Voices We Love: Local Change Agents

Madison, WI is full of some really amazing agents of change.  Most recently, Christine Ameigh, Owner of Slide food cart, David Rodriguez, owner of Melted food cart and Leia Boers, owner of Leia’s Lunchbox, have teamed up together to plan this trip to North Dakota to support the WATER PROTECTORS.

This trio has organized a crowdfunding campaign to get the money necessary to serve 4000 meals in this very loving but sometimes hostile environment. All the information can be found on the Generosity.com platform. Your contribution, no matter how small or large, will go directly into the stomach of one of these passionate protestors fighting to be on the right side of history. 

 

Here you can find more information about Slide Food Cart, Melted Food Cart, and Leia’s Lunchbox

Letters From A Change Agent: #Courage

We must find courage and take action on what we believe can be done in the tsunami of sadness, emptiness, and emotion left behind after the massacre in Orlando. Social change happens when we respond with action to a need that inclusively benefits society. After Sandy Hook, when young children were murdered, we said enough was enough. However, no real action was taken.  There was plenty of social media cry outs and processing, vigils all over the country, but no one, except the people directly impacted, altered their reality for change to happen.

This morning on the radio station I was listening to, the shows hosts were discussing the nightclub shooting.  They were upset and hurt, which we all are, but they acknowledged that they “have a show to do” and were obligated to tell a humorous story so the show could go on. WTF?!?!  That was their opportunity to be courageous and say no to taking the easy way out.  We have to be uncomfortable and vulnerable because real change can only happen when we are. 

THE SYSTEM IS NOT WORKING! In order for us to change as a society, our individual daily behavior has to change. We have to sit in the space and discuss it. We have to suffer a little to get to the new day.  We have to set a new priority list of what and who is important. We have to give this change the time it deserves. We have to acknowledge that each one of us has a responsibility to a societal shift that will, not immediately, but long term, change how we operate as a collective.

This societal shift can revolve around whatever issue that shakes you the most because every issue is related and is rooted in the same place. We must take responsibility for each other. This ownership of compassion, integrity, empathy, love, inclusive fulfillment is missing from every issue: LGBTQ rights, education, racial divides, wealth inequality, corporate greed, green power, immigration, international food disparities, and on and on are all missing a universal responsibility.

As we once again acknowledge a change must happen, and fifty more lives have been taken from us, we must be responsible in multiple ways.  First, we must share our thoughts, discuss how we are hurt, and send all of our love, prayers, good energy, and light to those directly affected by this tragedy.  Additionally, we must sit in the uncomfortable space where inspiration and courage lies. The radio personalities this morning could have done so many alternative things than “having a show to do” and following the conversation with a humorous story.  They could have offered numbers to call representatives or donate. They could have called an elected official on air. They could have challenged the listening audience to commit to a change in their lives.  They could have done more.  We can all do more.

I write this and acknowledge I too can be better and do more.  Just like you, I am processing this, while I also process close personal death in my life. That raw emotion reminds me that I am human and that I, along with everyone else, am fragile and easily defeated.  But we are also mighty and unstoppable, especially when we are united. This societal shift will come, it is inevitable.  Now, right now, we have an opportunity to make this societal shift deliberate and proactive. It takes a little universal suffering, some purposeful changes, and simple individual courage.  

Voices We Love: The Grassroots Traveler

by Callie Strouf

Blue Moon Community Farm

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Today, I would like to introduce you to a local Community Supported Agriculture farm just South of Madison, WI, Blue Moon Community Farm.  Owner and Farmer, Kristen Kordet has somehow managed to create not only a beautiful farm where over 150 families obtain nutritious and organic produce, but she has also developed a true sense of community and connection to our food and environment.  When speaking with Kristen it is easy to feel her curiosity and excitement for the experience that each new growing season brings. 

“At Blue Moon we raise about 40 different vegetables and over 200 varieties. Our vegetable fields are in rotation with our pastured livestock as a natural system of replenishing fertility. We believe that crop diversity is essential to our stewardship of the land.”

20140806-CallieJane-BlueMoon-#2Kristen goes above and beyond to develop a real sense of community with her weekly on-farm member produce pick-ups. She is always available to answer questions and point you in the right direction if you are inclined to visit the flower and herb gardens, or the many self-pick opportunities available.

She graciously hosts Fall and Spring on-farm potluck festivals for member families.  As the children play amongst the straw bales and feed a snack to the feisty pigs, the grown-ups set out a feast with Blue Moon produce featured in almost all of the homemade goodies.

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It is almost magical to walk the fields on a crisp day; feel the lumpy crunch of dried dirt under your feet and truly experience where your food comes from.  The sense of connectedness extends beyond the farm and its members, recognizing one small role in a much bigger system of change.

**As a Grassroots Traveler, I am committed to finding and supporting those businesses that promote local and sustainable values, both while traveling and when exploring closer to home.

Voices We Love: Dan Kipp

One of the newest voices to be added to voices we love is Dan Kipp.  He is young, but that detail cannot dispute his boldness. He holds courage to speak the truth and the ability to provide people assurance when dealing with difficult subject matter. Kipp works for the Young Adult Abuse Prevention Program in Maine. He brings to this responsibility his sociology and women’s studies degrees.  His blog, Calling Out, Welcome In, is his vehicle to sharing tools, his thoughts, and daily experience with the world. According to Kipp, “The way I see it, these are two essential steps to take: (1) Calling out, or holding men accountable for the messed up actions we’ve taken or beliefs we’ve learned from a sexist society, but doing so in the spirit of (2) Welcome in, or inviting men to be introspective and to seek positive change from within.” To Dan, this cycle is empowering.

This post is also categorized as ‘Tools We Love’ because Kipp has provided an amazing list of resources for young people who are facing abuse.  Share this list with anyone who you think may need it.

Here is a piece of one of Dan’s posts called Lesson #2.  We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.  Check out Calling Out, Welcome In. It has a lot to offer and you get to experience this young, active, change-making voice for your self.

 

Dismantling the Part-riarchy

Violence, superiority, entitlement: these are things that all men in a hetero-sexist, patriarchal society learn (albeit, to varying degrees).

They are attitudes that are normal, active, even functional for men in such a society.

They are attitudes that lay dormant in a man who has not questioned this version of masculinity, who has not had any positive role models to show him an alternative way to be a man.

This makes the line between a “good guy” and an “abuser” scarily thin. It’s why, when I’m playing the role of the abuser, I try to win over the male students in the classroom early in the skit. If I can get them to identify and laugh with “Jake” before they see his abusive side, it helps to show that abusers aren’t just monsters, or sociopaths, or skeeveballs we can see from miles away. An abuser could be our friends, our fathers, our coaches.

I don’t say this to scare you.

I don’t say this to condemn men as a group.

I say this to call you in.

Once we realize the scope of the problem, it demands of us some collective work:

To examine masculinity. To question masculinity as it exists within ourselves as individuals, but also within our friends, family, school, and wider culture. To unlearn masculinity-as-sexism. To unlearn masculinity-as-violence.

To examine what it means to be fully human. To encourage the boys and men in our lives – but also the schools we attend, the culture in which we partake – to treat others with full humanity. To learn masculinity-as-respect. To learn masculinity-as-nonviolence.  

We need to rewrite the script on what it means to be a man in America, and we need everyone to play their part.

Voices We Love: Vu Le

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.

Voices We Love: Jon Stewart

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!

Voices We Love: Rebecca Ryan

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.

‪#‎mytruth‬

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.

 

Tools We Love: Satire

It is difficult to dispute that majority of our media is not objective and does not report the news.  It is skewed, often has an agenda or is just commentary about what other commentators are saying about the “news”. Someone who we enjoy though is Chris Hayes. Some time ago, he shared a satirical story about white mob crime in efforts to demonstrate how different black and white people are portrayed in the media.  Then, one of Project Kinect’s favorite voices, Franchesca Ramsey, wrote an article about it on UpWorthy. Please check out her article.  This link will provide a bit more about her if you would like to check it out.

Voices We Love: Amelia Brown

We had the pleasure to have Amelia Brown speak at our Social Change Forum this year. She helped us through the forum by continuously reminding us that we must always know our privilege, our process, and our people.  These three P’s play a very important role in how we continue our lives as social change agents.

Amelia Brown is a consultant with more than 20 years of experience in advocating and activating social change spanning 30 countries and four continents.  She earned an MA from the University of Minnesota in Arts and Emergency Management.  She is the founder of Emergency Arts, a central resource and network for people working in art, emergency response and community development. Most recently, Brown published the first article in a series of three in the online magazine, Creative Exchange.  This woman is a leader for us all and her passion for art in emergency will help us all move forward.

Here is a sample of her first of three articles being published on Creative Exchange:

Connecting and Collaborating

In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast of the United States, resulting in the second-costliest hurricane recorded in U.S. history. In the wake of the disaster and emerging rebuilding efforts, multimedia producer, educator, and storytelling strategist Rachel Falcone founded Sandy Storyline with partnerMichael Premo. Sandy Storyline is an online platform that lets residents share their own stories about living through and rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy through videos, images, and narrative text. The multimedia website acts as a living history of the community, as told by its members.

Falcone was inspired after observing survivors exchanging cell phone images and stories at communal charging stations. Falcone remembers, “After the storm there is a lot of connection among story; everybody has something to share and there is a process. For us, we wanted to both allow the space for people to share their very personal experiences, but also build connection, understanding, and relevance.” Sandy Storyline served as an outlet for survivors to share stories amongst themselves and with a wider audience.

Falcone’s background in community engagement projects such as StoryCorps and Housing is a Human Right facilitated networking among residents, artists, and community-based groups.  Falcone explains the importance of artists in recovery, stating, “Artists provide so many things. They are supporting the social part of the community. Art strengthens the community’s ability to respond in every way. It brings us together, connects us; it’s a critical piece that would be missing otherwise in how we are thinking about rebuilding.” Artists, she says, play a vital role in both short-term response and long-term recovery.

 

Letters From A Change Agent: #IMNormal

Project Kinect just held our first annual Social Change Forum. The goal was to bring community members of Madison together and discuss how we could use our privilege to become more inclusive. About 30 participants joined us and we discussed a wide range of topics from the definition of terms like inclusion and ally to being a real advocate and what those actions looks like. At the end of the day we felt empowered and ready to charge forward.

There was a piece of the conversation that, because of limited time, was not touched upon. With more time, and with future events, I would like to hear more about conversations about when stereotypes and privilege are mixed. Status quo embeds our subconscious with what is and what is not normal. Symbols of what our society deemed as normal, two happily married parents of opposite sex with two children, house and a dog, are actually no longer considered normal. Now, a divorced family whose parents re-marry, one is homosexual, children are adopted, and they have a guinea pig as a pet is considered a more form of normal. The fact is, normal has no category anymore because we are all normal. Our diversities are so eclectic that one assumption of what is normal can not exist. Unfortunately our sub-consciousness has not been able to catch up with reality. That is why I support the #IMNormal campaign so much.

#IMNormal is a campaign to share and illuminate how there is no definition to what normal is. Despite what society says is normal, we are all different and in those differences, we are normal.  Our governments, media outlets, art, fashion, and cultural norms may dictate what is normal, but it is our individual stories that truly make us normal.

Norm:al Africa is initiating the #IMNormal campaign for two reasons:

1) The campaign wants to bring awareness of LGBTI issues throughout the globe by displaying how we are all normal and deserve the same human rights.

2) The campaign is to assist Norm:al Africa in aligning their startup efforts in Uganda.  Norm:al Africa is the newest organization to fight for the rights of the LGBTI community in East Africa.

 #IMNormal because I am a strong independent gay man who understands my past and privilege does not define me, but can be used to advocate and empower others.

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