Archive for December, 2008

New Years Rock Out!

Published
by
Hildy
on December 31, 2008
in Monday Morning Rock Out! and My Inspiration
. 1 Comment

There are Mondays when we need a Rock Out to get us through the week. And if New Years Day is anything, it is the Monday of the year – the start of whatever is to come. This very special Rock Out is therefore dedicated to the entirety of 2009.

I must confess that at the Community-Driven Institute, we are so excited about 2009, we can hardly contain ourselves!

In the next few weeks, we will be releasing The Pollyanna Principles. In the next few months, we will hold our first on-site classes for Community-Driven Consultants.

And throughout the whole year, we will be providing tons more opportunities to learn via teleclasses, listservs (yes, we still love good old-fashioned listservs!), via social media like Twitter and Facebook – and especially via live interaction in communities. And that’s just the beginning!

Everything we do this year will be focused on the singular objective of teaching the Community Benefit Sector how to create a more humane, vibrant, healthy resilient world.

With that vision in mind, what better way to welcome 2009 than to welcome you to the Library of Human Imagination.

Jay Walker, creator of (among other things) Priceline.com, is the holder of more than 200 patents. He knows in every fiber of his being that unless something is scientifically impossible, it is absolutely possible. He knows that there is a vast difference between what is simply “unlikely” and what is truly impossible.

That sense of possibility is our wish for you in this year ahead. Let’s embrace what is possible, and let’s find every means we can to bring those possibilities to reality. It may be unlikely, but so was our having an African American president. So was our traveling to the moon.

This year, let’s reach for what is possible. If we are reaching together, we will have accomplished something extraordinary just in taking those first few steps.

To each and every one of you, our very warmest wishes for a New Year filled with life’s possibilities, and, more importantly, the willingness to embrace them when they show up at your door.

Photo credit: Me. “Millennium Sunset” was taken on New Years Eve 1999, the last sunset of the millennium.

Letter from Palestine #4

Published
by
Hildy
on December 29, 2008
in Changing the World and Letters from Palestine
. 3 Comments

Long-time readers here at Creating the Future have come to know Nora Lester Murad, who has graciously shared her Letters from Palestine here from time to time.

As war rages between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, I know you will want to know how Nora and her family are doing. Here is what she told me this morning:

It’s just terrible. Indescribable. Inhuman.

My husband was supposed to leave for Gaza this morning (he goes every other week), but obviously he can’t go now. He’s next to me, just calling people one after the other. They are so scared. Bombs are exploding around them. They can’t go to the store to get food, and anyway, the stores are closed. No electricity, water. Frightening.

We all just pray it will stop soon, but all indications are that it will not. What will it take for the world to cry out?

Thanks for asking about us. (And thanks for your contribution.) It really means a lot.

This is what it is like to live in a war zone. It is not about who is politically right or wrong, or who started bombing first. It is about real people trying to live real lives.

That is why, as the year draws to a close, I am going to do something I have never used this blog to do. I am going to ask you to please help Nora’s organization – Dalia Association - by clicking here to donate. Even just $10 will help.

If you are not familiar with Dalia Association, they are Palestine’s only community foundation, working to build strong communities from inside Palestine, without the external political agendas that so often accompany “international aid.”

To share why I am so passionate about the work they are doing, I want to share the following, quoted from their annual letter:

Imagine thousands of Palestinians in villages, refugee camps and cities, with tremendous ideas and energy, taking initiative to improve their local communities and the world. It shouldn’t be hard to imagine because, in fact, this happens every single day.

Unfortunately, many of these grassroots community groups are not as effective as they could be. They often lack sufficient expertise and funds, or they get exhausted working under the challenges of occupation and colonization.

These groups deserve an advocate to believe in them, fight for them, advise them, and work alongside them. Dalia Association is that advocate.

As the first and only Palestinian community foundation, Dalia Association helps grassroots community groups to mobilize their own resources and capacities. We network them to experts and donors. We provide small scale funding, whenever possible. We coach them to improve the quality and professionalism of their work. We teach them how to become more sustainable, and we work for the sustainability of the civil society sector as a whole.

In the year 2008, we:
• helped an informal women’s group turn their $7,000 idea into a proposal for a $70,000 beauty salon to train and employ village women – and we secured funding from a donor.
• published research arguing that popular participation in development is a right enshrined in international law, a right which is not being respected by the international aid system.
• facilitated an innovative grant making program in which villagers decided themselves how to invest development resources.
• conducted many financial sustainability assessments and fundraising consultations at no cost to community-based organizations.
• began a project to highlight the creative ways that Palestinians engage in philanthropy in order to dispel the myth that Palestinians are receivers not givers.
• took part in meetings in the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, the United States, and Brazil, putting Palestine on the global philanthropic agenda.

We did this, and much more, because we believe that a thriving civil society is critical to Palestinian social change and sustainable development. And we believe Palestinian civil society can’t thrive as long as it is dependent on international aid.

But the success of Dalia Association is not at all assured. If we want to reduce dependence on international aid, we need every single Palestinian and every friend of Palestinians to become a donor. Your creative ideas, volunteerism, in-kind support, and encouragement have kept us going until now, but we also need money. Every $10, $100 or $1,000 matters. We know how to make a little money go a long way.

With your continued support we are enabling Palestinian-led social change and sustainable development today and for future generations.

We all know from experience around the world that building strong communities is a deterrent to terrorism, violence and war. As we sit and watch the horrors on the TV news, feeling helpless to do anything for those who are fearing for their own survival as their communities are being destroyed, Dalia Association is working every day to build strength in those communities.

In this horrible time of war, in a place where community-building will be such a key to peace-making, please join me in supporting the work of Dalia Association, where truly, every dollar will make a huge difference.

To read the next post in this series, head here.

“Capacity Building” for ALL Community Organizations

Published
by
Hildy
on December 28, 2008
in Changing the World
. 0 Comments

By now, you have probably heard of the initiative that is Change.org.  This is the site where people are submitting their ideas for changing America, to help inform the Obama Administration’s policies.

On behalf of the Community-Driven Institute, I have submitted an idea.

I have proposed that there be infrastructure in all communities across the country, to support Community Benefit Organizations in their work. (Details below).

I believe this is so important to the work we are all doing, that I am using today’s post to ask you to head to www.Change.org and vote for this initiative.  And if you are so inclined, I hope you will pass it along, to encourage others to vote for it as well.  (The deadline for voting is December 31 – this Wednesday – so if you are going to pass it to others, please do so quickly!)

If each and every reader at this blog clicks through to vote for this idea, it will make the first cut. That’s all it would take – if every reader here clicked and voted! So please do so now (or if you want, read below first).

The initiative I have suggested is titled “Infrastructure to Support ALL Community Organizations.” Here is how I described it at www.Change.org:

In every community, no matter how small, Nonprofit / Community Benefit Organizations are working to make that community more healthy, vibrant, and humane. Animal welfare, human services, environmental, arts, education and every issue in between – those efforts make our communities more livable.

To ensure those efforts are strong enough to simultaneously address current problems AND create a better future for our communities, ALL those organizations need help in maintaining strong internal capacity – ongoing education in running the “business” side of their efforts, help with board development and fundraising, support for working cooperatively, etc.

Communities already have infrastructure for our basic needs – police, fire, roads, water, power, sewer. We have infrastructure for schools, libraries, parks, and economic development activities. Regardless of the state of that infrastructure, it at least exists.

Imagine the dramatic results our communities would see if there was also reliable infrastructure for strengthening the work being done by all those many groups, to help build upon and expand the work they are already doing to improve our quality of life!

Those systems might include:
• Systems for organizational education (board development, fundraising, community engagement, planning and evaluation, etc.)
• Systems for facilitating cooperative approaches to community issues
• Systems to facilitate Learning Communities / Communities of Practice
• Systems to facilitate resource sharing between organizations
• Systems for community-wide program evaluation
• Systems for supporting funders in their efforts to improve their communities

Private Community Benefit Organizations have the potential to significantly improve the quality of life in our communities. It only makes sense that there be infrastructure in every community to support those efforts in every way possible.

Once the winners of this round are chosen, the top 10 ideas to emerge out of Round 2 will be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day and will be supported by a national lobbying campaign run by Change.org, MySpace, and other leaders in this sector. So each idea has a real chance at becoming policy!

As the Community-Driven Institute continues to create a movement for changing how the Community Benefit Sector does its work, having infrastructure to support ALL organizations in every community across the country will be a huge help. After reading what is posted at the link, I hope you will agree and click to vote for that initiative.

We are very excited about the possibilities this brings. Win or lose, we will continue to advocate for changes such as this, as we know it is critical to building the strength of our sector.

If anyone has any comments or thoughts about this initiative, I hope you will share them – either below in the comment section here, or in the comment section at Change.org.

But first, please – go vote!

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