Change Agent

Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett is gradually giving away all of his $58 billion. An online course this summer lets participants decide how to give away $100,000 of his sister's fortune. (Rick Wilking/Reuters/File)

Online course lets students give money away

By Josh Funk, Associated Press / 07.18.13

A free online course that started July 15 will offer students the chance to learn about giving from Warren Buffett and help decide how to spend more than $100,000 of his sister's money.

More than 4,000 people have already signed up for the course that will also feature philanthropic advice from baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr. and the founders of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. Boston Red Sox Chairman Tom Werner and journalist Soledad O'Brien are other featured guests. The amount being given away could grow if more students sign up.

Mr. Buffett and his older sister, Doris Buffett, will be featured in the first class to talk about their motivation for philanthropy. Warren Buffett is gradually giving away all of his $58 billion Berkshire Hathaway stock while Doris Buffett has already given more than $150 million away en route to her goal of redistributing all her wealth before she dies.

"The trick is not to have her give it away faster than I make it," Warren Buffett joked because his family's wealth is tied to the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate he runs.

Each one of the big-name givers will be featured in videos at the end of each of the six class sessions discussing an aspect of philanthropy.

But everyone involved with the course agrees that the fact students get a chance to give away real money may be more important than the famous speakers because it makes the lessons more powerful.

"It's an experience that gives profound insight into deciding how we meet the needs of our society," said Rebecca Riccio, the Northeastern University professor who will teach the course.

The Giving With Purpose online course is modeled after a class that has been taught at more than 30 universities that allows students to give away $10,000 after evaluating several nonprofits and learning about effective giving. This online offering allowed Doris Buffett's Sunshine Lady foundation to expand the classes without adding staff to manage the program.

"Giving With Purpose allows us to extend the classroom walls to include any individual passionate about philanthropy," Doris Buffett said in a statement. "There are thousands of people with the energy and ideas to make a difference."

Ms. Riccio said the course will focus on individual decisionmaking in giving and will teach strategies students can use to make sure their donations are effective.

"I'm trying to teach people about giving with their heart and their head," Riccio said.

Charitable gifts should be relevant to whatever people are passionate about, Riccio said. But this class will teach people how to judge what kind of impact a nonprofit makes and how well-run the charity is based on how much it spends on administration.

Allyson Goldhagen said she hopes many more people sign up for the class because she found the university version of the course so valuable, and she's looking forward to helping teach the online course.

Taking Riccio's class at Northeastern shaped the way Goldhagen thinks about nonprofits and helped her land her current job at the Associated Grant Makers, where she helps charities in the Boston area become more efficient.

Goldhagen said the course can help people realize how important their gifts are to nonprofits, even if they are modest. That's why she talked both of her parents into taking the course.

"I really hope that they start to think differently about the world and their impact on it," Goldhagen said.

Doris Buffett's grandson, Alex Buffett Rozek, organized the online course, and he said he hopes this will be the first of many times it is offered.

In addition to what students learn in the course about effective giving, the nonprofits involved are also learning because usually the classes focus on smaller local charities. As students review organizations that might receive grant money, the charities learn about the process of winning grants.

"These grants are huge to the organizations that receive them," Rozek said. "And because they went through the process, they do understand how to fill out a grant application and get funding."

• For more visit Learning By Giving and The Sunshine Lady Foundation.

President Obama and former President George H. W. Bush applaud during an event to honor the winner of the 5,000th Daily Point of Light Award at the White House in Washington July 15, 2013. Mr. Obama Lauded Mr. Bush for spurring enthusiasm for volunteer service. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Obama, George H.W. Bush celebrate the 5,000th 'point of light'

By Doug Donovan, The Chronicle of Philanthropy / 07.17.13

President Obama on Monday [July 15] established a task force to help federal agencies identify ways to expand the use of national-service programs to help tackle policy priorities, such as improving failing schools and aiding the environment.

At a White House ceremony honoring former President George H.W. Bush and the 5,000th recipient of the Daily Points of Light award he inspired two decades ago during his Republican administration, Mr. Obama said the new task force would determine how federal agencies and private companies could use members of AmeriCorps and similar programs “on some of our most important national priorities: improving schools, recovering from disasters, and mentoring our kids.”

The task force will be led by Wendy Spencer, chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and Cecilia Muñoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. Representatives of 12 Cabinet agencies—from environment and energy to homeland security and labor—have 180 days to determine how they can use volunteers, how to evaluate the effectiveness and cost of such partnerships, and how those relationships can create a pipeline to employment for volunteers.

Mr. Obama did not say how he would finance the expanded use of AmeriCorps members, who receive stipends and educational assistance for their service. Budget constraints led his administration to eliminate Learn and Serve America, a national-service program that encouraged young people to volunteer and previously one of the three main national-service programs administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service. Learn and Serve America received $39.5 million in fiscal 2010 but was eliminated the following year.

The partnering efforts between the service corporation and federal agencies will build on existing programs such as FEMA Corps, which provides 1,600 AmeriCorps members to support the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster-relief efforts; School Turnaround AmeriCorps, which works with the Department of Education to place 650 volunteers in low-performing schools; and STEM AmeriCorps, which places hundreds of AmeriCorps members with nonprofits to help science, technology, engineering, and math professionals steer students into those fields.

“In times of tight budgets and some very tough problems, we know that the greatest resource we have is the limitless energy and ingenuity of our citizens,” Mr. Obama said during the East Room ceremony at the White House. “And when we harness that energy and create more opportunities for Americans to serve, we pay tribute to the extraordinary example set by President Bush.”

Mr. Obama praised Mr. Bush for inspiring the Daily Points of Light Award, administered by the Points of Light Foundation since 1998. Mr. Obama stood on stage beside a wheelchair-bound Mr. Bush, who grinned widely and sported lively red- and white-striped socks that his son Neil later joked about.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Bush awarded the 5,000th Daily Points of Light award during the ceremony to Floyd Hammer and Kathy Hamilton, a retired couple from Union, Iowa, who founded a nonprofit called Outreach that has delivered 232 million free meals to children around the world.

President Obama then gave credit to Mr. Bush for spurring national enthusiasm for national service by signing the 1990 National and Community Service Act.

“Since 1989, the number of Americans who volunteer has grown by more than 25 million,” Mr. Obama said. “Today we can say that our country is a better and a stronger force for good in the world because, more and more, we are a people that serve. And for that, we have to thank President Bush, and his better half, Barbara, who is just as committed as her husband to service, and has dedicated her life to it as well.”

The Corporation for National and Community Service reported earlier this year that 64.3 million Americans “volunteered through a formal organization last year, an increase of 1.5 million from 2010,” according to its “Volunteering in America” report.

• This article originally appeared at The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Rosember López Samayoa founded a nonprofit group in Chiapas, Mexico, that helps migrants who are also LBGT and face two kinds of discrimination. (Amy Lieberman)

In a Mexican border town, a friend in the fight against AIDS

By Amy Lieberman, Correspondent / 07.16.13

When Rosember López Samayoa was diagnosed with HIV in 1995, he traveled the costly distance to Mexico City to receive affordable treatment. He then returned to this lackluster border city that hugs Guatemala and shut himself inside his house, ashamed to reveal the death prophecy a doctor had delivered.

But after 11 months Mr. López emerged – still alive, and with a commitment to help people in his hometown who could be vulnerable to HIV, or who, like him, are unable to access good and inexpensive local medical care.

The former accountant founded a nonprofit organization, Una Mano Amigo en la Lucha Contra /SIDA, or A Hand Friend in the Fight Against AIDS, in 2000. He began to recruit participants for sexual health and rights workshops. 

Over the past 13 years, though, as Una Mano Amigo has expanded its reach across the southern portion of the Mexican state of Chiapas, the population the organization serves has also shifted.

Tapachula has always served as a migration hub, as Central American migrants cross the Guatemala border with ease into Mexico, the largest migration transit frontier in the world, according to the International Organization of Migration. But the population arriving now looks different.

“Before what was more visible was the contrast between straight men and women, and we would see more straight men arriving,” López says as he drives around Tapachula’s rain-slicked downtown one recent afternoon. He has spent the day leading a workshop nearby with a group of 14 sex workers, mostly single mothers who send money home to their children in Guatemala.

“Now what we’re seeing is a migration of people who are gay and trans[gender]. They come to us because they have HIV, and in their countries they couldn’t access the health care so they had to leave, but more than anything they are leaving because of violence.”

López remains the only one in Tapachula, and along southern Mexico – backed by his team of eight at Una Mano Amigo – that is specifically addressing the acute risks that migrants who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) face as they pass through or try to stay in Mexico.

They provide LGBT migrants with information about applying for refugee status in Mexico, and advocate for their rights in migration shelters and migration detention centers.

“They are the only ones doing it, and more importantly, they do it well,” said Rafael Zavala, the head of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) office in Tapachula. “Rosember has gained acceptance among people in the local government here, who are listening to him.”

More than 700 murders of gay and transgender people across the country were documented from 1995 through 2009 by leading civil society watchdog organizations in Mexico. Assassinations of male and transgender sex workers are common in Tapachula, López says, though they are frequently reported as crimes of passion in the local media.

“It’s more difficult for this population. There is violence against migrants, and there is violence against LGBT people, so this population experiences double the discrimination,” Mr. Zavala explains.

Locating people who dually identify as LGBT and as migrants can be tricky for López and his team. On one July evening, his co-worker Gonzalo Ernesto Cue Rasgado, accompanied by a visitor, cut through the city’s turning streets and popped into brightly lit, tucked away bars. 

Everyone said they were from Tapachula, even one slight and young-looking bartender, who Cue remarked had a curious accent, as though from another country. 

The open office of Una Mano Amigo offers a space for transgender, female, and male sex workers, including migrants, who stop by regularly for afternoon educational workshops.

López has also established the organization as a rare source of employment for people living with HIV.

“In the physical, spiritual, and psychological sense, what he has done is really just create a safe place for people to express themselves,” says Mr. Cue, a coordinator with the organization who works with male sex workers.

López is also trying to impart these ideas to outside facilities, working with state-run detention centers to consider the particular needs of LGBT migrants, as well as networking with church-run migration shelters, which are often at a loss with how to register and house someone who identifies as transgender.

It’s an ongoing challenge, López explains. In 2012, for five months, he personally covered all the operating costs.

“There is still a lot of taboo and discrimination here if you are gay or trans, and so the institutions of government don’t touch these issues – in schools, in the detention centers – they don’t know what it means,” López says.

“We’re working to change this. But the issue of sexual diversity in Chiapas is very new, and this takes time.”

The Operation Jersey Shore Vacation team meets with leaders at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in central New Jersey to discuss the program, which donates an oceanside vacation to military families. From left, back row, CMSgt. Michael Ferraro; Col. John Wood, the Air Base Commander; and CMSgt. Terrence Greene. Front row: Paige Laurence and Amie Sinor of Operation Jersey Shore Vacation. (Courtesy of Operation Jersey Shore Vacation)

Operation Jersey Shore Vacation offers an oceanside respite to US military families

By David Karas, Contributor / 07.15.13

Summer is a time when many families take vacations to exciting or exotic places, whether across the world or just a drive down to a shore town along one of the coasts.

But for American military personnel and their families, such a luxury is not usually an option.

Operation Jersey Shore Vacation, the idea of a high school teen, is an innovative project that seeks to change that.

Lexi Sinor was a junior in high school when, in 2009, she came up with the plan to work with her father, Randy – a real estate agent – to identify homeowners with summer homes who would be willing to donate a week-long stay to members of the armed forces to allow them the chance to partake in a luxury so infrequent for those in the military.

After Lexi moved to Utah to attend college, her sister, Amie, now 17, stepped up to the plate. And the project quickly became something Amie is passionate about.

“It is great to see them when they come in,” Amie says of the families they provide vacations for. “I have been raised to give back whenever I can … it makes me feel good.”

Now in its fifth summer, Operation Jersey Shore Vacation works closely with military leaders at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in central New Jersey and with the owners of summer homes to identify qualified military families and to secure a home for them to stay in for a week at the New Jersey shore.

Beyond just providing the space for a family to enjoy, the project also works with local vendors and community groups to provide gift cards for groceries and other necessities, as well as free meals or outings on the island.

One location, Fantasy Island,  provides the families with free access to its rides, games, and other attractions as a special honor to service members.

“Being down here and having this chance to be together on a vacation – I think that is just real quality time for everybody to reconnect,” says Mr. Sinor, who added that he has no trouble finding support from local businesses or homeowners to make such vacations a reality.

One impetus for starting the program came when his oldest daughter was traveling in Italy between Florence and Rome and an earthquake struck, Sinor says. It took some 16 hours for the family to find out that she was safe. That experience, he says, resonated with the family as an example of what the families of US military personnel go through on a regular basis.

“We appreciate so much what the individual military people and their families sacrifice for us,” he says.

Seeing the families with children enjoying the rides and games along the coastline is a memory he won’t soon forget, Sinor says.

“It is special to them,” he says, noting the impact such experiences can have on young children. “That’s a memory they might not otherwise have had.”

While running the program takes a lot of time and dedication from an already busy high school senior, Amie says it has become something she is passionate about. The teen still visits each family during its stay – to date, more than 25 families in the five summers the program has been in operation.

“It does take a lot of time, but it is totally worth it,” she says. “When you see the families … and how happy they are to be together, it is just priceless.”

The Sinor family now is working to obtain 501c3 nonprofit status for their program.

This summer, the shore also may be visited by a family or two who have been displaced by the tornadoes in Oklahoma. At the time of a recent interview, Amie was working to identify times for a pair of Oklahoma families to travel to the New Jersey shore to get some much-needed rest and relaxation.

Heather Lamb fondly recalls the vacation her family was able to take through the project last summer, when they spent a week on New Jersey's Long Beach Island. She enjoyed the week-long reprieve along with her husband, Benjamin, and two of their three sons – Connor and Keegan.

“It was the first vacation ever for the family,” Mrs. Lamb says. “Due to my husband’s deployment schedules, we never got time to actually plan everything. You cannot make plans – it is very difficult.”

She said that every detail of the week – from the honors they received at local businesses to the memories they created together – was priceless.

“It was the best week we had,” she says. “It was so relaxing. We were so humbled and overwhelmed with the generosity.”

• For more information on Operation Jersey Shore Vacation, to apply for a vacation, or to support the effort, visit www.ojsv.org.

New York City’s Pop-Up Repair shop was a one-month experiment in June aimed at breaking the cycle of use-and-discard goods. (Oscar Abello)

Reduce, reuse, recycle – and repair: New York's Pop-Up Repair shop

By Oscar Abello, Dowser / 07.12.13

Throwing away broken stuff has never been an easier choice. For some items, prices have never been lower; for others, instant obsolescence means you always have an excuse to upgrade, as if you needed an excuse. Can the possibility of repair begin to change consumer habits?

New York City’s Pop-Up Repair shop was a one-month experiment this June aimed at breaking the cycle of use-and-discard goods. It was the first step of a larger exploration of the issue, led by Sandra Goldmark, a set and costume designer and theater professor at Barnard College. 

Sandra and her husband, Michael Banta, a theater production manager at Barnard, launched the shop using funds from an IndieGoGo campaign, which raised more than $9,000.

Besides suffering from the frustration of a broken toaster oven and a broken printer about a year and a half ago, the couple found some inspiration in theater for the shop.

“For every show, we make and throw away stuff to make a fantasy world, again and again, and it is just a constant reminder that there’s a whole world of real stuff going through the same cycle,” Sandra says.

Her father, by the way, is lifelong environmentalist Peter Goldmark, former president of the Rockefeller Foundation and former executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund.

Theater also provided an ideal skill set for repair.

 ”Everything we’ve been able to do here, we learned how to do because of theater,” Michael adds. Many of the “repair wizards” who staffed the shop also came from the theater world.

Customer volume far exceeded Sandra and Michael’s expectations. More than 190 customers brought in more than 360 items to repair. One customer brought in 14 items. The first 25 customers were offered pay-as-you-will prices, to get a sense of what people were willing to pay before settling on some set prices for common goods.

Getting a sense of what people would pay was part of the experiment. Chairs, lamps, fans, other small electronics, including iPhones, and also stuffed toys were popular items. Most customers came from the Inwood neighborhood of New York City where the shop was located in a tiny rented former pharmacy on Broadway.

As part of the experience, customers answered a set of questions, including, “Are you bringing this in to get fixed because it has sentimental value, avoiding the higher cost of a replacement, or to help the environment?” as well as, “On a scale of one to 10, one being not at all and 10 being very strong, how much of an environmentalist would you consider yourself to be?”

Barnard College provided a research grant to support data collection, analysis, and a “theatrical response” to be crafted based on the shop experience.

As it turned out, Sandra says, “a lot of people coming into the shop rated themselves high as an environmentalist but they rarely said that they’re coming in for that. They just want their things fixed. I think, in a weird way, they’re selling themselves short.”

At the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the largest environmental action groups in the United States, known for working with the recording academy to reduce the environmental footprint of the Grammy Awards, senior resource specialist Darby Hoover weighed in on incentives against repair and on the possibility of changing consumer habits.

“One particular thing that happened in just the past 20 years or so was that the pace at which we generate new technology has accelerated so much that by the time something breaks, it’s already outdated,” Darby says. “There’s no incentive to repair. There’s always something newer and better.”

The situation is not entirely hopeless. 

”We’ve also created much better ways of connecting so there are more options to mix and match something that’s broken with someone who knows how to repair it or find a video of someone showing how to repair it,” Darby says. “I think what we really need to do is match the information with the mentality. We need to remind ourselves that there is value in repair, and there is value in trying to keep something out of the landfill.”

Darby referenced a few for-profit firms in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is located, that are designed to keep stuff out of the landfill, including Urban Ore in Berkeley, Calif., tfounded in 1980, and Recology, an employee-owned firm in San Francisco that runs 20 programs designed to increase recycling and reuse.

Between ordering parts, rent, and utilities, and compensation for repair wizards, the Pop-Up Repair shop still turned out to be a losing venture, financially. 

”We don’t think right now there’s any way to charge enough for this model to really achieve financial independence,” Sandra says.

She remains optimistic.

“I think the attitudes around stuff in our country may start to follow along similar lines as the food movement,” Sandra says. “The first farmers market in New York opened in the mid 1970s, so this food movement has been building for a long time and is still frankly small compared to the mainstream. When it comes to stuff, at least in the Inwood community, I feel like people are ready for a similar change in habits, if we just provide them a way.”

• This article originally appeared at Dowser.org.

Kahindi Charo shows off a mangrove nursery in Dabaso, Kenya, with a boardwalk behind him. 'If there were no mangroves, we would be dead, since most of us are fishermen and fish lay their eggs and get their food from mangrove marshes,' Charo says. (James Karuga/Thomson Reuters Foundation)

Planting mangrove trees pays off for coastal communities in Kenya

By James Karuga, Thomson Reuters Foundation / 07.11.13

When Kahindi Charo gathered 30 of his friends to replant mangroves in the 32 square  kilometer (12 square mile) Mida Creek area, people in his village of Dabaso in Kilifi County dismissed them as crazy idlers.

Charo recalls that back then, in 2000, the creek had suffered badly from unregulated harvesting that had left the area bare, with rotting stumps and patches of old mangrove trees. 

Today, Mida Creek, about 60 km (38 miles) north of Mombasa, flourishes with dense mangrove plantations that provide a habitat for birds, fish, and crabs. There is also a boardwalk leading to a 12-seat eco-restaurant perched beside the Indian Ocean.

“If there were no mangroves, we would be dead, since most of us are fishermen and fish lay their eggs and get their food from mangrove marshes,” Charo said, sitting at the restaurant.

The task of the Dabaso Creek Conservation Group (DCCG) was not an easy one. At first, the group planted mangrove seeds that had washed ashore, not realizing that some were from different ecological zones and unsuited to the environment at Mida Creek. Fewer than half the trees first planted by the budding conservationists survived, Charo said.  

Some discouraged members left, but others pushed on with the work. Nowadays the 26-member organization is one of more than 50 mangrove conservation community groups with a total of around 1,500 members, spread along Kenya’s 600 km (375 mile) coastline. 

Over the last 10 years, conservationists in the region have planted an estimated 10 million mangroves, and the forests have in turn provided for the community. During the peak tourism season, which runs from August to March, the Dabaso Creek Conservation Group earns over 300,000 Kenyan shillings (around $3,600) from the eco-restaurant, birding excursions, and selling crabs and fish to hotels in Dabaso.

As the project’s supervisor, Charo himself receives a salary and no longer relies on selling groundnuts to make a living. 

Like Charo, 29-year-old Mwatime Hamadi, a nursery school teacher from Gazi, 50 km (31 miles) south of Mombasa, has seen her earnings rise through mangrove conservation.

Hamadi belongs to Gazi Women Mangrove, a group whose 36 members farm fish and crabs and keep bees for honey in the mangroves. There is also a boardwalk for visitors interested in touring the marshes, with a fee ranging from 50 shillings ($0.60) to 300 shillings (around $4) for international tourists. The women also run a curio shop targeted at tourists.

Some of the earnings from these projects fund classes for illiterate adults in the community.

Michael Njoroge, a researcher with Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI) Gazi station, explained that the institute also trains communities on planting other trees as well as mangroves – such as the fast-growing casuarina tree, which matures in just three to five years. Researchers hope it could take pressure off mangrove forests.

“We now use casuarina for building and wood fuel,” said Hamadi. “If you cut mangrove it takes 25 years (for a new tree) to mature, and other trees can’t shield us from high tide like (mangrove).”

Last year, the research institute provided almost 3,000 casuarina seedlings for planting around Gazi, a village with some 1,000 residents. Local institutions like Gazi Primary School have provided land for communal woodlots where the trees are planted. Once mature, the trees will be sold to locals, for construction and other uses.

The casuarina woodlots should help reduce the pressure on mangroves from unlicensed harvesting, although some mangroves are still felled by people who are too poor to afford other sources of fuel, according to Njoroge.

A 2010 study by Coastal and Marine Resources Development Africa (COMRED Africa) reported that 70 percent of coastal Kenya’s wood requirement was met using mangroves, including 80 percent of the poles used for building houses. But since a presidential ban on mangrove harvesting was enacted in 2000, there has been an increase in mangrove planting and losses have slowed.

A study released last year by Landsat, Ocean Coast Management, and KMFRI showed that from 2000 to 2010 mangrove depletion in Kenya totalled 1,340 hectares (3,310 acres), compared to 4,950 hectares (12,230 acres) lost in the eight years prior to that.   

Currently there are 54,000 hectares (133,000 acres) of mangrove spread across 18 forest formations along the Kenya’s coastline, according to the Kenya Forest Service (KFS). In Gazi and Dabaso any mangroves cut must be licensed by the service, which consults with community forest associations that act as grass-roots protectors of the mangroves. Communities also provide guards for the mangroves, paid for by the forest service.

Mangrove conservation is important in the fight against climate change, and not just because mangroves can slow storm surges, prevent erosion, and lower disaster risk for coastal communities.

An Earth Watch study reported that 1 hectare of mangroves can sequester 1.36 tons of carbon in a year, equivalent to the annual emissions of six cars. Mangroves and other coastal vegetation like seagrasses and salt marsh grass, which are collectively known as blue carbon, can sequester carbon up to 100 times more effectively than terrestrial forests, one study shows.

Locals hope the carbon-absorbing properties of the trees will help produce more income for communities around Gazi Bay once a “payment for ecosystem services” scheme dubbed Mikoko Pamoja is assessed and certified by Plan Vivo, a charity working on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD).  

According to project coordinator Noel Mbaru, the project covers about one-fifth of the 615-hectare Gazi Bay Mangrove Forest. The scheme is expected to sell carbon credits equivalent to 3,000 tons each year, earning the community about $15,000.

Mikoko Pamoja also oversees the casuarinas woodlots, and aims to replenish degraded land with 4,000 mangroves annually for the next 20 years.

“If mangroves are destroyed, we won’t get any more money or educate our children, (so) we need to conserve them carefully,” said Hamadi of Gazi Women Mangrove.

• James Karuga is a Nairobi-based journalist interested in agriculture and climate change issues.

• This article originally appeared at Thomson Reuters Foundation, a source of news, information, and connections for action. It provides programs that trigger change, empower people, and offer concrete solutions.

A group of clownfish is displayed ahead of the Taiwan International Ornamental Fish Expo in Taipei in September 2011. Conservationists are working to improve the home aquarium industry by ending destructive fishing practices and encouraging aquaculture. (Pichi Chuang/Reuters/File)

Cleaning up the global aquarium trade

By Rebecca Kessler, Yale Environment 360 / 07.10.13

To bring a kaleidoscopic glimpse of tropical marine life into their living rooms, aquarium hobbyists depend on a steady supply of live fish and invertebrates from the world’s imperiled coral reefs. Bagged and boxed, the animals are flown in from biodiversity hotspots like Indonesia and the Philippines in the so-called Coral Triangle. But poor handling and long supply chains have raised concerns that too many creatures die in transit or soon after arrival. Some marine populations have taken a hit, and destructive collection practices — including the use of cyanide — have damaged precious reef habitat.

In Hawaii the issue has ignited into full controversy, though scientists say the trade there is better managed than in many other regions. For several years, activists have sought to get aquarium collection banned through lawsuits, legislation, and public pressure. In May, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, best known for its confrontational anti-whaling crusades, launched a new campaign to end the trade in Hawaii — and eventually elsewhere — for good.

That effort comes on the heels of several failed attempts to introduce sustainable practices by more mainstream conservation groups, scientists, and industry representatives. Meanwhile, other new efforts are raising hope in some quarters that the trade might be able both to satisfy first-world hobbyists and support sustainable livelihoods for people in developing nations. These initiatives include raising fish and coral in aquaculture facilities specifically for the aquarium trade, as well as a promising new method for detecting fish caught after cyanide has been used to stun them.

“[In] Indonesia and the Philippines there are serious concerns about reef damage and fish mortality from the trade,” Brian Tissot, a marine ecologist at Washington State University, said in an email. A 2010 paper in the journal Marine Policy, on which Tissot was the lead author, called on the U.S. to take the lead in reforming the aquarium trade and its bigger siblings — the jewelry, home décor, and curio trades in dried corals, shells, seahorses, and the like.

“It’s very scary, and of course the impacts on those ecosystems are largely unknown,” he says of the magnitude of marine life that those trades are removing from reefs. “That’s what we worry about.”

Critters destined for aquariums are plucked from their home reefs in at least 40 countries throughout the tropics, with the Philippines and Indonesia supplying about 85 percent of the world’s aquarium fish. Poor fishermen typically sell their catch for pennies per fish into a complicated chain of dealers and middlemen. More than half the fish and other marine creatures land in the U.S., the world’s number one importer, trailed by Europe and Japan.

A consumer trend favoring tanks that emulate reef ecosystems — shrimp, corals, anemones, etc. — has increased the diversity of the catch. Around 2,000 fish species, 150 stony coral species, and more than 500 other invertebrate species now enter the trade, totaling perhaps 30 million reef fish and other animals annually, according to Andrew Rhyne, a marine scientist at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island and the New England Aquarium in Boston, who with colleagues has been scrutinizing trade records in unprecedented detail.

Retail prices vary widely. A common fish like the green chromis will set you back just a few bucks, but collectors have reportedly offered as much as $30,000 for rare individuals like peppermint angelfish. Globally, the trade may be worth up to $330 million per year, according to a report from the United Nations Environment Program.

Some scientists and conservationists worry that the industry is further taxing coral reef ecosystems already gravely threatened by rising water temperatures, ocean acidification, and pollution. They say the aquarium trade has taken its heaviest toll in the Coral Triangle, which encompasses a large area of the Pacific Ocean, including the waters of Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia. A chief issue in this region is the collateral damage to reefs, fish, and other marine life when fishermen break coral to get at their quarry, or, worse, squirt sodium cyanide and other poisons to stun fish.

In a 2012 analysis of a year of U.S. declarations forms and invoices from aquarium trade importers, Rhyne’s team found that most species entering the U.S. are abundant over wide areas, and therefore unlikely to be seriously harmed by the trade. However, although few studies have been done, a number of documented cases exist where the trade depleted or virtually eliminated some species in certain areas, experts say.

One such example is the blue tang, the 12th-most popular imported fish, which is overfished in Indonesia, Rhyne says. Retail prices are already high — even topping $100 for large blue tang — and the fish’s starring role in Disney’s forthcoming animated film, “Finding Dory,” will surely spike demand, just as “Finding Nemo” did for clownfish. “Fishers will have to travel much further distances, further increasing handling stress, which in turn increases mortality, which increases collection pressure,” Rhyne wrote by email.

In addition to the ecological concerns, there are ethical ones. Robert Wintner, Sea Shepherd’s new vice president, and the Humane Society of the United States, among others, argue that the trade and hobby are cruel and too often deadly, and that a tiny tank is no place for a wild animal.

The toll on reef life in Hawaii, where Sea Shepherd’s pugnacious campaign is focused, is hotly disputed. Wintner — a longtime activist on the issue there under the nom de guerre of Snorkel Bob — says the problems are visible. He rattles off “horror stories” perpetrated by the industry that include the devastation of hermit crab, yellow tang, and featherduster worm populations, as well as smashing up coral to extract the latter.

“These guys are taking obscene amounts of fish,” Wintner says. “They are ‘Hoovering’ the reefs.” He dismisses many of his critics as complicit in the industry and describes most attempts to reform the business as greenwash.

Yet industry members and some scientists, including Tissot, who has studied the Hawaiian trade for years, say the Sea Shepherd campaign’s claims grossly exaggerate the impact in Hawaii. They say the business is much better studied and managed there than in the Coral Triangle, and shorter supply chains and gentler handling mean captured fish have far better survival odds.

Previous high-profile attempts at reforming the trade have collapsed. The Marine Aquarium Council launched a decade-long effort to train collectors and others in the supply chain to adhere to tough voluntary standards, but that initiative largely fell apart by 2009 because its sustainability claims were not verifiable, according to one analysis. And a bill drafted by several environmental groups to set sustainability standards for coral-reef wildlife entering the U.S. has foundered after the death of its champion, Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, last December.

The criticism has prompted both bristling and soul-searching among hobbyists and business people. “From an environmental perspective there could be specific species or specific areas that are pressured, but from a global perspective it’s nil,” says Chris Buerner, president of Los Angeles-based Quality Marine, a leading aquarium animal wholesaler. Buerner, who served on the board of the Marine Aquarium Council, notes that the volume of fish taken from the sea for aquariums is minuscule compared to what’s taken for food. Nonetheless, he says it’s a good thing if all the scrutiny pushes the industry toward lower-impact practices, adding, “There are things the trade really should work hard to improve.”

Some public aquariums, retailers, and wholesalers like Quality Marine are taking measures to improve their practices, such as formalizing sustainability standards for purchased fish and improving animals’ traceability to avoid buying from unreliable suppliers, Buerner says. And a new industry-friendly eco-labeling system now under development, called SMART, would require adherence to catch quotas.

A recent breakthrough in developing a test for cyanide exposure in fish is being widely hailed. Fishing with the poison is illegal in most countries, but remains prevalent in about 15 nations that supply the aquarium business, as well as the much bigger trade in live reef fish for Asian food markets, according to a 2012 report by Defenders of Wildlife. Such a test would allow the industry to reject cyanide-caught fish, and U.S. law prohibiting the import of illegally collected wildlife could be applied, which could help finally eliminate the poison from the aquarium trade, experts say.

Aquaculture could also take pressure off wild fish, which comprise up to 95 percent of marine fish sold. A young SeaWorld initiative called Rising Tide Conservation aims to “write the cookbook” for breeding various marine fish species that have proven difficult to cultivate in captivity, says Judy St. Leger, the group’s director.

Coral aquaculture is even farther along. For example, just a few years ago, Indonesians were hacking tons of coral from their reefs for export. In 2011, Rhyne says he flew to Bali to help advise the nation’s young coral mariculture program, and was impressed to discover an advanced system already in place. More species were under cultivation when he returned last summer. One of the biggest producers was a shell and coral exporter who had harvested wild corals for decades but now has a prosperous coral farm with numerous employees in the unlikeliest of places, just offshore from a cement factory and a ferry terminal. The area’s coral industry is rapidly moving from a wild fishery to aquaculture, Rhyne says.

Ironically, while the U.S. government urged Indonesians toward aquaculture, a government proposal to list 66 coral species under the Endangered Species Act would likely destroy the fledgling business, Rhyne says.

Even so, Rhyne and others see in coral aquaculture an inkling of how the aquarium hobby could help reef-dependent humans and animals alike. If you take away a fish collector’s livelihood, he’ll likely turn to another unsustainable fishing practice to feed his family. But done right, the aquarium trade could give people living in poverty both an income and a reason to preserve their reefs. It won’t be easy, though, Rhyne acknowledges.

“If your goal is to conserve coral reef ecosystems then you have to... look at the people involved in these trade chains,” says Rhyne. “If you don’t do that then you can never touch the conservation.” 

Correction, July 8, 2013: An earlier version of this article reported that dynamite was used to collect fish for the aquarium trade. Experts say dynamite is used in the live reef fish trade for restaurants, but not for aquarium fish — a point also made in a United Nations Environment Program report.

• Rebecca Kessler is a freelance science and environmental journalist based in Providence, R.I. A former senior editor at Natural History, her work has been published by ClimateCentral.org, Conservation, Discover, Natural History, ScienceNOW, ScienceInsider, and Environmental Health Perspectives. She has previously written for Yale Environment 360 about the fatal impact fishing gear is having on whales in the North Atlantic and about efforts to restore prairies in the U.S. Midwest.

• This article originally appeared at  Yale Environment 360, a publication of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

Labor union members and supporters demonstrate inside the capitol building in Lansing, Mich., last December. While activists still see such protests as sometimes necessary, a new generation is looking for new approaches to solving disputes that that build bridges through concepts such as community and love. (James Fassinger/Reuters/File)

New generation activists build bridges

By Sally Kohn, YES! Magazine / 07.09.13

Saul Alinsky is called the father of modern community organizing. His 1971 Rules for Radicals is like a political version of The Art of War merged with street fighting tips from a boxing coach—the tone is gruff, aggressive, and blunt. For Alinsky, the ends justify pretty much any means. But a new crop of activists is forging a different path—and turning organizing orthodoxy on its head.

In the traditional Alinsky approach, opponents are “enemies” and strategy involves concepts like “pressure” and “attack.” Alinsky’s final rule is “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Don’t just target institutions, he says—go after individuals and make it personal and painful. This is the advice that helped shape modern political organizing—not always the most effective approach for alliance building and mass public appeal.

The new generation of community organizers is adapting the antagonistic politics of the past and building bridges instead of burning them—not necessarily abandoning old-school, Alinsky-style organizing altogether, but reimagining orthodoxies of organizing to create new alliances, innovations, and possibilities.

Ai-jen Poo is the founder and director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, a membership organization of housekeepers, nannies, and home health assistants, most of whom are undocumented immigrant women. These are the workers who are at the furthest margins of our economy. In 1938, they were explicitly excluded from initial labor standards as a concession to segregationists in Congress, and these workers, who do the work that makes all other work possible, are to this day excluded from basic wage and safety protections. But the central theme of Poo’s politics? Not revenge. Not protest. Not polarization.

It’s love.

“The way we try to think about it and the way the world is, we’re all interdependent and interconnected,” says Poo of her organizational philosophy. “Those connections are fairly invisible to most people most of the time. We’re taught not to see those connections. What organizing with love does is organizes ways for people to see their interconnections and harnesses that connection as a source for change.”

It’s not that Poo’s “political love” is conflict or tension free, a saccharine “Kumbaya” holdover from the ’60s.

“Conflict and tension are as much a part of the human condition as interdependence is,” Poo says. “There are times we have to have conflict, and tension has to exist to bring something else into being. But they have to coexist with a deep sense of connection and shared destiny.”

While the natural “enemy” of domestic workers might be their employers in a traditional Alinsky-style power analysis, through Poo’s prism, most employers mean well and love their home aides and nannies—and want to do well by them—but maybe don’t know how or face hurdles to doing so because of existing policy. So instead of fighting employers, Poo organized them—inspiring the launch of Hand in Hand, an association for employers of domestic workers.

Saru Jayaraman has used this model in her work. As co-founder and director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United), Jayaraman organizes low-wage workers in the restaurant industry—the servers and dishwashers and bussers who often make as little as $2.13 an hour and get no benefits or sick days. In Jayaraman’s work, calling restaurant owners “villains” isn’t just a figure of speech—ROC United has organized campaigns against specific restaurant owners for wage theft and other employment violations.

And yet after a very brutal public campaign that recouped $1.15 million in overdue wages for workers at one of celebrity chef Mario Batali’s top restaurants, Jayaraman extended her hand. She welcomed Batali into a group of “high road” restaurant owners that ROC United convenes. This might seem like a variation on another Alinsky mantra, “no permanent friends, no permanent enemies,” but it goes beyond a superficial tactic to a philosophical mindset. Jayaraman isn’t just moving targets like chess pieces. She isn’t burning opponents to the point where relationships are permanently charred. She’s building long-term alliances with partners that have recently been her opposition.

“We’ve evolved to think that nobody is evil at all,” says Jayaraman of her organizing philosophy and approach. “It’s different from how we thought about organizing even just 10 years ago—as bosses versus the rest of us. That’s not how we think about it anymore. We actually understand how hard it is to run a restaurant and be profitable. And at the same time, we think we can all do better. And we’re working together to do better.”

In fact, soon Jayaraman and her organization will launch a new association for restaurant owners who want to treat their workers responsibly, a competitive alternative to the anti-worker Restaurant Industry Association. “We’re willing to work with anyone,” Jayaraman says.

This new generation of bridge-building organizers isn’t just connecting unlikely allies but unlikely issues as well.

Take the work of Eveline Shen, head of Forward Together, a multiracial grass-roots organization that traditionally focused on reproductive justice issues within communities of color. Shen broadened the mission of the group and launched Strong Families, a nationwide campaign that is connecting women’s rights organizations, immigrant groups, queer activists, and poverty rights organizations to advocate for the full range of America’s families, the vast majority of which no longer fit the traditional mom-and-dad-and-kid, white-picket-fence norm of yesteryear.

Shen gives an example around identity: “When a queer Vietnamese American woman in New Orleans faces job discrimination, it may be difficult to disentangle whether it was due to racism, sexism, or homophobia, or a combination of these factors.” And it’s the same for issues: “We don’t experience climate change on Monday and economic hardship on Wednesday.”

A generation ago, organizers strategized about how to “cut an issue”—how to break an issue down and focus on the right bite-sized piece around which to organize an advocacy campaign.

The new generation strives to connect issues more and more. “In our work, we lift up the leadership and needs of communities that sit at the intersection of multiple systems of oppression to demand policy and culture change that reflect the reality of our lives,” says Shen. Her approach has led to a groundbreaking Strong Families coalition in New Mexico, which includes Native American, Latino immigrant, and gay rights organizations all at the same table. They have worked together to stop harsh anti-abortion legislation and juvenile incarceration proposals—issues these conventionally disparate groups would likely never take up on their own. It’s a model Strong Families is spreading to other states.

For Marcy Westerling, who founded the Rural Organizing Project to advance social change in rural Oregon, bridge building was a cultural necessity. “Small towns and rural communities lack anonymity,” Westerling says, so more conventional antagonistic organizing methods don’t make sense there—especially when it can lead to grass-roots leaders losing their day jobs or their kids being ostracized at school.

“There is a need to frame topics from some shared starting point,” says Westerling. It’s an approach that has worked for the Rural Organizing Project, winning support on issues such as gay rights and immigration reform from some of the most traditionally conservative parts of the Northwest.

Westerling notes that conservatives now use Alinsky as their playbook. Groups like Freedom Works, one of the parent organizations of the Tea Party movement, handed out copies of Rules for Radicals as a training manual for new leaders.

“The modern right uses the language of war when describing their assaults,” says Westerling. At this moment in history, she argues, the left must play a different role—not only disrupting and upending the status quo, but also pointing toward and building constructive alternatives. “Now it is more incumbent on us to be the keepers of calm, as we both acknowledge tense issues and offer reasonable ways forward that are fair to all sides.”

“Deep down, our organizing today doesn’t reflect a different value system,” Jayaraman says. “It’s not about being less radical or caring less about workers. It’s about being effective.”

“The traditional us-versus-them framework is limiting,” adds Poo. “There are moments when it should be utilized, when opposition is important to dramatize an issue—but ultimately, in the long term, we should be building shared destiny and a collective sense of humanity. That should be the driving force, even underneath moments of opposition.”

Westerling agrees. Leading with bridge building doesn’t mean abandoning the edge of protest or softening demands. Rather, says Westerling, it means trying to move beyond current dynamics and aim for shared analysis “to imagine a just future for everyone.”

In fact, Shen notes that under the traditional model, Alinsky discouraged organizers from “challenging issues” in favor of “short-term, winnable campaigns.” But the greatest need is often in the stickiest issues, which, if approached right, also hold the greatest promise for powerful bridge building—and for big change.

And yes, Westerling adds, that often means strange bedfellows “who confess their own surprise at walking with us.” But if the goal of progressive organizing is to achieve change, it makes sense that the strategies of organizing—as well as the alliances—should also change.

One of Ai-jen Poo’s role models is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who understood very well the advantages of combative organizing models as well as the power of joining with your one-time enemies to build bridges toward change. Now, in the shadow of the civil rights era, as opponents of fairness and justice rev up with increasing hatred and vitriol, a new generation of organizers—notably led by women of color—is innovating new approaches to organizing that borrow from these deep and old notions of community and love. They point the way forward toward a future that is better for all through a politics and practice that potentially engages everyone in achieving change.

• Sally Kohn wrote this article for Love and the Apocalypse, the Summer 2013 issue of YES! Magazine. Sally is a writer, activist, and television commentator. Her writing has appeared in Salon, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, More Magazine, USA Today, and elsewhere.

• This article originally appeared at YES! Magazine.

Romanian immigrant Marga Fripp founded Empowered Women International to give a voice to Washington D.C.'s immigrant and refugee women, helping them to pursue their dreams and become a part of their new community. (Nina Tisara )

Marga Fripp empowers women immigrants in the US

By Rich Polt, Talking GOOD / 07.08.13

FACT: A profound, life-changing experience can act as a spark to ignite a person’s sense of purpose and commitment to a calling.

FACT: A spark is useless without the presence of a combustible fuel.

ERGO: A life-changing event (the spark) will not necessarily ignite a person’s sense of purpose unless that person already possessed an underlying desire to make a difference (either knowingly or not). In other words, one’s need to make a difference is like a combustible fuel.

Case in point is the subject of this week’s Talking GOOD feature, Marga Fripp. In 2001, Marga had a life-changing experience when she had to leave behind her native Romania to bring her seriously ill newborn baby to the United States for treatment. Neither speaking the language nor driving a car, Marga struggled to find her own way in the US while caring for her baby and an eight-year-old daughter, and while managing with a husband whose work frequently took him out of the country.

That alone would have been more than most people could handle, but Marga felt she needed to also help other women who were in similar circumstances. So in 2002, Marga founded Empowered Women International (EWI) to give a voice to the Washington D.C. area’s immigrant and refugee women, enabling them to pursue their dreams of entrepreneurship and of becoming a part of their new community.

If coming to the US and struggling as an immigrant was the spark that led to Marga forming EWI, then what was the combustible fuel?

Not surprisingly, Marga was a passionate advocate for women long before arriving in the United States. As a journalist in Romania, Marga produced programs that focused on women’s equality, human rights, and integration solutions for orphans and street children during the difficult first years of Romania’s transition from communism. She was banned from broadcasting in 1996 due to her critical portrayal of the social policy of the post-communist government of President Ion Iliescu.

In 1998, she founded a Romanian nonprofit to counteract domestic violence and sexual assault and promoted legislation to protect women from domestic abuse, which led to a domestic violence bill signed into law by the parliament in May 2003.

For a more thorough background on Marga, I encourage you to read her full biography on the EWI website. Now, before I hand the microphone over to Marga, I’ll leave you with one of her favorite inspirational sayings (courtesy of Plato): “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle.” Thank you Marga for answering our questions!

1. IN JUST ONE SENTENCE, WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE IN LIFE? Be a voice for the voiceless, and inspire women to believe in their endless creative potential. 

2. HOW HAS THIS WORK CHANGED YOU? Social justice, creativity, and entrepreneurship have been guiding forces in my life ever since I was a young girl. Empowered Women International enabled me to see that no matter whether we live in a developed or a developing country, women must continue to stand up for their rights, to use their creative power to re-invent themselves, and to pursue their wildest dreams.

3. WHAT DO YOU GET FROM GIVING? Amazing sense of possibility, respect for others, and endless compassion.

4. WHO IS A LIVING HERO AND WHAT WOULD YOU ASK THEM IF GIVEN THE CHANCE? Krista Tippett (author and radio host/producer of “On Being”): Will we ever be able as humanity to see one another more similar than different? What will it take for that to happen?

5. WHAT EVERYDAY RESOURCES COULD HELP YOU ACHIEVE YOUR PHILANTHROPIC GOALS? A great writer who could pitch Empowered Women’s story to Oprah’s Magazine.

6. WHAT IS A BURNING QUESTION THAT YOU HAVE FOR THIS COMMUNITY? Do you see a need for women’s empowerment in your community? Share a link of a community where entrepreneurship can change the lives of women and their families. Empowered Women International can help. 

7. WHAT WOULD THE TITLE OF YOUR BOOK BE? "Making Change: The story of an immigrant woman who gave voice to millions"

8. TELL US SOMETHING YOU RARELY SHARE IN PUBLIC? I love puppet theater and never get tired of clapping my hands like a child during the show.

9. WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR OTHERS WHO ASPIRE TO BE CITIZEN PHILANTHROPISTS? Adopt a cause that speaks to you; seek to understand the problem and how your investment is changing lives. It is not about the size of your gift, it is about your commitment to be part of the solution. 

10. WHAT QUESTION DO YOU WISH I HAD ASKED, AND WHAT IS THE ANSWER? What inspired you to get involved in social change? I was 20 years old when I was hired by a Romanian television station to report news and produce talk shows on social issues: women’s rights, street children, orphans, and the disenfranchised. I learned quickly that being a newsmaker was powerful, but being a changemaker was my life’s mission. Over the past decade I’ve been dedicated to empower women and create opportunity, so they can lift themselves and their families out of poverty and become agents of change.

• This article was originally posted at Talking GOOD, a series of interviews with “citizen philanthropists” who champion causes and lead by example. Talking GOOD was launched in 2012 by Rich Polt, principal of the Baltimore-based PR consultancy Communicate Good, LLC. To nominate someone for a Talking GOOD interview, please fill out this form, or email rich@communicategood.com.