Do we need "heroes" or "leaders" to change communities?

[Debra J. Berg]

Heroes inspire us, set new limits, create new visions of what's possible and remind us of the good that is in each of us. When I wrote The Power of One, I referenced the social innovators in it as "heroes" because they certainly fit this description. But they are more than that.. they are leaders, too. And they are people who's time has come. We are living in a difficult time right now. The economy has hit more people than many of those living today can remember. Without a doubt this is a time for both heroes and leaders.. even those not in traditional nonprofit or social service roles.

Leaders are needed to bring us through times of trial and difficulties. They help us go where we sometimes don't want to go but need to for our long-term benefit. Leaders are courageous and forge a new pathway because they have the vision to test unchartered waters when others are too discouraged, fearful, or blinded by the status quo to try. The pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change, but the leader adjusts the sails. It's not enough to be optimistic. It takes strategy, planning, vision, and action to be a leader .And, right now it takes a heart for helping others.

If you're visiting this site (NICENetwork.ning.com) or the www.NICENetwork.org site for the first time, you'll get a brief overview of the heroes and leaders of The New Civic America. To gain a more complete understanding of this trend and the people behind it, I encourage you to read The Power of One and have your eyes opened to what's really going on below the media radar. It will give you great hope in this time of uncertainty. You and I are capable of great things. Just like these heroes, if we step out on faith and pull together now, we can share what's working in our communities and country and become the leaders needed to help those who are experiencing tough times. Anyone is capable of leadership if their belief in a cause is strong enough. You can do it!

[Debra J. Berg]

Hmm. the link to the site didn't come through for Kiwanis. It's
https://www.kiwanisone.org/Pages/Resources/default.aspx?PageID=223

Anyone can apply to be a member of Kiwanis and their sole mission is to help youth in the community. This gives me hope after my blog post today:-)

[Debra J. Berg]

Good news! As a Kiwanis member I learned that they are partnering with Boys and Girls Clubs at the national and local level. Here's the link to their site on the topic with suggestions on what to do in communities together: .
Also, here's what they suggest to Kiwanians on Mentoring:

Sponsor a Power Hour—an interactive after-school program that gives Boys & Girls Club members ages 6-17 access to tutoring and help with homework.
Serve as tutors.
Grant funds to local clubs.
Sponsor volunteers.
Provide snacks.
Host a barbecue or ice cream social.

I'm going to make this suggestion to our president at the next opportunity.

[Daniel Bassill]

JA has a great network of corporate sponsors and volunteers, but as far as I know they do not have a strategy of enlisting these volunteers or companies in strategies that support other volunteer-based programs in a city, other than their own.

This is one of the shortfalls of the non profit sector. None of us can solve all of the needs in a community, or in a child''s life on our own, but because of the constant competition for resources, very few non profits think of the big picture blueprint showing all needed services that need volunteers and funding, or take action that expand the range of support their sponsors donate to beyond their own organizations.

In the end, this reduces the overall impact of helping kids to careers, although it does help some organizations stay funded in their role for a long time.

If you're connected to JA, BBBS, Boys & Girls Clubs, etc. in your own community and you can convince them to join together at certain times of the year in efforts that get business volunteers and donors to shop for places to get involved in your community, based on where the need is, and who the programs are in those areas who need volunteers and dollars, this would go a long way toward unleashing a flow of business resources that now only land in certain places.

[Debra J. Berg]

Richard, I was thinking about your desire to help youth on a track to prison (or welfare). Many of these types of kids are from heavy drug-use families, minorities, and are written off by the system. I don't know if you are a person of faith background, but I did an interview with Tamara Cibis who founded a highly effective program called the Grandparent Home Missions project. It's a very low-cost project to implement and it taps the help from retirees who become "grandparent" role models for kids (after school) offering accountability on homework, pass along faith-based values, and build up their self-esteem by showing love, an interest in helping them develop natural skills, and listen to their problems.. The kids all sign an agreement before they enter the program.

Each home mission may take up to 6 or 7 kids after school. Grandparent model locations (usually their house) offers a snack after school. One has to remember that these kids are coming from rough backgrounds so they may not have had lunch or breakfast. That's really the most expensive part of the program and Tamara received outside donations for these snacks. She also has materials she will send or make available for reproduction at a very low cost. Obviously, those grandparent models need some patience. But it can be very rewarding. It's only a couple of hours after school M-F, but it can make a huge difference. The result in Tamara's 20-year history where she replicated to 11 home missionss was that 1000 children were mentored, The kids all had a 0% truancy rate (compared to 80% for their demographic in the schools!!! And, they ALL graduated!), All found jobs or went to college or tech school after graduation. I calculated that Tamara probably saved the taxpayer $3 billion in future incarceration and welfare costs. The kids all went on to have fairly normal families and pass self-reliant values onto that next generation. The other big thing was how they were taught how to handle discrimination without anger and fighting (this is also where the faith portion of the program comes in). Tamara tapped senior black women who were feeling unneeded in their community so it helped both age groups. You wouldn't necessarily have to use this group as mentors, but you would want to ask her how to engage these youth to take part in the program.

Her program is probaby one of THE most effective low-overhead programs I've ever researched. It was to be replicated by Catholic Charities. I'm not sure to the extent that it is or was. Tamara was a Nazi Germany survivor at the age of 9 and came to the US as an adult and developed a heart for black children discriminated against at school. She launched her program in my hometown, Champaign, IL and is now using her program in New Mexico to the Native American community in her semi-retirement there. We still email one another occasionally. If you are interested at all, I can put you in touch with her. Her story is chronicled in The Power of One. Feel free to chat with me more offline if you like.

[Debra J. Berg]

Dan ... great idea about companies who are reaching youth with career-related mentoring. As I expand my social networking outreach, I will definitely keep that in mind. I twould seem that companies would want to get their message out there to younger age groups than to wait until they reach college age. It's a new way of thinking for most companies, I'm sure, but I can't imagine those that already have kids as an audience aren't doing it or open to it in some way. I wonder if Junior Achievement doesn't already have connections with companies who do this? Some volunteers for JA probably work for or represent companies who have youth mentoring in their cause-related marketing strategies.

[Daniel Bassill]

I use visualizations to express some of my ideas, and this map shows support kids need from pre school through first job. For most kids, this support is informal and comes from family, neighborhood, community, etc. However, for other kids such as those living in high poverty, or without parents, the support system needs to be created if it is to exist.

I try to focus people on this because it shows that support can be given by those who "mentor, coach, teach, etc" as they "push" kids to make the types of decisions that we know will lead them to great futures. However, the chart also shows a role of businesses, colleges, faith groups, to use their resources in "pulling" kids through school and into jobs and adult responsibilities.

I feel that as kids get older they are more influenced by peers and economic issues than by parents, mentors and teachers. Thus, we need business to step up with a variety of age-appropriate job and career related programs that start influencing kids as early as middle school. Where such programs exist, they could be the type of support needed for college age youth, who don't have the strong family or community networking connections that other kids might have.

I suspect there are many companies providing this type of support, but I don't know of any place on the internet that is archiving examples of the work these companies are doing, and showing what kids are being reached and what communities are being served. Maybe Power of One can encourage submissions of such ideas to this forum.

[Debra J. Berg]

Richard
I don't know if there is a program like you're considering for foster care youth. I do know a few people in the field I could ask. I'm wondering if they're with a set of foster parents and not on their own yet if that's something that would be allowed by the current system. I really like the idea of mentoring college age foster kids like the ages of my daughters. There are so many issues they're grappling with and not to have parents to guide them would make life a real struggle.

I also really like your idea of The Power of One groups in communities! What a great concept and I'm ashamed I haven't thought of it before. I don't know the specifics of how one would launch the idea, but if we put our heads together, we might find a way to get it going. Certainly, if man can launch a space shuttle we should be able to launch anything. (see my InspireUNow blog from Sunday. We even have a book everyone can follow to get started:-0

[Richard Allen Lewis]

Let me share with the network a quote by Werner Erhard of that EST intent to so make the world work...
"Heroes are orginary men and women who dare to see and meet the call of a possibility bigger than themselves.
Breakthroughs are created by heroes, by men and women who will still stand for the result while it's still only a possibility - people who are willing to create the path to the result while others are willing to create the path to the result while others are still squabbling about the right path and arguing about the right answers - people
who will act to make possibility real"
For sure that speaks to this site: and it's but shared as The Power of One so could be then built into the process as a face to face local monthly social networking strategy...county wide and always bring people together knowing they were so connected to a group of individuals seeking commUnity sourced by that
vison...as I shared today: Wells Fargo so created their first theme for community service as:
"It takes but one to make a difference! Be the one!
The Power of One is to know that as that White House Initiative so is a theme to build on:
Is our Leave No Child Behind new Sec. so builds on it...The White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.
"Yes I Can!" and that theme is picked up by all children in that their vision and dreams can become reality.
That simple idea of mentoring to youth with no parents so opened up for me a possibility for those now on that
track to prison....a mentor who can come from for example the Big Brothers and Sister's to which markets it
program as mentoring. Is there any program like that now? My insight would be to so bring this to the court
school leadership in my own community as a possibility.

[Debra J. Berg]

That's a great point Dan. I remember pondering that one when I wrote my book and actually focused on it in the prologue. From my interviews with civic entrepreneurs, I do think the leadership quality grows with the success of an initiative, but one has to have the characteristic of courage and vision, part of every leader, to step out against the odds in the first place. It takes a lot of tenacity and belief in oneself to even begin. But a heroic person (which doesn't mean that they're necessarily fearless by the way) acts to help others when logic says, "why try?" There are the heroes of 9/11 who acted spontaneously because they had the training fitting with their professions. But were they all leaders? Some were and some weren't by definition of their job descriptions.

To diverge a bit, we often don't put the label "hero" on someone who hasn't received recognition in newspaper headlines. But quite often, depending on the type of initiative, I can think of many civic entrepreneurs who've had their lives threatened to achieve their goals so, they can certainly be considered heroic.

As I was trying to prepare the reader for what my book was about through the prologue, I wanted to shed more light on these "lesser known" individuals and give them value to the reader as heroes. They work behind the scenes to invent a solution to a major social problem but their names will never appear in the history books. Much like the tree in the forest, if someone isn't there to record what they do, it may seem to us that their lives never had an impact. Thankfully, civic entrepreneurs, while doing what they do in obscurity, focus on their missions, not on recognition. They're focused on giving and refining their initiatives. But a lack of recognition certainly makes them no less heroic. For example, a collectable car parked in a garage for decades is no less valuable than one that is always on display. Interviewing social innovators for The Power of One was my way of featuring people who are seldom acknowledged for the amazing social enterprises they contribute to society. But the challenge was to get them to talk about themselves and how they did it. Part of the reason we don't learn about them is that self-promotion is not in their nature. Only when I explained that people will relate more to them than the institutional name of their initiative did they say, "oh, ok".

Rachel Ramen's quote, "There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it" works here too. This site, my book, and my talks are "the mirror" so that we can educate others and replicate what you and other civic/social entrepreneurs are doing. That's also why NICE will bring two leaders/heroes out of obscurity and provide two recognition awards a year through press releases to the public.

Thanks Dan for prodding this discussion. Sorry, I got a bit windy here :-)

[Daniel Bassill]

I wonder which comes first a) people who for some reason or another see a problem and begin to try to fix it, and then find they can't do it alone, so say "join me"; or b) some natural form of leadership, or "hero" quality within themselves that comes to the front in times of need.

I think it is only in hind site that we recognize people as leaders, or heroes, after they have done the hard work of getting people to follow them and their ideas. I suspect that for everyone who is given recognition as a "hero", there have been many more people doing the same work in obscurity.

We do need more people to take on these big and little tasks that earn some the "hero" and "leader" tag.