A Curious Plan to Fight Climate Change: Buy Mines, Sell Coal, The New York Times
The lines in the so-called war on coal were drawn long ago: Sierra Club lawyers, on one side, clashed with Republican legislators and energy companies on the other. Tom Clarke, owner of a chain of nursing homes, set up a lonely camp in the battlefield’s middle ground. His nonprofit is buying up mines at bankruptcy proceedings, then selling the coal bundled with carbon offsets from tree-planting.
The Art of Breathing Lights, Albany Times-Union
At sundown in upstate New York, the blight is aglow with light. For the next two months, as part of a massive public art project, hundreds of vacant clapboard homes in Albany, Schenectady and Troy are being lit from inside with LED lights. Pulsing as if they were slowly exhaling, these abandoned houses refuse to be ignored.
The Children Who Saw Too Much, RYOT
Whipped with a belt buckle by his abusive stepfather, 17-year-old Ryan grew up believing all adults deal with their problems through aggression. At least, until he attended the nation’s first summer camp for children marred by domestic violence, where he learned, amid the Northern California pines and Klamath River rapids, about a different emotion: hope.
Tag: the arts
The Art of Using Film to Transform the Lives of Formerly-Incarcerated Youth
Comics, with their rowdy action boxed within firm, familiar lines and violence reduced to harmless bams, thwacks and kapows, give Mario Rivera the ability to escape from reality. “When you’re reading the comic book, you’re no longer thinking about your problems,” says Rivera, a 24-year-old New Yorker who served time in prison for a violent crime he committed at age 15. The same goes for Rivera’s younger brother Shawn King, 21, who lived in 37 foster homes between the ages of 7 and 18 and was jailed for a few months earlier this year. Comics gave him a “way of keeping in touch with my brother and my dad…[a feeling] like they were there next to me,” he says.
The two brothers — lanky guys with the same curly, orangish hair and dozens of tattoos between them — barely saw each other during their formative years, but they recently reunited at the Community Producers program at New York City’s Maysles Documentary Center (MDC) and discovered their shared interest in not only comics, but filmmaking as well. At MDC, the siblings, along with two dozen court-involved youth, created documentary shorts about their lives. After six months of production (all at no cost to participants), the films capture day-to-day life of someone who came into contact with the law and compel audience members to change the way they view these adolescents: not as convicts, but as creatives.
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“If you hear from a young person who’s been incarcerated and listen to his story, you’ll leave different somehow, based on what you learned,” says Christine Peng, MDC’s education director who founded and oversees Community Producers. “Serving the communities and neighborhoods of the tri-state region is important to NBC 4 New York and Telemundo 47,” says John Durso, Jr., vice president of community and communications for NBC 4 New York and Telemundo 47. “Maysles Documentary Center provides an important service to the community in which it’s located and through 21st Century Solutions, our stations work together to support new programs and initiatives, generating positive change within our region.
APPLY: Maysles Documentary Center is an NBCUniversal Foundation 21st Century Solutions grant winner. Apply to the 2016 program today.
MDC founder Albert Maysles and his brother, David, were revered documentarians known for “direct cinema,” an approach where the cameraman simply observes without intrusion and edits the clips together without narration. By letting characters in films such as “Grey Gardens” and “Salesman” speak for themselves, the brothers (now both deceased) believed, “you really get to know the world, not the philosophy or point-of-view of the narrator.” Albert’s creed was that “you can listen to someone else’s story and truly hear them out, without jumping to assumptions,” Peng explains.
Similarly, Community Producers gives participants (all racial minorities with a criminal history) the opportunity to share their real-life experiences of growing up — a chance many haven’t been afforded by the social service bureaucracy or criminal justice system. After just a few minutes onscreen, the filmmakers break through misconceptions and reveal their vulnerabilities to moviegoers. For instance, a viewer will discover that the roughly 46 tattoos crowding King and Rivera’s arms aren’t the typical jailhouse variety: they’re actually Pokémon and X-Men cartoons.
The process of breaking down stereotypes starts with the filmmakers themselves, as the adolescent New Yorkers, ever protective of their own turf and judgmental about other neighborhoods, had to learn to trust their peers at MDC. When the program first began in March, King was silent, and Rivera would only pipe up if spoken to one-on-one. They didn’t discuss life at home. “Is this a safe space for me? Are these people going to judge me?” Peng says the kids wondered. “Part of what eventually built that trust was either realizing you were totally wrong about somebody or realizing that you shared a lot in common, as people who lost parents or siblings or who had traumatic experiences growing up.”
Emulating the Maysles brothers by working in a pair, Rivera and King kept the cameras rolling nonstop, finding details from their lives that would resonate with an audience. As they debated artistic vision, their collaboration forced them to learn more about each other. While the brothers describe the experience as “fun,” Peng says she witnessed them learn “to be accountable to each other, emotionally and physically.” Often, the siblings pointed the lens toward their own family members, including a sister with whom they’d lost contact, and sometimes themselves. “The process of making the film gave them an excuse to be around people,” she noticed. “They could be involved and also be a little outside,” retreating behind the viewfinder. One afternoon, on MDC’s rooftop, Rivera and King asked each other about their relationship with their dad, the first time they’d ever discussed him together.
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When NationSwell visited MDC in late June, King had been temporarily kicked out of the MDC space. Despite his brother’s absence, Rivera said he planned to finish the film, even if he was doing it alone. “I’ve already started it, and I’m not the type who’s into starting something and not finishing it,” he told his peers after previewing a two-minute rough cut. King returned after a brief hiatus, and together, the siblings put together “Back to Reality,” a film that shows the their tangible love for each other and, as Rivera puts it, their “daily escapades.” The short movie also tackles weightier issues: learning how to parent while coping with their mother’s recent death and grappling with the lifelong appreciation of comic books their dad instilled in them even though they now hate the man for skipping out on their childhood.
Unlike most arts programs that tout the cathartic value of transforming one’s life into art, the Maysles Documentary Center Community Producers program impacts youth through alternative means. King and Rivera received something that had largely been missing from their childhood: a new way to connect with their family members and each other. With a camera in hand, they could rekindle any relationship and ask questions that previously might have been awkward. After filming her, King and Rivera’s sister arrived at the showcase to watch their finished movie. Sitting together in the back row of MDC’s theater, the siblings once again looked like a family. After years of separation, spent reading comic books alone, this reunion looked better than any caped crusader’s rescue.
Maysles Documentary Center is a recipient of last year’s 21st Century Solutions grant powered by the NBCUniversal Foundation, in partnership with the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations. The grant celebrates nonprofits that are embracing innovative solutions to advance community-based programs in the areas of civic engagement, education, environment, jobs and economic empowerment, media, and technology for good. Apply here for a chance to be one of the 2016 winners!
Why America Must Remember Its Lynching Past, The Compassionate Nonagenarian Who Knits Hats for Those on the Streets and More
The Legacy of Lynching, on Death Row, The New Yorker
Bryan Stevenson, one of the foremost civil rights lawyers of our time and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, sees a link between wrongful convictions, today’s police shootings of young black men and the nation’s barbarous history of lynching. To honor the 4,000 African Americans killed in the former Confederate states, Stevenson plans to build a $20 million memorial in Montgomery, Ala., on the site of a former public housing complex.
Man, 91, in hospice care knits hats for the homeless, WXMI
For the last 15 years, Morrie Boogart, a 91-year-old in Grandville, Mich., has knit hats for the homeless. Using donated yarn, Boogart has made at least 8,000 caps to keep the homeless warm during the winter. Confined to bedrest from skin cancer and a mass on his kidney, he’s spending his last days in admirable service to others.
Yes, Queens, The Ringer
When one thinks of podcasts, the image of a bespectacled white man, like “This American Life”’s Ira Glass, probably comes to mind. The seriously irreverent, wildly popular weekly podcast “2 Dope Queens,” hosted by Jessica Williams, formerly of “The Daily Show,” and Phoebe Robinson, a standup comedian, opens the medium to a new type of host. Racism, sexism and politics, as seen from a black woman’s perspective, are all carefully discussed, and somehow hilarity ensues.
MORE: Why Sleeping in a Former Slave’s Home Will Make You Rethink Race Relations in America
This Is Possibly America’s Most Immigrant-Friendly City, Using Burgers to Bring Police and Community Activists Together and More
How an Ohio Town Became a Model for Resettling Syrian Refugees, Vice
Many politicians don’t believe that the U.S. can properly screen refugees from the Middle East. Yet one city in Ohio is welcoming them with open arms. In Toledo, multiple organizations provide Syrian immigrants with much-needed assistance, helping them locate housing, receive English language lessons and more.
Diverse Wichitans Gather for Barbecue with Police, Wichita Eagle
Across the nation, Black Lives Matter protesters and police officers face off against each other in the streets. But in Wichita, Kan., these two groups came together over hamburgers and hot dogs to discuss the importance of community policing, how poverty and lack of education cause racial disparity and why racial bias still exists.
Meet the Dangling Goddess of Street Art at Ozy Fest, Ozy
Low-income students who receive a strong arts education are more successful at challenging coursework than kids whose schooling is light on the arts. Which is why street artist Alice Mizrachi is teaching urban youth how creative expression can fight poverty and racial inequality.
MORE: Why Sleeping in a Former Slave’s Home Will Make You Rethink Race Relations in America
The Program That Encourages Girls to Speak Out About What It’s Really Like to Be a Teenager
On a recent Saturday evening in Lower Manhattan, nearly two dozen high school girls stood next to glowing laptops, displaying projects to a milling crowd. One used the online presentation tool Prezi to click through chapters of her vampire novel-in-progress, which, she says, is a metaphor for society’s fear of African Americans. Another showed off her short film, “Stop and Smell the Roses” depicting New York City scenes about journeys: subway rides, map-reading, outdoor strolls. In voiceover narration, the filmmaker, Sharon Young, explains the uncertainty she feels about attending college in the fall: “I’m the type of person who wants to plan everything out, who wants to know what’s on the set list, if the clouds are going to be overcast, what sort of direction I’m floating in.”
Girls Write Now is largely responsible for Young’s emerging voice. Since 1998, the New York City program has paired over 5,000 underserved high school girls with established female journalists, novelists, screenwriters, bloggers and other digital media professionals. The teens (only 4 percent of whom are white) mainly come from the outer boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx to string words into poems, try their hand at reporting a story or dream up the concept for a novel. Basic English proficiency is a challenge in many New York City high schools, so Girls Write Now helps low-income young women of color improve their communication, writing and leadership skills. With a mentor, a teenager develops a portfolio of creative work and then, during her senior year, crafts a college essay. Despite outside obstacles, every single senior who participated in Girls Write Now has gone to college — often with scholarships and accolades in tow.
As the media landscape changes rapidly, the mission of fashioning young female writers takes on a particular urgency since there’s now a chance for women of color to claim a space in a world dominated for centuries by white men. In today’s digital age, young women can control their own narrative by telling it themselves online, reaching a wide audience, says Veronica Black, a pixie-cut-sporting filmmaker, museum curator and Young’s mentor. Which is why Girls Write Now offers a special digital media program that trains teens in creative uses of the latest technology. “At the end…girls are equipped to tell a story in GIFs, write a poem in HTML, and take their words to the next level,” says Maya Nussbaum, Girls Write Now’s founder. “From narrative games to audio and animation, writing isn’t just in ink anymore.”
APPLY: Girls Write Now is an NBCUniversal Foundation 21st Century Solutions grant winner. Apply to the 2016 program today.
Young’s participation in the digital media program was unplanned. (Coincidentally, so was Black’s.) Initially shy, Young, a Harlem native and recent graduate of The High School for Math, Science and Engineering, one of New York City’s nine specialized magnet schools, kept her opinions to herself, needing several meetings before really opening up to Black. Together, the pair experimented using various types of digital media before Young discovered that film best aligns with her sensibility and visual way of thinking. (She’s attracted to the freedom that comes with a multi-platform definition of writing because she doesn’t have the patience to draft sentences until they’re perfect, preferring the spontaneity of capturing unplanned beauty on camera.) Suddenly, questions about classic movies, how to write a script and what Black had learned from her own video projects flowed out of the once-quiet girl. One night, as Young worked on her vlog, she glanced up from her video-editing software and realized it was two in the morning. “I think that’s when I realized making films was something I enjoyed,” she says.
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Today, in an interview at Girls Write Now’s offices in midtown, Young displays confidence, especially with her mentor beside her. After three years together, they understand each other, laughing about inside jokes and grading each other’s metaphors. “[Black has] been very supportive of my ideas and helped me turn them into reality. She helped me to be vulnerable in my writing and take risks,” Young says, sharing that her mentor “open[ed] my eyes to the different uses of digital media.”
While many of Young’s high school classmates plan on getting STEM degrees, Girls Write Now has given her other options for next year in college (she plans to attend Hunter College, located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan) — including finding a way to bridge both science and art through technology. While scared of the future, she now understands the importance of being a female storyteller. “It’s taking ownership of your identity, your gender, your upbringing and not falling for society’s norms for you because you’re a girl. It’s breaking those walls down,” she says, possessing the mental clarity and confidence to articulate her feelings and share them with strangers. It’s something of a risk, she feels, but one she can’t resist. Now that she’s found her voice — and the perfect medium to share it — through Girls Write Now, there’s no sense hiding it.
Girls Write Now is a recipient of last year’s 21st Century Solutions grant powered by the NBCUniversal Foundation, in partnership with the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations. The grant celebrates nonprofits that are embracing innovative solutions to advance community-based programs in the areas of civic engagement, education, environment, jobs and economic empowerment, media, and technology for good. Apply here for a chance to be one of the 2016 winners!
How Do You Get Millennials Focused on the Issues Facing Americans Today?
Kasey Saeturn, a 20-year-old journalist, got the idea for her most recent reporting project while attempting to grab take-out in Oakland’s Chinatown. That summer afternoon, she and other reporters left the Youth Radio headquarters to find cheap eats. Most returned empty-handed, unable to find anything affordable in the gentrified neighborhood. The situation prompted Saeturn, a first-generation Mien-American whose family came from Laos, to think about urban renewal, wondering: Was a lack of affordable cuisine unique to the Easy Bay or did kids across the country choose between an empty stomach and an empty wallet?
To answer her question, Saeturn built a map and used Facebook and Twitter to collect responses from across the country to fill it. Last month, her story (which was produced by Youth Radio) appeared before a national audience on NPR’s website. “I wouldn’t have even found out if I liked [storytelling] if I didn’t join Youth Radio. I never saw myself as a journalist,” Saeturn, a college student with a second job at a ramen shop, says.
With kids manning the mics, Youth Radio, a public radio station, launched from Berkeley, Calif., in the 1990s. As shootings ravaged low-income neighborhoods, its founder, Ellin O’Leary, hoped to end the prevailing news narrative that all teens were violent gangbangers or victims by giving minority, low-income youths the opportunity to explain their lives for themselves. That mission continues today at bureaus in L.A., Atlanta and Washington, D.C., as Millennials — burdened with college debt and unemployment — create stories about living in a hashtag-centric world. Keeping up with the times, Youth Radio now also streams its content online and in 2009, started its Innovation Lab, a digital storytelling platform, where young people design interactive mobile apps that give a fresh take on the news in a format that’s relevant to their peers.
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“There’s multiple ways to tell a story,” says Asha Richardson, a Youth Radio alum who now manages the Innovation Lab. Richardson, the station’s former tech journalist, wanted her reporting to go beyond the reels and was intrigued how technology — video, music, graphic design, coding — and new platforms that appealed to her peers enhanced reach and storytelling impact. Students in the program (80 percent come from low-income homes) receive real-world tech skills, learning not only how to use a recording device, set levels and mix their audio, but also how to design and code, says Lissa Soep, a senior producer who cooked up the Innovation Lab with Richardson.
APPLY: Youth Radio is an NBCUniversal 21st Century Solutions grant winner. Apply to the 2016 program here.
Youth Radio’s apps transform the century-old two-minute radio story and make it better by allowing a reader to spend as much time with a story as she desires (the same way a listener could binge on Serial). A series of interviews about gentrification in five Oakland neighborhoods, for example, allows a visitor to turn about the city through an online map, visiting schools and playgrounds, a Disneyesque theme park, grand old hotels and new high-rise condos. Richardson’s Bucket Hustle app combines trivia questions about California’s drought with an arcade-style game of collecting falling water drops in a bucket. And another online interactive, Double Charged, lets a viewer follow three people through the juvenile justice system and watch as thousands of dollars in fees pile up throughout the process.
Youth Radio’s multi-platform approach extends young people’s voices far beyond their Twitter feeds and Tumblr accounts. So far, its stories have reached more than 28 million users and the digital tools created in its Innovation Lab have an active user base of more than 3 million people worldwide.
That ability to reach a diverse audience changed the way Saeturn thinks about her own life and how much she’s willing to share on the radio. When she sits down to brainstorm, she asks herself, “What’s going on in my life that other people can relate to?” Knowing her words will be shared justifies “putting all the thought and feeling and heart” into each story, hoping her experience helps another young person listening on the web.
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More than any hackathon or a media studies class, Youth Radio allows young people to express themselves and connect with listeners. By telling stories, Saeturn feels like she’s finally found her voice. Not in the sense that it gave her thoughts and opinions she didn’t hold before, but that it gives her a platform to stand on.
“A lot of adults, they don’t really care for what children have to say. To them, it’s whatever we say goes. They forget that the youth is our next generation. They forget that we have the same thoughts and opinions as you do. We have worries as well,” Saeturn says. “That’s the biggest thing: we’ve been silent for so long, forced to believe that nobody cares.” With Youth Radio as their outlet, they’re finding people that are willing to listen. Online, they’re able to reach more of them than ever before.
Youth Radio is a recipient of last year’s 21st Century Solutions grant powered by the NBCUniversal Foundation, in partnership with the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations. The grant celebrates nonprofits that are embracing innovative solutions to advance community-based programs in the areas of civic engagement, education, environment, jobs and economic empowerment, media, and technology for good. Apply here for a chance to be one of the 2016 winners!
Through the Power of Music, These Homeless Mothers Create a Lasting Bond With Their Children
Earlier this winter at Siena House, a homeless shelter for young mothers in the South Bronx, Crystal spoke softly to her five kids. “This song is for you,” she said, and began crooning a lullaby she wrote (along with the musician Daniel Levy), titled “You’re the Reason Why.”
Accompanied by a guitar and violin, she sang, “You’re the reason why I smile. You’re the reason why I sing. You’re the reason I’m alive. You’re my all, my everything.” In delicate couplets, Crystal expressed a mother’s love for her children — sentiments we often associate with a woman leaning over a crib in a baby’s bedroom, not new moms passing through homeless shelters, jails, housing projects and adult education programs who are barely able to hold their families together.
Since 2011, the Lullaby Project, a Carnegie Hall program (part of its larger Musical Connections initiative) that takes music’s transformative power outside gilded concert halls and into neglected communities throughout New York City and across the nation, has paired more than 300 homeless or incarcerated mothers with professional musicians to create a musical experience for their child. Over three sessions, new and expectant moms write, compose and record a short lullaby for their newborns. For young women who may have experienced their own difficult childhood, the project is a chance to give a name to all the raw emotions that come with motherhood: the regrets from their own lives, the bright wishes for their children and, most importantly, the bottomless affection welling up in these new mothers’ hearts.
The Lullaby Project is not simply a chance for a mom to pen something lasting and meaningful; the song also creates a vital bond that’s key for the child’s development, says Dr. Dennie Palmer Wolf, a researcher evaluating the project. Singing a lullaby helps to create a secure attachment between mother and child, which studies have shown often leads to exploration, better social relations and emotional well-being in later life, Wolf says. Carnegie Hall’s Lullaby Project is one of the few programs that encourages that broader neonatal development, rather than society’s limited emphasis on preventing infant mortality or disease.
“When we fund maternal and infant healthcare, it’s chiefly in a disease framework: ‘How do you keep mothers from smoking, drinking, or having soda? How do you ensure that kids, postnatally, get vaccinations?’ Those are epidemiological issues. What we don’t pay any attention to, yet is no less critical, is the other side of prenatal and postnatal care: ‘How do we say to young mothers who are maybe on their own, maybe pregnant in neighborhoods that are not particularly safe or in the shelter system, that you are about to be a mother? How do we tell them you are an agent in charge of your own and this baby’s growth and development?’” Wolf asks. This initiative, she adds, is “building young people to do the job they are about to engage in.”
For a generation of children, despite all the turbulence of growing up in poverty, falling asleep in mom’s arms suddenly sounds much sweeter.
MORE: How Texting Can Improve the Health of Babies Born to Low-Income Mothers
This Is Why Hollywood’s Depiction of Veterans Must Change
When it comes to seeing veterans on the big screen, Tom Cruise leading a protest from his wheelchair in “Born on the Fourth of July” or Christopher Walken and Robert DeNiro playing a final game of Russian roulette in “The Deer Hunter” probably come to mind. But Hollywood’s usual portrayal of service members being physically and psychologically wounded is too narrow, says Charlie Ebersol, a Los Angeles-based TV and film producer. “It’s so staid and boring.”
Having on-screen veterans look like ordinary Americans, however, causes our views and politics will change, Ebersol believes. So along with Got Your 6 and support from the White House, he developed a certification system for films and television shows that “contain a representative and balanced depiction of veterans.” (Think: Chris Pratt playing a Navy veteran in the blockbuster Jurassic World, or the latest season of Dancing with the Stars, which featured an Army vet and double amputee doing the Tango.)
NationSwell recently spoke to Ebersol by phone from Southern California about the role Hollywood should be playing in bridging the civilian-military divide.
What misconceptions does traditional media perpetuate about veterans?
That they’re either heroes or they’re victims; they either need our help or they don’t need any help at all. It’s not binary, and the real story is so much more complex and interesting, in that, you have great opportunity in all these veterans coming home, but we don’t take advantage of it because we think they all have PTSD or hero syndrome.
How are you personally changing that narrative?
In keeping with Hollywood tradition, I operate from a philosophy that if you offer some sort of shiny prize or award to producers, they will do what they need to do to get said prize. So we’ve been certifying movies and television shows that do a good job telling veterans’ stories. Lo and behold, people started telling better veterans’ stories when they got a gold star at the end of their show or movie.
Should filmmakers be meeting with veterans to turn their stories into films?
It’s literally that simple. The problem is that, for so long, we were trying to drum up support for the veterans coming home. To do that, people have always [done something similar] to those ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) commercials where the dogs look really pathetic and what’s her name — [Sarah] McLachlan — is playing her sad song. You may donate money, but what they found was the best way to get people to actually adopt dogs was to show how much fun and how fabulous these dogs were.
After Word War II, veterans came back and people wanted to hire them because they were highly trained. They knew they did well under pressure, and some people started really reaching out. We don’t do that [today]. So when you look for a story, all you really have to do is talk to a veteran, say, “Thank you for your service. Can you tell me about interesting people that are in your lives or unique stories?” And the majority of the stories you’re going to hear are not going to be stories of, “oh, my buddy who’s got a massive drinking problem and is living on the street,” because that’s such a fraction of the population. A lot of the stories are going to be about guys who served two or three tours and now they run a hardware shop or now they’re working in a corporation or are in the tech business. Those stories make for interesting characters.
In telling these stories, what have you learned about what defines an American soldier?
Loyalty, duty and commitment. As an employer, when I’m interviewing somebody, if I could know inherently those were a person’s three strongest traits, that would be the ultimate cheat sheet. That’s the beauty of hiring a veteran. You know going in that that person is loyal, feels a sense of duty and is all about commitment because the guy or girl put themselves in harm’s way for their country and for their fellow soldier or sailor or airman. That’s what you’re looking for in a company, in a family, in a friend. You want people that you know are going to show up, and nobody shows up like the military.
What can the rest of us do to support veterans?
The platitude needs to stop being, “Thank you for your service,” and actualize that into something meaningful. The yellow ribbon and the stickers, that’s all well and good, but that’s not actually translating into anything. We have to look past that and ask, “How are we creating job opportunities? How are we creating community support where we’re embracing these people?” A lot of people want to do it under the guise of “They served our country, so we owe them.” That’s not what I’m saying. Don’t get me wrong: You do have to take into account that we enjoy our freedoms because of them. But I think the other side of it is significantly more important; they have show their true character and their true colors, and in showing us that and in being trained, at the absolute worst, they are certainly the best qualified people for almost any job.
It’s rare that the person I hire into my company is the most suited because they went to the right types of schools; it’s always about how they act under pressure and how they understand teamwork and the mission being bigger than the man or woman. Veterans are always significantly better at that than anyone else.
MORE: Why Is It So Hard to Understand What It’s Like to Be a Veteran?
The Visionary That’s Getting Everyone to the Table to Talk About Social Good
This February, on the exact same day, two governors from two very different states — Nikki Haley, a Republican in South Carolina, and Dan Malloy, a Democrat in Connecticut — both announced social impact bonds to promote family care: one for low-income moms, the other for parents struggling with substance abuse. Both of these bonds (also known as “pay for success”) deployed private dollars to fund the scaling of a social program. If the project succeeds in meeting specific, predesigned metrics, the private backers will profit from their investment; if not, taxpayers don’t owe a penny more. Behind both of these innovative, cross-sector partnerships was Tracy Palandjian, CEO of Social Finance, a nonprofit intermediary between all the parties, who helped bring the “pay for success” model to the United States after seeing it first implemented in England in 2010.
NationSwell spoke with Palandjian by phone from Boston about the daily obstacles and excitements that come with rethinking how American social services can reach more people in need.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given on leadership?
I have two. The first one is an African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go with others.” Just because one has a great idea and one could often accomplish a lot more, going at it alone is often insufficient if you really want to deliver a movement. That’s hugely evident in our work here. Imagine these very funky public-private nonprofit partnerships with so many stakeholders with very divergent motivations. What motivates a private investor? A sitting governor or mayor? The executive directors of these classic human service providers? We have everyone sit around a table to articulate a common goal — in this case, delivering results to our communities — when they have often conflicting frameworks and very different languages they speak in and very different world-views. Bringing them together around a very common goal among very uncommon stakeholders is something that we have found, yes, it’s challenging, but if we can rally this forth, we see enduring, powerful results coming out of those partnerships.
By way of background for my other one: I didn’t grow up in this country. I’m Chinese, and I grew up in Hong Kong. My grandfather whom I was very close to, his favorite quote was (translated to English): “Distance tests the strength of forces, time tests the hearts of men.” It really is a message about patience. A lot of things take time, and the people who can stay steadfast on that vision could achieve the most. My grandfather was born in 1903 in China. He took his courageous wife — my grandmother — and, at that point, four children, and literally fled the Second Wold War on foot, by boat and by train out of China into Hong Kong and then to Taiwan ultimately. He was a chemical engineer, completely self-taught. He left everything behind when he fled. Along the way, he lost two children. After they made it to safety, he started all over again. He made consumer batteries and completely rebuilt himself, his family and his business. I always think about their lives and what they were able to overcome and what they were able to accomplish. Sometimes, we take three steps backward to take five steps forward.
What’s your favorite book of all time?
One of my favorite books, which I’m proud to say is the namesake of our eldest daughter: a Chinese classic, “Tao Te Ching.” It’s just so poetic and so poignant about how one should live. And it’s full of these non-intuitive sentences like, “It is through being effortless that you can achieve the most.”
What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
Taking a step back, social impact bonds are probably the latest and the most recent comer to this broader investing landscape. I agree there’s been a lot of hype, but the reason why people are excited about it is that the impact is so direct. When our investors get their money back and then some, it’s because somebody’s life has been improved. This very articulated, metric-driven all-around life improvement, whether it’s recidivism or job attainment or education attainment or improved health outcomes, these are the metrics of each of our deals. Someone’s life improvement is the source of the return back to the investor, and that connection is really powerful. While the field started off in criminal justice (and still a lot of projects are focused on reducing recidivism), we’re excited to see there are a lot of projects in early education, in early childhood, in health and in workforce development.
How do you try to inspire others?
I just try to be who I am. I believe, as a person, I’m best when I’m aligned as a human being and I’m 100 percent authentic. I don’t try to say something because it will inspire others. I don’t try to do something because, well, that’s what I believe a good leader should do. I try to model good behavior for my colleagues. I’m not perfect, I have lots of limitations. I try to be a good parent and model good behavior for our children. I feel very strongly about this; I feel like there are too many lessons and advice that people give. People just need to be authentic.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
I am probably most proud of the fact that I really think that I understand two cultures perfectly well. Obviously, I grew up in my own [Chinese] culture. My whole family’s still in that part of the world. You never forget your own culture and your native language. But I also think I’ve worked in America long enough and I’ve worked with enough different sectors and different kinds of people that I really understand how this country and this culture works, too. I think that’s just a huge skill to be able to be empathetic, to be able to step into the shoes of others. I think it’s a really important skill to have, especially for our work, which requires us to talk across sectors and work across disciplines.
What don’t most people know about you that they should?
I’m an artist at heart. That’s what I did as a young kid, all throughout high school and college, I painted a lot, I drew a lot, I experimented with all kinds of mediums. I miss that part of my life. I haven’t done much since I graduated from college. Now, I watch my kids do it, and it makes me very happy.
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This interview has been edited and condensed.
The 10 Most Inspiring Books of 2015
In the waning years of the first African-American president’s time in office, a young black male can be gunned down by police with impunity and a young Hispanic girl can grow up in a neighborhood with limited educational horizons. As the wars in the Middle East draw to a close for American troops, veterans struggle to find work and housing and gun violence follows them back to their communities. In 2015, it often felt like progress was tempered by setbacks, so it’s important to look to journalists to provide the nuanced understanding of events, to historians to give them historical weight and to novelists and poets to distill their meaning. Our essential reading from this year:
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