Sunday, September 26, 2010

JoAnn and Kailasa in concert (video in next post)



JoAnn and Kailasa were two of the performers in the Benefit Concert for Free the Slaves organized by Desiree Dennis as her senior project at State College High School. Desiree and her mom Terri and sister Emily give voice lessons and all their students had the privilege of singing in this wonderful concert. There were about 25 students who sang a variety songs. The benefit also included an art auction of original art by the high school students.
JoAnn and Kailasa performed two of JoAnn's original songs. JoAnn sang "Blue Twilight" while Kailasa danced a solo dance. Then they sang "The Heartbeat" with the Dennis family and several other students. Inspired by the Free the Slaves organization and their work in countries around the world to end slavery, JoAnn wrote "The Heartbeat" for this concert. She wrote "Blue Twilight" last winter and Kailasa contributed some lyrics. Desiree Dennis arranged the music for both pieces, while Emily played the violin for Blue Twilight. Thank you so much to the Dennis family!!!!!
Many, many of JoAnn & Kailasa's family and friends were able to come to the concert and they are so thankful to everyone who supported them! Love to you all.

JoAnn and Kailasa -- "Blue Twilight"

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Keeping Vigil: an Act of Supreme Love

Tonight my sweet son got sick right as he was going to bed. My husband and I were both there to help him and tuck him back in. We went to bed soon thereafter, but I could not sleep. Something inside would not let me fall into slumber. On the couch in the living room, I began to pray for his healing and to speed his recovery. Not long after, I heard him get up again. I was there-- right away-- rubbing his back, soothing him. I had been keeping vigil and arrived just in time.
What could be more comforting for a child than knowing that his mother is there for him, keeping a watchful eye over him as he tries to rest? What could aid his full healing more than knowing that his beloved parents are there to support him when he feels so sick?

I once went on a ten-day Deep Ecology retreat in the woods with 150 other seekers. Deep Ecology is a philosophy that teaches us that we are all (humans and non-humans) interconnected in a vast web of life. Deep Ecology is a deep, long-range view of ecology as opposed to short-sighted and shallow views of the environment.  During this extended week of workshops and experiences, one night, we kept a vigil for the earth. About 25 of us chose to stay up all night, talking around a bonfire until the sun rose. At each hour of the night, we would stop and pray for whatever area of the earth was experiencing dawn at that moment. It was a beautiful event, a life transforming moment. Out of all the workshops and discussions and lectures I was a part of that week, I felt this was the most significant episode of them all.

There is something special, vital, critical, yet indescribable about keeping vigil over someone you love. It is an experience worth having, an act of supreme love.
 Penn State students hold a prayer vigil for victims of sexual abuse in November 2011. Over 10,000 people came.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Guerilla Gardening


I almost did guerilla gardening yesterday. Guerilla gardening is putting flowers or plants in surprising or unexpected places, where they show up suddenly without warning. There are guerilla gardening organizations all over the world; people taking over public spaces with a bit of beauty, whimsy, function, and/or food. It is simply one easy and fun way to 'pay it forward' and make this world a better not to mention more aesthetically pleasing place.


To engage in guerilla gardening, you being by coming across an orphaned piece of land, or perhaps some corporate piece of land that could really use some bright pink flowers! Then you need to plan your mission, find some lucky blooms and under cover of dark, or at a minimum with anonymity, go and plant them. Better yet, plant wildflower seeds in spring and watch them transform a small parcel of land. What I love about guerilla gardening is that it does require stealth, occuring often in the light of the moon. Virtually no one needs to know
your good deed, but everyone whose heart is kindled by an unexpectedly tended patch of earth will benefit.

So, I said I almost got to do guerilla gardening yesterday. I walk or drive down a certain road in my neighborhood every day and saw two large flowers that had nothing in them, even though the rest of the neighborhood is teeming with abundant color. I also ran into that particular neighbor that day and she seemed down to me (I might have been projecting here!)  So I went out to the store with a plan to fill those planters on my way home, as long as their car was missing from the driveway. Happily I went and picked out a 6-pack of the brightest flowers I could find. But on the way home, I saw .....the planters had just been planted! Maybe some other neighbor beat me to it. I guess I'll just have to find another spot for my surprise strike!

Friday, May 21, 2010

Prescription for Joy

Dr. D's Prescription for Joy
1) “Road Trip it”: “Sometimes you have to journey out to journey within.”

a. Go somewhere warm; see ‘big nature.’
b. Drive across the country- twice. Sleep outside when possible.

2) Nurture your relationship with Nature:
a. Hike, bike, walk, kayak, ski, etc.
b. Be in silence.
c. Skip school or work & be in nature when no one else is.
d. Notice nature- even from your window.


3) Serve other, serve others, serve others:
a. As much as humanly possible, share your financial, emotional, physical resources with others.
b. Schedule it into your week, like any other event.
c. More than anything else, this will open up the door to joy.

4) CREATE/ENJOY music, the arts:
a. Concerts-Ipod-Cds: Listen, dance, move.
b. Sing in the shower.
c. Join the world drumming ensemble- make music with others.

5) Play like a kid/ play with kids:
a. Ride a swing & swing REALLY high.
b. Volunteer with children.
c. Color with crayons.
d. Get a pick-up game of football, Frisbee, baseball together

6) Get healthy- stay healthy.
a. hydrate like crazy; ten glasses a day is not too many.
b. eat whole foods; eat something that looks like what it is called: fruit not fruit roll-ups.

7) BREATHE, SURRENDER to God, PRAY
a. Learn to notice your breath and posture all day long. Take time to pause.
a. PRAY DAILY- fortify yourself each day like a daily vitamin.
b. Start slow (Pray 5 minutes a day); then slow down (2 min a day); work your way up slowly.
c. Make it a part of your essential daily planning.

8) Go “Unplugged”
a. Go tech free for a day;
b. shut off your cell phone, laptop, Ipod, etc. just for one day. See how you feel. Do it again.

9) More fun, less stuff
a. Give up consuming for awhile
b. Give your stuff away.

10) Take a fast from the Fast Lane!! Take a day off; schedule it now.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

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.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

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.