Storytelling and the Importance of Coffee Diplomacy

"The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them, and learn to give them away as needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. This why we put stories in each other's memory. This is how people care for themselves (and each other).

---Barry Lopez

"Writing becomes an act of Compassion toward life, the life we so often refuse to see because if we look too closely or feel too deeply, there may be no end to our suffering. But words empower us, move us beyond our own suffering, set us free.

This is the sorcery of literature: We are Healed by our Stories."

---Terry Tempest Williams

I often place these quotes at the top of my Sociology course syllabi, especially for my Cultural Diversity or my Environmental Sociology classes. These passages came alive for me the year that I created and worked on Project H.O.P.E. (helping other people and the earth), a community collaboration project between the small university where I worked and the tiny Catholic school located in the same town.

The goals of Project H.O.P.E. were to facilitate and enhance community ties between the university and the grade school as well as to provide hands-on, community-based instructional opportunities for both sets of students. We planned to educate our constituents about the Pennsylvania Environment and Ecology standards by building and planting a large native plant garden at the entrance of elementary school, creating an enormous mural of indigenous plants and animals inside, and by fixing up their playground. Our final goal was to “Pay it Forward,” to literally use the good will generated from the little children we were working with to send funding and help to a community in Mississippi whose homes and lives were lost during Hurricane Katrina.

In order to meet our goals, we needed to raise several thousand dollars for materials as well as to make a donation to another Catholic school in Waveland, Mississippi that had been destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. In that community, 90% of the people had just lost their homes and businesses.  Their community was completely destroyed but they were determined to start over, together. We wanted to lend a hand.

One of the tenets of Project H.O.P.E. was that we valued using local businesses. So for several months, I went out with my then 1- year old daughter Kailasa, and one of my students Michelle, to solicit monetary or in-kind donations from local businesses. We met these folks in their storefronts, or just as often in the back of their homes or on their property. Almost universally, we were invited in for a ‘cup of coffee.’ How could we refuse such hospitality? We needed to engage in coffee diplomacy.

We quickly realized that part of the ‘exchange’ was to sit and listen to people’s stories, and often to share ours. Most people want to give, but often they first need to be heard. They wanted to share their history with either the university or the grade school, and talk how they were personally connected to the communities we were working with. Some of them had their own stories of lost homes, or lost lives. Sometimes, it was as seemingly tenuous as their aunt’s daughter used to work at one place or the other back in the 1980s, but it was vitally important to them that their story be known.

We recognized that they were interested in our story as well: how did Project H.O.P.E. come about; what was motivating a bunch of undergraduate students to take on such an immense project? We revealed how a small group of 15 sociology students travel

ed to the grade school purely to complete an exercise assessing their resources and needs. When they came back to my class, they all insisted that we figure out how to follow through on the evaluation and actually create the changes that the school so clearly needed. Thus, Project H.O.P.E. was born.

Though at first, we merely wanted request a donation and simply obtain the goods or money that we needed. In the end, this coffee diplomacy was an essential part of our community collaboration. We had to plan to give not just our dollars but also our TIME.  By listening to these stories and sharing our own, we were weaving together the tapestry of this joint venture and making the bonds between the members even stronger than before. We became the keeper of the stories and it is our duty to keep telling them.

Everyone needs Stories. Stories can Change your life. Stories can Heal and give HOPE. Hope takes roots in the mind. 
Hope grows in the Heart. Hope is born into the world.

Five Steps to Completing Community Projects for Social Change

Do you see a problem or issue in your community or organization? Are you interested in making some changes in your community or organization? You can use the following five steps to help you guide on your journey toward social change.

1) Assessment: Assessing the community or organization's needs and resources.

a. What are a community's resources (finances, people, physical and material resources, structural layout, community map, individual's time);
b. What are the community's needs?
c. What organizations are connected to and support this organization or community?
d. You can use Social Mapping: Asset Mapping and Social Network Mapping. Where are the natural and material assets located; what kinds of natural social networks already exist? What the natural pathways for resources? Where are the highest concentrations of community resources? Where are the areas of lack?
e. Identify community characteristics:

• i. Aspects of material culture (dress, architecture, food)
• ii. Cultural values, symbols, norms for behavior, language, beliefs/attitudes

f. For community participation in the assessment:

• i. Assure complete voluntary participation
• ii. Protect anonymity when you can. If not, maintain rigorous standards of confidentiality.

g. RESEARCH other similar projects to get ideas for how to proceed.

2) Develop goals and objectives: These two are the guiding forces for your entire project. You will need to refer to these for each action you take.

a. After compiling the data from your assessment, you can analyze the results looking for core themes and patterns. Summarize the quantitative and qualitative data in order to discover the needs of the community. Afterwards, write goals and objectives for each of the community's needs that you are able to address with the current project.

b. Some questions you should consider are: what problems can be reasonably addressed with the current community members and potential collaborators? Is this the right season (literally spring, summer, fall or winter) to tackle this problem? How should we prioritize projects?

3) Planning: In this part, you are answering the question, how can this community be mobilized?

a. Assemble a core team of leaders that will coordinate the entire project. Keep this team relatively small: 4-6 members. The core team needs to be organized, committed and most of all enthusiastic.

b. Create a plan and timeline: Sketch out a time line with appropriate dates, spaced well to accommodate fundraising needs;

c. Make sure your plan meets your goals and objectives; revise if necessary.

d. Create teams (with community organizers, collaborators, and participants) who will tackle specific parts of the project; try to work with individual's strengths.

• i. When contacting collaborators, volunteers and participants, know the culture of your community. Do phone calls work better than email in this situation? Can we use Facebook to organize meetings?

e. Hold regular core team meetings for planning.

4) Fundraising:
a. In pairs, go to local community members, national organizations, local businesses or any other potential funder and ask exactly for what you need; nothing less.

b. Take time to listen to your potential funder; most people want to give; they just want their own story to be heard first.  practice coffee diplomacy

c. Organize FUN fundraisers, based on the theme of your project, if possible.

5) Take Action: Put your plan into action to meet your goals and objectives.
a. Organize the necessary short-term volunteers and plan for work parties or work sessions, whichever your particular requires.

b. Always have an agenda or work plan and a presider. You need one point-person at each work party or work session who knows the overall plan, someone people can turn to with questions as they arise.
c. Have snacks and water. You can get these donated for your event.

d. If possible, show up with gifts for participants and recipients.

e. Hold ceremonies and hold rituals (Have a project Launch party, an opening ceremony, closing ceremony, blessing of land, project blessing, any ritual that your project calls for)

f. Keep it fun; You need a 'fun raiser' at each work party, someone whose sole job is to keep things enjoyable for the participants.

g. Applaud yourself (send press releases to local newspapers, high schools, churches). Get the word out! And celebrate your community project along the way.

h. Send periodic feedback to participants through Facebook, email, e-newsletters; keep enthusiasm high!

There is one last ingredient that can make your community project especially successful and rewarding: pay it forward. Partner with the community you are serving to look for another community that needs the help of all of you. As part of your community project, together make a donation of money, resources, or time in their direction.
Finally, keep your team energetic with an inspiring mission and message! Come from the heart and the urge to serve and surely social change will come to your community.

The Power of a small group of committed citizens: the birth of Project H.O.P.E.

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In fall of 2005, I was asked to teach a class called Applied Sociology and I intended to take the title literally. Each week, I asked myself, how can I get these 15 college students more hands-on involvement in the local community? This course focused on how to assess the health and needs of a community, and how to attempt to fulfill their needs.

One evening, I was sitting down to meditate. I had a pen and paper nearby as I usually do to capture insights, or more realistically, to write down a to-do list, so I can actually relax into meditation. I realized before closing my eyes, that I did have a question on my mind, so I simply posed that question: “What can I do with my class tomorrow?” I was truly only focused on the next day’s class, and was unprepared for what happened next.

When I closed my eyes, I literally saw Project H.O.P.E. (helping other people and the earth) unfold before me. I saw my class go to our little local Catholic school (St. Michael School) and conduct interviews: asking students, faculty, and staff about what improvements they would like to see in their school. I then saw us and many others creating a beautiful garden in the front of the school, fixing up the playground, and painting the inside hallways; just simply beautifying a school that did have the extra resources to do so on their own.

My immediate reaction was to say, “Have you lost your mind? I am not doing all this!” But it quickly became clear to me that I would not be doing anything; I just needed to facilitate the process and let it unfold as planned. Moreover, I would have to believe in the power of a “small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” (--Margaret Mead)

I still did not intend to follow through on this ‘crazy’ idea. In fact, I completely dismissed it as unrealistic. However, I did take my class to St. Michael School that week to conduct the interviews and outside analysis for our assessment assignment. When we returned to our class room to debrief the exercise, I was utterly astonished by MY students’ reaction. The first words out of their mouths were, “Dr. D, we HAVE to DO this project! We can’t just go there and get their hopes up and not follow through!” Now is when I began to realize that the divinely-inspired plan I saw in meditation was going to unfold whether I wanted it to or not.

I will never forget that day in the classroom: their eagerness was contagious! They began to brainstorm ideas at once and we had the entire year’s worth of work fleshed during that one class session.

Our intention was to build community relations between our college and their grade school; beautify their school with gardens, murals and playground improvements; and “Pay it Forward” by partnering with the grade school to raise money for another Catholic school in Mississippi that had been entirely wiped out by Hurricane Katrina.

By the end of the day, we had our Kick-off party planned. Within three weeks, we were going to have an ice-cream party at their school, and unfold our ideas for the project. I will never forget Carla getting on her phone right there in the classroom to call Vale Wood Dairy about donating all the ice cream we would need for our event. (I can still see Carly, Moe, and Renee dishing out ice cream that day!)

We wanted to go there bearing gifts so Michelle offered to solicit sports equipment donations from her softball team and the rest of athletics, while Anna quickly researched buying pencils for each student with our two names on them to demonstrate our unity. Without delay, Neil stepped up to organize the equipment we’d need to eventually create these gardens.

In the end, the main Project H.O.P.E. team that worked together for the rest of the year consisted of Michelle, Anna, Neil and myself. By late April of the following year, we had raised over $3000; completed the gardens (we built two-foot high stone garden walls which enclosed two large 9foot by 9foot garden plots); with the art skills of one of the moms, we created an enormous mural which covered an entire hallway; fixed up the playground; organized dozens of students, local community members, faculty and various student groups to participate in the work parties; and finally sent $1000 to Saint Clare School in Mississippi to help rebuild their school.

Throughout the many months of service work, we were sustained by the energy and enthusiasm of that first class that said, ‘hey, we need to DO this!” and that was a call that a few committed citizens could not ignore.
Thanks to all of you former students who still inspire me to this day!

The Great Bread Exchange

When I first moved to Seattle in 1996, I had no idea how daunting it would be to move to an enormous city, 3000 miles from home, and not know a soul. I found a wonderful little one-bedroom bungalow with a spectacular view of the Mt. Rainier and all the Cascade Mountains. This stunning view of nature was truly solace for my soul; however, I longed to have some friendships as well.
So.... I started baking bread: zucchini bread, banana bread, French baguettes, you name it.
I could not wait for the neighbors to welcome me, which might not ever happen in a large anonymous city like Seattle. Instead, every few days, I knocked on a new door and made a new acquaintance. I made my first real friend in Seattle this way, a single mom who lived across the street from me.
I also got to know two of the most interesting women I would ever meet. Two of my neighbors were elderly African American women who lived side by side. One of them, it turns out, was an original Rosie the Riveter. She came all the way to Seattle from the South during World War II to become a welder for the war effort, and never left. Later, she raised her family there.
I visited with these two women regularly and hearing their stories about leaving their homes so far away and making a new life in Seattle made me feel more confident about my own choices. I also got to taste and enjoy some of their bread recipes.
Now, I am not saying it was easy to go door to door with my meager offering of homemade bread. On the contrary, before each outing, I had to ready myself with lots of deep bracing and a little pep talk. But, in the end we all benefited from the great bread exchange: I got to meet my neighbors and make friends, they got to share their stories from their past, and we all got to eat some yummy bread!