Colorlines.com created an amazing infographic to detail Hurricane Katrina a decade later. Take a good look at it. How does this article and image make you feel? How does it inspire you to take action?
Here are some images from the infograhic, but check out the entire article and illustration because it is fantastic!
In our early years, we had a Monday Spotlight series where great new organizations and projects were highlighted because of the incredible work they were doing. One of those projects was Sofar Sounds in the A Little LA Monday Spotlight. At that time, music in a room was only a unique idea of music being brought into intimate living spaces around Los Angeles. Now this music project is much larger.
Sofar brings people together and allows them to communicate in a common way; music. Communication does not have to be A to B. Communication can be A, B, C, and D, communing together to enjoy a common love. This type of communication for common cause is a way to Social Change.
It is pretty easy to get involved with Sofar. Go to the website. Sign up. Get notified about upcoming shows. Their, ‘How It Works‘ page will be more helpful though.
Here is an informational video about them:
And here are a couple of our favorite videos:
Recently Project Kinect was contacted about this fantastic infographic about Copenhagen, a biking heaven. Take a moment to go through it. There is so much information about the steps the city has taken to become such a successful bike friendly city.The entire article can be found on IceBike.org.
At Project Kinect, we love biking. Here is another love of ours we discussed in October, 2014: People for Bikes.
Recently on a project with Peacework, we were introduced to Periscope. If you haven’t heard about it yet, let us have the excitement to introduce you to it. Periscope, similar to Meerkat, is a new social media platform that allows you to broadcast an event, meeting, conversation, or whatever, live for a much wider audience. The app also allows viewers to become interactive in the conversation by adding insight, asking questions, or just emoticons. We suggest you play with it and begin sharing it because we see it as an amazing vehicle to build bridges among diverse communities.
Here are some tools to help you better utilize Periscope:
It is a tragic shame that Vu Le and his website, Nonprofits With Balls have just been introduced to our staff. We know that it is extremely difficult to keep reading this when you want to click the link to his website, but please refrain. We probably shouldn’t even be adding these sentences because you have already clicked it. If you haven’t, go ahead, click it. We’ll even put it here to make it easier for you to click…. Nonprofits With Balls.
Vu Le is extraordinary. He is a hot sexy unicorn to us for his candidness, ability to point out where real positive social change is and isn’t happening, and his humor about it all. Life is funny!
His website says this about him:
Vu Le is a writer, speaker, vegan, Pisces, and the Executive Director of Rainier Valley Corps, a start-up nonprofit with the mission of developing and supporting leaders of color to strengthen the capacity of communities-of-color-led nonprofits and foster collaboration between diverse communities to effect systemic change.
Vu’s passion to make the world better, combined with a low score on the Law School Admission Test, drove him into the field of nonprofit work, where he learned that we should take the work seriously, but not ourselves. There are tons of humor in the nonprofit world, and someone needs to document it. He is going to do that, with the hope that one day, a TV producer will see how cool and interesting our field is and make a show about nonprofit work, featuring attractive actors attending strategic planning meetings and filing 990 tax forms.
Known for his no-BS approach, irreverent sense of humor, and love of unicorns, Vu has been featured in dozens, if not hundreds, of his own blog posts at nonprofitwithballs.com. He is also the humor columnist for the awesome nonprofit online magazine, Blue Avocado. Vuenjoys talking about himself in the third person.
What’s with the name “Balls”?!
You may be thinking, “Why ‘Nonprofit with Balls’? Isn’t that sexist?! Why not ‘Nonprofit with Balls and Ovaries,’ you sexy sexist pig?!” The title comes from an experience he had, described here. Please read that entire post before writing him an angry email. Also, it refers to all the balls that we nonprofit professionals have to juggle: clients, board, staff, volunteers, funders, auditors, payrolls, budgets, cashflows, trainings, annual events, etc. We are all knee-deep in balls. We have balls coming at us from every direction. Sometimes we “drop the ball,” but no worries, since there is never a shortage of balls in this line of work.
Take a look at this video from Many Network. It is a great display of Le’s speaking ability and candor about what nonprofits really need to be successful.
In February of 2013, the very talented Amanda Palmer gave a Ted Talk in Long Beach, California. It needs to be revisited and we must remember that people are built to help others. If we ask and share for what we need, humanity will answer us. If you have not seen this video, enjoy! If you have seen it, then we suggest revisiting it.
Here is where you can find more about the Art of Asking.
On Monday, June 29th, Project Kinect’s founder, Gregg Potter, produced a program on WORTFM to illustrate the organization and have a conversation about positive social change and community engagement. He invited Sara Alvarado from the Alvarado Group, Amy Kesling from Sustain Dane, and Tariq Saqqaf, from the Madison Mayor’s Office to have an in-depth discussion on, ‘What positive social change looks like on an individual level?’ These change agents will discuss different definitions of positive social change and how each of them identify as an agent of change. The goal of this open dialogue is to build capacity to agents of change in Madison in the diverse life roles we play.
In a city like Madison, we must celebrate our social change and always remember how individually, we all make a difference.
You can listen to the show now on WORT’s Website.
We love satire! We have acknowledged this before. The Daily Show and Jon Stewart are great examples of how satire can capture large amounts of people and get a message across. Sometimes though, Jon Stewart excuses himself from his comedy and acknowledges when something just needs to be dealt with seriously, without humor. The recent terrorist attack in Charleston, South Carolina by an American was one of those moments.
We have a lot of obstacles in our country where positive social change is needed. Thank you Jon Stewart for acknowledging this. We will miss you when you depart.
We also love Elite Daily! John Haltiwanger published a fantastic article on white privilege in the shadows of the Charleston tragedy. The article does an excellent job of using one of the victims to illustrate how he is reminded of white privilege. He also references Jon Stewart.
**Photo credit goes to Weaselzippers and a good call out!
Let’s Eat Out! has some amazing things coming up!
Let’s Eat Out! has asked Project Kinect to assist in a four part pilot summer concert series at Burr Jones Field in Madison, WI. The series will be three concerts in June 21st, 28th, & July 5th and a final concert, the “Fall Food Cart Festival”, on September 27th. The concert series would include the presence of local bands (3 bands for each date), six food carts representing LEO!, A beer trailer representing a local brewery, a sponsored children’s area, and a specific nonprofit benefactor for each event. Project Kinect’s role with the concert series will be to assist logistics for the events while outlining the process for giving donations to local nonprofits. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, please check out the Let’s Eat Out! sponsorship page.
The Let’s Eat Out! Internship Initiative, in partnership with Briarpatch Youth Services, will target youth between the ages of 16 and 18 from economically challenged communities around the city of Madison who are seeking unique skills related to food service and entrepreneurship. The internship will not only provide a steady summer job (at $9 per hour), it will also provide external correlated training and the potential for long term job and entrepreneurial development.
In addition to providing valuable work experience and other training, the Let’s Eat Out! Internship initiative will also provide mentors for youth. Food cart owners will serve as mentors for their interns and offer an up close and personal look at what it takes to manage and operate a small business.
Unlike other internship opportunities where interns often work at the bottom-rungs of the company, Let’s Eat Out! interns will be trained through day-to-day interactions with the owners of the businesses they’re working for. The business owners will provide valuable guidance and insight on all aspects of small business management. Additionally, interns will be involved in labs each week that will assist to strengthen and add to their skill sets.
If this is something you would like to support financially, then here is where to donate.
If you want to volunteer, here are great volunteer opportunities provided by Let’s Eat Out!s weekly dinners.
Project Kinect is so happy to call Madison, Wisconsin home for so many reasons. One of the biggest reasons however, is because Madison is filled with forward thinkers and positive social change makers. One of them is Rebecca Ryan. She is the founder of Next Generation Consulting, is a futurist, an author, and a public speaker. And basically, she rocks. A couple weeks ago, she published a little piece on her Facebook page, “I am a Liability to the Status Quo” that we found brilliant. Here it is in the entirety:
I am a liability to the status quo.
Last night, I was having drinks with the executive director and the chairman of a board I serve on. They shared another board member’s response to my strategic ideas: “You know,” he said hesitantly, “Rebecca’s a fighter. And she’s W A A A Y out there…” He was pointing to the future, or the edge of his vision. I’m not sure which.
I felt a little guilty about this. I wondered if I’d put our chairman or ED in a bad spot with this other board member.
So I slept on it. And I’ve come to this: if you want to preserve the status quo, if you don’t want to stretch your vision, I’m gonna make you uncomfortable. And I’m willing to fight mightily for a future that benefits all of our children. Here’s my secret: in every meeting, I imagine a row of chairs occupied by kids I’ll never meet, people who will be born long after I’m dead. And I think about what decisions I can make today that will benefit them.
That’s not “out there” in the future. That’s in here. (I am pointing to my heart.)
So screw anyone who wants to judge me because of their lack of comfort with the future or their discomfort with conflict. Future generations aren’t going to look back on us and say, “Thank you for maintaining the status quo. Thank you for continuing with your consumptive, environment-killing, selfish ways. I know that’s what made you comfortable, and I’m so glad you valued your comfort over my future.”
Hell, no.
I’ll continue to be a liability to the status quo. And I’ll work my face off to help others do the same.
If you want to see a little more of Rebecca Ryan’s brilliance, here is a video. It is a few years old, but still embodies her forwardness, honesty, and greatness.
