NationSwell is kicking off 2020 with a series that looks back on our biggest moments of impact from 2019. In our fifth installment, we’re delighted to celebrate how NationSwell supported Microsoft in their journey to develop better tools and services for social impact organizations and beyond.
NationSwell: We were delighted to parter with the Microsoft Envisioning team last year. Can you tell our audience about the work your team does within Microsoft?
Microsoft’s Harald Becker and Ming-Li Chai: We work on this unique team that looks three to five years out, that uses research to try and reimagine how people will get things done in the future. We like to go out in the field, find interesting organizations and people and try to learn from them. Our research last year was focused on the future of work and how organizations are evolving in the future. Our thesis was that organizations are going to be more networked, working in ecosystems and platforms, and we had the idea to talk to social impact organizations because they have a unique environment and they’ve worked with a lot of different partners in complex environments. They’re trying to solve big, complex challenges and they’re very mission-driven.
NS: So interesting. And how did working with NationSwell support that mission?
M: It started with a co-hosted conversation on the power of networks. That was a fantastic experience and our first exposure to the kind of the magic NationSwell can create. There were amazing NationSwell Council (NSC) members at that dinner. We then shaped a plan to work together on a research project alongside the Studio team. It was a joint learning journey to better understand how social impact organizations thrive, with a thesis that we can learn from their tactics and strategies and apply those to other domains. Ultimately, as a technology company, Microsoft could then think about developing better tools and services to support those organizations in the future.
NS: Share a bit about the journey of the research project.
M: The project had three main components. For the first component, the Studio team organized interviews with 30 NSC members. It was a diverse representation of executive directors across different domains and industries as well as different sizes and social impact organizations. We conducted those interviews over the course of two or three months and there were a lot of amazing conversations. We also had a chance to come out to New York and bring a camera crew and we did some of those conversations on video, so we ended up with rich visual data that was awesome. Our team also spent a day and a half working with the Studio team at the NationSwell offices, both to understand some of the patterns we could detect from the interviews and to distill them into a clear set of key criteria that ultimately were the inputs for our final report. We were actually able to visit some of these amazing organizations.
There were two more things we did together that were very important to us. First, you created two video cases studies for us. [The videos] were very touching and you should see them — they’re really great. And the final piece was the salon you created and produced. We brought a whole bunch of Microsoft executives and stakeholders to the event and mixed them with NSC members. We had a half-day experience together where we unpacked some of our findings and we did some interactive table discussions. Our colleagues actually got a taste for what it means to operate in a social impact organization. It was a lot of fun and we got great feedback.
NS: What did this partnership and project mean for Microsoft? How did NationSwell ultimately impact your work?
M: It enriched our understanding and made us smarter about the dynamics that are important to make social impact organizations successful. We also got a sense for what some of the key challenges are. The project with NationSwell really helped us get a better, more nuanced understanding of those dynamics. There’s a lot of very superficial, high-level talk about what the future of work will look like and I think now we can actually bring a much more nuanced conversation to the forefront.
NS: Were there any internal perception shifts that took place as a result of our partnership and if so, can you describe them?
M: One of the key learnings was really the importance of purpose and mission in social impact organization’s work. We had an inkling about that before, but now we have a much clearer understanding. Yesterday’s announcement at Microsoft was all about purpose, mission and sustainability. So many employees were so excited about our articulation of purpose and mission and accountability and responsibility, and the work we did together really clarified that for us and made it a lot more tangible.
The exercises we did at the salon and visiting the social impact organizations… it touched people. We walked in with our heads and we walked away feeling in our hearts that people are devoting their energy towards something really bigger than themselves. We now talk a lot more about impact at Microsoft. Like “what’s your impact? What are you going to do?” It’s very closely aligned to the industry and the technology jobs and roles that we have. You can touch people’s lives in very profound ways. And there’s so many organizations focused on that and in tremendous ways. For some people, it was a bit of an awakening and that was very powerful and emotional for them as well.
We were super impressed with your team. Everybody at every level of the effort really brought the energy, brought the expertise and always had smile on their faces. We could feel that you care about your work and that was very stimulating for us. It was really a true partnership. It wasn’t like there’s a big firm hiring a vendor. I never really felt that dynamic at all and that was really great. You were challenging us and we learned a ton in the project.
NationSwell is always trying to learn more about how we’ve supported our Council members (and partners!) in their efforts to make the world a better place. If we helped you, we’d love to hear more about it. Let us know.
Category: Uncategorized
Celebrating NSC Impact: Tuesday’s Children Secures Influential Financing for Gold Star Families
NationSwell is kicking off 2020 with a series that looks back on our biggest moments of impact from 2019. In our fourth installment, we’re delighted to celebrate a Bob Woodruff Foundation grant that supports Tuesday’s Children.
NationSwell: Thanks for taking the time to speak, Terry. Tell us about the mission of Tuesday’s Children.
Tuesday’s Children’s Terry Sears: Tuesday’s Children began after the events of Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, where there were 3,051 children who lost a parent on that day. It was started as an organization to provide long term support for those children through mentoring programs, college and career guidance, and leadership programs, as well as programs for the surviving spouses. And in 2011, after the 10-year anniversary of September 11th, we broadened our mission to include the military families, the fallen, the gold star families, and have really been reaching out across the country. Our long-term healing model provides mentors (whether they’re career mentors or youth mentors) and leadership programs which adds value to the grief and the scholarship services that are currently available to the gold-star community. We are really pioneers for broad-based resilience focus tools for that community.
NS: Such an important cause. How has NationSwell been able to support you and your mission?
TS: I joined NationSwell to take part in the veterans roundtable series a few years back, where we heard anecdotally that less than 1% of all veterans’ organization served gold star families. The fact that there weren’t others doing this work reaffirmed our mission. We ended up receiving a sizable grant from the Bob Woodruff Foundation after meeting them through the NationSwell series. So much of organizational collaborations is between people and not so much organizations, as you hear a lot. From getting to know Marshall and Anne Marie (from the BWF) we’ve had opportunities to get the word out about the work we’ve done. Having some personal relationships that we made through NationSwell was great.
And the other thing is that, a couple of years ago, we started traveling to places like Silicon Valley, San Francisco, North Carolina any beyond where NationSwell had members, and I was able to set up meetings in each city. I met Mary Beth Bruggeman, president of the Mission Continues, who was able to connect us with veterans interested in continuing to serve in a different way — by being paired with a gold star child for four to six hours a month over the longterm. These were really important relationships for our organization. When I went to [the West Coast] we were able to get introductions with some of the big tech companies. And, as luck would have it, there was a NationSwell event when I was out there.
It was just really great to be able to walk into a new city and have 40 people right there, where you can say, “Hey, I’m an NSC member too,” and exchange cards and follow up in that way. That was great.
NationSwell is always trying to learn more about how we’ve supported our Council members in their efforts to make the world a better place. If we helped you, we’d love to hear more about it. Let us know.
Celebrating NSC Impact: NSC Members Bring Critical Expertise to Supporting New Parents in San Francisco
NationSwell is kicking off 2020 with a series that looks back on our biggest moments of impact from 2019. In our third installment, we’re delighted to celebrate four NSC members joining the board of the Children’s Council of San Francisco.
In July 2019, Anna Nordberg Thompson became board chair of the Children’s Council of San Francisco, where she was tasked with growing the board during a pivotal time for the organization. Below, she shares how being a part of the NationSwell Council helped her support her 2019 goals.
NationSwell: Tell us about why you joined the Children’s Council of San Francisco. Why is its mission so critical?
Anna Nordberg Thompson: Both of our kids were born premature and we were lucky enough to have resources and live in an area where we could access excellent medical care, excellent childcare and a wonderful preschool for both of our kids, who are now five and seven and these robust little nuggets. Going through that experience, I saw both the power of early intervention and I felt the agony of what would it be like to be in a position where you didn’t have access to that kind of care. That really brought home for the importance of early education — those early years are essential for neurologic and social development. But for most parents in this country, finding support during those years is private problem, and its creating a real readiness gap that persists through K-12. I’m passionate about kids, about childcare — and I really don’t think we can fix our K-12 education system without investing heavily in early childhood.What the Children’s Council does is help families find and afford quality childcare in San Francisco. We connect families with the childcare that fits their needs through intensive counseling and resource and referral.
NS: How has being a part of the NSC helped you in this mission?
ANT: I met with my community manager and shared that one of my big priorities as new board chair to build the board. He let me know that the NSC was launching a new project, to try and connect members who were interested in board service with members who were serving on boards and looking to recruit new members. He ended up connecting me with probably 15 people that resulted in 11 conversations and we now have four new board members. If you’re familiar with onboarding new board members to nonprofits, and it’s a big process and it’s a big time commitment and a lot of people go through it and decide, “I love what this organization does but I can’t commit to this right now.” So, to find four new board members from one network or organization is pretty extraordinary. And the four we have really come from a range of industry backgrounds. Chris Thomas is head of nonprofit engagement at SalesForce. Victoria Fram is a female cofounder of a VC (VilCap Investments), Omar Butler is the CEO of a nonprofit, New Door Ventures, one George Israel is in private wealth management at UBS and his wife is a developmental pediatrician (so he’s very connected to the issue through that).
NS: We’re so thrilled for you! What a great group. What does the future hold for the board and for the CCSF, and what are you hoping to celebrate as a result of this board growth?
ANT: We have a new CEO, we’re starting a strategic planning process and a it’s pivotal time for early childhood in the Bay area and nationwide. California governor Gavin Newsom has signaled how important childcare is to him. And it’s an exciting time: paid parental leave is finally gaining steam — it’s about the only bipartisan issue there is on Capitol Hill right now. So these issues at least are getting more awareness even though there’s so much more that needs to be done.
And we’ve already seen real strategic planning in our board meetings. I’m already seeing those new points of view help shape the discussion in powerful ways. Victoria, as a female co-founder, has a lot of understanding of how hard it is for women in the business world who are trying to manage childcare and their careers and those challenges. Chris at Salesforce has a really strong sense of how different platforms might support our work. So my hope is that with these new board members, we can really continue to raise our profile and connect with people in San Francisco who understand that childcare is a equity issue and a social justice issue, in addition to an incredibly spicy issue for every family dealing with it, regardless of income. Childcare is a challenge for every family, every parent I know — it’s something they’re always working on or trying to solve a problem in or they’re so happy in a situation they’re in and just hoping that it lasts. I think that our NationSwell members can bring is new networks and new people who are ready to care about this issue and need to just be informed about it. With their perspective on what our core focus areas of our strategic plan should be and how we’re going to achieve them,
NationSwell is always trying to learn more about how we’ve supported our Council members in their efforts to make the world a better place. If we helped you, we’d love to hear more about it. Let us know.
Celebrating NSC Impact: NYU Business Program Created for Survivors of Sex Trafficking
NationSwell is kicking off 2020 with a series that looks back on our biggest moments of impact from 2019. In our second installment, we’re delighted to celebrate a first-of-its-kind project that empowered an at-risk population right here in our city.
After attending a NationSwell Council (NSC) Strategic Advisory Group in 2017, NSC member Joe Esposito (managing director at Jennison Associates) became deeply involved with Restore NYC, an organization seeking to end sex trafficking in New York and restore the well-being and independence of foreign-national survivors. Below, Joe shares how the NSC community supported Restore in creating what might be the nation’s first entrepreneurship program tailored for survivors of sex trafficking.
NationSwell: Thanks for taking the time to speak, Joe. We know a little bit about how Restore helps women who have survived human trafficking find financial independence. Could you share the origins of the innovative solutions you all have piloted?
Joe Esposito: Restore is an extremely mission-driven with a very healthy culture and an extraordinary impact relative to the resources that go into that organization. At the end of 2016, and I went to their executive director with an idea for an online jobs platform to reduce the friction involved with their clients finding jobs. At that time, I also learned about an organization in London that was running a successful entrepreneurship program for survivors that we wanted to replicate here. We knew it would have massive transformational potential. We saw a lot of synergy between these two programs and we wanted to bring it to New York City – a place with financial resources and immense human capital.
NS: How did the NationSwell Council help support this innovative program?
JE: The NationSwell Council had a critical role here. I first turned to my community manager who helped me connect with fellow NSC members in educational institutions, [including Gabe Brodbar, the then executive director of the social entrepreneurship program at NYU.] We connected and quickly realized we could host this program out of NYU. Had it not been for my community manager’s efforts and connections, this program quite literally would have never happened.
Furthermore, part of the program includes connecting the women with mentors, and we have a very specific set of criteria for these mentors, given the sensitive nature of the program. I again reached out to my community manager, and she connected me with more folks in the community. Several NSC members ended up being mentors.
NS: Incredibly powerful. What’s next?!
JE: We completed the first two-week program and supported 28 women who came from 20 countries. It was a massive success. We’re planning to measure success of the program by tracking outcomes at the 6-month mark, 12-month mark, etc. We’re also planning the second cohort for 2020. I don’t say this lightly, but I believe we are in the early innings of revolutionizing economic empowerment for this population. And then I expect we can move on to at least one other population of at-risk people in the U.S. I see a long, steady upward trajectory for NationSwell to be at ground zero of this change that has the potential to impact hundreds if not thousands of women over the next decade. And I think it’s a very unique opportunity for people to invest time and energy into. I hope NationSwell continues to be a partner because your organization has so much in terms of capabilities, so much in terms of its diverse, rich community. I think NationSwell can play a unique role here.
NationSwell is always trying to learn more about how we’ve supported our Council members in their efforts to make the world a better place. If we helped you, we’d love to hear more about it. Let us know.
A Letter From the Editor
To our loyal readers and viewers:
Thank you for choosing to spend another year with NationSwell. We’ve arrived together in 2020 at a time when so many Americans feel we must build the groundwork for a better, brighter future for the collective whole. But before it became shorthand for a referendum on the state of our nation, 2020 was a number associated with clarity of vision — and, of course, the type of clarity that only comes from hindsight.
But what if we could be as clear-eyed about the road ahead of us as we’ve been about the road we walked to get here?
I arrived at that clarity completely by accident: Someone I love asked me to pick and share the one big issue that keeps me at night. I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t pick just one. I punted on it till later. In trying to narrow it down, I asked others. They couldn’t pick just one, either.
It’s not an uncommon question around election years. Politicians, reporters and pollsters use it to take the pulse of average Americans. The answers have been roughly the same over the course of the last few cycles.
But maybe the reason I and so many others I spoke to couldn’t answer is because there’s actually a better question: Instead of asking what keeps people up at night, what if we asked Americans what wakes them up in the morning? What gets you out of bed, ready to meet your day? What fills you with a sense of purpose, and then moves you into action?
When you ask that question, people answer. It’s their families, their friends, the one cause to which they’ve devoted their professional life, the charities for which they fundraise, the protests and marches they attend on nights and weekends. The answers are different, but more often than not, there’s an answer.
Their answers bring the future into focus for me. I don’t believe that good simply happens without us, but I see people taking action on creating that good, and I’m filled with hope.
NationSwell will aspire to be a key part of that clarity and hope for you. Our team has always committed itself to finding the stories of people in this country rolling up their sleeves and getting to work on solving the problems in their own backyards. For the first half of this year, we’re going to keep a laser focus on telling the stories of how our nation’s leaders in social impact have committed their professional and personal lives to putting purpose into action.
If you’re like them and you want to start leading and living by seeing your purpose in action, we’ll give you the tools and inspiration you need to get started and keep building.
With deep gratitude,
Anthony B. Smith
Vice President, Published Content & Growth
NationSwell
One Man’s Mission to Help Others Grow Through Grief
Bruce is no stranger to grief. He lost his father to a work accident, then his son, a Marine, died in a motorcycle accident one day after re-entering civilian life. Bruce sank into a depression, cutting himself off from everyone and everything.
He saw counselors and read self-help books, and finally drove to a church more than an hour away to attend a GriefShare program he had read about. Talking with others who had also lost loved ones made him feel a little better — or, at least, a little less alone.
As Bruce continued to heal, he wanted to give that peace to others. He started a GriefShare program in his church. He believes everyone’s pain is easier to bear when they can also share hope and comfort.
This article was created by Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.
How You Learn Will Matter Much More in the Future Workplace
In today’s technological workplace, knowing how to learn is key to keeping pace with change. We’ve entered a new work culture, one where technology executes while humans learn and create new value. Being able to acquire new skills is becoming a skill in itself: In this new era, those who learn and adapt fastest will thrive.
We‘ve all heard that different people learn in different ways. But the idea that personal learning styles are crucial to successful education models has been debunked as little more than a myth. As it turns out, learning styles aren’t entirely innate, so it likely doesn’t matter whether you’re a visual learner or a kinetic learner, a “reflector” or a “theorist.” What matters more is your experience of learning — how you’ve learned how to learn — and the experience you bring to what you’re learning.
While people might not strictly learn in their own unique style, they do tend to learn differently depending on their age. For example, several studies have compared the way that older and younger adults learn and found that there are important differences that can be leveraged by employers.
A 2014 Brown University study scanned students’ brains as they learned. When humans acquire new information, our brain cell structures change in order to store it, a phenomenon known as “plasticity.” The researchers found that older and younger adults learned at the same rate, but they tended to store new information in different parts of their brains.
What does that mean in practice? One study compared traditional-age college students in their late teens and early 20s with adults returning to college in their 30s, 40s and 50s. It found that the older group tended to take more time to analyze and break down new information rather than simply memorize it.
And yet another study found that older students were better at staying organized and felt less stressed by coursework than their traditional-age peers. “Students with more life-roles and responsibilities” — that is, older students — “may be more adept at the mechanics of time management such as making lists and scheduling activities in advance,” the researcher concluded.
There’s also evidence that as people age, understanding the process of learning becomes more important to them. Mid-career and older workers often want to understand why they’re learning a new skill — how it will contribute to their overall mission, how it fits in with what they already know and how they can deploy it creatively in the future. In contrast, younger learners are often ready to soak up knowledge as it’s presented to them and figure out how it fits into their work later.
This is important because all people are being called upon to keep learning new skills much later into adulthood than ever before. We’re in the midst of an unprecedented, rapid technology shift. Whereas previous generations could learn a trade and stay at it for a lifetime, today’s workers are asked to constantly assimilate new information, new skills and in some cases, entirely new jobs.
As future-of-work strategist Heather McGowan, co-founder of Work to Learn, has said, “this shift [in technology] requires us to think differently about both work and learning. In the past, we learned once in order to work, but we must now work to continuously learn.”
Then there’s the fact that older adults are staying on the job much longer. Summarizing a 2018 study, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported that in 2000, about one in 10 Americans aged 65 to 74 worked. Today, roughly a quarter of that age group works, with that figure expected to grow to one in three in the next few years.
Economic strain can play a role in that, as do longer lifespans. But many older employees also say they simply take satisfaction from having meaningful work. As they reach the mid- to late-career stage, people start to take inventory of their work as it pertains to both purpose and self-expression. Some find a greater connection to their passions, whereas others wish to recast their career in greater alignment with their values.
The result is a much more multigenerational workforce, according to the AARP. It isn’t unusual for a 22-year-old and a 65-year-old to be learning the same new tech skill at the same time from the same supervisor. Or perhaps one employee is teaching the other — and either could be the instructor. That makes it important to understand your own learning style as well as that of others, so you can better communicate no matter if you’re the teacher or the student.
Here’s an example: Imagine that your manager is showing you and a colleague a new process for publishing documents online. Are you most likely to: A) Memorize the sequence of clicks and keystrokes; or B) Figure out what each click in the sequence is doing?
If you answered “A,” you learn in a way typical of people in their 20s. It might seem easier to simply memorize or write down the sequence of commands without worrying about why it is the way it is. It might seem frustrating when your fellow employee insists on understanding the inner workings of every process. But bear with them, because it will help the lesson stick in the long run — and you might learn something in the process that you can apply in your work.
If you answered “B,” you learn in a way more typical of people over 30. You don’t just want to go through the steps, as you won’t remember them unless you know the logic behind each one. You should realize that your coworker might not need the full explanation of what they’re doing — they might just need a quick rundown of how to work the system. That doesn’t mean they’re not absorbing what’s being said, but they might need to come to you if they run into trouble since you might have a deeper understanding of the process.
When you understand how you approach new information and new skills, it will be easier to adjust your style to help others. As AARP’s Debra Whitman has noted, “In today’s era of rapid change… a single dose of education is not enough. Explicit knowledge is easily accessible from our devices and ripe for automation. Workers maintain their value by continuing to learn and adapt.”
As multigenerational workplaces embrace how different people learn at different stages of life, it will become easier to unify all employees across cultural and technological divides. In this way companies will be better able to optimize the different skills and experiences their age-diverse employees bring to the table. AARP believes that learning is a social act that is much more fun and meaningful when it happens in collaboration with others.
This article was produced in partnership with AARP. You can learn more here about how AARP is shaping the Future of Work.
David Brooks Wants to Weave Connection Into the American Fabric
NationSwell: David, you’ve spent most of your life as a journalist, author and columnist holding a mirror to society. What made you decide to join the Aspen Institute and lead a project aimed at shifting American culture?
David Brooks: It’s clear that we have a crisis of connection in this country. I do a lot of reporting across the country and see firsthand the loneliness and division. So many people feel unseen and misunderstood. Black people feel that white people don’t understand their daily experience. Democrats and Republicans glare at each other in angry incomprehension. There are teenagers across the country who feel that no one knows them well. There are seniors wondering what happened to the warm bonds they remember from the old days in their neighborhoods. Our national problems are really relational problems. I realized that the solution wouldn’t come from Washington, DC. It had to happen in our neighborhoods.
Q: How do we solve this crisis of disconnection? How do we make people care about each other?
Brooks: It’s already being solved. It’s being solved by people in neighborhoods everywhere. I will go into a town and ask, “Who is trusted here?” Immediately people start reeling off names of folks who are really good at building community and deepening relationships. Sometimes the people they mention work at a suicide hotline or a mentoring program. Sometimes they run a coffee shop where everybody feels at home. Sometimes they are just the person on the block who invites everybody over for barbecue. Sometimes it’s a young woman in high school who sees someone alone and sits down to talk.
Q: So, for you, are these people “Weavers” of their communities?
Brooks: Yes, they are all Weavers. And they are all very different and yet they are the same in one way. Whatever they do, they lead with love. They create countercultural islands, where love and community are more important than ego and self. The problem is that so far, it’s just islands. So many places and people are left out. Our project began as a way to learn from the Weavers and spread their way of living. Relationships happen one on one. They don’t scale. But social norms do scale. Our goal is to spread this way of living, these social norms that value relationships and community over striving just for yourself. The job is not just to heal division. It’s to find a better way of being.
Q: How do you do that?
Brooks: Our Weave Project does three things. First, we find Weavers and tell their stories to illuminate their values. Being around Weavers has inspired me to change how I live, to be more emotionally open, to live more as an active member of my communities. We use video, narratives and public appearances to bring the Weaver stories to millions of people, so they, too, will be inspired to live a little more in the Weaver way. Culture changes when a small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us copy them.
Second, we bring Weavers together, online and through in-person gatherings. We’ve learned that Weavers crave each other’s company. They want to know, “I’m not alone.” They want to meet other Weavers to laugh together, share each other’s burdens and learn from each other’s wisdom.
Third, we spread Weaver skills. Building good relationships is hard. How do I talk to someone with depression? How do I help people heal from trauma? How do I organize a community gathering and keep people engaged? How do I weave across racial or ideological lines? We want to spread the wisdom that’s already out there in the community.
Q: What makes Weave unique? How is your project different from other groups that support community development and neighborhood organizations?
Brooks: Wonderful organizations are doing important work in their communities. Their services are crucial to supporting people, but their work alone will not create the kind of society we dream of. Look back on the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s and 2000s. In those decades, there were foundations that spent hundreds of billions of dollars to build community and expand social mobility. There were millions of volunteers who dedicated hundreds of millions of hours to this work.
They did good work and helped many people. But the fundamental trends did not change. Social mobility declined. Social trust declined. Polarization got worse. All that work didn’t bend the curves.
They didn’t bend the curves because they focused on creating and scaling good programs. The vast majority of Americans are not in programs. Most of the care in society is informal — friends, neighbors, relatives, teachers and parents.
If you really want to change society, you have to work to change the rest of us. You have to change the culture. You have to change the norms – what people think is the normal way to be a neighbor and citizen, the way a good person behaves. If you’re not doing culture change, you’re not going to bend the curve and make fundamental change.
Weave’s hope is to be one of many organizations that shift people’s perception of how they want to show up in the world. What kind of person do I want to be? How can I live a more connected life, where I deeply see others and where I am deeply seen? How can I lead with love? Culture change is vital.
Q: In today’s society is cultural change on that scale really possible? Aren’t we too steeped in values and a pace of life determined by technology, social media and the pursuit of money and fame?
Brooks: Culture change has happened before and it’s happening now. Back in the 1890s, America was coming apart at the seams just like now. But the Settlement House movement, the Social Gospel movement and the Progressive movement shifted culture and norms and produced 60 years of greater cohesion.
By the 1960s, people found those communities stifling, so they created a counter-culture that emphasized individualism, freedom from restraint, liberation. Think of all the old rock anthems: Free Bird, Rambling Man, Born to Run. They shifted culture again. Today, individualism has gone too far. People acknowledge that. Now the tide is turning again. People from every walk of life, every ideology are talking about connection, relationship, interdependence. Cultural change is already happening. People want to come together, to form new kinds of community. Weave is highlighting those who are on the leading edge of this new way of life.
Weaving is not some complicated legislative agenda. It’s us creating connections that make our hearts glow and souls shine. It’s us spreading that kind of love and care to the people around us, who may be lonely, stressed, or marginalized. It’s us creating a culture where that seems normal, a culture in which it’s easier to be good.
I was in Waco, Texas recently having breakfast at a diner with Mrs. Dorsey. She’s a formidable African-American woman in her nineties who was a school principal for many decades. I was a little intimidated by her. “I loved my students enough to be disciplined,” she told me, firmly.
As we were having breakfast, a friend of hers named Jimmy Dorrell, a white guy in his sixties, came in and grabbed her by the shoulders and beamed into her eyes and said, “Mrs. Dorsey! You’re the best! I love you!” Her face lit up like a thousand suns. They were just there in that moment together, two friends who were making their town a better place.
I remember thinking, I want to be able to do that. I want to be so emotionally open and so caring toward people that I can make heart-to-heart connections with a friend even when I’m just walking into a diner. I want to be so deeply connected and so gift-giving that I radiate joy, the way Jimmy Dorrell does, the way the Weavers do.
This article was published in partnership with Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.
The Radical Act of Showing Kindness to a Neighbor
For as long as he can remember, Mack McCarter has felt a duty to serve. A former pastor in Texas, McCarter returned to his Louisiana hometown in 1991. It was there that he began spreading a new message — one of racial reconciliation — in the historically segregated city of Shreveport.
One Saturday, McCarter, who is white, drove to a majority black neighborhood to meet people. When no one opened their doors after he knocked, he chatted with a few kids on the street instead. McCarter kept going back, week after week. It took three months before doors finally started to open.
McCarter’s Saturday efforts eventually led to Community Renewal International, a faith-based nonprofit that has transformed Shreveport by facilitating stronger relationships among community members. Trained volunteers might organize neighborhood social gatherings, for example, or help out when someone is sick or hungry. The nonprofit has also built 10 community centers in low-income, high-crime areas. Called Friendship Houses, they offer everything from family movie nights and service projects to after-school educational programs. In the neighborhoods where the centers operate, crime has fallen by an average of 52 percent.
Service-minded neighbors like McCarter are everywhere, yet most seldom draw attention to themselves. These humble leaders are weaving connections at a time when community ties throughout the U.S. are frayed and risk coming apart. Inspired by their work, the Aspen Institute, along with the New York Times columnist David Brooks, launched Weave: The Social Fabric Project, an initiative that identifies and supports the people quietly working to strengthen America’s communities.
The project began by cold-calling towns and cities across the U.S., said Brooks, Weave’s executive director. They’d simply contact civic leaders and ask, “Who do people trust most in your community?” As they began hearing the same names over and over, the Weave staff hit the road to connect with these trusted community members. Brooks would invite them out for a meal and ask about their lives, their communities and their work.
Common themes emerged from the cross-country conversations. For example, people kept mentioning hospitality — not in the usual way, but as a radical act. To them, friendship and generosity meant an always-open home or simply showing up for others without hesitation or expecting anything in return. When someone was in trouble, these “Weavers” said they always found a way to help.
Their jobs didn’t define them. Some were teachers or business owners. One ran a distillery, another a coffee shop, and one was a parking lot attendant. But what they all had in common was a dedication to lifting up others in the face of today’s self-striving culture. Like McCarter, these people made relationships and community success a priority ahead of status, power and money — and often, in spite of personal hardship and pain.
Weavers … are quiet rebels, working for the common good in a society that values the individual.
In an interview, New Orleans native Katherine Hutton shared how much of her early life was marked by intermittent homelessness and abuse. Instead of isolating herself from strangers, she welcomed them by opening a restaurant in the same neighborhood she’s always called home. Today, people flock to Open Hands Café not just for the crawfish, red beans and rice, and gumbo, but also for Hutton herself. She provides food — and company — for her customers, doting on every one of them.
Weavers like Hutton and McCarter are quiet rebels, working for the common good in a society that values the individual. They emphasize what they have in common with strangers, not how they differ. And they’d rather risk intruding on someone’s privacy than failing to offer support when someone seems isolated and might need a visit, a hug or a sympathetic ear.
Weavers don’t see themselves as doing charity work. “To them, ‘charity’ is the ultimate dirty word,” Brooks said. “In their view, we all need each other. We are all taking this walk together, helping each other with mutual needs and dreams.”
At a time when many in our country feel disconnected and lonely, when families and towns are torn apart over social issues and politics, and when suicide rates are rising, we need more Weavers, said Brooks.
Weavers know that effective change starts at the local level. They know that small gestures can snowball, leading to community-wide impact. And they know that simply showing love can be the most game-changing act of all.
As McCarter put it, “When I meet you, I assume there’s a bridge from my heart to yours — and I am coming over!”
This article was created by Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.
A Chicago Neighborhood Revived Its Soul by Buying Vacant Lots
Asiaha, her husband and daughter were set to leave their Chicago neighborhood, Englewood, to live in a suburb. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t just leave the kids playing in dirt and broken glass in empty lots. She couldn’t be one more person to give up on the neighborhood where she grew up.
According to an analysis of the FBI’s 2018 uniform crime reports, Englewood’s violent crime rate is about two and a half times higher than the national average, and property crime was nearly eight times higher, according to estimated data. Vacant lots are everywhere. The Chicago Sun Times reported that the neighborhood had the second highest number of property demolitions in the city, with very few permits to rebuild. An eye-opening 2011 report in the Chicago Tribune noted that the many vacant, boarded-up homes you see in Englewood have “kept [the neighborhood] in [a] downward spiral.”
Asiaha only knew how to lead by putting her love for her community first, and that made all the difference in getting her community to believe in Englewood again.
This article was published in partnership with Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.