The Amazons have returned from Ethiopia and we are very happy to have Fran and Kath back after we’ve heard about their horseback riding adventure story as well as this: “… and then we were in the cab and all of a sudden the car filled up with smoke and I politely asked the driver ‘Sir, could it be possible that your car is actually on fire?’ followed by coughing and a ‘Fran, let’s get out of here!’ [exhausted pause of still freaked out narrator] … Finally, we hiked the rest of the way. Now guys, how was Bern?”

Well, how was Bern? As this is one of the most exciting cities in the world, Kath and Fran’s story is nothing compared to what the rest of us has been through!

Gaby has been conquering the endless jungle of CAPs applications and will have the final list of CAPs on 4 October. If you have any questions, just drop her a line.

Matt has finally released the famous Sachertorte from its box that he brought from Vienna. We have to admit that this was a battle which the cake lost in the end – it just didn’t have a chance against the force of six passionate chocolate cravers.

Zahid and I have been on a mission to the One Young World press conference in Zurich. Has anyone of you been to last year’s One Young World event in London and want to share their experience?

Yesterday and today all of us were struggling with wild animals called Monitoring & Evaluation. We have a very skilled tamer from the UK who helps us to sharpen our view of how to evaluate the success of the Global Changemakers programme. All of you who’ve done projects themselves know how important that part is and that monitoring the advances of a project is essential to a projects success.

Lastly and out of curiosity, I want to pass on the question we were asked on Monday morning (and I have to say, it is a big question especially on a Monday morning!): “What does success look like for you personally and where do you see yourself in five years’ time?”

Being active in your community brings with it enormous opportunities, but some things can make it all seem too much. Here is how to get past them.

The last year of my life has been simply incredible.

After stepping away from an organization I helped create and moving overseas a year ago I haven’t looked back.

While the opportunities have been endless that doesn’t mean it was the smoothest of journeys. It has been full of exhilarating highs and exasperating lows.

Standing here today I could not have possibly imagined the things I have been so lucky to be a part of or help achieve. None of it would have been possible though without a strong support network and a focus on simply taking care of one’s self at the end of the day.

The last time I wrote exclusively for this blog was on Ten Lessons of Youth Activism which dealt with how you can best create change in your community. So in that flavor I have tried to encapsulate another ten focusing on those that perhaps will help you deal with the more challenging aspects of becoming involved in society.

So here we go:

1.     Manage perceptions & expectations
People will form impressions of you before they meet you and not always in a good way, so seek to challenge them or they will just upset you and your work.

For example, I am commonly perceived as a rich, private schooled, collar-wearing, wannabe politician and in many ways this hurts my cause as it is often mischaracterized as me being opportunistic and ruthlessly ambitious.

But I love telling people that I actually grew up on an isolated farm without electricity for 16-years, went to a small public school, live mostly off student allowances at the moment, have no idea what I want to do for a career and am a tragic romantic!

Be conscious of your narrative and how you present yourself. Don’t shy away from being yourself; just be confident in expressing who you really are as well. And don’t negatively stereotype – I know plenty of rich, private schooled, etc people doing amazing things in the world!

Also understand that because you are active and doing well in one aspect of your life people will expect this in others and that won’t be possible. For instance in university it is often hard to maintain the highest grades if you are constantly doing other things, but your professors might expect so if they know you are also working in your field of study so help them understand the trade-offs.   

2.     Spend time with family, partners & friends
Family is the most important thing in the world. The sooner you realize that the better generally. For me it took a while.

While my family are interested in what I do, they really have very little idea but this is a good thing. Nothing grounds you quicker than spending time as a son or daughter again. No matter how old you are try and go on family holidays still and always call home once a week regardless of where you are!

In the same way, girlfriends/boyfriends can be great for grounding you and providing the emotional partnership and companionship you need to keep going or simply to enjoy life. Not that I speak with much credentials here!

3.     Do things spontaneously
Believe it or not it is actually not common for people our age to not have an Outlook appointment for a coffee date…or at least so I am told.

No matter how good you get at diary management and how busy life gets – or appears to get as a result of it – never lose the knack of spontaneity. Meet up with friends even if it hasn’t been organized days beforehand, go away for the weekend at short notice, see movies just because you feel like it, and call people up just to say hello.

4.     Set aside time to keep in touch
It is so easy to lost contact with close friends these days. Most of my dearest friends live overseas from Toronto to London to San Francisco which can make things difficult but I try quite hard. I use social media like Facebook more than I should because it helps facilitate keeping in touch and knowing what they are up to and where they are.

I try and write or respond to two or three long personal emails a week, make a handful of hour-long phone calls or have Skype dates, and write a card or letter every time I catch a flight during take-off and landing when the laptop has to be off!

Try and develop little tricks or routines like this to make sure that the friends you make at conferences and so forth actually endure, because they often will become the closest and most beautiful friendships.

5.     Dealing with the travel
Understand that traveling for different opportunities is not always as glamorous as it seems and try to brighten it along the way.

Just because you are invited to a conference doesn’t mean it is “all expenses paid”. Often the little discretionary money you have goes towards a snack at the airport, buying a meal because you are not home and can’t cook, or covering a taxi ride because you don’t know the local transport system.

I will have flown on over 100 international flights in twelve-months by the end of this year. Most of them will have been in economy, and about a whole month of the year will have been spent awkwardly sleeping at 35,000 feet, feeling almost constantly jetlagged.

I will have also spent around 200 nights away from home by the end of this year, most of them alone and often working late into the night on an assignment or other piece of work somewhere in the world. Just because you are away doesn’t mean you are on holiday.  A lot of times when I travel I skip meals because I can’t afford to eat out so frequently.

But I am incredibly blessed to have the opportunities I do and there is always a bright side!

The trick I find is to always see and stay with friends as much as you can wherever you are. Not only do you go into a warm caring environment that is someone’s home, but you avoid loneliness and have a great time in the process. By also taking a day on the sidelines of things to see a city you haven’t been to or so you can catch up with friends you give yourself lots of “mini holidays” throughout the year that will constantly recharge the batteries!

6.     Get yourself a hobby
At the end of the day it is important to just be able to stop what you are doing for an hour or preferably more. Even if you aren’t on your laptop you are probably monitoring email on your phone or thinking about something related to your community work. A good way to do this is to get a hobby that removes you entirely from that realm of life.

For me I love learning to fly small planes and partly out of sheer terror when I get off the ground behind the controls I forget about everything else and feel like a small boy again gliding through the clouds. Returning to the family farm I mentioned earlier is also a love of mine as I get away from everything and can race cars around the rally tracks near the property. More recently I’ve become slightly obsessed with opening an organic wine bar/café/bakery/deli one day in multiple locations around the world. But the reading, sketching and thinking I do for this I find very therapeutic, if slightly worrisome about my state of mind!

7.     Seek out mentors
One of the most helpful resources to me has been some very supportive older mentors, both formal and informal. While some of the relationships have formed naturally and are simply people I look up to and respect who are always open and honest with me, others I have approached and asked if they could be a mentor. Each help me in different ways – for example, one is very helpful on being active at a young age, while another helps give me a balancing female perspective!

For the most part we connect for coffee or a meal every month or so and try to focus on the challenges I am facing right now but also importantly my direction for the future. Depending on their position in society some are more available than others but I am always so grateful for their support, whether it is sending me an opportunity, helping me get to someone or simply telling me when I need to slow down.

If there is somebody in society you really look up to and admire you should ask them to mentor you. It doesn’t matter whether they are your Prime Minister, President or just someone you know who you think might have faced some of the same challenges you do. Be brave and ask them when you get in their diary, you’ll be surprised how open they are.

8.     Get away from technology
Part of becoming involved in your community seems to be the reality that you will become surgically attached to your email and phone. But realize that life goes on.

It is not uncommon to receive several hundred emails a day, ranging from some that require one word responses to those that require more thoughtful remarks.

Try and have one day a week when you don’t do any email at all. Go away with just your mobile device and no laptop and then just allocate yourself a day to catch up when you return for the stuff that requires research, consideration or more than typing a short response.

Always avoid looking at your phone’s inbox during breaks at dinners and so forth – it will only disrupt your evening.

9.     Good emails & bad emails
Someone once suggested to me to create a folder in my email client that I file correspondence in that makes me smile. It sounds corny but it really works. In an age where the vast majority of emails will not be positive reinforcement or personal notes, it helps to appreciate those that stand out.

In my folder I have special notes from friends, those out of the blue from others that are particularly supportive, and some which help me realize that it is all worth it and bigger than just me.

At some point the chances are you will probably receive a hurtful email too. I’ve had quite a few and every time an article of mine is published generally some will come through along with the string of comments on the online version of the piece of course. I once had someone create an account that in itself was an insult towards me! Another time someone posted quite a polite response to an article saying “only your mother would be proud of this” to which my mum also commented “thanks I am”, which I thought was priceless!

If you get a hurtful email it helps to understand whether the author is trying to provide some advice or just being blindly abusive. I try to gain an appreciation for what has motivated such an emotive response directed at me and whether there is anything personally I can change that could alter that feeling in others in the future.

If I think there might be a lesson in it for me I generally reply along the lines of “Thanks, you raise some good points actually, if you have any specific examples I think that would be helpful for me”. This also helps you perhaps narrow down who it might be!

If I think it is just outright abusive I generally reply along the lines of “Thanks, I hope that made you feel better”. This at least shows them you are a human being with real feelings and emotions too.

Another big lesson is to understand that not every email needs to be responded to. Sometimes it sends a more powerful message not to respond.

10.  See a counselor
Get past the stigma and go and see a counselor. If you are at university or school the chances are it is probably covered in your health plan or under your insurance if you have it. You don’t need to have anything “wrong” with you, but it is good to have a professional to share your successes and challenges with. They will be able to give you many more lists like this to help!

—
Thom Woodroofe is a Global Changemaker from Australia. Follow him on Twitter @thomwoodroofe

On Mondays, http://www.global-changemakers.net turns into Speakers’      Corner: members of the network and community have their say on their       work and the issues that concern them.

Timeless Resilience

I hail from the ancient un-colonized tea-pot looking enclosure that defines blackness in its purest form, where hunting game is not a game but a way of life. Chasing behind the game each day for some game meat for dinner. Using decades old tactics passed on from the generations past to defend the inherited beautiful land which has attracted pink, red and white folks from all races living life on different ends of the earth with its numerous precious stones whose value was unknown to my late great grandfather. The same stones whose love has made me and my brother enemies for life. The same stones for whose love I killed, lied and conspired and the same stones I lost to the state when it found me illegally in possession of the glass-like things that have blood in their mid-point, the same glass-like things that made my world go round for a moment when that Nigerian man bought a couple which I had risked my life for, for a couple of one hundred dollar bills. But it’s just the memory that remains at the back of my mind of what I am, what I was and what I will be, for these are the times, the realities I have to face.

I am centuries if not millenniums old. I was once free to explore the green stretches of savanna land in an African Summer, the bare trees in winter, hunt the game as I so wished, grow those crops brought bt those Portuguese men with no one pointing a metal stick with holes in it to my head until the men of no knees came. They threatened my homefolks and took me to be their slave. I worked like I would get a US$10 000 pay check at the end of the month, working on those plantations they called ‘prazos’ like I had a family to feed, like the whole community depended on me and I had to, like my mother’s life depended on my working myself to death. I had to respect my baas like he was my own father, calling him names fit for God only who created me out of fear of that which he constantly held in his right hand which had the power of life and death.

What hurt me the most is, I had to be a slave to a foreign man who had suddenly become feared for he thought himself a superior man with a ’superior color’ and the power that comes with it. He brought those niceties which were beautiful to look at, sweet on the tongue and soft on the hands. The niceties which came for a price a hundred times more than normal were few and suddenly they became a necessity we could not do without. What a curse! Conflict came to be. We had had a peaceful lifestyle amongst ourselves but now it was all gone because of those things which we exchanged for our precious gold. The spirit of brotherhood faded slowly and eventually brothers turned against brothers. Killing and enslaving fellow black brothers from some other mothers because they had inherited a capitalist state of mind and a white man’s heart, all this for self enrichment. Kings were Kings no more but slave masters who were responsible for the capturing of the slaves.  

As my eyes were opened to the realities that faced me, I fought for liberty. I fought with a brave heart, with my life on the line for the sake of my fellow black men, for my mother to put on a smile on her face one more time and not to cry herself to death every time I’m arrested for being a black man with an ambition to be a freeman, for my mother to sleep peacefully not like a dog that sleeps like a security guard who wakes up at the lowest decibel. I fought with so much faith and one day tables turned and my life took a turn flowing in directions I would gladly flow with it. I did not have dead faith after all. I eventually did bring happiness to my mama.

But the optimism and the astrological wave that brought good things did not last for long as the drought hit. The dams, the fields, the service stations, the shops and the bans all ran dry. My mother again would walk eight miles with that left leg that always gives her problems to that shop by the roadside on your way out of town where they sold mealie-meal once in a blue moon. I thought hard to myself, I thought I had brought happiness to my people but it seemed so clearly that I had taken them back centuries when there was no rain for three and a half years.

It was bad enough to see my father sleep in his car for three consecutive nights at a queue that stretched from a popular 6th avenue service station going round the aging city blocks like an anaconda squeezing life out of an unfortunate victim who has fallen prey. All I could do was watch for this was the freedom which I had brought to my mother and father. They were beginning to enjoy the fruits of all my years of fighting in the bushes that had sheltered all my ancestors.

My little brothers and sisters began to drop out of school with no high school certificates nor college degrees. Schools had either become playgrounds or had been closed because my mother and father could no longer afford to send my little brothers and sisters to school because inflation was hitting an all time high of a million plus percentage. My older sisters at varsity saw it better to fall back on those shameless pot-bellied, Benz-driving white headed men old enough to be their fathers just so as not to be chased back home for non-payment of fees.  At the same time as girls they could not do without food supplies and clothing in this year where fashion trends change on a daily basis. All I could do was watch and today I do not have them. They died together with the men who were attracted by them as nectar does to the bees. They succumbed to the deadly virus that has to date claimed millions of my fellow black men. 

In all the years of my so far infinite life I have concluded that I am black to the core, ageless, timeless and resilient. I live on through thick and thin, there, where there is no bread, for men shall not live on bread alone, where there is no fuel for I was made to walk the walk for hundreds of miles. I live on, where prices go up every day for I do not have to worry about tomorrow. I live on where there is no power, where there is no water for that is what I was made for-to live on. Behind the blackness is a timeless resilience, endurance beyond human expectations. I am black call me a race, a nation, a continent or a man. The bottom line is- I live on. They tried to break me, enslaving me, taking my liberty away from me, separating me from my family, taking me across nations to new lands I had never known, working me out beyond humane limits. My hands, my feet cracked till they cracked no-more. My skin developed a layer resistant to the whipping I had to endure on every black day of my life because I am black and my resilience is timeless.

- Lovemore Mafukure, Zimbabwe

Are you a member of the http://www.global-changemakers.net  community? Do you have something to say?  Send your blog entries to me!      The best entries will be published on Mondays’ Speakers’ Corner.    (Blog   entries should be submitted as Word documents. Please attach   any   pictures you have separately.)

Starting today, http://www.global-changemakers.net will collect incoming opportunities during the week and post them on Saturday. Any urgent opportunities with a short deadline will still be posted as they come in.


Nonprofit Leaders: Apply for a Paid, Overseas Fellowship Position with Atlas Corps (deadline: 15 October)
(Sent in by Italo, Global Changemaker from Brazil)

Education Without Borders 2011: the call for papers for the 6th EWB conference is now open (deadline: 30 October)
(Sent in by Uyen, Global Changemaker from Vietnam)


Have you heard about any interesting opportunities? Do you know about foundations giving grants to young social entrepreneurs and community activists? Is an organisation looking for youth representatives? We’re happy to post any opportunities of interest to the Global Changemakers community. Just send them to [email protected]!

Sillamäe Society for Child Welfare is issuing a Call for Partnerships for three European level projects:

1. “European Youth Meeting for Sustainable Development 2011”, to be held in Tallinn to be funded by the Council of Europe, Government and Business.

2. “Constructing Dialogue: Youth, Culture and Policy”: publication on intercultural dialogue, conflict resolution and tolerance in print and web forms to be funded by the Council of Europe and partners.

3. “....TBA......”: culture project involving the creation of a performance on intercultural communication to be funded by the European Commission Culture 2007-2013 Strand 1.2.1.

All details and information on the three projects can be found in the linked documents for each project. When you feel a project fits your organisation’s programme or activities and wish to be our partner in one or more of these projects send the following to [email protected]:

For Council of Europe projects: by providing two documents- one organisation’s overview, the other an official letter detailing motivation, signed and scanned. In the first describe your organisation, its aims, structure and also give contact information. In the second describe the rationale and added value of working together and your involvement in the process (which could be roughly running the call for participants, helping design the agenda, contributing to the facilitators and experts team for workshops and sessions).

For the Culture Programme: one document that details: the name (and acronym), registered address, internet address, telephone, person authorized to represent the organisation in legally binding documents (name, e-mail and role in the organisation), contact person (name, e-mail, telephone and role in the organisation), status, type of the organisation, aims and activities of the organisation and the organisation’s potential role in the project (looking for participants, creative team for your countries performance, contributing to design and outcomes of the overall project).

The final deadline for responses is 27th of September 2010.

Vassili Golikov

Executive Director of SSCW

www.sscw.ee

[email protected]