Danielle Cook’s oldest son was only 11 years old when he was diagnosed with stage three Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer that affects the immune system. “There was a huge sense of powerlessness and great sadness,” remembers Cook, a mother of three who worked for years as a cooking demonstration instructor in the Washington, D.C., area.
Cook, who now also works as a holistic nutritionist, relentlessly looked for answers in food. After months of making special recipes, she saw her son go from a “worn, depressed, tired kid to a healthy adolescent,” she says. Drawing from her experience, she founded Happily Hungry, a program that consists of cooking workshops geared towards hospitalized kids battling cancer and other illnesses.
Watch the video above to see how Cook helps patients and families deal with some of the negative side effects that accompany various medical treatments.
Tag: NationSwell
A Big-Hearted Man and His Calling to Build Tiny Houses for Oakland’s Homeless
“Homeless people,” says Gregory Kloehn, an artist, plumber and construction contractor based in Oakland, Calif., “they’re not really seen… I don’t want to say as human but almost. I mean, they’re definitely [viewed] lower than second class citizens.”
To Kloehn, it’s odd that our society finds it acceptable to ignore the plight of those living on the street.
Several years ago, when Kloehn got an iPhone, he began taking pictures of the structures erected by the homeless of West Oakland, compiling the photos in the book “Homeless Architecture.” Through this work, he came to know his homeless neighbors as the unique people that they are.
But Kloehn’s fascination didn’t stop there. Inspired by the ingenuity of his homeless neighbors, he put his construction and artistic skills towards making homes with the materials they were sourcing, mostly illegally dumped items found on the streets of West Oakland. Mostly famously, he created a house out of a dumpster that garnered a lot of media attention.
“I really just ripped a page out of the homeless peoples’ book, their own game plan,” says Kloehn.
The first home — complete with wheels for mobility and a lock for safety — and a bottle of celebratory Champagne was given to a homeless couple Kloehn had come to know while taking photos. As he saw them wheel it down the street and live in it, he came to understood the value that a safe, dry place has to people who have fallen on hard times.
To date, Kloehn has built 35 miniature homes for the homeless in Oakland and San Francisco. All construction materials (except for the wheels and a few other odds and ends), are sourced from garbage. He also runs workshops and give lectures, teaching other artists and handypeople the tricks of the trade. Following his lead, other builders have made homes for their neighbors in Los Angeles, Tucson, Arizona, and even abroad.
“It’s really put me in tune with the homeless,” says Kloehn. “Now, I see them as people. I know their name, I know their story, I know where they come from, I feel comfortable going up, chatting with them, just hanging out as a person.”
Rebuilding New Orleans’s Lower 9th Ward, One Bag of Groceries at a Time
New Orleans native Burnell Cotlon has spent the last five years on a mission. He’s turning a two-story building that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (along with most of his Lower 9th Ward neighborhood), into a shopping plaza. Already, he’s opened a barber shop and a convenience store, and as of last November, is providing the neighborhood — identified as a food desert — with its first full-service grocery store in almost a decade.
The Lower Ninth Ward, which experienced catastrophic flooding during Hurricane Katrina, has had a much slower recovery than most New Orleans neighborhoods. Before Katrina, the area had a population of around 14,000 and boasted of the highest percentage of black homeownership in the country. According to the last census, however, only around 3,000 people live in the neighborhood. Many of its roads are still torn up, it lacks basic resources and the closest full-service grocery store is nearly 3 miles away in the neighboring city of Chalmette.
Burnell’s merchandise is still mostly limited to non-perishables and fresh produce, but he hopes to add poultry, bread and dairy this year.
What the Former Mayor of Indianapolis Wants You to Know About Government
Stephen Goldsmith is the former mayor of Indianapolis and former Deputy Mayor of New York City for Operations. He sat down with NationSwell and shared his thoughts on how government can work more effectively with data, unions and the private sector.
From Military Officer to Entrepreneur: How One Veteran is Focusing on Renewing America
The Got Your 6 campaign is celebrating the accomplishments of veterans through Storytellers, a series of videos that media partners — including NationSwell — are promoting to raise awareness of all that our veterans have to offer the country.
In the weeks ahead, we’ll share the stories of a U.S. Army Combat veteran who uses comedy to heal war wounds, a punk rocker who found his sense of purpose through service, a West Point graduate who says the military taught her how to unf*** things and more.
The first video features Greg Behrman, the founder and CEO of NationSwell. His talk centers on three projects that he’s focused on since returning from deployment: NationSwell, the Connecticut Heroes Project, and his favorite project, which you’ll have to watch to discover!
Behrman opens his talk standing before a picture of his 10-week-old self, squeezed between his mom and his dad — who, as a boy growing up in South Africa, dreamt of moving to America one day. Behrman says that his perception of the United States has always been linked to the sacrifice his parents made and the opportunities that afforded him.
One such opportunity was at the Harvard Kennedy School, where Behrman was a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. While there, he spent a lot of his time reading the stories of service members, coming to the realization that he wanted to be a part of the Armed Forces. He commissioned in the U.S. Navy (much to his mom’s surprise, given his tendency toward seasickness), then did two years of reserve duty before deploying to Afghanistan and returning with the desire to build something new.
Behrman also speaks about his motivation for building a media company devoted to elevating solutions to national challenges, before going on to discuss his work to address veteran homelessness in Connecticut, his home state, and concluding with his favorite project, who looks very much like his 10-week-old self.
“My hope for her is the same one, I think, that compelled my parents to move halfway across the world all those years ago,” he says. “It’s that she has the opportunity to pursue her dreams and the chance to realize her full potential.”
Veteran Storytellers Take the Mic and Change the Conversation
Got Your 6, a campaign working to change the conversation about veterans and military families, is hosting its Storytellers event in New York City today.
By bringing together service members who continue to pursue careers as change makers and problem solvers, Storytellers represents one way Got Your 6 is bridging the military-civilian divide by uniting the government, the entertainment industry and nonprofits.
The Storytellers that will deliver short presentations include Greg Behrman, founder and CEO of NationSwell; Becky Kanis, who led the 100,000 Homes campaign and is now working on a new project called the Billions Institute; and Don Faul, head of operations at Pinterest. Each of their talks will be filmed, released and promoted widely with the help of partners including MTV and The Huffington Post.
NationSwell will feature these videos in the weeks and months ahead so that this celebration of veterans can continue well past Veterans Day. You can take action in support of the Got Your 6 mission by joining the conversation on social media using the hashtag #wagegood then sharing the videos with six of your friends.
In the meantime, here is a glimpse at highlights from the 2013 Storytellers event.
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Why Are America’s Innovations in Education Spreading Worldwide But Not Here?
At a recent NationSwell Council event, Wendy Kopp spoke about the irony of having American innovations in education being put to use all over the world, but failing to find momentum to spread them far and wide here in the U.S.
The Three Things That Innovative Thinkers Do As Children
Tony Wagner, Expert In Residence at Harvard University’s new Innovation Lab, sat down with NationSwell and shared some ideas on how to rethink the American education system. He says that parents of innovative thinkers encourage play, passion and purpose.
A New Fleet of Food Trucks Offers a Better Path for Formerly Jailed Kids
Snow Day is the first in a potential fleet of food trucks by the New York City-based nonprofit Drive Change. On its menu: locally-sourced, maple syrup-inspired food that is prepared, cooked and served by formerly incarcerated youth.
Jordyn Lexton founded the organization in 2013 with the goal of reducing the number of young people that return to jail after being released with a criminal record. She employs them at $11 and hour and provides what she hopes will be a launchpad into the food industry or other employment opportunities.
Big Bets: How Tutors in Struggling Schools Are Increasing College-Readiness Rates
Nick Ehrmann founded Blue Engine in 2009 to help better prepare New York City’s low-income high school students for success in college.
According to a study by the Urban Institute, only 10 percent of low-income students get a college diploma, compared with about half of teens from higher-income families. To tackle this achievement gap, Blue Engine is focusing on the academic rigor of high schools in low-income neighborhoods. They deploy recent college grads to assist teachers in these schools (so far, they are partnering with five schools in New York City) and to provide small-group tutoring in the classroom.
According to Ehrmann, who began his career as a grade-school teacher in inner-city Washington, D.C., students attending Blue Engine partner schools are seeing huge performance gains. “We’ve seen college-ready rates anywhere from double to triple year after year,” says Ehrmann. “We’re finding failure rates on high-stakes exams plummet 30 percent or more.”
Since the original publication of this story, Nick Ehrmann, founder of Blue Engine, has become a NationSwell Council member.
MORE: Why It Took A Plea From A Pizza Guy to Increase Michigan’s Higher Education Funding