A Pocket of Change

A Good POV | "A Starbucks Moment for Nonprofits?"

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:46:00 +0000

In April I wrote and raved about Robert Egger of the DC Central Kitchen, as a social entrepreneur with a vital point of view. Egger just dropped some knowledge and insight about this pivotal, transitional moment in the nonprofit trajectory:

This is where the company [Starbucks] made a brilliant set of decisions that created a model which, if modified, could offer the nonprofit sector a business example which might prove critical to its future economic growth and social vitality.

The full post is a thoughtful and fluid read, and highlights an enthusiastic and hopeful perspective on the opportunities of these turbulent times:

This could be a great moment for the nonprofit sector. If we can see this era of economic duress as an opportunity to attract new employees that can help us sell a new approach to creating a civil society, then this may be the year we finally move from selling the metaphoric empty calories of fast food, to a healthy, whole lifestyle where commerce and justice share equal seats at the table.

Click here for the full post.

Poop-to-Power: "European Farmers Turn to Biogas Plants"

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:18:00 +0000

My dear friend Matthew Dalton reports for The Wall Street Journal from Europe:

BERGHAREN, the Netherlands -- European governments are quietly transforming the practice of turning manure into energy from a fringe technology into a tool for both slashing greenhouse gases from farms and boosting domestic energy supplies.

Plants that convert manure, corn, grass or organic waste into electricity were historically built by just a few environmentally conscious farmers. But the European Union now counts about 8,000 so-called biogas plants, and -- fueled by rising subsidies -- thousands more are expected to be built over the next decade. Farmers are building plants to make a profit, not to protect the environment, and orders are rising at companies that provide the technology.

Click here for the full article. Thanks, Matt.

"Everything Is Amazing, Nobody Is Happy"

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:59:00 +0000

I had the pleasure of attending the Influx Curated conference on Thursday up at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. The forward-thinking branding outfit Influx Insights hosted the event in which 30 speakers came to speak on a range of topics for five minutes each. It was, in the post-coital words of the host, quite the "over-stimulus fest" and just the ticket for a blitz of inspiring ideas around branding, crowd participation, doing 'good', and the necessity and ubiquity of hope.

It started (with hindsight, pretty brilliantly and appropriately) with a viewing of a clip of comedian Lewis C.K. on Conan O'Brien, on how the technological advances in our generation are nothing short of miraculous, and yet everyone seems miserable. Take five minutes to watch the clip. It's hilarious, and it puts some amazing perspective on our modern American life.

As I said, the topics and speakers were a motley bunch: from magazines like GOOD and Wired to brands doing 'good' like Mozilla (Firefox) and Method. Our host Ed Cotton just posted Ten Themes Coming Out of Influx Curated which tells the tale nicely and drives home the requirements for making better brands and a more progressive business culture:

1. Stand for something
If you are fighting for an idea or trying to build a new business, have a point of view and stick to it.

2. Get Out of Your Shell
Everyone has the power within themselves to do something great and to think creatively and imaginatively, it's just that most of us don't. We need to find ways to come out of our shells.

3. Hope is Everywhere, You Just Have to Look
Listen, look and learn and you will find hope and inspiration

4. The Crowd Has Power
Power to create, power to dictate and the power to change

5. The Crowd Needs Motivation
There has to be a leader that has something to spark the imagination of the crowd

6. Story is King
Look hard for them, create them, tell them, share them

7. Be an Optimist
Happy people make ideas good

8. Be a Pessimist
Amazing things can come from dark places

9. The World Needs Ideas
There are huge problems everywhere and we have the potential to solve many of them from the ground up.

10. More Corporations/Creatives Should Be Good
What's the problem with doing good, does it cost too much?

One insight that came through out of this day of conversation concerns the definition of 'inspiration' and verges on the esoteric.

Inspiration seems to be dependent on the thing observed: something inspiring happens and so a person bearing witness to it feels inspired, and thus, inspiration is born. You watch Kobe Bryant pull off some ridonkulously artful move, and you are inspired.

But there's a different kind of inspiration centered not in an event, person, or object, but rather, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. In this way, inspiration is a way of seeing, and so, everything can be inspiring, even the most mundane of happenings.

Therefore, if you can change someone's quality of perception, say, around an issue or concern, the inspiration that is built in that change is long-term, sustainable, maybe even world-changing. Create something - a brand, an image, a piece of art, a movement - create anything that makes that kind of inspiration... and anything is possible.

Kiva Brings Its Game-Changing Loan Program to the US

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:13:00 +0000

Kiva has been a growing international microlending phenomenon for a while now, connecting a vast network of unique entrepreneurs who use tiny amounts of loaned funds to build out their businesses and raise themselves sustainably out of poverty.

Today, Kiva announced that they are now including U.S.-based entrepreneurs in the network:

Today Kiva got a little closer to its mission of connecting people around the world for the sake of alleviating poverty. Starting today, lenders can make loans to microentrepreneurs in the US.
When Kiva first started, it focused on lending to entrepreneurs in Africa. In the last 4 years we have expanded to many more regions around the world, focusing in developing nations. However, our desire has always been to be a truly global organization, and to allow individuals anywhere in the world to make loans anywhere else in the world. Kiva believes that poverty exists in many forms throughout the world and that we can play a part in helping alleviate that poverty by allowing people to lend through our website.
Therefore, to be a truly global organization, Kiva is expanding into microfinance markets in the developed world. Since over 70% of our lenders are currently from North America, the United States was a natural first choice. We know there is much more to be done to fully achieve our mission of connecting people throughout the world, but we are very excited about this first step. We look forward to the day when money is flowing in all directions around the world through Kiva: a Guatemalan woman making a loan to an entrepreneur in Detroit, a man in Uganda making a loan to an entrepreneur in Rwanda, and an Italian lending to a Filipino farmer. We are excited about these possibilities and look forward to seeing them become a reality.

The 'Level' | Furniture Gets Its Own LEED-like Certification

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:33:00 +0000

From the Environmental Leader:

Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA) International, the trade association for the commercial furniture industry, has launched its “level” product certification program. The sustainability standard takes into account material use, energy and atmosphere impacts, human and ecosystem health and social responsibility.

I'd love to see some metrics on the impact of this type of certification on an industry's output. I'm sure it helps raise the sustainability bar, but how much? what are the barriers to compliance? Anyone with some additional knowledge, please drop it.

This Just In: Yunus Calls for Social Stock Market

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:15:00 +0000

A friendly reader forwarded me this bit of Yunus news after reading my post earlier today about the Grameen Bank Family of Companies. In a lecture (full transcript here) to mark the British Council's 75th anniversary in London, Yunus called for "a social business fund and social stock market to ensure social enterprise is at the heart of a recovering economy":

The Nobel Laureate also called for banks to create a more inclusive financial system that benefitted everyone not just the ‘privileged', as part of his lecture to mark the British Council's 75th anniversary in London on Friday, chaired by Lord Neil Kinnock.

‘2009 is a good year to ask the same question again: who is credit-worthy? Is it the large banks with large clients? They are collapsing, going bankrupt, whereas the poor people taking tiny loans, without collateral, are paying every penny of it and changing their lives,' he said.

‘Definitely, one lesson we have learned is that it cannot remain the exclusive club of privileged people. Banking should be an inclusive system, not an exclusive system. Almost two-thirds of the world's population do not qualify to receive the services of conventional banks.'

Thanks for sharing, Robert.

India Has Really, Really, Really Big Plans for Solar

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:04:00 +0000

Over the weekend, Worldchanging reported on a leaked Indian Government national solar energy plan that is - to say the very least - big and ballsy.

The draft strategy "outlines plans for a national target of 200,000 megawatts of solar generation capacity by 2050. This is 1.3 times India's current installed power generation capacity of 150,000 megawatts across all energy sectors."

After years of hearing other regions' alternative energy plans that sound like paltry salt-shakers compared to this - i.e., 5% of energy use from alternative sources - this is a Tim-Taylor-bit-of-bravado that makes me smile. Is it actually possible, though?

Given India's "2.97 million square kilometers of tropical and subtropical land and an average of 250-300 clear sunny days a year," there's every reason to believe that a shift to a new model of energy production might be scalable.

And here's where the real green comes in:

Crucially, however, once the high upfront investment costs have been circumnavigated, the shift to renewables would actually be cost positive, the reports conclude. "The fuel savings up to 2030 would amount to $2,170 billion, seven times more than the additional investment costs," said Sven Teske, an author of Energy [R]evolution. "Over 30 years, India would make money."

Needless to say, this ambitious plan would put the current solar power leading nations into the back seat to say the least.

Putting the 'Family' Back in Multinational | Grameen

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:49:00 +0000

The man won a Nobel Peace Prize three years ago, so I can guarantee I'm not the only one who thinks Muhammad Yunus is the bee's knees of social change. (Check here for an old post I wrote about him.)

As part of GOOD Magazine's excellent Transparency series, they've just put out the above infographic:

Founded in 1983 by Muhammad Yunus, the Grameen Bank (Grameen is Bangledeshi for “village”) provides small loans to rural borrowers in Bangladesh. In the years since, the Bank has become so succesful (Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006),that a whole community of Grameen enterprises—known as the Grameen Bank Family of Companies—have sprung up around it. Some bring phone service to poor Bangledeshis, while others invest in technology startups. The whole range of companies is like a massive, multinational corporation, except this company’s goal is social change.

Click the image above to launch the larger version.

Building 'Climate Positive' Communities | Raising the Bar to 'Less Than Zero' Emissions

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:55:00 +0000

The NY Times Green Inc. reports today on the Climate Positive Development Program, a joint venture between the Clinton Climate Initiative and the U.S. Green Buildings Council.

The mission of the Program is to develop 16 large-scale urban communities on six continents "with enough energy-efficient bells and whistles that its on-site emissions are actually less than zero." The Program includes London's Development Agency's $2.4 billion Elephant & Castle regeneration program (pictured above), among others.

All sixteen are in very different stages of development but will share certain key characteristics, such as high densities, mixed use zoning and transit accessibility. [President and Founder of the U.S. Green Buildings Council] Mr. [Rick] Fedrizzi says they will also rely on state-of-the art energy efficiency building technology, such as super insulation, high performance glass and natural ventilation systems.

As the mainstreaming of sustainability concerns continues, we'll undoubtedly see more such raisings of the bars of what is considered "sustainable." One such bar-raising debate has already sprung up around certain industries "trying to expand the meaning of 'renewable energy'." Because of billions of dollars in incentives and tax breaks available to those in the 'renewables' market, it's clear there's a "follow the money" fever going on here.

In some states, the definition of “renewable” or “alternative” has already expanded. In Pennsylvania, waste coal and methane from coal mines receive the same treatment as solar panels and wind turbines. In Nevada, old tires can count as a renewable fuel, provided microwaves are used to break down their chemical structure.

One of the main drawbacks of this growing elasticity of 'renewables' is that it defeats "the whole purpose of the renewable standard, [which is] to encourage the development of some of these newer technologies and bring the price down," says Jeff Bingaman, Democratic Senator of New Mexico and chairman of the Senate energy committee. If you add in the burning of garbage for energy, among dozens of other such waste-to-energy initiatives, the numbers and the issue gets complicated.

Complicated or not, we need all the help we can get right now. So while "climate positive" and cradle-to-cradle initiatives might be the cream of the proverbial sustainable crop, shouldn't we encourage the slightly less green upcycling of waste? It might pale in comparison to the former, but it certainly beats the horrifying standards set by industry up to now.

The Red Dragon Goes Green | Wales Zeroing Out Waste by 2050

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Sat, 23 May 2009 16:24:00 +0000

Being part Welsh, this bit of news from Worldchanging makes me proud:

Wales today laid out radical plans to make it one of the most energy- and resource-efficient countries in the world within a generation.

The government development plans, which are legally binding, are far in advance of anything planned for England or Scotland and would see it become energy self-sufficient in using renewable electricity within 20 years and reduce waste to zero by 2050.

The proposals would make Wales one of only three countries in the world legally bound to develop "sustainably."

...

The plan commits Wales to becoming possibly the only "one planet" country in the world, ie a nation whose use of resources could be sustained for the entire global population.

Maybe it's time to check out the Welsh family roots a bit - beginning with ... WTF?! what a cool flag!

Top Photo: North Wales Molly258

"How Did You Pray Before Someone Told You Who Your God Should Be?"

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:09:00 +0000

File this under ... "You Know The Times Have Changed When...."

Just watched this phenomenal, hair-raising bit of spoken word courtesy of... the White House. Picture that happening under POTUS 43.

Mayda del Valle performing the spoken word at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word on May 12, 2009:

Click here for video.

You Are Brilliant, and The Earth Is Hiring

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:10:00 +0000

If you've read Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest, you know that there is no other writer/activist in our time with quite the macro- and uber-optimistic-perspective on the challenge of our times.

I just stumbled upon this brilliant commencement address he gave to the Class of 2009 at University of Portland on May 3, 2009.

If I could distill this speech into liquid form I would get drunk on it every day of the week. Period. So without further ado, in its entirety (click the "Click Here to Read On" nub):

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was "direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful." Boy, no pressure there.

But let's begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement.

Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don't poison the water, soil, or air, and don't let the earth get overcrowded, and don't touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food, but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn't bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn't afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here's the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don't be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand data.

But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse.

What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better description.

Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refugee camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums. You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen.

Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force.

It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisher-folk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true.

Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, re-imagine, and reconsider.

"One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice," is Mary Oliver's description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself.

The founders of this movement were largely unknown - Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood - and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty.

But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy.

We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can't print life to bail out a planet.

At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a "little universe formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven."

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body?

Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party.

Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn't stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence.

Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn't ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn't make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

Social Enterprise is an Old Sonofabitch

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Thu, 21 May 2009 01:59:00 +0000

Social enterprise might be a big, hot buzzword these days (at least on my radar), but it pays to note that "social enterprise" as a concept ain't all that new. It's almost as old as Sookie's Bill Compton, in fact.

Thanks to Uncivil Society for unearthing this tidbit (see image excerpt below), proving the existence of social enterprise as a working paradigm for the scientific philanthropy movement of the nineteenth century. It's a rich part of the fabric of American ingenuity and has been for generations.

Of course, that's obvious, right? Doing good while doing well must be an age-old concept. In fact, maybe it's the corporate greed, corruption and all-profits-at-any-cost style of Business that's the newbie on the block, relatively speaking....

One Minute Well Spent | Support the Summit in Copenhagen

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Thu, 21 May 2009 01:53:00 +0000

In December world leaders will get together at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen to decide how the world tackles climate change and global warming for decades to come. In the words of Oxfam's Campaigns Director, Thomas Schultz-Jagow, this conference is "the most important meeting mankind has ever had."

Here's a video to get the message out. Please pass it along, embed it, tweet it, digg it, all those good things.

Join the global movement for action on climate change, and support the summit in Copenhagen this December at: www.oxfam.org.uk/climateaction

Written/Directed By Gio Messner; Starring: Luke Frydenger

Food, Inc.

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:18:00 +0000

In theaters June 12th, 2009, a new documentary about the food industrial complex and what everyday consumers can do (if they wanted) to demand more nutritious, sustainable food:

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that’s been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. Food, Inc. reveals surprising — and often shocking truths — about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Watch the trailer (and more) here.

The 2nd of 5 Social Entrepreneurs That Rock | Robert Egger

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:01:00 +0000

Last week I wrote about Dickson Despommier, who roused the StartingBloc crowd by encouraging the transformation of the decidedly non-ecological Business 1.0 model through vertical farming.

The day prior Robert Egger stepped up to the mic with a hepcat swagger to his introduction. You've probably heard of him. He's been around; he's down with Oprah, down with The Boss.

He starts not with definitions of social enterprise, nor with a painting of today's "doing good while doing well" landscape. He starts with Casablanca - it's what inspired him to get into the D.C. nightclub business. He saw that opening sequence in the film - all the superficial freedoms in the airs of Casablanca the nightclub, the music, the buzz, the drink and vitality, and then the higher-order freedom embodied in clandestine conversations around getting the hell out of dodge. He saw Casablanca and got into nightclubs; then he volunteered on a truck passing out food to the homeless and had a vision.

In 1989 Robert Egger leveraged a mini-lifetime of nightclub experience and a passion for shaking things up to create the DC Central Kitchen, an organization in Washington, DC, that collects food donated by area restaurants, hotels and such; the donated food and DC Central kitchen serve to train unemployed/homeless men and women for food-service jobs while converting food donations into 4,500 meals every day of the year. Waste not, want not. Bravo.

But Egger's message gets bigger quickly - and as he gets worked up, he swears more and more, with virtually no apology. But because of his singular look and history, it feels like we're chatting with him at Cafe Wha? (a Greenwich Village nightlife institution) and not being schooled, as we are, at a Village institution of higher education ... so it works, the swearing and all.

His big message is about the tired state of nonprofits, of having to fight tooth and nail against other meaningful nonprofits for funding and media attention. He's tired of finding nonprofit advocacy falling on so-called deaf ears in city halls and federal buildings.

With his V3 Campaign, he hopes to build anew a nonprofit movement that better reflects the realities of the sector, as he says: "We [the growing network of American nonprofits] employ 14 million people, and channel the energy and ideals of 80 million American volunteers annually. We stimulate the economy in every town and city. We put billions into tax coffers."

The three V's are for Voice, Voting Power and Value. And the mission of the V3 Campaign is simply to change the way nonprofits are involved in the political process by asking "every candidate for higher office—from small town mayoral contenders to presidential nominees—to provide details about their experience with nonprofits and their plans for partnering with and strengthening the nonprofit sector if they are elected."

As a social media enthusiast, I'm personally attracted to the idea of leveraging virtual networks to empower alliances and create strategic and expansive social change. So Egger got me good with this idea. I'll be tracking its progress along the way. And in the meantime, I'm going to pay closer attention while watching old films. Clearly some treasured wisdom in there.

The 1st of 5 Top Social Entrepreneurs Who Schooled Us at StartingBloc | Dickson Despommier, PhD.

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 20:27:00 +0000

The last weekend of March, I joined 130 other StartingBloc NY Fellows for the closing weekend of speakers and discussions around cutting-edge social entrepreneurial practices. Now, as I've said, we're talking back-to-back-to-back presentations and networking around social change and sustainability that was all just simply electric. I could go on for hours with insights, thoughts, and further research I intend to do. But all that doesn't make for a good blog post.

So, instead, I've put together this series of posts that make up my "Top 5 Brilliant Social Entrepreneurs Who Schooled Us at StartingBloc." In no particular order, and fully recognizing that there are dozens of other genius presenters that I could highlight, the list begins with:

Dickson Despommier, PhD. is the Professor of Public Health in Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University, and the leading spokesman of his Vertical Farm Project, whose website (btw) is a wellspring of resources on the subject. Prof. Despommier takes one look at the immense momentum of populations towards urban living and has this to say: if you're going to live in a city, then truly live in the city. What he means, specifically, is that we must change our agricultural practices right now in order to feed people sustainably and still solve the great social, environmental problems of our time.

He breaks it down like this, and it's quite simple: if we consider that it's a universal, legal right of Man to have 2.3 liters of safe drinking water and 2000 calories a day just to survive, and we're already using a landmass the size of South America right now as an agricultural footprint (80% of Earth's arable land is currently being farmed), and no one who can make a living doing something other than farming actually chooses to be a farmer in this day and age.... Then the big question is this:

Can we provide food sustainably and repair Earth's damaged ecosystems at the same time?

Well, on this Sunday morning in early March, this tall, electrifying teacher (who calls himself, first and foremost, a student) gave us the resounding solution to this seemingly intractable question: you guessed it, pahtnah: YES WE CAN!

The Vertical Farm Project is working on the following solution. By applying proven (and decidedly unrevolutionary) indoor agricultural strategies (like hydroponics, aeroponics, drip irrigation, etc.) in buildings in urban areas on a grand scale, we can (a) reduce agricultural runoff (giving the Earth a breather so she can heal herself), (b) and produce crops year-round (c) without losing enormous amounts of crops due to severe weather (70% of viable crops are lost due to weather outside of Europe and U.S.), (d) all while using 70% less water than in traditional farming, with no fossil fuels, no pesticides or herbicides.

The Vertical Farm Project is in the final stages of developing a prototype project in the Middle East. Check out their website for updates.

Provided the project bears the intended fruit and provides a much-needed solution on this issue, let's consider this. With Green Collar Jobs on the tip of everyone's tongue, might this niche of vertical farming in urban areas be a phenomenal opportunity to reverse the legacy of environmental injustice by seeding these types of food-giving, hope-giving, job-providing projects in the heart of neighborhoods so often unjustly on the receiving end of all the "industrial runoff" of the last century? Just a thought.

A Pocket of Change is Back in Action!

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:27:00 +0000

Dear friends, and fellow seekers of inspiration! all you folks who, like me, dig on getting continually educated on issues pertaining to the not-so-small-task of making this blessed world a better one for everyone kicking around on this planet, and certainly, most certainly, for those soon to come.

You might have noticed that I've been on radio silence for two weeks. And I just wanted to assure you it was not for neglect or laziness.

I had a truly electric trip to New York City for the closing weekend of the StartingBloc Social Innovation Institution fellowship I received. I was with an amazing crew of young entrepreneurs getting schooled in cutting-edge theories and best practices for solving social issues through conscientious enterprise. So much goodness, ideas, opportunities, so much work to be done! The Pocket is full! Stay tuned as I process and share the wealth in the coming days and weeks.

It was followed by an equally electric, educational, mesmerizing, heartbreaking trip to New Orleans with the General Service Foundation. Blatantly, not surprisingly, a good time was had ... because that is what New Orleans is all about, right?

But more importantly: the stories we heard about the real New Orleans, the parts and people crushed and cleared out by Katrina and by ruinous inequalities in place there. New Orleans, heart and soul of this country; culture so deep-rooted and alive; amid a system built on injustice and corruption. Much work to be done! But I'll stop there in the doom 'n gloom litany because, really, the upshot of the whole trip can best be summed up by our final day there when we took part in a second line parade through residential streets. The spirit, the music, the civic pride and resilience were all overflowing in true New Orleans style.

And that more than anything is what I've come home with: hope and resolve.

And yet, exclamation points and platitudes be damned! As in poetry, as in art, the true insight and true work are in the details. So stay tuned ... A Pocket of Change is back in action.

Stir Your World

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:35:00 +0000

DailyGood sends out daily bits of goodness to your inbox. Today's was this video. File it away in the yes we can brand of hair-raising inspirational videos. And enjoy.

we20 | Your Own Private G20 Summit

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:43:00 +0000

Just got a notice from John Grant at greenormal (of Green Marketing Manifesto fame) about his new social action network called:

Seems like a fantastic idea, and I am looking forward to trying it out. Anyone want to start a we20 group with me?

Everything (In Your Kitchen Sink) | Your Go-to Resource on Water

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:30:00 +0000

Yesterday, March 22nd was "World Water Day," a UN initiative begun in 1993 and meant to inspire deepened conversation around issues of dwindling water resources around the world. I've been tracking the media in the run-up to World Water Day and have found, on the subject, a variety of angles to the discussion, from highlights of the dangers (aka doom 'n' gloom) to inspiration for the solution (aka tall glass of water), from educational resources and entertainment provocation to product innovation and ideas.

There are dozens of ways to encourage some get-up-and-go when the time has come for action. My personal favorite is when Yosemite Sam comes in and fires away at your feet with his six-shooters. Barring his availability - and when what's really needed is concerted discussion and sustainable innovation around an important subject, such as the world's water - a combination of the following tactics is required, examples of which follow (after the jump - click through) in no particular order. (At least 50% of you are smarter than I am on this topic, so please comment with any further, deeper, better insights.)

Good ol' Entertainment and "Provocation"

For me nothing works quite so well at striking up dialogue and engagement as some good, clean (or dirty) 'edutainment' in the form of satire and provocative, hip, culturally relevant media bytes. And as usual GOOD Magazine's online content on the subject tops my list of provocative material shining light on the very complex issue of global water resources:

• GOOD's Transparency on how much actual water is used in everyday activities, and how to effectively reduce your water footprint around said activities. Very enlightening, and still some of the best examples in the art of data visualization via graphic design.

• GOOD's Transparency on where America's largest cities actually get their water (often, of course, from sources hundreds of miles away).

• Check out this YouTube movie trailer of FLOW, a film that examines "the global water crisis and presents a case against the growing privatization of the world's dwindling fresh water supply."

• Not to be the GOOD groupie (but hell, if I'm going to be a fan, I will not be outdone), but GOOD also cut up some iconic media items from American Culture's past and re-imagined them in a world without water: check out the 'Crocodile Mile' slip 'n' slide commercial from way back re-imagined in a world without clean drinking water; or this classic 'Cool Hand Luke' scene; or this reimagining of the 'Psycho' shower scene... :)

Education, or How I Learned to Expand My Short-Attention Span and Read Some Long-Form Informative Shit

For those who remember the Encyclopedia Britannica mainly as that dust-collecting, leather-bound, how-does-a-book-full-of-paper-so-ungodly-thin-weigh-so-goddamn-much monstrosity that took up three shelves and cost your parents a fortune, you probably know that there are hundreds of resources for educating yourself about important, timely issues like the world's water resources. Turns out you could probably go to one place and find whatever you need:

From their concise introduction to the topic of World Water Day ... to information on the role the Obama administration can play in securing the world water resources.

Industry and Product Innovations

• The Rebirth of Cool Tap Water

As the above film trailer for FLOW suggests, the bottled water market is a $450 billion industry. Meanwhile, tap water is, for a great part of the developing world, of far superior quality and a breathtakingly better price point (aka free). It's just that tap water hasn't been marketed to the extent that the $450B bottled water industry has been, and so, bottled water seems hipper. Not for long, though. There are at least two current initiatives to bring tap water back from the back of the proverbial market shelf:

Tap'dNY: "a New York City bottled water company with a local twist and knack for honesty. We don't travel the world from Fiji to France seeking water or offer the usual bottled water gimmicks. We work with NYC’s public water system to source the world's best tasting tap water, purify it through reverse osmosis and bottle it locally, leaving out ludicrous transportation miles. We offer an honest and local alternative to thirsty New Yorkers, giving them a smarter choice: to drink their own (award winning) water." While not the most sustainable response to the problem - still using plastic bottles - this is a fantastic initiative to shed light on the ludicrosity that is the bottled water industry.

London On Tap: "The London On Tap campaign is a unique collaboration between the UK’s biggest water company, Thames Water, and the Mayor of London. At its heart, is a competition to design an iconic carafe, which will be used to serve tap water in restaurants, bars and hotels throughout the capital." The winning design (left) will be used all over the city to serve tap water to customers and tourists who would normally be opting for bottled.

ZeroWater Filtration System: Take your usual Brita filter and give it superpowers. That's what the ZeroWater Z-pitcher seems to be about. At $40 and available at a variety of retailers, this is already pretty ubiquitous, but I haven't seen it anywhere except on CoolHunting. It "uses a five-stage ion-exchange filtration system that removes any discernible additives. And ZeroWater is so confident in their product that they include an independently-manufactured TDS meter with each purchase," on which it consistently produces an immaculate ZERO readout, meaning zero additives or impurities.

• Rainwater Harvesting

CISTA | Modern Rainwater Harvesting Made Beautiful: The image at left is of an innovative new design for a rainwater collection receptacle that might just bring this product segment into the forefront. There are plenty of examples of rainwater harvesting techniques and products: like the H2OG, the reLEAF, the TerraCycle Rain Barrel, etc.

• Corporate Involvement | "Big Blue Wades Into the Water"

IBM recently announced a huge research initiative called Strategic Water Management Solutions, part of IBM's smart planet initiative. One of the findings through this research is a new water filtration membrane, which "uses a unique chemistry that creates a “water super-highway” that filters water more efficiently than previous filters. When contaminated water is forced through the membrane, salts and a number of toxins are filtered out, and only pure drinking water flows through to the other side. Additionally, the membrane is also potentially resistant to chlorine damage."

Local Los Angeles Public Sector Initiatives

I'm going to blow your mind right now: Los Angeles is a desert. Pull your jaw up off the desk and continue.

Yes, if there's any place that needs water resources innovations yesterday, it's Los Angeles. And some initiatives are already on the table and up for debate.

• The Orange County Water Replenishment System, a $480-million, decade-long state-of-the-art water treatment system that processes and transforms formerly flushed sewage into drinkable tap water.

• The Department of Water and Power just announced that it will raise your utility bill if you don't cut your usage by 15% by June 1st. Details of the program here.

• There's a potent debate going on in California around residential grey water. It's a compliated issue fleshed out nicely by LA Times blog here. In a nutshell, in order for a residence to install a system that recycles waste water from their own sinks and showers and such, it must comply with strict guidelines many feel are prohibitively stringent and expensive. Everyone's discussing those guidelines at length, hoping to make it easier for Californians to recycle their own rainwater legally. Finger's crossed.

header photo: flickr | darkpatator

Save the World (Ride a Movement) | Thoughts on Branding Sustainability

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:37:00 +0000

Unless you've been under a rock for the last few years, you know what sustainability is. You know that "green" is not just the color of money anymore. You might know that 'green' has been divided into shades, light, dark, bright, even blue. It's even got it's own collar now.

Green has been around for so long, it's become an over-fattened symbol of far too many connotations of thrift, or of some level of thoughtful consumption, meant to save a threatened planet. The veins of our culture are thick with green. There are more green products and innovations than could fit in Santa's lugged sack. Green is so overused that even the conversation about putting "green" to rest as the brand of the sustainability movement is tired.

For me, Adam Werbach seems to have started the conversation with his Birth of Blue speech in April 2008, in which he tolled the bell for the end of the Earth-centric "green" movement and the inception of, what he and SaatchiS were dubbing, a people-centric "Blue" movement:

Today, I'm here to acknowledge the birth of a BLUE movement. As vast and common as the ocean, BLUE is a platform for sustainability that goes beyond the deep, beautiful green of environmentalism. Green puts the planet at the center of the dialogue. BLUE puts people at the center.

I have the utmost respect for Mr. Werbach, his work, for the notion of a re-brand for the sustainability movement, and for his game-changing move of connecting, at long last, the sustainability movement with people, with us, not just some objectified, scientific thing called 'the planet'). Still, the choice of simply another color felt, well, feeble, or as John Rooks writes, "a temporary fix." Because color - i.e., "the new black" - has always been one of the ramparts of fads and trends, colors are inherently at their mercy.

What we're all aiming for with sustainability is not simply another trend, nor another phase in its long character arc. What we're aiming for with sustainability is not just another color in a rainbow of colors, a niche business angle in a hearty arc full of angles. What we're aiming for is that sustainability become the standard by which business and business success are judged (For more, see Smart Growth Manifesto).

I believe in branding. The way an initiative is messaged to constituents can make or break the initiative. Obama's recent budget proposal included a cap-and-trade plan that, many say, would have been a serious boon to sustainability, to people, planet and even profit. But, as was noted here, their inability to define the plan clearly gave detractors many openings to knock it, however erroneous were their arguments.

I believe branding is about taking the long view of an offering, the greatest, most aspirational intention of a proposition, and then searing that on the collective consciousness of the market. And if sustainability is about redefining business such that its greatest goal is both asset and opportunity growth for company, people and planet, then pigeonholing sustainability with just another color in the spectrum feels like a short sell. And missing out on promising opportunities due to inefficient messaging feels like bush league errors. But that's just me sitting on the proverbial armchair wagging a finger at actions fueled by good intention.

With the news that Van Jones will be joining the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) as its Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, I feel great optimism for sustainability, for the green economy, for social justice... not to mention the message this sends to the country. He's already brought new life to the movement through his work thus far (as has Adam Werbach, and many others) and will certainly up the ante on the discussion on a national level.

A Special Message from "The Pocket"

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:43:00 +0000

Please pardon the small bit of radio silence the last few weeks. "The Pocket" has not forgotten about you. I've just been going through a pocket of change.

Backstory: I had the great pleasure of attending the remarkable StartingBloc Institute for Social Innovation fellowship a few weeks back. Please follow me as I first explain what StartingBloc is, and why I was there, and then, I'll get to the point of this post: what's up with "The Pocket."

First: StartingBloc .

It's a gathering of emerging leaders and aspiring social entrepreneurs. Really, it was like camp for aspiring innovators, for up-and-coming leaders wanting to do good, to live well, and to seize opportunities.

“Optimism is incurable.” That was the unofficial mantra of the opening weekend of this year's StartingBloc Institute, which took place the last weekend of February at the Yale School of Management. In this down economy amid dark times on a burning planet, it’s a wonder to have found optimism so alive and thriving there. But then again, that was the whole point: "optimism is incurable."

Which brings me to the point of this post: how has this effected "The Pocket"?

My experience at StartingBloc helped to clarify for me the mission of "The Pocket," of highlighting inspiring news and trends, in particular, in sustainability and social change, as well as sharing the arts and culture items that inspire that mission. My faithful readers still on the school bus might be thinking "This ain't news, brutha!" True, you could say that the bulk of my most heartfelt posts of the last six months have espoused that mission all along.

But as Eddie Izzard once said, and I paraphrase, "You're not a country unless you have a flag."

In a manner of speaking, I want a flag. I want to underscore my reason for writing this blog. In marketing lingo... I needed a re-brand.

And so, from now on, this blog will be known as "A Pocket of Change" and can be found at www.aPocketOfChange.com. It's meant to signify (among other things) that change, as well as optimism, is an incurable phenomenon, and that this forum - far from being the pocket - is one of the many pockets of change out there.

(NOTE: I've set it up so that www.dasgriffer.com will automatically forward to the new web address. That said, apologies in advance for any snafu on your email subscriptions; you might want to re-subscribe to avoid any potential misfire.)

Moving Windmills | Inspiring Social Entrepreneur from Malawi

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:46:00 +0000

William Kamkwamba is a 22 year old from Malawi. During his freshman year in high school, a nasty drought brought hard times to his family's farm in Masitala Village two and a half hours outside of Malawi's capital. They could no longer afford his education, and he was forced to drop out. William began educating himself on the mechanics of renewable energy by borrowing books from a local library. With astounding do-it-yourself ingenuity, he started experimenting with building a windmill in the backyard of his family farm. With great success. And so William's remarkable story begins. Take a look at this tearjerker inspiring video to get to know what an inspiring young man can muster with the opportunity that comes in the shadow of crisis.

Google PowerMeter | If You Can Measure It, You Can Improve It

noreply@blogger.com (Griff Foxley) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:48:00 +0000

Google.org is testing a new service that will track data from utility smart meters and energy management devices and give anyone who signs up access to their home electricity consumption right on their iGoogle homepage. The graph below shows how someone could use this information to figure out how much energy is used by different household activities.Some folks inside Google who are testing out the program are speaking out about it in this video. One person in particular says that, by changing only a few minor household activities, he was able to reduce his energy consumption by about 64%, at a savings of about $3000.