Change Agent
Charitable works, NGOs, nonprofits, social entrepreneurs, and ordinary people with great ideas on how to make a positive change in their communities and around the globe.
A woman enters a portable toilet in Rio de Janeiro. Sanergy, a social enterprise founded by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, offers desperately needed clean toilet facilities in the developing world and then sells the collected waste for fuel and fertilizer. (Sergio Moraes/Reuters/File)
An entrepreneurial approach to sanitation
In most of the world’s slums, sanitation is a daily challenge. In the absence of sewage systems, people living in slums in Nairobi, Kolkata, and São Paulo rely on rows of pit latrines shared by hundreds of other people, while others use “flying toilets” to dispose of waste. Disease and infection spreads easily in such environments.
But some social entrepreneurs in Nairobi, Kenya, are picking up where the government has left off and attempting to provide sanitary options to the slums. Sanergy, for example, is a company launched by a group of students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Sloan School of Management. The group has designed low-profile sanitation centers that can be constructed anywhere to provide hot showers and clean toilets.
These facilities can be built quickly and easily with affordable materials. Waste from the centers is deposited into airtight containers that are collected daily. Then it’s brought to processing facilities that can convert it into biogas. The biogas generates electricity, while the leftover material is made into fertilizer.
RELATED: World Toilet Day: Top 10 nations lacking toilets
The company won a $100,000 grant from MIT and has been building its first units in Nairobi. It charges a low pay-per-use fee and hopes to grow by franchising the operation of its units, creating an income opportunity for enterprising residents.
As the number of toilets proliferates, so too will the amount of energy the company is able to generate from its processing facilities. It hopes to eventually generate enough energy that it can sell its power to the national grid.
The company’s unique and innovative approach is notable for the way it combines the decentralization of waste collection with the centralization of waste processing. Retrofitting the slums with proper sewage drains is a near impossibility and can be an expensive and potentially politically volatile effort in areas where landownership is at best ambiguous.
The self-contained units grant access to sanitary facilities to even those far off the grid. But by centralizing the processing of waste, Sanergy’s facilities will take advantage of the economies of scale present in the waste-conversion process.
By creating products of value out of the waste, the company creates an incentive for others to set up their own facilities in partnership with Sanergy. The company hopes that there may eventually be facilities on every neighborhood block, significantly increasing the number of people with access to clean sanitation.
The energy generated through the waste production will be a clean option to power a growing economy, and the fertilizer is a nutrient-rich alternative to expensive petroleum-based fertilizers.
• Jeffrey Lamoureux is a research intern with Nourishing the Planet. To purchase your own copy of "State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet," please click HERE.
• This article originally appeared at Nourishing the Planet, a blog published by the Worldwatch Institute.
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Brass City Harvest in Waterbury, Conn., operates an urban garden. And in November it will add a year-round farmers market supplied by nearby Connecticut farms, says Susan Pronovost, executive director of Brass City Harvest. (Cathryn J. Prince)
Brass City Harvest brings fresh food to an urban 'desert'
In a bricked up, boarded up part of Waterbury, Conn., where the main crop seem to be shattered glass, Brass City Harvest stands as an oasis.
Pots of colorful flowers line the steps to Brass City’s office, which is actually no more than an iPad on a conference table. Just behind the table two large pools await the arrival of trout. Outside stand raised-bed gardens. Some are filled with Asian eggplants, others with tomatoes hanging like Christmas ornaments from the vine.
Nonprofit Brass City Harvest operates the "Connecticut Grown" farmers markets in Waterbury, providing what its executive director, Susan Pronovost, calls “real food” for hungry people. And next month Brass City Harvest will open a year-round farmers market, selling produce and goods produced by about eight Connecticut farms.
Chase Manhattan Bank once occupied the 3,000-square-foot space where the farmers market will stand. Grants from the University of Connecticut and Wholesome Wave, a nonprofit group dedicated to make fresh food more available, helped make the market possible.
The new market will be a food hub, Ms. Pronovost says. According to the US Department of Agriculture, one-third of Waterbury is a "food desert." That means that either at least 500 people, or 33 percent of the population, have a poverty rate of 20 percent or higher and live more than one mile from a supermarket or grocery store.
“People are hungry. They knock at our door and ask if we have something,” Pronovost says. “The problem of food security and poverty in Waterbury is deeper than we can imagine. I think every year it’s getting worse.”
Pronovost was born and raised in Waterbury, known as the Brass City because it was once famous for its brass works. She worked for the city for years. She has seen too many hungry people and too many abandoned lots and buildings, particularly in the past several years. The state of the city gnawed at her.
Thinking there must be a better way to feed people Pronovost started Brass City Harvest in 2007. Today it’s a seven-day-a-week operation that sponsors two farmers markets. Brass City’s staff includes a nutritionist, nurse, and social worker. It also offers vocational training to homeless men.
Still, Pronovost thought more could be done to keep the supply of fresh food and produce flowing year round.
After visiting Halifax, Nova Scotia, and St. John, New Brunswick, this summer, she says the year-round indoor markets in those cities there inspired her.
“If people to the north can do it, we certainly can,” she says.
Brass City’s year-round market will offer fresh produce, poultry, beef, goat soap, flowers, and candles. It will also provide cooking and nutrition classes. It’s important that those who shop at the market know how to cook and prepare the food they buy, Pronovost says. One of the Connecticut farmers has a commercial kitchen and is considering making pre-cooked meals people could heat and serve.
Pronovost knows she will have to do a lot of outreach to make the market a success. Many of her clients rely on food-assistance programs.
“We hear you can’t buy real food with food stamps, that real food is macaroni and cheese or processed food," Pronovost says, citing two bits of misinformation.
"There is a tremendous amount of education needed for what real food is,” she says.
That wholesome food is grown on this block is a testament to Pronovost’s grit. Across the street from Brass City Harvest stands the fire-scarred Nova Dye and Print building. Last spring flames engulfed the building, and the fire burned underground for a week. The inferno nearly destroyed Brass City's hoop house, its garden warmed and protected by a plastic covering.
Brass City itself sits on top of a brownfield. The soil is filled with lead and other hazardous materials, Pronovost says. The City of Waterbury inherited the lot and had three choices – leave it alone, dig 30 feet down and replace the soil, or pour a concrete cap over the toxic soil. The city chose to cover the area with concrete. Brass Harvest has built its raised bed gardens over the concrete.
Waterbury is not going to return to its past as a thriving industrial city, Pronovost says, adding that she has no patience for those who say they are just waiting for businesses to return.
“You reinvent yourself," she says. "You have to do what will be sustainable in the future.”
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Saudi Arabian Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel participates in the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) 2012 in New York Sept. 25. The CGI was created by former US President Bill Clinton to gather global leaders to discuss solutions to the world's problems. (Andrew Burton/Reuters/File)
Saudi princess founds Opt4Unity to bridge cultural divides
Saudi Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel says she wants to use philanthropy to bridge cultural divides and prevent violence like the recent attacks on US embassies sparked by an anti-Islam video.
In New York last month for former President Bill Clinton’s annual philanthropy summit, the princess spoke about her ambitions for the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundations, where she serves as secretary general. The philanthropies are financed by her husband, Prince Alwaleed, a multibillionaire and nephew of the Saudi king. They give away at least $70 million a year in 70 countries, she said.
With $2 million in initial financing, she is starting a project called Opt4Unity, which she describes as an “uncommon table” of nonprofit leaders, business executives, and philanthropists who can tackle big problems like youth unemployment in the Middle East, agricultural development in Africa, and religious and cultural divisions.
RELATED:10 voices for change in Saudi Arabia
She says she hopes to introduce courses at 20 universities aimed at bridging cultural divides; start the first “Food University” designed to improve agricultural production; and encourage young people to take to social media for the promotion of tolerance, not violence.
Sitting on a couch in the busy lobby of the Plaza Hotel, Princess Ameerah, 28, cited the example of a young Saudi man studying in the United States who, after the embassy attacks, uploaded a video designed to educate Westerners about the Prophet Muhammad.
“He’s a bridge builder whether he knows it or not,” she said. “If you want to change people’s ignorance about Prophet Muhammad, then teach about it. We want to have 10,000 young people uploading videos of them and how they can bridge build.”
Princess Ameerah has become an outspoken advocate for women’s rights, a bold step given that Saudi Arabia is one of the most restrictive countries in the world for women.
Her family’s philanthropies supports entrepreneurship programs for Saudi women. After the government began to enforce a law permitting women to work in lingerie shops – over opposition from conservative clerics – the philanthropies created a course to train women in retail work.
Princess Ameerah is also backing efforts to strengthen the role of women in politics. She says she is bringing together 200 women professionals for a dinner in November to organize their voices and encourage them to speak out collectively in the media and in public.
She disputes the idea that change can only happen from the top down. “The change comes bottom up, and this is what we’ve seen in the Arab revolutions,” she says. “Saudi women have been quiet for a long, long time, and it’s about time we spoke up.”
Princess Ameerah says that Saudi Arabia is hindered by its small number of nonprofits – roughly 600, she says, compared with 3,000 in Bahrain.
She’d like to see more young Saudis choose jobs with nonprofits, she says, but they often view those positions as unattractive and poorly paid. “We need to think about how we can make working in [nonprofits] appealing,” she said.
The Arab Spring, she says, has had the short-term effect of constraining the work of nonprofits across the Middle East. But she hopes that when the political situations stabilize, nonprofits and philanthropies will be able to step up their work.
“People want to do good, and that will continue whether you have a dictator or a democratic government,” she says.
• This article originally appeared at The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
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Dewayne Hurling loves Detroit and is thrilled to have renovated a beautiful old home in the Boston-Edison neighborhood of the city. Young adults who have recently moved to Detroit or are lifelong residents are giving the city a new vitality. (Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor)
Natives join 'hipsters' in reviving Detroit
Stories of Detroit's emerging comeback often highlight the city’s attraction to young hipsters. According to plentiful media reports, well-educated twenty-somethings are streaming into the Motor City to test out new ideas, explore art and music projects, or launch D-I-Y revitalization initiatives.
You can spot a number of once-dormant corners of the city now pulsing with activity thanks to young entrepreneurs. Corktown now sports pubs and restaurants that would fit in Brooklyn or Portland. Midtown shows all the makings of a creative class hub, complete with hipsters hanging out at the Good Girls Go to Paris creperie, the Avalon International Breads bakery, and the N’Nmadi Center gallery, devoted to the rich tradition of African-American abstract art. Recent college grads can be seen all over town from the bountiful Eastern Market to bustling Campus Martius square to festive Mexicantown to the scenic Riverwalk to the yummy Good People Popcorn shop downtown, featuring flavors like cinnamon and chocolate drizzle.
This burst of youthful energy – even in the face of the city’s continuing economic and social woes – debunks widespread opinion that nothing can be done to jumpstart the Motor City. While a new, more positive narrative about Detroit is welcome, there are problems in focusing entirely on idealistic young adventurers swooping in to save the city – it reinforces the stereotype of native Detroiters as hapless, helpless, and hopeless.
The truth is, locals have been working hard for years to uplift the common good in Detroit, which drew the interest of outsiders. And newcomers aren’t the only ones stirring up excitement around town. Good People Popcorn, for instance, was started by two sisters and a cousin, all of whom grew up here. Sarida Scott Montgomery, one of the founders who is also a lawyer and executive director of the Community Development Advocates of Detroit, says people are often surprised she grew up in the city. "Not in the suburbs," she says, "but in Detroit itself."
Regina Ann Campbell, director of the Milwaukee Junction Small Business Center incubator in Detroit's North End, grew up on the Northwest side before earning a Masters in urban planning degree at the University of Michigan. "I welcome all the new people," she says. "But it’s important for them to understand they are building on some things that have been going on for years. I want to help them appreciate the city though the eyes of the people who have lived here."
Ms. Scott Montgomery and Ms. Campbell are both part of a new initiative that matches the talents of bright, young professionals with local organizations working at the frontlines of reviving Detroit. The Detroit Revitalization Fellows Program (DRFP) selected 29 fellows with backgrounds in urban planning, economic development, finance, real estate, and related fields.
A lot of the buzz around the program highlights ambitious folks relocating from New York, Seattle, the Bay Area, Washington, D.C., Montreal, Chicago, and Los Angeles to further their careers in Detroit, but in reality 10 of the fellows were already living in Detroit and nine others had grown up in the metro area or previously lived in the city.
For many of them it was a long-awaited homecoming, which shows that continuing loyalty from the Detroit Diaspora is a hidden asset in the city’s favor. Jela Ellefson, who was working at a Los Angeles urban planning firm before moving with her husband, an architect, and two children back to Detroit, says, "We always followed what was happening in Detroit, and noticed that the urban planning world was paying a lot of attention.” She now works to expand programs at the city's Eastern Market.
DRFP – a Wayne State project financially supported by the Kresge Foundation, Ford Foundation, Hudson-Webber Foundation, Skillman Foundation, and the university – placed fellows at organizations identified as being "actively engaged in building the Detroit of tomorrow." The breadth and impact of these nonprofit groups – everything from the Data Driven Detroit research firm to the Community Investment Support Fund, which directs investment capital to low-income neighborhoods – speaks to a strong sense of the commons that survives in Detroit even amid the economic setbacks.
Fellow Matteo Passalacqua works at the Vanguard community development corporation to rehab historic structures as affordable housing in the city’s struggling North End, for instance, and Marcus Clarke at the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation and David Barna at Midtown Detroit Inc. are collaborating to help city firms acquire a larger share of procurement contracts from large local institutions.
Dan Varner, CEO of Excellent Schools Detroit, who hired fellow Eric Anderson as the organization’s Director of Digital Media and Engagement, sees the DRFP as important in reversing Detroit’s brain drain. "We’ve been losing talented folks for a long time. Part of what we have to do to recover our potential is stop that drain. The fellows program represents that potential."
Allyson McLean, who grew up in the Detroit suburbs and has worked on brownfield redevelopment in Pittsburgh’s Urban Redevelopment Authority and on strategic planning for the Department of Homeland Security in Washington D.C, is back in town aiding real estate development in low-income communities with the Community Investment Support Fund.
“Now that I am back,” she says, “it’s frustrating to hear from friends I grew up with who have no plans to ever return. In many cases they aren’t necessarily staying in places like Chicago because they’ve landed great jobs, they simply think it’s a cooler place to be. They have no idea what they’re missing in their hometown.”
• This article originally appeared at Shareable.net, a nonprofit online magazine that tells the story of how sharing can promote the common good.
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A young girl pumps water from a well in the village of Manugay in the Pech River Valley of Afghanistan's Kunar Province. Mobile technologies are allowing nonprofit groups to better monitor and serve the water needs of developing nations. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters/File)
Mobile technology boosts access to clean water for the poor
Information technology is a powerful tool for experts working to provide secure access to water for personal use, food production, and business in developing nations.
Giving poor people proper access to safe water and sanitation would save 2.5 million people a year from dying from diarrhea and other diseases spread by a lack of hygiene, according to the charity WaterAid.
The widespread availability of mobile phones has enabled the development of low-cost solutions aimed at improving water security and reducing poverty.
Three quarters of the world's 7 billion people have access to a mobile phone, according to a World Bank report. There are 6 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, of which almost 5 billion are in developing countries.
This is where mobile networks come in – they have led to the development of communication services that aim to increase the transparency and reliability of water delivery. For example, mobile technology has allowed service providers to monitor water supply to prevent theft and leakages, while offering more effective repairs and billing.
But these innovative efforts still face huge political and logistical challenges, complicated by the risks linked to climate change, experts say.
Here are five mobile strategies that are already helping people get better access to water and sanitation:
Supply mapping
Timely data on the state of water infrastructure is key to implementing a secure water supply. Akvo FLOW (Field Level Operations Watch) is a mobile application that uses Android-operated devices, the internet, and map-reporting tools in Google Maps and Google Earth to collect, analyze, and report data for monitoring water supplies.
The system, which has been used in 17 countries in Africa, Asia, Central America, and South America since 2010, was developed by two nonprofit organizations: Water For People, which helps communities in developing countries access clean drinking water; and Akvo, which creates web and mobile software to improve the delivery of humanitarian aid.
In 2011, the Liberian government, assisted by the World Bank, used Akvo FLOW to map 10,000 water points in Liberia.
Smart-card tap system
Lifelink, developed by Denmark-based Grundfos AS, uses submersible borehole pumps powered by solar or wind power to deliver water to an elevated storage tank.
Gravity forces the water to flow into a tap unit in a small building, which also serves as a payment facility. Customers buy water credits that are stored on a "smart card," using mobile-phone banking. They insert the smart card into a slot at the tap unit to purchase water.
A percentage of the money goes towards service and maintenance. Lifelink staff can monitor water pressure, temperature, and the amount of water tapped from anywhere in the world via the internet.
The company, which provides the service in urban and rural communities, says it has implemented drinking-water supply systems for 100,000 people in Kenya and is expanding into other African countries and Asia.
Water management by SMS
A mobile-to-web platform designed to regulate water management is improving water delivery in West Africa.
The mWater service – used by 240 small public-private piped-water schemes in Senegal, Mali, Benin, and Niger – allows water-service operators to share information with national authorities and financial institutions via mobile phone.
Text messages provide data about water-production levels, account balances, and service disruptions. mWater generates real-time reports and also archives data to provide water-scheme managers with monthly reports, which can be emailed or downloaded.
Today, more than 25 percent of rural and small-town populations in western and central Africa are served by small piped-water schemes, a proportion that is expected to rise to 80 percent by 2015, according to the Manobi Development Foundation.
Smart hand pumps
Experts estimate that a third of handpumps supplying water to some of the world's poorest people are broken at any given time, according to Rob Hope, a researcher at Britain’s University of Oxford Mobile/Water for Development (MW4D) program.
Hope is part of a team developing a mobile system that coordinates access to, payment for, and upkeep of hand pumps, which are often installed and then left for the local community to manage with varying success.
The "smart hand pumps" automatically transmit water use and performance data over the mobile network, sending a text message to alert engineers of a breakdown.
Data provides water output estimates that show fluctuations in daily to seasonal demand levels. The mobile application is being tested in 70 villages in Kenya's drought-prone Kyuso district, as part of a year-long pilot project funded by Britain's Department for International Development (DFID).
Hand-pump service centers
More than half of India’s village hand pumps are not working and remain out of use for more than 30 days due to a shortage of mechanics, according to WaterAid.
In response, the charity has set up hand pump service centers, known locally as Public Panchayat Participatory (PPP) centers, operated by locally trained mechanics in two districts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states.
The condition of village hand pumps is monitored by the centers and repairs coordinated by mobile phone.
Between January 2011 and March 2012, the centers oversaw the repair of more than 4,500 hand pumps serving almost 338,000 people, according to WaterAid.
Only 6 percent of the repairs took longer than two days to complete, and this was usually down to remote location, the need for major work, or a lack of spare parts, the charity says.
• This article originally appeared at AlertNet, a humanitarian news site operated by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
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Visitors play World of Warcraft during the Gamescom 2011 fair in Cologne, Germany. By the time average Americans turn 21, they have played 10,000 hours of video games. Games for Change advocates using some of that time on games that result in social good. (Ina Fassbender/Reuters/File)
Games for change: How digital fun is becoming a way to better the world
From world hunger to peace to economic development, a new tool is making a difference: video games.
By the time average Americans turn 21, they have played 10,000 hours of video games. That is equal to the amount of time they will spend in school in the United States between 5th and 12th grade or it is equal to five years in a full time job. According to Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers, a person who spends 10,000 hours on any activity "masters" it.
Take World of Warcraft, a hugely popular interactive virtual reality game with 10.3 million players around the world. It's not your '90s Mario Brothers with 10 controls. Warcraft is so complex that the online wiki encyclopedia about the game – characters, history, events – -has 96,890 pages, making it one of the largest wikis in the world. Mastering Warcraft means internalizing vast amounts of the information in that wiki.
World of Warcraft is not saving the world. But focusing on the positive uses of video games could turn gamers into global heroes.
The education potential of games is huge, in part because so many people are already playing them. Globally, we spend 3 billion hours playing video games. There are few activities that over a fifth of the population do that can be used to create change. If we harnessed that time and energy for really tough global problems, we just might be able to solve them.
Using games for social benefit, or "games for change," is a fast-growing movement led by an organization founded in 2004 under the same name. Games for Change's mission is to "catalyze social impact through digital games."
Using games for positive social change has evolved just as gaming itself has evolved. As more people became aware of the popularity of games, they began to spread. First came simple educational games: The Oregon Trail and Reader Rabbit were popular in the United States in the '90s.
The United Nations saw the value of games and was an early pioneer in figuring out how to use them to create positive social change--and putting funding behind it.
- Food Force, launched by the World Food Program in 2005, puts players in the shoes of an aid worker. They start off with a fairly simple plot of wheat. If their wheat survives, the aid worker has to figure out how to get the food to a processing plant, showing the player the complexities of the global food supply chain. But drought and pests--devastating issues that real-life farmers face every year--often hit the player's fields, forcing them to manage a hunger crisis. The game is played by 10 million on Facebook, and raises money for the World Food Program by letting players donate through the game.
- Evoke , a real-time game published online in 2010, was funded by the World Bank as a tool to inspire and create real innovations that would help solve global issues. The game was set in Africa, but the solutions could have impact around the world. For a 10-week period, players followed a virtual storyline while earning points from fellow competitors for blogging about real-world social change activities they did as part of the game, such as developing a bike that creates enough electricity when pedaled to charge personal electronics.
Jane McGonigal, a key proponent of the movement, gave a popular TED talk in 2010, further pushing the concept of gaming for change forward.
"Games are really good for exploring complex issues in society," continued Games for Change spokesperson Suzanne Seggerman in an interview on ABC News in 2011.
Social change games have been branching to all fields and all styles. Foldit is a game designed to discover protein structures that will solve genetic problems and diseases. Each player gets to fold proteins and the game determines if that protein solves a medical problem. Busy-work that would take someone a lifetime to do alone is spread among thousands of players in order to help teach human puzzle-solving strategies to computers. Researchers had been working for over a decade on discovering an AIDS protein that may lead to a cure. Earlier this year, the gamers solved the protein puzzle within 10 days.
- Peacemakers is helping establish understanding between Israelis and Palestinians. As a player, you are the leader of both nations and have to use real facts reported on in the news to determine the actions you would take to successfully lead that nation peacefully. Players see not only their political views but also the other side's, too.
The number of these games has been growing, and as these games become more established, the success of their objectives is becoming more apparent.
For organizations with messages or agendas, games are a fun way for people to get involved. Technology is spreading from laptops to tablets to mobile phones. Seventy-five percent of the world's population has access to mobile phones, making the possibility of scaling games for change incredible.
Games that create positive change is a way for companies that produce games to reach an entirely new market segment. At the same time, gaming audiences welcome the chance to reverse the stereotype of "gamers."
For game developers, it's also a new market: helping nonprofits with social missions reach a new, engaged audiences. For the first time next year, the Games for Change organization will get an entire day at the annual Game Developers Conference to help more developers get involved.
The opportunities for charitable organizations are increasing every day, and as groups like Games for Change have conferences of their own, recruiting developers to create the games is getting easier.
Soon, a favorite pastime may actually do a lot of good.
• This article originally appeared at Global Envision, a blog published by Mercy Corps.
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A worker piles compost at a community garden in Chattanooga, Tenn. Working in community gardening programs is proving to have many good effects on troubled military veterans, including raising their self-esteem and creating better eating habits. (AP Photo/Chattanooga Times Free Press/Allison Love)
Gardening projects change lives of troubled veterans
Name: Howard Hinterthuer
Affiliation: Organic Therapy Program
Bio: Howard Hinterthuer served as a medic in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970. Returning from the war, he found solace by establishing various gardens in Virginia. Today, Howard works as a Peer-to-Peer Mentor for the Organic Therapy Program (OTP), a veterans’ recovery project that promotes healing through organic gardening.
You recently gave a Ted Talk on the Organic Therapy Program (OTP). Can you tell us how the OTP started and how you, as one of its Peer-to-Peer Mentors, personally became involved with helping veterans recover from the war by gardening?
William Sims, a Vietnam veteran of the 101st Airborne Division who served from 1966 to 1967, started the Organic Therapy Program. Mr. Sims was wounded after being in Vietnam for about 9 months, and returned home to Milwaukee. He was able to deal with the stress of coming home and experiencing combat by puttering around in his mom’s garden. He remembered that.
The Center for Veterans Issues has about 300 or more formerly homeless veterans in transition with PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and depression. These veterans come to us and we provide a wrap-around service to deal with their different problems. Mr. Sims figured that if gardening was good for him, then it would be good for other veterans as well. So he began creating raised-bed gardens to help veterans cope with their problems.
IN PICTURES: Serving those who have served: veterans' programs
I was also in the 101st Airborne Division a couple of years later. When I came home, I helped rehabilitate myself by planting a series of gardens in rural Virginia. This was very therapeutic. I was working at Sweet Water Organics as their Executive Director when the Center for Veterans Issues recruited me to become be a Peer-to-Peer Mentor. I took this opportunity because I wanted to help other veterans recover from the war.
Since its establishment four years ago, OTP has expanded into a program that now includes many innovative agricultural practices. What are some of the projects that OTP is currently working on?
The program has evolved over the years. When I first began working with the veterans, I started looking at our food expenditures. Our mess halls service our veterans three times a day and the numbers that we were getting from the mess halls from our surveys were disturbing. We had unusually high expenditures on meat. This was a problem because we serve a population of individuals who are particularly susceptible to diseases related to diet. So we thought of OTP as a way to introduce a better diet for our veterans. There was certainly some social engineering involved in this process. When our veterans say they don’t like something, such as fruits and vegetables, it probably means that they haven’t tried it. I do that sometimes with things, too. So the OTP program took 2 goals: reintegrating veterans into the world and improving their diets. The OTP program is especially important because we’re in a food desert area and it’s hard to get fruits and vegetables here. Now, in our fourth year, there’s enthusiasm and support for the program. Our veterans can’t get enough greens!
Why is it important for veterans in particular to engage in gardening as part of their recovery process?
Gardening is important because it allows our veterans to have an optimistic experience. It takes their mind off of the injustices and bad things that have happened to them in the past, the things that have gotten them to the place of homelessness. The issues veterans suffer from are often chronic; additionally, many veterans are smokers. They’ll smoke and talk about their difficult pasts. But their tone changes when they are in the garden. It’s like magic. Gardening makes sure that they have positive experiences. This is almost guaranteed by the act itself, as it creates such a peaceful place. Gardening is meditative and increases self-esteem. We are trying to assign raised beds to certain people so that there’s an increased sense of ownership. I think that there’s therapeutic value in establishing a pattern of responsible behavior.
How does the OTP introduce veterans to gardening and spark their interest in growing their own food?
OTP brings together people who have gardening in their background with people who don’t. Inevitably, someone who comes into the garden who was raised in Mississippi will talk about their grandmother's and their grandfather’s garden. And for people who haven’t gardened, it’s delightful for them to see where an onion comes from and to pick a cherry tomato off of the vine and pop it in their mouths. When they taste the explosion of sweetness in their labor, it’s easy for them to eat healthier. Once our veterans have tried our produce in the garden, they realize that they like it.
What kind of changes have you seen in the veterans who have been working with OTP?
I’ve seen people evolve in a number of different ways. The most dramatic instance is when someone comes in and they’re extremely depressed. We had a key player last season who was like that. When I explained what we wanted him to do, he’d say, “I’m a good solider. I can do that.” Over the years, though, he worked closely with me on a couple of projects. One day, he was in the garden and told me, “You know, this program has just saved my life.” And now he’s in Nevada talking about his gardening experiences. To engage other veterans, we’re putting in a small aquaponics system that we worked on last year. We’ll redo it again this year. Additionally, we’re thinking of adding a green house. The veterans responsible for assembling these projects need to have some plumbing skills. Cutting barrels in half, working with PVC pipes, and other tasks all require certain skills. Our veterans have to apply carpentry skills, too. When they have the chance to use their skills again and to learn new ones, they feel useful. These projects bring our veterans out of themselves. They take pride in their involvement and love explaining their work to our visitors. They are able to think about what’s possible instead of what’s impossible.
How do you see the program itself changing in the future? Could the concepts behind OTP expand into other veteran recovery programs?
In terms of the future, we’re expanding our gardens and renting out two greenhouses that we’ve used in previous winters. We have received funding through the department of labor for it to heat these green houses with compost. This work will be a part of a jobs program to teach growing skills to our veterans. A big component of our expansion is sustainability. Using compost to heat our green houses is an example of the sustainable techniques we want to apply. In terms of expanding into other veteran recovery programs, after the TED talk I gave, I was contacted by a woman in Scotland working with veterans of the British military. Her program used horticulture for veterans’ recovery, so I think gardening is an approach to dealing with difficult issues that can definitely be replicated in other places.
• Molly Redfield is a research intern with the Nourishing the Planet project.
• This article first appeared at Nourishing the Planet, a blog published by the Worldwatch Institute.
• Sign up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by clicking here.
A librarian leans over to help a senior citizen use her iPad while learning how to set up and use a Facebook account at a class at a branch of the New York Public Library. Besides teaching online skills, public libraries have begun helping people create things on site, from photographs, books, and music to podcasts. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters/File)
Libraries reinvent themselves as labs of creativity
From their inception, libraries were designed to be hubs of information. What that looked like for a long time was that they housed books and other media including music, film, and historic documents.
These days, being a hub of information looks rather different. In addition to lending traditional media materials, libraries are becoming community centers for creativity and innovation. By providing patrons access to emerging digital and manufacturing tools, libraries are reinventing themselves as laboratories that help bridge the digital divide and move projects from the idea stage into the production stage.
Recently, the Online Education Database published a round-up of the 10 Most Amazing Library Laboratories. Among those featured were some well-known projects: the NYPL Labs at the New York Public Library and the FabLab at the Fayetteville Free Library in Fayetteville, N.Y., as well as some lesser-known labs that are helping to move libraries into the center of future-forward communities.
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Through book publication, digital media workshops, "makerspaces," and even organic gardens, these laboratories are demonstrating that libraries aren’t just places to borrow stuff, they’re also places to make stuff.
Catering exclusively to teens, the YOUMedia Lab at the Chicago Public Library offers young people a way to create, edit, and produce podcasts, recorded music, blogs, film, photographs, and more. By providing access to digital tools of all kinds, the library gives voice to the teens and nurtures a new generation of creators.
Providing a way to write books and to publish them on-site, the Sacramento (Calif.) Public Library’s I Street Press turns readers of books into makers of books. Using the Espresso Book Machine, patrons can print their own material or access one of thousands of out-of-print titles. The library also offers writing classes for budding authors.
A digital media laboratory for teens, the StoryLab at the Tacoma (Wash.) Public Library is a production center for digital illustration, filmmaking, photography, music production, and the like. Boasting tools that range from MIDI controllers to tablets (as well as classes on how to use the tools), the lab is an incubator for a variety of projects.
Proving that space doesn’t have to be an issue when it comes to library laboratories, the Allen County Public Library Maker Station is located in a trailer right behind the library in Fort Wayne, Ind. A makerspace open to library patrons, the Maker Station features laser-cutters, 3-D printers, digital sewing and embroidery machines, saws, vinyl cutters, and more. As methods of production become increasingly available to the public, spaces like this will become necessary elements of communities.
While access to digital tools is imperative these days, so is access to healthy food. A community hub of a different kind, the Library Farm at the Northern Onondaga Public Library in Cicero, N.Y., encourages patrons to use its organic garden as a laboratory. Patrons can “check out” a small plot of land and learn from master gardeners how to grow organic produce on it.
There’s also a community area, for those who don’t want a plot to themselves. The stated purpose of the project is to teach food literacy, preserve the knowledge that our grandparents had, and to provide food to local pantries.
• This article originally appeared at Shareable.net, a nonprofit online magazine that tells the story of how sharing can promote the common good.
• Sign up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by clicking here.
Mayor Michael Nutter visits ShopRite following ground-breaking for the expansion of the Cheltenham Brown's ShopRite, an $11m project that will create about 40 new jobs. (Copyright City of Philadelphia. Photograph by Kaitlin Privitera.)
Inner-city grocery chain innovates by hiring ex-cons, providing fresh food
[This article was originally published on The Huffington Post and is reposted with permission.]
Want proof that the goals of business and the needs of the most vulnerable can align? Meet Jeff Brown, fourth-generation grocer and owner of the 10-store ShopRite regional chain based in Philadelphia. By mixing old-fashioned customer service with innovative new approaches, Brown is chipping away at the nation’s jobs challenge, starting in the communities hardest-hit by the financial crisis.
After being sentenced to jail for five years for selling drugs in his hometown of Lancaster, Pa., Louis Rivera was determined to turn his life around. An eighth-grade dropout, he spent his first year in prison preparing for and obtaining his GED. Upon release, he moved to Philadelphia and sent out dozens of resumes, hoping, at age 31, to secure the first real job of his life.
No employer responded. Louis was frustrated and scared. “I knew I could not go back to the life I had been leading,” he told me. “I needed a break.”
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He walked down the street from his apartment to Jeff Brown’s ShopRite grocery store, where he had already applied online. He said to the hiring manager, “I’m not leaving here until you give me a job.” She laughed at his mix of pluck and desperation, and after listening to his story, gave him that break: a minimum-wage job in the seafood department.
Louis had gone to the right place. He did not know it at the time, but ShopRite is the only grocery-store chain in Philadelphia, and possibly in the nation, with an explicit focus on hiring ex-offenders. Jeff Brown explains that these employees are just as successful as a group compared to those without criminal records. “I have not seen evidence that the fears are true,” he says.
Brown believes his success with hiring ex-offenders is due to a strong partnership with a nonprofit workforce training organization, ABO Haven, that screens ex-offender candidates to find those who are a good match for the grocery’s culture, provides training in “soft skills” like how to be successful in a work environment, and then checks back in with the workers once they are on the jobs. From a profit perspective, hiring ex-offenders actually saves Brown money, since workforce-training dollars support the initial screening, training, and follow-up.
Four years and three promotions later, Louis is a model of the type of upward mobility that is on the wane in America. As assistant store manager, he brings home $53,000 per year plus benefits. He has been able to provide for his fiancée and three children, and now owns a home and two cars. He plans to stay with the company, and hopes to become a store manager one day.
Brown is also one of the first grocers to recognize the profitability of opening large grocery stores in underinvested low-income communities and communities of color, which other retailers have fled or avoided. Six of Brown’s stores are located in areas that were “food deserts” before he opened his doors: low-income neighborhoods without grocery stores or other healthy food retailers. Food-desert neighborhoods tend to have higher rates of diet-related health problems like obesity and diabetes.
One of those stores is located in West Philadelphia’s Parkside neighborhood. An African-American community of about 100,000, Parkside went without a supermarket for nearly three decades.
Since its 2008 opening, the Parkside ShopRite has been an overwhelming success. It brought 260 jobs to the area, and 40 of them went to ex-offenders. The store’s roof is covered in solar panels, and the product mix is tailored to the community’s cultural preferences, including halal products and African food staples. Like the other stores in the chain that opened in food deserts, overall sales, revenue, and fresh product sales are on par with suburban stores.
Brown says that making fresh foods available in communities with limited access to them is changing people's diets, shifting them away from processed food to a healthier mix that includes more produce and fresh foods. A recent study found that childhood obesity rates are dropping in Philadelphia, suggesting that the city’s efforts to increase access to healthy food in communities and schools are making a difference.
Every ShopRite store includes a community room that community groups can use for free. A new store opening in North Philadelphia will include two community rooms, one of which will contain cooking equipment that can be used for nutrition classes.
Brown is experimenting with bringing other needed services into the stores. In September 2011, American Heritage Federal Credit Union opened up a branch in the Parkside store, offering free checking and ATM services with no minimum-balance requirements. A second branch was opened in the Roxborough store in June 2012. The banking services are incredibly popular, with lines most days of the week.
More recently, Brown has sought to increase access to affordable health care in these communities by opening nonprofit clinics in stores. The first clinic opened five months ago and a second one will open in the Parkside store within the next several months. The clinic has not been an instant success, but the model is being tweaked to meet community needs, including implementing a sliding fee scale for uninsured patients.
The six ShopRite stores located in Philadelphia’s grocery-poor neighborhoods could not have opened were it not for the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative (FFFI), a public-private partnership that provides start-up funding in the form of one-time loans and grants to help retailers open or improve food retail stores in underserved low- and moderate-income communities.
The FFFI program has impressive results: 88 new or renovated stores in urban, rural, and small-town Pennsylvania, and more than 5,000 jobs created or retained. And the idea has spread: Fifteen other states have taken steps to set up similar public-private partnerships.
In 2010, the federal government began a similar initiative, the Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI), which is also a central pillar of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign. Since its launch, HFFI has provided nearly $500 million in loans, tax credits, and grants toward healthy-food retail projects, including grocery stores, farmers’ markets, cooperatives, food hubs, and other innovative efforts.
Brown believes that his comprehensive approach to solving community challenges is the key to his success. “Believe it or not," he told me, “solving the community’s problems helps on the financial side as well.” Cultivating strong relationships with community leaders, for example, helps to increase sales and reduce theft.
He thinks his success can be replicated elsewhere, and he has begun a nonprofit consulting firm, UpLift Solutions, to share what he’s learned with other business leaders. A number of major cities are getting ready to launch citywide initiatives focused on hiring ex-offenders using Brown's model, and other major retailers have expressed interest as well.
The ShopRite story is proof positive that it is possible to fulfill a community-oriented mission—to “bring joy to the lives of the people we serve”—while turning a profit. It also shows how well-crafted public-private partnerships can be critical to making this happen. Hopefully the model is paving the way for a new generation of entrepreneurs who are meeting the “triple bottom line” of people, planet, and profit.
• Sarah Treuhaft adapted this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. A trained city planner, Ms. Treuhaft is Associate Director at PolicyLink and an authority on the use of data and mapping in policy analysis, organizing, and advocacy. She works with local partners and coalitions to develop and implement equitable development strategies such as employer-assisted housing and transit-oriented development.
• Sign up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by clicking here.
'I love the uprisings ... and I think the young people especially are doing something that is very natural,' says Pulitzer prize-winning author Alice Walker. 'It is natural to want to have a future. It is very natural to want to live in peace and joy. What is lovely about this time is the awareness that is sweeping the planet. People are just waking up, every moment.' (John Amis/AP/File)
Alice Walker: 'Go to the places that scare you'
Alice Walker is a poet, essayist, and commentator, but she’s best known for her prodigious accomplishments as a writer of literary fiction.
Her novel The Color Purple won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in 1983 and quickly became a classic of world literature. Set in an African-American community in the rural South during the decades before World War II, the novel is told in letters written by Celie, a woman who survives oppression and abuse with her spirit not only intact, but transcendent.
Walker’s writing is characterized by an ever-present awareness of injustice and inequality. But whether describing political struggle—as in Meridian, which deals with the civil rights movement—or meditating on the human relationship to nature and animals, as in her latest book, The Chicken Chronicles, her work conveys the possibility of change. In Walker’s vision, grace is available through love and a deep connection to the beauty of the world.
Walker was born in the segregated South, the eighth child in a family who made their living as sharecroppers in Georgia. She came of age during the civil rights movement, and emerged early in her career as a defining voice in feminism and an advocate for African-American women writers. She is a prominent activist who has worked, marched, traveled, and spoken out to support the causes of justice, peace, and the welfare of the earth.
Alice Walker spoke to YES! about the challenges of working for change, and the possibility of living with awareness—and joy.
Valerie Schloredt: Over the past few days I’ve been immersed in your work, and I’ve been wondering how you do it. Being able to move someone to tears with a few words on a page is extraordinary to me.
Alice Walker: I want very much for you to feel for whoever I’m talking about, or whatever I’m talking about. Because it is only by empathy being aroused that we change. That is the power of writing. I’ve experienced exactly what you’re saying, reading other writers. I remember the book I first had that experience with was Jane Eyre, being right there with Jane, and understanding, yes, we have to change these horrible institutions where they abuse children. Today, I’m the supporter of an orphanage in Kenya. And one of the reasons comes from having been so moved by reading about Jane at Lowood.
Schloredt: It’s interesting to hear about what you read as a child, because some of your best-known work, like "The Color Purple," draws on the stories of your ancestors and your family and aspects of the world you knew as a child.
Walker: I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder. We were way out in the country, and why wouldn’t you just absolutely wonder at the splendor of nature? It’s true I had various sufferings, but nothing really compares to understanding that you live in a place that, moment by moment, is incredible. That your mother could say, “I think we’ll have tea tonight,” pull up a sassafras root, take it home, boil it, and you have sassafras tea. I mean, it’s such a miraculous universe. For a child, this magic is something that supports us, even through the hard times.
Schloredt: Do you go back to your childhood home?
Walker: It doesn’t exist.
Schloredt: No?
Walker: No. And there were many of them. We lived in shacks. Each year the people who owned the land (that they had stolen from the Indians), after they had taken the labor for the year, forced us to another shack. How could people do that, to people that they recognized as people? They did this to babies, they did this to small children, they could look at the people they were exploiting and actually see that they were working them into ill health and early death. It didn’t stop them.
The most beautiful parts of the area that I lived in are now an enclave of upper-class white housing tracts with a huge golf course. They built a road that went right through the front yard of our church. Most of the people moved to cities, they moved to projects. So, it doesn’t exist.
Schloredt: Something I wanted to ask after listening to you talk last night [at the YES! celebration in Seattle], is the idea that some people don’t experience empathy and don’t have a conscience that bothers them when they’re treating people extremely badly. Where can progressives go with that idea? How do we relate to knowing that?
Walker: You relate to it by being honest. We’re sitting back thinking that every single person has a conscience, if you could just reach it. Why should we believe that? I mean, what would make you actually believe that? Certainly not the history of the world as we know it. So it’s about trying to understand the history of the world, how it’s been shaped, and by whom, and for what purposes.
Understanding trumps compassion at this point. When people are forcing you out of your home, starving your children, destroying your planet—you should bring understanding of them to bear. Not everybody is loving of children, not everybody cares about the ocean. I think if we collectively decide that we are going to confront this, we have a chance. Because humanity is very smart, and we’d like to survive. And we’re not going to survive the way we’re going. I think we know that.
Schloredt: Your novels are among those books that cause people to say, “This book changed my life,” or “This book changed my way of thinking.” For me the book of yours that really did something to my way of thinking was Meridian. That is a very powerful book. One thing that really affected me was the description of the cost of racism to the psyche, what a struggle it is to fight such embedded injustice. I think I saw you as the character Meridian. Are you—have you got some Meridian in you?
Walker: I think all people who struggle at the risk of their lives have some Meridian in them. It’s an acceptance of a kind of suffering. You hope that something will come of it, but there’s no way of knowing. What I didn’t realize was so close to me was how Meridian gets really sick as she encounters various struggles. She’s using every ounce of her will, her intelligence, her heart, her soul. It often leaves her debilitated. And that has certainly been true in my life. And it’s something that I have to accept.
In Jackson, Miss., during the civil rights movement, the mayor had a tank that the town bought just to use against us. So there’s the possibility of the tank running over you, and you have to stand there. So I understood that, well, this is probably going to mean a few weeks of just being immobilized. And then you figure out ways to recuperate.
It’s learning to accept that the cost is great. It would have to be, because we’re talking about emotional intelligence and growth and stretching yourself, reaching for the sun, kind of as if you were a plant. It’s a difficult thing to change the world, your neighborhood, your family, your self.
Schloredt: Not only is Meridian risking her life, like the other civil rights activists in the South, but there’s also internal oppression, an inner struggle the characters deal with.
Walker: The inner struggle is extremely difficult for all of us, because we all have faults, severe ones, that we will struggle with forever. One of the things that I like about Meridian is that it is about how we like to have almost a stereotype about leaders and revolutionaries and world-changers, that they are always whole. It’s wise to accept that [human faults] are inevitable. Factor that in and keep going.
Schloredt: I love the passage where Meridian visits a black church after the assassination of Martin Luther King and finds that they’ve incorporated his rhetoric into the sermon.
Walker: This is the segment where B.B. King is in the stained-glass window with a sword—where the people needed to incorporate, as far as I was concerned at the time, a bit more militancy. More awareness of what you’re up against, and confronting that with real clarity. In some ways it’s the same issue that we’re talking about. You have to go to the places that scare you so that you can see: What do you really believe? Who are you really? Are you prepared to take this all the way to wherever the truth leads you and accept that you have to figure out different ways of confronting reality?
Schloredt: I wanted to ask you about Occupy and uprisings in the Middle East. You’ve been politically active over your lifetime. Is there advice that you would give to people who are organizing now in the United States?
Walker: If you want to have a life that is worth living, a life that expresses your deepest feelings and emotions, and cares and dreams, you have to fight for it. You have to go wherever you need to go, and you have to be wherever you need to be, and place yourself there against the forces that would distort you and destroy you.
I love the uprisings, I love the Occupy movement, and I think the young people especially are doing something that is very natural. It is natural to want to have a future. It is very natural to want to live in peace and joy. What is lovely about this time is the awareness that is sweeping the planet. People are just waking up, every moment.
Schloredt: One thing that I worry about for progressives is that we are often distracted from effective direct action by the project of improving ourselves, of being good.
Walker: And also, “good” in that sense can sometimes be very facile. And a good cover, you know, “I’m doing good, so I don’t have to change very much.” But I think for most Americans, the change that’s required is huge.
Schloredt: How do we make that change happen?
Walker: Well, you know, you’re doing it. I think YES! Magazine is part of what’s changing people’s consciousness. And I think the spread of Buddhism—the retreat centers, the meditation practice—has had a huge impact on people’s consciousness. Americans learning Buddhist tradition has helped a lot of people understand that they actually have a power that is theirs. They have their own mind. It’s not somebody else’s mind, and it’s not controllable, unless you permit it. That’s a foundation for huge change.
Schloredt: Your writing has, I’m sure, also changed consciousnesses. How does it feel to know that your work has in some way changed the world?
Walker: Well, it’s a gift the universe has permitted you to achieve—but it’s not just dropped in your lap, you have to really work for it. For instance, years ago when I wrote Possessing the Secret of Joy, the campaign against female genital mutilation [FGM] was a dangerous subject. There was a great deal of flak about my wanting to address it.
I wrote the book, and then Pratibha Parmar and I made the film [Warrior Marks, a documentary about FGM], and lugged it around Africa, and London, New York, all over. It allowed women who had no voice about FGM to speak. Progress is slow, and sometimes it’s discouraging. It’s like knocking on doors in the South asking people to vote, and they’re terrified of voting. And then seeing over the course of years that people started understanding that they had a right to reject the practice of FGM, that they had a voice. I feel grateful that I could be an instrument to stop any kind of suffering. I mean, what a joy.
Schloredt: In your novels you describe profound suffering and pain, but there is also often the potential for reconciliation and healing. If you could create healing and reconciliation for something that’s happening in our country today, what would it be?
Walker: I think the War on Terror is really absurd, especially coming from a country that is founded on terrorism. The hypocrisy of that is corrosive, and we should not accept it. There is no way to stop terrorism if you insist on making enemies of most of the people on the planet. Why should they care about you? All they feel is fear. So I would stop the War on Terror, and I would start making peace with the peoples of the planet by trying to understand them. I would like us to be able to say, “If that happened to me, I would feel exactly the way you do. And what can we do from here, from this understanding? What can we do together?”
• Valerie Schloredt interviewed Alice Walker for It's Your Body, the Fall 2012 issue of YES! Magazine. Valerie is associate editor of YES! Magazine.
• This article originally appeared in YES! Magazine.
• Sign up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by clicking here.
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