kind of organization that is so pragmatic, forward-thinking and optimistic that they make you wish they were running all of the world’s governments.
They broke the mold of traditional conservation from “keeping places intact as relics of the past” to a “working model of the future – a future in which people lived in harmony with nature.” In order to accomplish this, they realized that they needed to add effective business practices, partnerships with national governments and major corporations and scientific innovation to their significant passion for the environment. This strategy of combining the best parts of science, technology, business and social outreach has catapulted them past more traditional environmental organizations to become a leader in their field. In fact, they’re now on charitynavigator.org’s “10 Best Charities Everyone’s Heard Of”.
What has set them apart more than anything, though, is their vision of nature as all-encompassing - from the boardroom to the playground to the ocean, every square foot of the earth is a connected part of this ecosystem. So, they understand that it doesn’t make sense to just retreat into the wilderness to face the problems that can start anywhere and affect humans, plants and animals everywhere. To CI it’s just as important to ensure that businesses and citizens are creating a human culture that’s in harmony with the earth as it is to repair the damage we’ve already done. This involves everyone from the largest company to the smallest village.
The scope of their projects and the way in which they tackle today’s biggest problems make them a charity we believe is deserving of all the funding we can provide. We believe this particularly because they don’t cling to any dogma about how things are o should be done, but concern themselves with the problems at hand and how to solve them. That’s the kind of charity we think is worthy.
Born in 1983, I fall somewhere between “digital immigrant” and “digital native”. These are the monikers aptly used to describe the two kinds of humans who went through their important developmental years either before or after that point on the digital timeline when the internet became a ubiquitous part of our daily lives. Digital immigrants have to adapt to technology, whereas anyone who’s seen a teenager these days can see that the digital natives have to do very little adapting to the machines they grew up believing had always existed. I grew up with Nintendo, didn’t have a cell phone until late high school and didn’t use the internet on a daily basis until college, so in some sense I grew up alongside these disruptive technologies and not before or after. I like to think this gives me a unique perspective on how these modern conveniences affect the way we think and how we look at the world. Although I’m more in tune with computers than most people at my parents age ever will be, I still find myself shocked whenever I see ten year olds with cell phones or hear about elementary school students doing anything on the internet besides playing Oregon Trail.
So the world is changing and it seems our childrens’ brains are changing as well just to keep up. Ages ago, humans evolved to use tools to adapt to the natural world, but now we find ourselves forced to adapt to our own tools. How did we end up on the wrong side of the stick? It seems like we’ve created a feedback loop of biology and technology, but sometimes I’m not entirely sure that our biological adaptations serve us as much as they serve to facilitate the runaway growth in complexity of technology. In some sense, I think we’re so enamored by our digital creations that we assume whatever progress we make is inevitably good progress and therefore the onus is upon the human brain to keep up. We’ve prostrated ourselves before the altar of the microchip.
The reason I mention all this is because I recently learned of Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child program. I was totally blown away by the scope and vision of the program - to provide the world’s poorest children with “a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.” The mind reels considering what sort of possibilities this can open up for these children and for the entire world. Like my last Op-Ed piece pointed out, who knows how many Einsteins and Edisons are waiting for an education in the developing world? For the purpose of giving these kids connection to the outside world, freedom to pursue their own intellectual passions and the resources to become autodidacts, I wholeheartedly applaud Mr. Negroponte. This program has the potential to transform the world in countless ways and I can’t wait to see the effects.
What gives me pause, however, is the concern that we will stop at the laptop. I’m concerned that sending laptops to Kenya will become the educational equivalent of dropping sacks of rice from the sky - well intentioned, but ineffective in creating long term change without some further human interaction. Even in the richest nation in the world, we’ve begun to find that computers in the classroom do not show any correlation to improved test scores. It’s completely commonplace today for American middle and high school students to have their own computers and yet I’d feel quite confident wagering that far less than half of their time on it is spent for educational purposes. Some circles of education are finding that computers in the classroom are actually having negative effects on the progress of students.
One factor in education, however, has proven to be extremely beneficial and most of the world’s best scientists, artists, politicians and engineers have cited it as having a highly critical impact on their own success. That factor is having a good teacher. Connection to the internet is extremely powerful and so is educational software, but absolutely nothing can replace the sort of passionate curiosity that can only be instilled by parents, teachers and mentors. In a recent New Yorker conference, the erudite Malcolm Gladwell proclaimed, “There’s nothing you can do to improve school more than by improving the teachers [sic].” More than class size, computers or any other resource, good teachers equate to good education. But, he went on to note that being a “good teacher” actually boils down to something quite ineffable, citing a recent study which showed that the best educated, most prepared educational experts performed on par with a random sample of ordinary people. I can’t say this for sure, but I feel very confident that this ineffable quality probably boils down to two things - passion and the ability to connect. I say this because I know that the teachers I learned the most from were always the ones who inspired and motivated me with their passion or through their connection to me on a human level.
So, let’s send laptops to Uganda and Cambodia. But let’s not forget that the people that built those laptops probably had a whole cadre of teachers and parents pushing them forward. If we really want to teach these children we also have to instill in them a passionate curiosity. Otherwise, we’re just giving them a window into another world.
A couple of days ago I wrote a bit about NextEinstein, which is an initiative to fund the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences. It made me optimistic because it focuses on allowing Africans to help themselves by providing scholarships and materials to allow the country to develop a much needed corps of native engineers, physicists and scientists. All too often, philanthropy is all heart and no head, but NextEinstein is a step in the direction of putting the two together.
Serendipitously, Christopher Hitchens just wrote a piece in Slate magazine about donating towards the same end in Iraq. The loud debate over whether or not we should have gone to Iraq and whether or not we should stay often ends up leaving the Iraqis themselves voiceless to the rest of the world. Hitchens notes how depressing it is to know that what was once,
“one of the world centers of humanistic learning and philosophy—is in a profound crisis of intellectual unfreedom. It boasts of no great centers of study; it translates pathetically few books from other languages and cultures; it is prone to waves of intolerance and fanaticism under which books are actually burned. Thus the attempt to reverse this trend and to lay the foundation of a liberal and cosmopolitan education for the next generation of educated Iraqis is of the highest importance from every conceivable point of view.”
Practically all of the country’s intellectuals and professionals fled the country during the war, leaving behind a country absent of intellectual manpower. Just as Africa can only lift itself up by developing a foundation of professionals from its own population, Iraqis, who did not ask for war, are trying to put their shattered educational and intellectual assets back together.
It may take decades for American forces to “rebuild” Iraq or perhaps we’ll pull out before that happens, but the real rebuilding can only be done by the Iraqis themselves. You cannot import the scientists, writers, lawyers, engineers and statesmen that make a country great, they make themselves. The American University of Iraq is requesting books so they can begin rebuilding the most important assets of the country: the minds that will lead the country towards a hopefully peaceful and prosperous future. It is an unbelievably worthy cause in my mind. I plan on finding whatever books I can to send over.
