In their own words, Women in Hospitality United was “born of the #MeToo movement and the belief that there is an urgent need for evolution” in the hospitality industry. Their mission? To make the workplace safer and more equitable for women and other marginalized people at all parts of the workforce in the hospitality space.
As part of NationSwell Live, we’re amplifying their efforts to assess and meet urgent need amid the COVID-19 crisis. We recently spoke to Kutina Ruhumbika, a member of their board, about how they’ve stepped up to meet the moment and help women in the space. Here’s what they had to say.
NationSwell: Could you please introduce yourself?
Women in Hospitality United’s Kutina Ruhumbika: My name is Kutina Ruhumbika, I’m currently the Vice President of Human Resources with Major Food Group based here in New York City, and I’m on the board of Women in Hospitality United.
Women in Hospitality United was founded during the #MeToo era movement. The founders saw a need for the dialogue around equity in the restaurant industry for women and those that are underrepresented. They saw the need for that dialogue to evolve considerably. And so initially the focus was on equality and equity for women, but it has since evolved to looking at a broader landscape for those that are underrepresented.
NS: How has the COVID-19 crisis impacted the communities you serve?
WiHU: We’re still gathering and fact-finding data to understand, but a lot of the businesses affected are small businesses. Most of them are owned by women, they’re owned by minorities. For so many of them, this is their livelihood. And for so many of them, this is their sole revenue stream. They have employees that are depending on theml. When restaurants are closing, when hotels are closing, and you can’t no support your employees and your community and your families — it’s certainly been devastating. So we’re all looking at ways to support and uplift those communities.
NS: What are some of the ways you’ve taken action?
WiHU: We circulated a survey to better understand the needs of all who are impacted in the populations that we represent. We have a strong Facebook following that’s consistently sharing with us feedback around what’s happening with their peers and with each other. And we’re currently now in the process of work on action steps towards what will be the most impactful. I think now that we’re settling into understanding what this is, it’s clear that this is going to be around for a while. Let’s think of long-term solutions that could have long-term impact.
NS: What have you learned from the survey so far that’s helped you hone how you’ll take action?
WiHU: Not just the survey — the conversations. We are women. We talk to each other, we talk to like-minded individuals and we’re hearing some common things. Some of it is the fear of what’s next. Fears around how their business will thrive, or how they’ll bring it back to life. And then I think some of the other things that we’re hearing, like concern from undocumented workers. They are struggling, underrepresented, and because of circumstances, their voices may not be as loud and as bold as others. And so we’re starting to see a common theme there too as well, just in regular day-to-day dialogue.
NS: How can we help?
WiHU: Definitely follow us. We are about to relaunch our Instagram page and all of our social media channels within the next few weeks. We’re about to embark on an incredible journey to raise funds to help support our community team, so look out for that in the next few weeks.
And the dialogue we have with our followers on social media is super important. You know, we just don’t want to just shoot out information; we want to receive. Just listening to the needs of the people that we talk to on a regular basis and understanding what’s happened, the community, what’s happening to our friends across the industry. The more we do, the better we’re able to come up with solutions are impactful for our industry.
NationSwell Live is a one-hour event on June 26, 2020 that will convene organizations like Women in Hospitality United that have been at the frontlines of COVID-19 response for communities with some of the most urgent need. Together, we’ll take meaningful steps towards offering help at a time when so many need it. Find out more here.
Category: Uncategorized
May 2020: NationSwell in the News
We’re proud that the work we’re doing to build a more resilient future is reaching audiences far and wide through some of our nation’s most prestigious newsrooms and magazines. As a valued member of our audience, we wanted to share with you three instances from our recent coverage.
1. “From Military Service to Civilian Leadership” — The Atlantic
In the Atlantic, reporter James Fallows profiles the work NationSwell has done since our founding, praising our team and our ecosystem of partners and Council members for “trying to be part of an answer for America, and of the resilient capacity of citizens in the absence of national leadership.” Read our profile here.
2. “How NationSwell Is Mobilizing Business and Philanthropy to Help Build It Back Better” — Forbes
In Forbes, columnist Afdhel Aziz caught up with NationSwell CEO and founder Greg Behrman for a deep dive on our #BuildItBackBetter initiative, which is convening purpose-driven leaders across sectors to build a society that’s more diverse, equitable, inclusive and resilient than the one COVID-19 disrupted. “We know that it’s challenging to lift our gaze and to think and plan beyond the immediate moment,” Behrman notes in his interview. “But, history shows us that our biggest crises also open up the aperture for paradigmatic change. So, the time is now. ” Read more about our #BuildItBackBetter initiative in Forbes here, and sign up for more information on how you can get involved here.
3. “Paint and a Paintbrush Are Rebuilding Community for Austin’s Homeless” — The Webbys
NationSwell’s original video, “Paint and a Paintbrush…” , received an honor from the Webbys, an annual award celebrating the best of the internet, in the category of Documentary: Longform. “The work represents the very best of what we’ve done so far in our editorial storytelling efforts,” Anthony Smith, NationSwell V.P. of Published Content + Growth, told the team. “I couldn’t be more proud of how producers Sean Ryon and Hallie Steiner told this story, and how it exemplifies our approach of finding human narratives to tell stories of systemic problems and the people getting to work trying to solve them.” Watch the video here.
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We’re looking forward to sharing more with you on a regular basis.
De-Stressing From Social Media Is Easier Than You Think
If you can feel your stress and anxiety levels rising while you use social media, you’re not alone. And even though your feed is completely digital, those negative feelings can actually have an impact on our physical health. Clenched jaws, tightened fists and elevated heart rates are just a few ways that bad experiences with other people on social media can manifest in our bodies.
But a simple mindfulness exercise like inhaling deeply, listening to music or taking a walk while paying attention to your surroundings can help combat that. At a time when social media use is surging due to the COVID-19 lockdown, it has never been more important to take care of yourself IRL while you spend more time online — and that means learning ways to find your center while you scroll.
Watch three social media users put mindfulness exercises to the test in this video.
This was produced in partnership with the Greater Good Science Center and the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust. Learn more about how you can bridge differences in your life here.
Overheard at Council: Supporting Young People Through COVID-19
As adults struggle to understand the impact COVID-19 will have on us and our communities, we have an important opportunity for connection with the young people in our lives. We held an inter-generational conversation designed for adults and teens, ages 13 to 18, with David Shapiro, CEO of MENTOR, Dr. Bruce D. Perry, Senior Fellow of the ChildTrauma Academy, and Dr. Torie Weiston-Serdan, the founder of Youth Mentoring Action Network. Together, we explored the intersectionality of this crisis and how we can best support our young people through it.
In the hope that these might serve you on your mission to make this world a better place, we’re sharing out some of the key moments from our discussion.
Insights:
- You need routine, but you need a different routine right now–start with physical routines, family meal routines, give yourself reflective time (and fill in school and other obligations from there).
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Open conversions with youth are important. They are often underestimated. Honesty, straight facts and education can help.
- The single unifying factor that predicts resilience and the ability to heal from past trauma is connectedness–someone or the people who value you.
Practices:
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Employ youth. Ask them to facilitate webinars as paid work to replace other work that once supported their family.
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Parse experiences into smaller, manageable moments. Having more predictable moments of stress can build resilience.
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When in doubt, reach out. Relational moments will get us through this. Listen to others’ reality.
Recommendations and Resources:
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This report on social emotional learning by Robert Jagers
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Podcast episode that discusses the concept of “weathering” in relationship and the impact on Black communities
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An episode of “Code Switch” on racism and weathering
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Reimagining Youth, an online community with Featured Innovator Dr. Torie Weiston-Serdan
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Tips for mentors switching to text-based communication with mentees.
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Stress, Distress & Trauma Series with Dr. Bruce Perry
The Opportunity Network’s AiLun Ku on the Importance of ‘Unstoppable Learning’
As President and CEO of The Opportunity Network, AiLun Ku has devoted her professional life to harnessing the inherent talent of every young person of color from historically underrepresented backgrounds, matching their talent with access to resources and helping them thrive in both college and career.
NationSwell spoke to Ku about the road she’s walked along her professional and personal journey, what she and The Opportunity Network have been able to accomplish, and what the future looks like for her and her organization.
This is what she had to say.
NationSwell: Thanks for taking the time, AiLun. When did you first know you wanted to devote your life to purpose-driven work?
The Opportunity Network’s AiLun Ku: We moved to the United States from Taiwan when I was 10, and we moved to a predominately white town in New Jersey. The culture shock was real. It was a hard transition for my family to leave our communities and our families back in Taiwan and to move to a town that seemed… really different. Yes, we had our aunt and uncle there, and my cousin. We didn’t really have a full community like what we had in Taiwan.
When we moved to the United States, we attended your typical small, suburban public school. They hadn’t had to welcome an immigrant family for probably decades before we arrived, and so the teachers weren’t prepared to support us to learn English or to just become a part of the learning community. The teachers would say things like, “Why are you talking to her? She doesn’t speak English.” One time I used the word “yeah” instead of “yes,” and the teacher reminded me, “That’s an American word.” It made me feel like, “Oh, that word is not for me,” essentially.
It was a hard thing to come from a public school in Taiwan where everybody pitched in as a community of learners, and to come into the American public education system being singled out as an outsider who was made to feel like, “You’re not worthy of the learning resources.”
That was a tough thing for us to reckon with. Then, we just persisted because that’s what you do. That’s what you do when you move to a different country. And having experienced both that overt and underlying racism growing up and as an immigrant, I quickly realized I didn’t want anybody else to have to feel that way again, and that I wanted to prevent others from feeling it.
NationSwell: Part of the work that you do is so that people who come from other countries, who speak English as their second language, it’s so that they can move towards sort of thriving from an earlier age, rather than persisting, I imagine.
Ku: Thriving should be the absolute norm of the education system; but it’s often an exception to the rule when somebody thrives in the American education system. Especially if you look at really segregated communities in urban areas, and if you look at historically under-resourced, underserved communities — that continues to be the case. I think it’s the fact that only few people thrive in the American education system from preschool, from early childhood, all the way through post-secondary, is all the evidence we need to see that the system is designed to leave many of us behind.
NationSwell: That’s a perfect segue into my next question, which is, what is the opportunity gap, and how is The Opportunity Network working to close it?
AiLun Ku:I define the opportunity gap as something that was systematically, historically produced in our social context. That means between systematic oppression, systematic racism that has created generations of resource hoarding and gatekeeping that prevents young people of color and first generation students to access the resources that match their ambitions and talents, to thrive. That is the opportunity gap. The opportunity gap exists both in resources as well as in relationships, and in social capital as well as financial capital. That’s what we’re working to address.
The Opportunity Network works to close it from a few different entry points. From a direct service entry point, which is meeting students’ immediate needs. How do we serve young people of color in high school all the way through college graduation, open up access that provides them with awareness of all the college and career opportunities that are available to them, and then secure those resources and support them on their self-directed journeys toward college and career success?
We also change the way people think about what opportunity and access look like from an institutional level as well as the systems level, which is why we also have a capacity building program. We work with other non-profit organizations and schools to reimagine what college and career look like when your young people are the center of decision-making. The Opportunity Network is doing that work across 18 cities in the United States. This year, we’re slated to serve 5,000 students. Those are the ways that we’re working to address the opportunity gap.
NationSwell: What’s a touchstone that shows you that you’re on the right track here, even if there’s still so much to be done?
Ku: One of the things I’m really proud of is building an asset oriented and asset-based space for all of our young people, all of our staff, all of our stakeholder groups. I think it is important that we continue to underscore that every person inherently has something to offer, and every community inherently has something to offer. It’s a belief and a core value that we continue to nourish within the organization and with our partners, and also in the broader social change conversation and narrative. We know that it matters because our students, our young people and our partners enter spaces knowing their value, and are unapologetic for activating their agency because they know that they have value in every space that they enter.
NationSwell: What is the Purpose Library? Why are you launching it?
Ku: I think “purpose” is an evolving thing. It almost feels like a privilege when you have time and resources and the access to live your purpose. That should be a right for every person on the face of this planet to live fully into your purpose, and to lean fully into your purpose. One of the things we believe really firmly at The Opportunity Network is the more you can hear about stories of purpose, the more you can self-reflect, and self-direct, and shape what that purpose means for you, and it doesn’t have to be a privilege.
The idea of purpose, it’s embedded in stories, it’s embedded in storytelling. I think the only way we learn about how people have arrived at their purpose is through storytelling, and so what a better way than to create an entire library of people telling the stories of their journeys from their roots to their purpose, so that young people, as they’re on the road to discovery, their own purpose, they can learn from everybody else’s experience and activate the power of storytelling, and be authors of their own futures.
The Purpose Library will live on OppNet’s brand new open-access platform, UninterruptED: Unstoppable Learning, which we launched in response to COVID-19. The platform will help first-generation college-bound students and young people of color from historically underserved communities to stay the course in their postsecondary and career goals.
About The Opportunity Network
The Opportunity Network (OppNet) ignites the drive, curiosity, and agency of students from historically and systematically underrepresented communities to connect them to college access and success, internships, career opportunities, and personal and professional networks. We work with 950 students in our direct service OppNet Fellows program for six years—from the summer after 10th grade through to college graduation, and into careers—with remarkable results: 92% of OppNet Fellows graduate college in six years; 93% will be the first in their families to graduate from college; and 89% secure meaningful employment or graduate school admission within six months of college graduation. Additionally, OppNet drives national student impact through Career Fluency® Partnerships, our capacity-building program for schools and youth-serving organizations across the country looking to boost college and career readiness in their young people. To date, OppNet has worked with over 60 Partners to support thousands of young people in 20 cities across the country reimagine college and career success.
How Adrian Haro Is Fighting to Bolster the Power of Workers Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic
There’s never been a more urgent time to talk about the workers of America. The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the structural inequities of our society, where workers in essential services — like grocers, delivery people and laundry attendants — risk their lives to work the frontlines of this crisis, despite the fact that they’ve been largely excluded from the economic growth of the late 20th and early 21st century.
As interim CEO of the Workers Lab, NationSwell Council member Adrian Haro fights the good fight for the workers of America. This is what he had to say about the novel ways he and his organization are innovating to not only consolidate and bolster worker power, but to provide immediate relief to those who need it most.
NationSwell’s Anthony Smith: Can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the work you’re doing, and a little about how that work has pivoted amid this pandemic?
The Workers Lab’s Adrian Haro: Our purpose as an organization is to give new ideas about increasing worker power a chance to succeed and flourish by taking highly flexible, bold dollars and shooting those out to innovators all over the country — and on the ground — who are really enabling experimentation around new ideas about workers and worker power, and learning from those experiments.
Last year, we partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation and with Google.org to stand up an experiment about something that is now very much on the minds of the American people, certainly public sector and public sector leaders alike, which was to try to get $1000 in emergency cash to gig workers. Through that experiment, we were able to get $1000 in emergency cash to over 400 workers — and we learned that $1000 isn’t enough.
Emergency cash, I suspect now, is being thought of as like a necessity. But it was a necessity before this. Emergency cash, like emergency savings, like easy emergency loans should all be a part of a renewed or re-imagined social safety net. And we are now seeing why.
“What does it mean that workers are being deemed essential, but are not given essential safety gear or equipment?” — Adrian Haro, Interim CEO, Workers Lab
What we’ve been thinking a lot about since this pandemic began is what work looks like now, and how the supports workers need are perhaps important now more than ever before.
Particularly I hear things like how in some states, the process and infrastructure for claiming unemployment insurance is breaking down; when we’re having to rethink what childcare looks like; or trying to rethink what it looks like to go to the grocery store. I know there are innovators all over the country who right now are being forced to be super creative about how to solve problems that are rapidly revealing themselves, and the need to be able to respond quickly with new ideas that reflect responses to new challenges that have been exposed because of this crisis.
So the innovation and experimentation we do as a lab is more important than ever.
NS: What are some of the new ideas out there that you’re supporting?
AH: We are actually currently in the middle of the Innovation Fund, a grant competition we host two times a year. It’s our signature program. It is the main way that we put out a big open call and source innovative ideas from all over the country.
Once the pandemic really took hold, we were smack dab in the middle of that open call. What we’re doing now is doubling down on that program and asking for folks to think about the solutions that they’re submitting to us not necessarily as tools to respond directly to what’s going on, but certainly to be grounded in this moment, but also tied to a broader vision that extends beyond this moment, and where they sit in relation to the kinds of tools that need to be included in our social safety net once all of this blows over.
NS: How do you define a worker?
Workers for us are arguably one of the most powerful constituencies in this country, and I don’t know that they’re talked about in that way enough. Think about what workers need in our communities as citizens. When you think about the potential they have in our democracy as a powerful voting block in policy and advocacy, when you think about given the right conditions and access the role that workers can play in exerting corporate control — and we forget that workers are also moms and dads in our communities that need time, and space, and motivation to do things like the PTA, to run for office.
Workers are all of these things, and indeed because of all of that, because we think about workers as a massive constituency in this country within which myriad issues intersect in their lives, and what we’re working toward in our vision is that workers play an outsized role in determining how our society works more broadly.
NS: What does worker power mean at a time like this, when there are so many different types of jobs that have been classified as essential services, but the workers that work those jobs don’t get the essential support that they might need from their companies or from our governments to work those jobs and live their lives?
AH: We think about power for workers as what are we building in service of all of the outcomes that workers envision for themselves in their lives?
And so you can talk about safety as one of those outcomes. You can talk about recourse in the form of rights. You can talk about pay and benefits as outcomes that folks envision for themselves, mobility and control in the workplace; how much power do they have to participate in their democracy?
Workers need all of those things to be active and able members of our society. We are seeing now not just how unprepared our society writ large is, but how unprepared workers are in this moment to respond at work, or to respond personally on the family side — and how does that inform how we’re thinking about solutions? Where do workers sit in the conversation about the solutions like paid sick leave, the expansion of paid sick leave and the accessibility of unemployment insurance?
These are not new ideas. These are things that advocates have been asking for, demanding for decades. And what we’re looking for are, what is the solution to the problem of an overloaded unemployment insurance claim infrastructure? Who on the ground is thinking about how to fix that problem to achieve impact now and beyond? What does it mean that workers are being deemed essential, but are not given essential safety gear or equipment? When you look at an industry like care — my heart breaks for care workers for whom the notion of social distancing is really, in many cases, not an option. It’s just not an option to maintain distance when it’s your job to help somebody get out of bed or to give somebody a bath. And so in many cases the problems that are being surfaced now, the crux of them is as old as time.
There’s like this misconception that innovation and experimentation is only about solving or addressing challenges for a worker is unique to the 21st century, in gig, in tech, in digital.
Innovation is very, very much also a tool to make sure that all the workers that didn’t benefit from the policy gains of the 20th century can do so now, that they are included in those laws and in that progress. I mean I could go down the list of queer people, people with disabilities, immigrants, farm workers, domestic workers — all groups of workers that in some way, shape or form have been excluded from the progress of the 20th century. And we should be using innovation and experimentation to solve those problems as well.
NS: You mentioned that we’re at the crux of a moment right now with respect to workers and their future in this country. Is there anything that you’re seeing right now that heartens you, that says this is sort of the reckoning that needed to happen to make sure that workers get the support, the recourse that they deserve — that they’re the beneficiaries of past and present policies? Or are you more disheartened?
AH: In many ways, this is both a heartening and a heartbreaking moment. We are seeing workers be the heroes of this crisis, on the front lines of this crisis in many ways, right? As nurses, as domestic workers, as caregivers, as the folks who check us out at the grocery store, as the folks who feed us via whatever platform. That heartens me because I feel like there is a national resonance and recognition — that in normal times largely often doesn’t exist — that workers are in fact critical and integral to the lives that we live and benefit from every single day.
At the same time, you are seeing in a matter of weeks the rapid construction and revision of the social safety net that we would argue should have been in place decades ago. And so, for me, when I see how workers are finally being given their due, so to speak, are being seen for the value and the critical nature that they play in society in normal times, and you talk about what I imagine is going to be a tremendous opportunity through legislation, through organizing, creating a new social safety net that recognizes that value of workers — that heartens me, and we are doing everything we can in the way of funding experimentation and innovation to prioritize workers in the conversation about what happens now, but also what happens in the future after this.
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Adrian Haro and his team encourage NationSwell readers to subscribe to receive updates on their experiments, learnings, as well as opportunities to get resourced for their ideas on their website. If you’re able, they also encourage you to make a donation to help support workers amid the COVID-19 epidemic.
Haro is a member of the NationSwell Council. For more information on the Council, visit our hub.
Overheard at Council: Leadership During a Moment of Great Uncertainty
In early April, Wendy Kopp, CEO and Co-founder of Teach For All, and Gerald Chertavian, founder and CEO of YearUp, stopped by the NationSwell Council’s digital table for a conversation about how the social impact leaders we convened can navigate this uncertain and challenging time, leveraging the disruption and chaos as a potential opportunity to learn and scale our reach and impact.
In the hope that these might serve you on your mission to make this world a better place, we’re sharing out some of the key moments from our discussion. These insights and practices and recommendations all come straight to you from Wendy, Gerald and some of the other inspiring Council members in attendance.
Insights:
“People have such various entry points, like grappling with personal struggles, deep concerns or having lost loved ones to really being fixated on the questions of how we evolve the way we work right now and what we’re called upon to do right now, to being open to what world is going to emerge from this, and what our role coming out of that will be. I’ve just found that holding open spaces has helped us meet people’s personal needs, become clear very quickly in a shared way about what our immediate priorities are and also, continue with the open space around medium term to long term questions about what we need to evolve into as the world around us is evolving.” — Wendy Kopp
“I know there’s light at the end of this tunnel. I know we’ll emerge from it and feel confident about that. But I also know, man, it’s a heck of a long time. And the more folks I talk to who are out in the private sector space who have really good visibility onto this tell me this isn’t one or two quarters, it’s not it’s not six months. This is a couple of years for us to figure out how to get back on our feet. How do you help your team realize it’s not a firefight?” — Gerald Chertavian
“The thing that we turned to almost immediately is just holding space for our global team, and the teams within those teams. Not a day goes by when I don’t have big, open space — probably more than one — where we’ll break down into small groups and really just check in. And we’ve found that that has been helpful.” — Wendy Kopp
“Some of us will come out stronger, but in some parts of the world, this [pandemic is] going to be just extraordinarily devastating. I just hope that our development response recognizes what we’re seeing in the world right now, which is that local leadership matters and the degree to which we can figure out how to help local folks build the volition, the capabilities, and the networks to become globally informed rather than trying to, as we generally do in development, rain down solutions around the world.” — Wendy Kopp
Practices:
“Set up principles very early on. We will have to make very hard choices, so what are the principles that guide those decisions? Principles like: whatever we do, it’s got to be top down. Also, we want to use an equity lens as we make decisions. If we look at whatever decisions we make, do they pass those principles as best we can, and are we also thinking about the bias that can creep into those decisions and trying to eliminate it.” — Gerald Chertavian
“Whatever we decide now, we want to look back in a couple years’ time and feel like we made the very best decisions we could. And so as we make decisions, let’s also look out and ask, ‘Would we be happy, or not, with these decisions? Do we feel we’ve lived our values well?’” — Gerald Chertavian
“With every stakeholder group, we just need constant, constant, constant communication, probably a lot more than we — at least I — would naturally gravitate towards. But I’m really trying to embrace it because I know it’s just crucial right now.” — Wendy Kopp
“There is a new world coming if we’re ready to listen for it. One of the most important things right now is to actually hold the uncertainty and not jump to solutions. Really consider whether we’re asking the right questions so that we can see the real possibilities as we look out beyond the immediate and see what emerges, and really lean into this chance to actually be part of shaping what really could be a better world.” — Wendy Kopp
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Welcome to Overheard at Council, a series capturing insights, practices, recommendations and other powerful moments from some of our NationSwell Council events. If you have any feedback on this series, or if you attended and you’d like to add something you think we might have missed, please reach out via email. To find out more about the NationSwell Council, visit our digital hub.
Overheard at Council: The Joys and Challenges of Modern Parenthood
Members of the NationSwell Council recently gathered around the digital table to discuss the ways that modern parenthood as evolved, and to talk about how the social impact leaders in attendance could better support the needs of parents in the modern workplace — especially amid a pandemic that threatens the health, safety and economic stability of families.
In the hope that these might serve you on your mission to make this world a better place, we’re sharing out some of the key moments we heard from our discussion. These insights and practices come straight to you from the inspiring Council members in attendance.
Insights:
- “When we men are in larger groups, we talk about sports, we talk about business, we talk about failures at work and how we rebounded from those. But we don’t do that same kind of conversation as well as it relates to our families.”
- “When you’re raised by a single mom, there isn’t a line of demarcation in terms of what women do and what men do. Everything was provided by a loving parent. So the benefit is that when I had an opportunity to become a parent, I didn’t go into what I believe to be my space in terms of this is what a father does. I just loved as a parent and I’m learning. I’ve had wins and losses for sure along the way, but that’s kind of how it started.”
- “To be a successful co-parent, I treat all our agreements as a living breathing document. It’s not ironclad, it’s concepts that we agree upon, but everything else is conversation. When something like coronavirus comes, I want to be able to call my daughter’s mom and say, ‘Hey look, I know that this is my weekend or this is your weekend, but what looks best for her?’ As opposed to, “The rule says that the child is here.” For some people that works, and I certainly don’t want to negate anybody’s situation. That’s the other thing, everybody has to create a situation that works for them, but ours is founded on communication.”
- “If having dinner with the family is something that’s important to you, or seeing your kids at the end of the day… kids don’t stay up that late, so we can’t come home at 8:30 at night and expect to see your five year old. Is there a way for the modern workplace to be flexible, and let people leave at 5:00 and then come back online at 8:00? That’s not going to work for every workplace, and that in some ways is a little bit of a privileged conversation, because I think the people whose workplaces have those kind of jobs tend to be richer and have other advantages.”
- “As we pull kids out of school, one of the things I think is the most damaging about that is that for kids with highly educated parents, it’s going to be fine, their parents are going to spend a bunch of time trying to figure out what’s the best distance learning-this and enrichment-that, and how can we get an extra violin lesson in every week. Then there are a lot of kids whose parents are really struggling, especially given what’s going to happen to the economy, who are not going to have those kind of things. They have to keep those kids out for six months, that’s a relay significant learning loss. I haven’t seen as much discussion of that as I think that we need to be having.”
Practices:
- “[Take] the time to step back and hold a mirror up to yourself and say, ‘What do I really want to be true about my parenting? What’s aligned to my core principles and values?”
- “Spend a lot more deliberate time making sure that we don’t let work deteriorate the safe space that is supposed to be home. Kids should to some extent be able to run and play in their home, without feeling like I’m a burden or I am a bother to mom or dad, or whoever the caregiver can be.”
- “Make what’s called a reading island. My daughter and I have one, and it’s real simple. My bed is the reading island, so she’s able to get whatever book she wants, and I’ll get whatever my reading material is, the caveat is that we can’t do actual work. So it’s not for homework, it’s not for me taking my laptop, the only technology that we have is the cellphone timer, and she can also use snacks. For 30 minutes, we read to ourselves and she can have whatever snacks she wants, but we can’t get off the bed. We can’t get off the island — the island is surrounded by sharks, or piranhas or there’s a storm.”
- “Look at [the coronavirus disruption that has parents working and kids learning from home] as an opportunity to engage in positive ways with your kids that you might otherwise have been pulled in one way or another. Make the most of time together.”
- “Organize Zoom calls for your kids to talk to their friends! We spend so much time trying to get our kids to have these tools, but we don’t always create the space for them to use it. And so I think for them to have an opportunity to engage with each other in this new way that their parents are figuring out, giving them the same space and opportunity to explore it and to get some things that they may be going through off of their chest, I think that can be valuable as well for them — and it might buy you 20 or 30 minutes that you don’t have to look over their shoulder.”
Welcome to Overheard at Council, a new series capturing insights, practices, recommendations and other powerful moments from some of our NationSwell Council events. These quotes have been edited for clarity. If you have any feedback on this series, or if you attended and you’d like to add something you think we might have missed, please reach out via email. To find out more about the NationSwell Council, visit our digital hub.
Team Rubicon Coronavirus Response: How Jake Wood and the Greyshirts Are Taking Action
10 years ago, Team Rubicon CEO Jake Wood co-founded his organization to mobilize veterans in times of great emergency, harnessing their unique skillsets and experiences towards helping victims of sudden crises.
Today, the people of our world find ourselves amid one such crisis: the Coronavirus pandemic, which by some estimates is expected to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, hospitalize or infect millions more and debilitate our economy.
NationSwell spoke to Wood, a Council member, about how Team Rubicon’s #NeighborsHelpingNeighbors initiative has sprung into action to lead and assist aid efforts across the country, mobilizing its volunteer corps of “Greyshirts” towards the frontlines of the communities that need the most aid. We also had the chance to speak about his forthcoming book, “Once a Warrior: How One Veteran Found a New Mission Closer to Home.”
NationSwell: At time of publication, the Team Rubicon blog mentions at least 49 relief operations that are already in progress, and 44 more that are in progress. Can you speak to what those efforts look like, and what you’ve been able to accomplish so far?
Team Rubicon CEO Jake Wood: We have a medical capability that we really only deploy internationally. We’ve pivoted here to focus domestically. We have never gotten into issues like food security, food, transportation, logistics — things like that. But this is a pandemic that is crippling some of our governmental and non-governmental infrastructure. And I think we have an organization that can flex into the fight. And so that’s exactly what we’re doing. We have pivoted our entire organization into this fight.
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve been asked by various agencies, federal, state and local to help establish federal medical stations. We’re doing that in California. We’re now currently establishing, and we’ll begin operating, a 250 bed hospital in Northern California to help decompress the health care system there. We have similar requests for similar field medical hospitals in the states and cities that you can imagine. I don’t want to name them yet because none of those are for certain. We’ve been asked by some major metropolitan areas to oversee the command and coordination of quarantine shelters for homeless populations.
And then, on another end of the spectrum, we’re partnering with major national food security networks like Feeding America and Meals on Wheels. And I think that we’ll probably be assisting with operations and logistics at easily a hundred food banks by the end of this week. And then we developed guidance and protocols for how any one of our 112,000 volunteers could identify the vulnerable people in their neighborhood and assist them with their quarantine and shelter in place mandate. So if they have an elderly person on their street that may have difficulty in this time getting prescriptions or groceries, whatever. How can you safely assist that person or the single mother that suddenly just got furloughed and has two kids that she’s now the educator of at home? How do you assist that woman with walking, something as simple as walking their dog? Because she can’t do it with the two kids who need to be learning.
“Leaders should embrace the brutal reality of the situation, acknowledging the gaps that we have — but then inspire people to believe that we’re going to get through this.” — Jake Wood, Team Rubicon CEO
We’ve had over a thousand acts of service logged since we launched that. 30,000 people have gone to the website so we’re confident that we have many, many thousands of unlogged acts of service. We call it #NeighborsHelpingNeighbors.
NationSwell: How can our audience help you all with your efforts?
Wood: We’d love to have #NeighborsHelpingNeighbors amplified. We don’t want this to be a campaign that just… if it stays within just the bounds of Team Rubicon, then we failed. From the beginning, one of the objectives was, how do we inspire people to action in a way that is safe? Right? So that they’re not contributing to the spread, but rather contributing to the effective social distancing that’s actually necessary to inhibit the spread of this. So we’d love to see that get amplified. Obviously we are partnering with organizations in ways that we never would have imagined. We just signed an agreement with one of the largest healthcare systems on the East Coast to help start staffing their testing clinics. And, so for those members who have a unique organizational capacity to partner with us in this, or unique expertise or they’re retired doctor that wants to get back in the fight — we need people.
NationSwell: How can leaders of all stripes step up at a time like this? What qualities mark a good leader in a time of crisis?
Wood: It’s very rare that a leader in a moment like this is going to have the necessary competencies to be the expert, right? And so what you need to see in leaders is a certain level of humility. You need them to say, “Listen, I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know when things are going to get better. I don’t know this, that and this. What I do know is, here’s what we’ve got to do. Here’s what the experts are saying. Here’s what we can control. Here are the things that we can’t.”
Leaders should embrace the brutal reality of the situation, acknowledging the gaps that we have — but then inspire people to believe that we’re going to get through this. I think one of the challenges thus far has been convincing people that this isn’t about them, right? This is about the whole. And you have a lot of people right now who are really concerned about the social distancing and the shelter in place orders, because it impacts them personally. And we need leaders who can inspire people to think beyond the four walls of their home and think about the community at large.
I think we’ve gotten that in some places. I don’t think we’ve gotten it throughout all levels of leadership right now. It’s just — f*ck man, just shut your mouth and push somebody else up to the podium who’s actually an expert, right? And let that person have the spotlight, and you lead from behind. That’s kind of a lost art.
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NationSwell: Tell us about “Once a Warrior.” What’s it about? And where did you get the idea to write it?
Wood: “Once a Warrior” is a project that I’ve been working on for over a decade. I started writing pretty extensively when I was deployed overseas with the Marine Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan. And at first I wrote to keep my family and loved ones updated on what was happening. I was in Iraq during the surge in 2007 with a Marine rifle platoon. And then I was a sniper in Afghanistan in 2008. So that was when I first started writing. And then when I got back from the war, I started writing as a way of making sense of what happened and for a kind of catharsis.
And so, I’ve been writing ever since, and have at times throughout the 10 years of Team Rubicon written about moments that have happened. And I got to this point where at the conclusion of Hurricane Harvey and in our efforts there, there was… a bunch of things that just kind of came full circle for me, and I decided that I wanted to write this story of going to war and coming home.
It’s part memoir in that it’s the story of the last 15 years of my life, but it’s really intended to be bigger than that. It’s a story of about service. It’s a story about what happens to young men and women in war, and what happens when they come home and what is the role of service — continued service? Where’s the role of purpose in the lives of those young men and women as they come back into our community? So, I tell that latter part kind of through the lens of starting in building Team Rubicon and losing my best friend to suicide shortly thereafter. And watching how Team Rubicon has impacted the lives of tens of thousands of volunteers who’ve picked up a new mission and put on a new uniform over that time.
NationSwell: Your book’s publication will coincide with the 10 year anniversary of Team Rubicon. What are some of the most important lessons you’ve learned in those 10 years?
Wood: The first lesson would be that purpose is a powerful healing force, this powerful driving force for any human. Any human being on earth needs purpose. But I think for those who have served in the military, who have fought overseas, who’ve come home to a community that doesn’t always understand them and doesn’t always care about their service, that the lack of purpose that some people can find when they transition back to civilian life can be really detrimental to their ability to lead long and fulfilling lives.
And it’s really actually pretty easy to rediscover purpose. You give somebody a mission, you give them responsibility or you give them a challenge and they can find that purpose again. I think that the other thing that I’ve seen time and time again after hundreds and hundreds of disasters that Team Rubicon has responded to is that Americans truly do become the best version of themselves in crisis. I think we’re seeing a lot of that now play out with Covid-19. You see people having empathy for communities that they didn’t previously have an empathy for.
You see people reaching their hands out across the aisle in politics to find solutions to challenging problems. You see people crossing over to help a neighbor that they wouldn’t have even spoken to a week prior. And that’s always inspiring to see. And I think that what’s always disappointing is just how quickly we revert back to the former version of ourselves, and forget those lessons of empathy and compassion and service in community and camaraderie that it took a tornado to place at our feet.
NationSwell: You’ve stayed connected to the work over the course of a decade. How do you keep from reverting?
Wood: I mean, I guess I’ve never had in 10 years the opportunity to take a pause. My wife jokes that I never really left the military — I just kind of changed uniforms. And I think there’s some element of truth to that. But I’ve spent the last decade of my life running from crisis to crisis. I just always get re-inspired by what’s possible. Because I see these changes in people and in communities on a weekly basis and I always set myself up for disappointment. I always think the next one is going to be the one that sticks, the one where people finally learn the lesson. And maybe I’m just kind of a hopelessly optimistic about that.
NationSwell: What are you hoping that readers will take away from the book?
Wood: The book is really in three parts. The first part is my wartime experience. And what I really wanted, the stories I told from Iraq and Afghanistan to be was a more authentic and maybe vulnerable retelling of life in combat. I didn’t want to just add to the genre of guys who were thumping their chest and talking about body counts or fierce battles. I want people to know what’s really going through a young man’s mind the first time they get shot at. What are some of the those moments that people may not think about where… you start to explore what’s happening to people mentally and emotionally. How are people processing? I spend a lot of time talking about moments where I found myself losing kind of a grasp of who I was and who I wanted to be. Whether that was sensing that I was beginning to lose that empathy and compassion that I’d kind of had my entire life. Those moments where suddenly, war was becoming too familiar, too easy.
And I think those are the questions that I want people to walk away from the book wondering. What is the true cost of war for the young people we send to fight it? I think one of the things I tried to accomplish in the middle part of the book was an authenticity around my own challenges transitioning home. I think a lot of people look at me and, as a veteran with a fairly high profile, they think, “Man, the guy had it easy. He came home and he started a nonprofit that’s grown and done amazing things.” And the reality is I came home, I lost just as many friends to suicide as I lost to combat, including my best friend. I had to fold the flag and hand it to the mother of that best friend and tell her I was sorry I wasn’t there for her son. And then figure out how to pick up the pieces after that.
And I think that that last part of the book is really just about what happens when you ignite the purpose of an entire generation of veterans and challenged them to serve their community in a new way. And that’s really the story of Team Rubicon And I try to tell that story through the lens of as many of the amazing volunteers I’ve met over the years, who have this diversity of experience and backgrounds that is so compelling, but who have so much more in common than they ever have had different now or at any time in their past. And I think that’s the really powerful thing is this unifying power of that purpose and that service.
I mean, I’m excited for it. My mom thinks it’s really good.
NationSwell: It sounds like your ideal reader or readers for the book isn’t just veterans and service members, right? Who do you see as someone who can potentially take a lot away from it?
Wood: There was a big debate with the publisher and me about the timing for the release of this book. They were cautioning me from releasing it in the lead up to the election, or too close to the election itself. And I kept saying, “No. I want this to cut through the divisiveness and the vitriol that we’re undoubtedly going to hear in 2020. I want this to serve as a break that Americans can pick up this book and read something that re-inspires them about what America should be and can be.” I think the audience is anybody that is sick of hearing about how fucked up this country is. And believes that there’s a better version of this country that we can achieve. I’m hopeful that this can serve to re-inspire that sentiment among some people.
This interview was lightly edited for clarity. For more information on the NationSwell Council, please visit our splash page. You can pre-order Wood’s book, “Once a Warrior,” here.
How to Show Grocery Store Workers That We’re Grateful
Leaders and readers,
I hope this edition of the Impact Weekly finds you, your teams and your loved ones in good health, and that you’re finding moments of joy of peace throughout this sometimes taxing period of social distancing.
I want to take this opportunity to be radically honest about something I’d taken for granted. Before this crisis began, if you’d asked me to name three service or purpose-driven career paths that are essential to the health of our communities, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned the people who work at our grocery stores. Now, I can’t imagine making a list that doesn’t include them at the very top — and I bet I’m not alone in that.
Like doctors and nurses, grocery store workers are at the frontlines of this crisis. But unlike doctors and nurses, these essential workers are far less likely than most to be able to afford health care, child care, rent on a one bedroom apartment in the state in which they live — the list goes on.
I’m grateful to these people; and if you’ve been to your grocery store to pick up food for your family, I’m sure you are, too. But gratitude can and should be more than just a thank you. To that end, I’d like to mine the compassion and good thinking of my readership to find ways that we can show up for them the way they’ve shown up for us.
If you have any ideas, please reach out. I’ll be spotlighting them on NationSwell and in this letter.
Many thanks,
Anthony Smith
One Harvard Medical Expert’s Idea to Fight This Crisis
Dr. Raj Panjabi, CEO of Last Mile Health & Associate Physician at Harvard Medical School, has a proposal for how we can fight the health and economic impact of the pandemic: Take U.S. workers who’ve lost their jobs amid this crisis and hire and train them to be Covid-19 community health workers, empowered to do everything from delivering elderly people food and medicine to organizing transportation to testing centers for people who might be sick. How do we pay for their training and their wages, you ask? Through the public-private sector collaboration of federal stimulus dollars and philanthropic efforts. Read Dr. Panjabi’s full proposal here.
#WeavingCommunity Matters — Now, More Than Ever
It’s on all of us to practice social distancing amid this crisis. But social distancing is lonely, and loneliness is America’s most under-discussed health crisis. That’s where our partners at Weave: The Social Fabric Project come in. Rising to this moment, they’ve created a digital toolkit that empowers you to connect and converse with, and care for, people who might be struggling right now.
Learn more about Weave’s Coronavirus response here, and see more about how we’ve worked with Weave and the Aspen Institute here.
Three From the Council
I wanted to use this space to express gratitude to the social impact leaders in our Council by amplifying their efforts to respond to this crisis. Here are just three examples, and ways you can get involved.
- In one week, Eric Leslie and Union Capital Boston have ordered the direct delivery of Visa cards for 374 families in Boston in need, totaling $56,100. Contribute to the fund here.
- With offices closed, many companies are entering the brave, new world the completely digital workplace. Council member Rachel Renock created a great, great guide with insights on how Wethos built their fully-remote team, and how they keep it running smoothly each week across 17 different cities.
- Simone Marean and Girls Leadership have created a guided meditation for you. You are 30 seconds away from feeling calmer and ready to embrace what this week might bring your way. GL’s Certified Yoga Instructor & Meditation Practitioner, Sybil Henry, has created a meditation to help you and your people start your day off right. Check it out on Youtube here.
Helping Hands
One more quick thing! Like so many of you, I’ve been practicing the CDC’s guidance on hand-washing: do it many times a day, use lots of soap and scrub 20 seconds minimum. It’s helping keep all of us healthy, but it’s also leaving our hands dry and raw — mine included! And that’s why dermatologists have an additional reminder for us during this crisis on how to properly care for your freshly and frequently scrubbed hand: Always pat your hands dry after you wash to minimize dryness, and if that still doesn’t help, it’s time for a hand cream or a moisturizer. It isn’t just cosmetic — it could keep a bacterial infection away.