This is not exactly a groundbreaking insight. Philosophers and child development experts have been trumpeting the importance of play for centuries. Piaget said that children discover the world through play. Friedrich Froebel, who opened the first kindergarten in 1837, called play “deeply significant.” And Plato believed that children had to grow up in an atmosphere of play to become virtuous citizens. #

In the face of this accumulated wisdom, the question is why so many educators across the nation have, in recent years, decided that it is acceptable to reduce or eliminate recess. As a Baltimore principal told me, “Whenever we get away from the traditional subjects — and recess can be looked at as a traditional subject — we have to wonder why we’ve stopped doing what has worked in the past.” #

Principals who cut or eliminate recess in their schools tend to do so for two major reasons: they feel they need to maximize every minute of instruction time to improve student test scores and, in many cases, recess has become a behavioral headache. #

In Tuesday’s column, I explained how an organization called Playworks is helping to address this problem by placing full-time coaches in schools to teach children how to manage their play. Many readers liked the idea. Some wrote movingly about their own recess experiences. Jkisner from Waynesburg, Pa. (11.), commented: “I’ll never forget when my 6th-grade teacher, Mr. Francis Smith, played softball and soccer with us at recess 47 years ago.” Another reader, Josh Hill, from New London, Conn. (32.), wrote: “Fifty years later, I still carry the emotional scars of Lord of the Flies recess bullying.” #

These comments reveal just how defining playground experiences can be. Which is why it makes sense to think seriously about recess, not treat it as something that will just run by itself. #

I attended a Playworks training program a few years ago and I was surprised by the rigor with which the organization prepares its play coaches. These were not volunteers being sent into schools to improvise things. Trainers spent hours helping coaches with practical challenges like how to manage transitions smoothly; how to get children’s attention without yelling at them; how to break the ice when children resist trying new things; and what to do if African American, Latino and Asian kids aren’t playing with one another. #

At face value, play may look like nothing special — just kids kicking a ball back and forth. But I saw that the training helped coaches gain a deeper insight into their work. During one exercise the trainees gathered in a circle and each was asked to recall a playground experience that had left a lasting impression. About half recalled a moment of triumph: winning a race or getting a game-winning hit. The other half brought up a painful memory: being picked last, dropping an important pass, or being excluded from a game. Just summoning the memories caused a number of them to well up with emotion and shed tears. It was a reminder that the playground experiences they would be helping to orchestrate for children were potentially those moments — so they needed to muster all the awareness they could. #

Among readers who took issue with Playworks’ approach, the main concern was that children needed more time, not less, to be free of adults. Ned from Knoxville, Tenn., (9.), didn’t like the idea of a recess coach who acted as an “arbiter who makes all decisions as to who wins and loses.” But, as I mentioned, the coaches work to elicit play skills, not to dictate playground behavior or act as referees. They try to follow the approach described by Jerri, from Seattle (16.): “[P]rovide just enough leadership to keep everyone moving in the right direction — and then let [the kids] run their own show and learn from their own mistakes.” #

In fact, it’s not possible for coaches to succeed any other way. Some schools have a few hundred kids in the yard at recess; a coach can’t pay attention to all of them. They move in and out of games, offering assistance where necessary, but for the most part the kids have to learn how to serve as their own arbiters. They get help from junior coaches, the older children that Playworks enlists to help manage recess. This is a key part of the program. More than 75 percent of teachers report (pdf) that the junior coaches gain important leadership skills. #

What’s curious is that while adults have no problem with counselors guiding children’s play at a summer camp, many feel that kids should be left to their own devices at recess. Why? I suspect that it has to do with the fact that we all have negative school memories of adults who were too controlling — and we can empathize with kids who just need a break. This might explain the comment of Tina from Portland, Ore. (4.): “I can’t help wondering if kids would do a better job of learning how to play if we just left them alone. And I mean ALONE: No adult interference unless there’s bloodshed.” #

I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s hard to defend this approach at a time when so many principals report that playgrounds are chaotic and dangerous, and the U.S. Department of Education has identified bullying as a serious national problem — and charged schools to come up with solutions. Moreover, bloodshed is not a good litmus test for adult involvement. Some of the cruelest bullying in elementary schoolyards occurs invisibly between girls, who don’t hit, but whisper things like, “Let’s not be friends with Tina.” Given the troubled state of playgrounds, a no-interference policy on the part of adults would be as misguided as today’s mandatory suspension policies. #

In Massachusetts, where the state legislature signed anti-bullying legislation last year, Playworks has been identified as a key prevention program. Close to 90 percent of the teachers in Boston schools where the program operates report a decrease in bullying. Teachers in one public school are now trying to extend Playworks to the school buses. #

Kids bully and misbehave more when they aren’t busy with better things. A San Jose principal observed that she knew Playworks was working because she no longer had to guard the bathrooms at recess. Kids used to vandalize the toilets; now they preferred to play. In many schools, coaches have turned bullies into junior coaches — giving them avenues to be positive, instead of negative, leaders. #

The reason that schools are engaging Playworks, and other programs like Peace First, Peaceful Playgrounds and Asphalt Green, to teach play, leadership and cooperative skills is that the channels that society has historically relied upon for transmitting these skills have broken down. As Veh, from Detroit (13.), writes: In years past, “larger families meant plenty of older siblings…[T]he older kids would lead the way, initiating games and activities.” Children also used to have much more time to play outside unsupervised where they learned the ropes from older kids. Another reader (35.) notes that many children today are “used to having every moment of their day scripted.” #

Lest we romanticize the past, it’s important to note that the old recess was no paradise. Girls were excluded from many playground games. Awkward and unpopular kids were chosen last. The Hobbesian structure of games like dodge ball was far from ideal. (Having a rubber ball fired into your face by a kid twice your size is not fun.) For physically awkward children, recess was pure torture; only gym class was worse. #

Even a benign game like kickball can benefit from an upgrade. If the idea is to kick the ball and run, why do kids spend most of their time standing still? Playworks’ version of kickball — Ultimate Kickball — has no foul balls; kids can keep running the bases, scoring multiple runs, until they’re tagged out; and even if they pop up, they still have to be tagged out. #

For years, schools have operated on the assumption that any teacher or volunteer lunch lady is qualified to oversee recess. But just as schools outsource the management of their cafeterias, some need to consider outsourcing recess —  or at least bringing in specialists to help them. (By 2015, Playworks plans to be working in 715 schools in 23 cities and training staff and parents in an additional 1,000 schools each year.) #

Play requires the acquisition of a complex set of skills. It’s not just about exercising or letting off steam. It’s about making agreements with others as equals, stepping into an imagined structure, and accepting that structure even when things don’t go your way. This may be why Plato considered play the ideal preparation for citizenship. #

As it turns out, recess is the only weekday play opportunity that isn’t stratified by income — like living in a safe neighborhood, having decent park and recreation programs, or being able to afford private after-school activities. Recess can be made available to all children, rich or poor, provided the adults see fit to give it to them. (After a 38-year hiatus, it may even become available soon to the fresh-air-deprived students of the Chicago Public Schools.) #

Recess is easily forgotten. But as Jill Vialet, the founder of Playworks explains, the way we treat it tells us something about what we value as a society. “If you think of education as a process by which we shape kids into the people we want them to be, and if you think that we have removed play from the school process, what does that say about the kinds of people we want them to be?” #

(Note: On Tuesday, I promised to report on another organization working to make play accessible to more children. I plan to do that a future column.) #

This column was originally published in The New York Times. Fixes appears on Tuesdays and Fridays in the Times' Opinionator section. #

Photo Credit/Caption: Tracie Faust/ Fifth grade students at AXL Academy in Aurora, Colo., which employs coaches from Playworks to oversee recess periods. #

Photo Credit/Caption: Tracie Faust/ Antonio Carnes, known to students as “Coach Tone,” led AXL students in a warm-up exercise. #]]> http://dowser.org/the-power-of-the-playground/feed/ 0 http://dowser.org/in-memory-sargent-shriver-who-transformed-americas-moral-imagination/ http://dowser.org/in-memory-sargent-shriver-who-transformed-americas-moral-imagination/#comments Wed, 19 Jan 2011 20:38:41 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=10444 Sargent Shriver is remembered as the founding director and architect of the Peace Corps, but his contributions to American, and global history, go well beyond that distinction. As the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity -- the agency that administered the war on poverty -- Shriver created Head Start, VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), the Job Corps, Legal Services to the Poor, and many other programs. He pioneered Neighborhood Health Centers, Foster Grandparents and, with his wife Eunice, the Special Olympics. His ideas influenced, and elevated, how his generation viewed the roles and responsibilities of citizens. #

Today, it's all too common to hear references to the failures of the war on poverty. With a generation's hindsight, it's easy to critique past efforts to attack poverty. But the exercise is like critiquing the vacuum tube-filled hulks that people used to call computers in the 1960s. You forget how innovative they were at the time. Shriver had no blueprint to work from. His task was to invent social institutions that could help make the American dream a working reality, not just an ideal, for tens of millions of people. He held to his principles in the face of bitter political opposition. He created a practical model for the social innovator in public life that inspires and informs the best and the brightest today. #

Click here to view the embedded video.

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When we hear the word innovation, we often think of new technologies or silver bullet solutions — like hydrogen fuel cells or a cure for cancer. To be sure, breakthroughs are vital: antibiotics and vaccines, for example, transformed global health. But as we’ve argued in Fixes, some of the greatest advances come from taking old ideas or technologies and making them accessible to millions of people who are underserved. #

One area where this is desperately needed is access to electricity. In the age of the iPad, it’s easy to forget that roughly a quarter of the world’s population — about a billion and a half people (pdf) — still lack electricity. This isn’t just an inconvenience; it takes a severe toll on economic life, education and health. It’s estimated that two million people die prematurely each year as a result of pulmonary diseases caused by the indoor burning of fuels for cooking and light. Close to half are children who die of pneumonia. #

In vast stretches of the developing world, after the sun sets, everything goes dark. In sub-Saharan Africa, about 70 percent of the population lack electricity. However, no country has more citizens living without power than India, where more than 400 million people, the vast majority of them villagers, have no electricity. The place that remains most in darkness is Bihar, India’s poorest state, which has more than 80 million people, 85 percent of whom live in households with no grid connection. Because Bihar has nowhere near the capacity to meet its current power demands, even those few with connections receive electricity sporadically and often at odd hours, like between 3:00 a.m and 6:00 a.m., when it is of little use. #

This is why I’m writing today about a small but fast-growing off-grid electricity company based in Bihar called Husk Power Systems. It has created a system to turn rice husks into electricity that is reliable, eco-friendly and affordable for families that can spend only $2 a month for power. The company has 65 power units that serve a total of 30,000 households and is currently installing new systems at the rate of two to three per week. #

What’s most interesting about Husk Power is how it has combined many incremental improvements that add up to something qualitatively new — with the potential for dramatic scale. The company expects to have 200 systems by the end of 2011, each serving a village or a small village cluster. Its plan is to ramp that up significantly, with the goal of having 2,014 units serving millions of clients by the end of 2014. #

Husk Power was founded by four friends: Gyanesh Pandey, Manoj Sinha, Ratnesh Yadav and Charles W. Ransler, who met attending different schools in India and the United States. Pandey, the company’s chief executive, grew up in a village in Bihar without electricity. “I felt low because of that,” he told me when we met recently in New Delhi. He decided to study electrical engineering. At college in India, he experienced the Indian prejudice against Biharis — some students refused to sit at the same table with him — which contributed to his desire to emigrate to the U.S.. He found his way to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, N.Y., where he completed a master’s degree before landing a position with the semiconductor manufacturer International Rectifier in Los Angeles. His job was to figure out how to get the best performance from integrated circuits at the lowest possible cost. This helped him develop a problem-solving aptitude that would prove useful for Husk Power. #

He was soon earning a six-figure income. He bought his family a diesel-powered electric generator. As a single man living in Los Angeles, he enjoyed traveling, dining out and going to clubs. “I was basically cruising through life,” he recalled. “But along with that pleasure and smoothness was a dark zone in my head.” He began meditating — and he realized that he felt compelled to return home and use his knowledge to bring light to Bihar. #

Back in India, he and his friend Yadav, an entrepreneur, spent the next few years experimenting. They explored the possibility of producing organic solar cells. They tried growing a plant called jatropha, whose seeds can be used for biodiesel. Both proved impractical as businesses. They tested out solar lamps, but found their application limited. “In the back of my mind, I always thought there would be some high tech solution that would solve the problem,” said Pandey. #

One day he ran into a salesman who sold gasifiers — machines that burn organic materials in an oxygen restricted environment to produce biogas which can be used to power an engine. There was nothing new about gasifiers; they had been around for decades. People sometimes burned rice husks in them to supplement diesel fuel, which was expensive. “But nobody had thought to use rice husks to run a whole power system,” explained Pandey. #

In Bihar, poverty is extreme. Pretty much everything that can be used will be used — recycled or burned or fed to animals. Rice husks are the big exception. When rice is milled, the outside kernel, or husk, is discarded. Because the husk contains a lot of silica, it doesn’t burn well for cooking. A recent Greenpeace study (pdf) reports that Bihar alone produces 1.8 billion kilograms of rice husk per year. Most of it ends up rotting in landfills and emitting methane, a greenhouse gas. #

Pandey and Yadav began bringing pieces together for an electric distribution system powered by the husks. They got a gasifier, a generator set, filtering, cleaning and cooling systems, piping and insulated wiring. They went through countless iterations to get the system working: adjusting valves and pressures, the gas-to-air ratios, the combustion temperature, the starting mechanism. In they end, they came up with a system that could burn 50 kilograms of rice husk per hour and produce 32 kilowatts of power, sufficient for about 500 village households. #

They reached out to people in a village called Tamkuha, in Bihar, offering them a deal: for 80 rupees a month — roughly $1.75 — a household could get daily power for one 30-watt or two 15-watt compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs and unlimited cell phone charging between 5:00 p.m and 11:00 p.m. For many families, the price was less than half their monthly kerosene costs, and the light would be much brighter. It would also be less smoky, less of a fire hazard, and better for the environment. Customers could pay for more power if they needed it — for radios, TVs, ceiling fans or water pumps. But many had no appliances and lived in huts so small, one bulb was enough. The system went live on August 15, 2007, the anniversary of India’s independence. #

It worked. Back in the United States, their colleagues Sinha and Ransler, who were pursuing M.B.A.s at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, put together a business plan and set out to raise money. They came first in two student competitions, garnering prizes of $10,000 and $50,000. The company received a grant from the Shell Foundation and set up three more systems in 2008. It has since raised $1.75 million in investment financing. In 2009, they had 19 systems in operation; in 2010, they more than tripled that number. #

Technically, most of the problems were solved by 2008. But to make the business viable has required an ongoing process of what has been called “frugal innovation” — radically simplifying things to serve the needs of poor customers who would otherwise be excluded from basic market services due to their limited ability to pay. #

In order to bring down costs, for example, the company stripped down the gasifiers and engines, removing everything non-essential that added to manufacturing or maintenance expenses, like turbocharging. They replaced an automated water-aided process for the removal of rice husk char (burned husks) from gasifiers with one that uses 80 percent less water and can be operated with a hand crank. They kept labor costs down by recruiting locals, often from very poor families with modest education levels (who would be considered unemployable by many companies) and training them to operate and load machines, and work as fee collectors and auditors, going door-to-door ensuring that villagers aren’t using more electricity than they pay for. (Electricity theft is a national problem in India, resulting in losses to power companies estimated at 30 percent. Husk Power says it has managed to keep such losses down to five percent.) #

When the company noticed that customers were purchasing poor-quality CFL bulbs, which waste energy, they partnered with Havells India, a large manufacturer, to purchase thousands of high quality bulbs at discount rates, which their collectors now sell to clients. They also saw that collectors could become discount suppliers of other products — like soap, biscuits and oil — so they added a product fulfillment business into the mix. #

And they found ways to extract value from the rice husk char — the waste product of a waste product — by setting up another side business turning the char into incense sticks. This business now operates in five locations and provides supplemental income to 500 women. The company also receives government subsidies for renewable energy and is seeking Clean Development Mechanism benefits. #

With growth, human audits have proven inadequate to control electricity theft or inadvertent overuse. So the company developed a stripped-down pre-payment smart-card reader for home installation. The going rate for smart-card readers is between $50 and $90. Husk Power is near completion of one that Pandey says will cost under $7. #

Alone, none of these steps would have been significant. Taken together, however, they make it possible for power units to deliver tiny volumes of electricity while enjoying a 30 percent profit margin. The side businesses add another 20 percent to the bottom line. Pandey says new power units become profitable within 2 to 3 months of installation. He expects the company to be financially self-sustaining by June 2011. #

From a social standpoint, there are many benefits to this business model. In addition to the fact that electricity allows shop keepers to stay open later and farmers to irrigate more land, and lighting increases children’s studying time and reduces burglaries and snakebites, the company also channels most of its wages and payments for services directly back into the villages it serves. #

For decades, countries have operated on the assumption that power from large electricity plants will eventually trickle down to villagers. In many parts of the world, this has proven to be elusive. Husk Power has identified at least 25,000 villages across Bihar and neighboring states in India’s rice belt as appropriate for its model. Ramapati Kumar, an advisor on Climate and Energy for Greenpeace India, who has studied Husk Power, explained that the company’s model could “go a long way in bringing light to 125,000 unelectrified villages in India,” while reducing “the country’s dependence on fossil fuels.” #

It’s too soon to say whether Husk Power will prove to be successful in the long run. As with any young company, there are many unknowns. To achieve its goals, it will need to recruit and train thousands of employees over the next four years, raise additional financing, and institute sound management practices. Many companies destroy themselves in the process of trying to expand aggressively. #

But the lessons here go beyond the fortunes of Husk Power. What the company illustrates is a different way to think about innovation — one that is suitable for global problems that stem from poor people’s lack of access to energy, water, housing and education. In many cases, success in these challenges hinges less on big new ideas than on collections of small old ideas well integrated and executed. “What’s replicable isn’t the distribution of electricity,” says Pandey. “It’s the whole process of how to take an old technology and apply it to local constraints. How to create a system out of the materials and labor that are readily available.” #

Let me know if you’ve come across other examples of innovations that follow this pattern. #

Photo Credit/ Caption: Photo 1: Harikrishna Katragadda/Greenpeace; Students in the village of Tahipur in Bihar used kerosene lanterns for studying. Photo 2: Harikrishna Katragadda/Greenpeace; A biomass gasifier owned and operated by Husk Power Systems Photo 3: Courtesy of Husk Power Systems; The mini-power plant during the day. Photo 4: Harikrishna Katragadda/Greenpeace; Shops in the Sariswa Village market use power generated by Husk Power Systems. #]]> http://dowser.org/a-light-in-india/feed/ 2 http://dowser.org/a-plan-to-make-homelessness-history/ http://dowser.org/a-plan-to-make-homelessness-history/#comments Mon, 20 Dec 2010 22:08:41 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=10357 This is a story about a plan to end chronic homelessness in the United States. It’s not an indeterminate “war on homelessness,” but a methodical approach to do away with a major social problem. Each day, roughly 700,000 people in the country are homeless. About 120,000 are chronically homeless. They often live on the streets for years and have mental disabilities, addiction problems and life-threatening diseases like heart disease, cancer and diabetes. They are also five times more likely than ordinary Americans to have suffered a traumatic brain injury, which may have precipitated their homelessness. Without direct assistance, many will remain homeless for the rest of their lives — at enormous cost to society and themselves. #

Against this backdrop, the 100,000 Homes Campaign has set the goal of placing 100,000 chronically homeless people — pinpointing those who face the greatest risk of dying on the streets —  into permanent supportive housing by July 2013. It’s the human welfare equivalent of NASA’s race to put a man on the moon. Whether the goal is achieved or not, the campaign is shifting the way cities address a problem that has often been seen as more of a nuisance than a public health emergency. #

The campaign was launched this past July by a New York-based organization called Common Ground and close to 20 organizations that focus on homelessness, veterans’ affairs, mental illness, housing and health care. So far 64 communities have come on board. As of today, 6,816 people have been housed — on track to hit 98,000 by the deadline. But organizers say they are gaining momentum. #

People who live on the streets tend to cycle through emergency rooms, addiction treatment, psychiatric care and jails. Housing them yields huge cost savings for society. In Los Angeles, the nation’s homeless capital, 4,800 chronically homeless people — about 10 percent of the city’s homeless population — consume half a billion dollars in services annually (pdf, p.23), well more than the remaining 90 percent. Providing supportive housing in Los Angeles is 40 percent cheaper than leaving people on the streets. #

The shift in mindset that made it possible to solve this problem began in the early 1990s when a group called Pathways to Housing pioneered an approach called “housing first.” Historically, homeless people had to be deemed “housing ready” — typically drug and alcohol free — before they could become eligible for permanent housing. In reality, this screened out most of the chronically homeless. Pathways showed that permanent housing was, in fact, the first thing people needed to stabilize their lives. Today, it has been adopted as government policy. #

But even as a solution to chronic homelessness is within sight, housing agencies, and other groups, need to change they way they work to implement it. It’s not just that there is a shortage of affordable housing, which is true. It’s that, even when housing is available, public systems remain slow, complicated and confusing, and disconnected from the streets. They don’t target the neediest people and they don’t coordinate well with other agencies or nonprofits. #

“There is no system that has existed to intentionally move people from homelessness into housing,” explains Rosanne Haggerty, Common Ground’s founder, who has helped 20 U.S. cities, including New York, New Orleans and Denver, to reduce homelessness. “The problem isn’t that hard to solve, but the connective tissue to make it happen has been missing.” The main role of the campaign is to help cities learn how to connect the dots. #

Haggerty had to learn this herself in the late 1990s after Common Ground opened the Times Square Hotel, then the nation’s largest supportive housing complex, and saw that it made no dent in street homelessness around Times Square. In response, in 2003, she launched a program called Street to Home, and recruited a graduate of West Point, Becky Kanis, who had spent nine years in the military, to reach out to every one of the 55 individuals living on the streets around Times Square, to persuade them to enter housing on their own terms. #

Kanis and Haggerty wanted to learn how people on the streets lived; they were shocked to discover how they died — often in their 40s and 50s. If it were any other population, it would have constituted a health crisis. Homeless people had access to the health system — they made extensive use of emergency rooms — but their diseases were impossible to manage while they remained on the streets. Medicine for heart disease would get lost. Diabetics had no refrigerators to store insulin. Doctors couldn’t follow up with cancer patients. #

Street to Home’s outreach used that index to prioritize the homeless around Times Square, and they managed to get every person they met — except one holdout known as “Heavy” — into housing. “We learned that the only way to get chronically homeless people into housing was to go out and beg them to let us help them,” explained Haggerty. Along the way, Common Ground developed the strategy that is now at the heart of the campaign: hit the streets and get to know the most vulnerable people, keep talking with them until they agree to enter housing (without pre-conditions), and then blanket them with supports to keep them there and help rebuild their lives. #

Another thing that Common Ground discovered was that the homeless were an amalgam of many subgroups. They have now surveyed almost 14,000 chronically homeless people and found that roughly 20 percent are veterans, 10 percent are over the age of 60, 4 percent have H.I.V. or AIDS, 47 percent have a mental illness and 5 percent remain homeless because they can’t find housing with their pets. #

This is vital information — because there are more than 20,000 housing authorities in the country, but less than a third have subsidies for “homeless” people. Far more prevalent are government subsidies for other groups — “VASH” for veterans, “202 Housing” for the elderly, “Shelter Plus Care” for people with disabilities, “HOPWA” for people with AIDS. Historically, these big buckets have gone underutilized for the chronically homeless — because nobody knew who they were. Now they can be tapped. #

With new cities joining the campaign each month, Common Ground has outlined a standard process to roll things out. A local lead organization pulls together support from politicians, businesses, nonprofit groups, foundations, and volunteers. One of the early steps is recruiting local volunteers to go into the streets to conduct vulnerability surveys with homeless people — from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. three mornings in a row. #

You might imagine that it would be hard to get people to show up in the pre-dawn hours, venture into alleyways, and ask strangers personal questions about their health. Just the opposite. In Phoenix, 175 people turned out; in San Diego, 250; in Omaha, 75; and in Chicago over 150, including Mayor Daley. In Phoenix, after the surveys were complete, organizers asked volunteers if they would like to contribute money — at $1,000 a shot — to assist homeless people with furniture and move-in expenses. In 10 minutes, they raised $50,000. “This wasn’t a room of philanthropists,” Kanis added. “It was just volunteers. But you had people saying, ‘I’ll take the guy in the wheelchair.’ ‘We’ll take the two veterans.’ There was probably a five minute standing ovation.” #

The other linchpin of the campaign is encouraging city partners — who participate in weekly webinars and monthly innovation sessions — to teach one another how to get around bottlenecks in government systems. “There’s a half dozen things that each community struggles with that somebody has already figured out,” explains Kanis. “When you go to your housing authority with an idea they think is crazy, it helps if you can say, ‘We’re just trying to do what Baltimore did…’ It takes away the excuses people have for saying something will never work.” #

One leader on this front has been Laura Green Zeilinger, who led the effort by Washington, D.C.’s Department of Human Services to reduce homelessness. Zeilinger adopted Common Ground’s vulnerability index, registered homeless people across the district, and then re-imagined a housing placement process that took six to eight months and required a homeless person to make five separate visits to the housing authority. By pre-screening applicants and pre-inspecting apartments so they could be matched quickly, Zeilinger boiled the process down to one that can be completed in 10 days and requires a single visit by the homeless person – to sit through an orientation, sign the lease and pick up the keys. As a result, in a little more than two years, 1,200 of the most vulnerable people in Washington, D.C. have been placed into permanent supportive housing. This contrasts with 260 during the previous four years. #

In times of emergency, people can accomplish big things. After the flash floods in Nashville this past May, citizens mobilized quickly to house the homeless who had lived near embankments for years. Until recently, however, chronic homelessness has been treated as an inconvenience, not a life or death matter. When someone has been living on the streets for 15 years, it’s easy to think, ‘What’s another few months?’ But if you happen to know that that person is Michael, who is a 62-year-old veteran with heart disease, it’s a different matter. #

“We think this campaign is about much more than homelessness,” says Haggerty. “We’re all feeling so concerned for our neighbors who are struggling now. This is a way to do something with neighbors that helps the most vulnerable among us in a very dramatic way. And I think the feeling of having the power to change things is something that many people are looking for these days.” #

Photo Credit/Caption: Photo 1: Mattie Lord; Donna, who was homeless, with her original survey team, showed off the key to her new apartment in Phoenix. Photo 2: Becky Kanis; A volunteer surveyed a homeless woman in New Orleans #]]> http://dowser.org/a-plan-to-make-homelessness-history/feed/ 0 http://dowser.org/foreclosure-is-not-an-option/ http://dowser.org/foreclosure-is-not-an-option/#comments Mon, 06 Dec 2010 17:15:39 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=9683

Photo: Ben Baker-Smith. A home boarded up in Slavic Village section of Cleveland, Ohio, in October of 2008.

Nationally, some 4 million homeowners are facing foreclosure this year and another 11 million are “underwater,” meaning that they owe more on their mortgages than their homes are now worth. During the past quarter, foreclosure filings were reported on more than 930,000 properties, with September 2010 being the first time banks repossessed more than 100,000 homes in a single month. The Obama administration took a positive step last year when it established the Home Affordable Modification Program, an agency devoted to helping homeowners in trouble, but by most accounts, it has been a disappointment. To date it has yielded only 520,000 active permanent modifications. #

That’s why I’m focusing today on ESOP, an organization headquartered in downtown Cleveland that has been unusually successful in helping struggling Ohioans to hold onto their homes. Last year, ESOP, reported that about 70 percent of those who completed its process received loan modifications that allowed them to avert foreclosure. The organization, which honed its strategy fighting predatory lending in the inner city, has now become an important destination for suburban homeowners desperate for help. #

Bank officials say that they try to avoid foreclosures, but the recent “robo-signing” scandal indicates that many have sought to repossess homes as cheaply as possible, even if it has sometimes meant sidestepping the law. (Last month, 50 attorneys general launched a joint inquiry to examine charges that banks used deceptive practices to accelerate foreclosures.) So how has ESOP, a not-for-profit organization with about 50 employees and 10 offices across Ohio, been beating the odds? #

ESOP (which stands for Empowering and Strengthening Ohio’s People) engages loan servicers or lenders and borrowers, acting as a good-faith intermediary between the parties, so it can effectively negotiate sustainable mortgage “workouts.” There is no secret to this. For lenders, it means reducing interest rates, knocking off principal, or stretching out loan terms, or some combination of the three. For borrowers, it means making realistic budgets and income forecasts, exploring assistance from governments and other sources, and making reduced payments faithfully. #

One thing that distinguished ESOP from the government’s program, as well as other mortgage counselors, is how it holds lenders accountable. It has gotten several large companies, including Bank of America, CitiMortgage, Ocwen Financial Corporation, and Litton Loan Servicing, to sign “fair lending agreements” which spell out the terms of their working relationship. In its agreements, ESOP requires that lenders provide a single point of contact, someone with decision making authority. Without this access, ESOP says, homeowners get bounced around the bureaucracy, making little progress, and files simply vanish, frequent complaints from borrowers who seek to take advantage of the government assistance. ESOP also insists on a defined escalation process for cases it believes are mishandled. Some agreements give it the right to appeal all the way to a lender’s chief executive. #

ESOP also succeeds by adding a human element. They bring executives from banks and loan servicers on community tours, where they get to meet their homeowners and see the effects of their policies. These neighborhood tours almost always strengthen ESOP’s partnerships with lenders. Countrywide (now owned by Bank of America) signed an agreement after senior executives took a tour of Slavic Village, an area on the east side of Cleveland where a third of homes, many of them foreclosed by the lender, remain vacant, boarded up, stripped and ransacked, demolished, or occupied by squatters and drug dealers. #

So why don’t the banks refuse to sign the agreements or take the tours, and just foreclose? ESOP uses both a carrot and a stick. #

The carrot is that ESOP genuinely helps its lenders do something they are not structured to do well: communicate effectively with a large number of distressed borrowers. “[ESOP has] been instrumental in completing that last link of the communication chain without which we’re dead in the water,” explained Paul A. Koches, the general counsel for Ocwen, which services a half million mortgages, and was one of the early companies to form a partnership with ESOP. #

Communication between borrowers and lenders remains a significant problem. The state of Ohio’s foreclosure prevention program, “Save the Dream,” forwards its applications from homeowners to loan servicers and tracks the companies’ response rates. In its 2009 report (pdf, p. 16), the response rates for Chase, US Bank and Wells Fargo were all less than 2 percent. By contrast, Countrywide’s rate was 72 percent and Ocwen’s was 85 percent. The latter two have signed agreements with ESOP. #

When it comes to dealing with borrowers, ESOP has two major advantages over lenders. First, while lenders have many competing interests, ESOP specializes in saving homes. Second, borrowers tend to trust ESOP ─ which is a free service ─ so they provide more comprehensive and truthful information, the key to a solution. They also know that ESOP can tell when a lender is offering a reasonable deal or trying to take advantage of their situation. In many cases, ESOP gets better information than lenders do — clients are more forthcoming about things like credit card debt and cell phone bills, for example. “Our ability to contact everyone and have a response from everyone can be challenging at times,” notes Joe Ohayon, senior vice president at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. “And it may be that customers are more comfortable talking to someone local, a trusted third party in their eyes.” Finally, ESOP doesn’t press lenders to do workouts that homeowners can’t sustain, which builds trust among their partners, too. #

In its dealing with homeowners, ESOP is both compassionate and tough. The goal is to help clients take control of their lives, not to cushion them from reality. If three phone calls to a client go unanswered or a document requested fails to arrive within five days, the file is closed. The tough love approach works. In 2009, 5,011 homeowners walked into ESOP’s offices and 63 percent complied with all information requests. #

But perhaps the biggest reason for ESOP’s success is that, when push comes to shove, it knows how to focus the attention of lenders. That’s the stick — and it harkens back to ESOP’s early days as a take-no-prisoners community organizer that fought to improve education and policing in Cleveland’s poorest neighborhoods. (ESOP, established in 1993, originally stood for “East Side Organizing Project.”) In the late 1990s, when ESOP began focusing on housing and mortgages, it found numerous lenders engaged in predatory practices. In one case, it launched a campaign against a company called Fairbanks Capital (now called Select Portfolio Servicing), accusing it of failing to apply payments and then charging big penalties. As a result, the Federal Trade Commission sued the company and Fairbanks settled in 2003 by refunding $40 million to borrowers. #

ESOP reached out to dozens of lenders on behalf of its clients, hoping to save their homes. “We’d write letters. We’d make phone calls,” said Inez Killingsworth, ESOP’s founder. “The lenders would totally ignore us. And then we would have to pay them a visit.” #

That’s a euphemism for a “hit.” They would organize a demonstration in front of a lender’s offices. If that failed to elicit a response, they would fill a bus with community members, drive out to the suburban house of a regional vice president and demonstrate there. ESOP’s signature tactic was to throw hundreds of two-inch plastic sharks on the lawn and circulate flyers saying, “Your neighbor is a loan shark.” #

It didn’t make them popular — but it worked. Some lenders came to the table after one or two hits. Others took more time. Countrywide took 18 months, but eventually signed an agreement. After the Fairbanks campaign, Ocwen approached ESOP. Later, Select Portfolio Servicing (formerly Fairbanks) even signed an agreement. #

“Once we make contact, they say, ‘Inez, you didn’t have to do this,’” said Killingsworth. “And I say, ‘We don’t do confrontation just to do it. We do it because you’re not listening. We tried to communicate with letters and phone calls and we were totally ignored. Our community has been devastated by foreclosures. Why are you ignoring us?’” #

ESOP rarely does hits these days. “The word has gotten around,” Killingsworth said. “Now, most of the time we ask for a meeting we get a meeting.” At those meetings, ESOP makes clear that it wants to help lenders make money — by resuscitating loans wherever possible. The real absurdity in the mortgage saga is that lenders often do better financially in the long run by modifying loans quickly rather than foreclosing or prolonging delinquencies. (Unfortunately, in the short run, foot dragging and foreclosing can make a bank’s books look better.) #

Ocwen’s general counsel, Koches, said his company approached ESOP for this very reason. “Foreclosure in virtually every single case results in a major loss for the investor,” he said. “We found that you actually make more money if you can resolve loans and get them cash flowing even at a lower payment.” Now Ocwen sends reports to ESOP when their shared clients miss two payments, and ESOP follows up to try to catch problems before they snowball. With so many people remaining unemployed, the work is getting tougher. #

One of the couples ESOP helped was Danny and Kristy Lawson, from a small town about 90 miles southwest of Cleveland. After Danny had to switch to a lower paying factory job and Kristy was laid off from her position in an employment agency, the couple could barely make their $800 a month loan payments. Kristy tried to do her own modification with her lender, Chase, but they offered her a horrible deal: slightly lower payments but at the end of the 25 year loan, a balloon payment of roughly $60,000 would be due. A friend told her about ESOP. She contacted them and in less than two months she had a real modification: $675 payments for the life of the loan representing a fixed 5 percent interest rate — and no balloon. “The $675 is still hard for us,” Kristy said, “but we always make sure that’s the first one we make. #

On Saturday, I’ll share some of ESOP’s homeowner stories and respond to some of your comments. If you’ve had experience getting help to avoid a foreclosure, let us know about it. #

This column was originally published in The New York Times. Fixes appears on Tuesdays and Fridays in the Times Opinionator section. #

Photo credit/caption: Associated Press; An abandoned chair sits in front of a foreclosed home in the Mount Pleasant section of Cleveland, Ohio in January 2008. #]]> http://dowser.org/foreclosure-is-not-an-option/feed/ 0 http://dowser.org/a-safe-haven-in-cartoon-confidants/ http://dowser.org/a-safe-haven-in-cartoon-confidants/#comments Mon, 22 Nov 2010 21:36:42 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=8121 For months, psychologists struggled to reach the eight year old boy in the burn unit of the Pediatric Hospital of Tacubaya, in Mexico City. He had been discovered in the basement of a house, tied to a water tank after being burned along the backs of both legs with a clothes iron by his uncle and aunt, who were later arrested. Every time an adult tried to talk about his abuse, the boy would turn away and repeat, “No, no, no, no.” One day, a therapist said to a colleague, “Nothing is working. Let’s try Dulas.” #

A therapist named Rafael Mateos Ortiz took the boy to Dulas’s room, which was decorated with stars, planets and children’s art. In the corner a TV screen was set inside a cutout of a 1950s-style spaceship, with mailbox slots for children to place notes or drawings. Mateos explained to the boy that Dulas doesn’t like to interact with adults – so he would only come out after he left the room. Mateos went to an adjacent room and Dulas appeared on the screen. Speaking through Dulas in a software-altered cartoony voice, Mateos used keyboard strokes to make him move and express emotions. #

When I visited Mateos recently at the Tacubaya hospital, he told me that, within 30 minutes: “[The boy] told Dulas that he was living in a shelter, that his parents had died, that he had been abused, that he had been burned by his uncle and aunt.” Mateos added: “It was a major step – beginning to talk about his feelings.” Now the therapists had insights they could work with and the boy said he wanted to speak with Dulas again. #

Over the past five years, Borbolla’s characters have been used to assist 2,000 children from 3 to 14 years old, and have been employed in three Mexico City hospitals and a center for disabilities in another city, Morelia. The characters collectively go by the name Antenas because they all have antennas and come from Antenopolis (Borbolla’s original character also goes by the name Antenas.). The psychologists I spoke with said the tool creates an environment of trust and empathy that enables them to understand children’s issues more quickly than they imagined possible, and enhances the effectiveness of their work by providing a context in which children find it easier to discover and express their feelings — which carries over to therapy. “In my practice, if I needed four or five visits with a child to understand what really happened — with Antenas I need 10 or 15 minutes, maybe two sessions,” said Borbolla. #

Perhaps most important, therapists must undergo several months of training and practice, under observation, before they can use the tool. Not all therapists receive certification, Borbolla says. It takes a good ear and a light touch ─ playful, enthusiastic, funny at times, but not too funny ─ to understand how to follow the child’s lead and make the characters come alive in a way that respects the child’s feelings and is believable enough to work. #

Borbolla originally got the idea to use a drawing of an animated character to communicate with children when she was working as a school psychologist in the 1980s. Years later, in private practice, she worked with a cyber-puppet maker to develop a software version. She spent six years refining the tool. “This is the fruit of many years’ experience and many adjustments,” she told me. #

In 2005, she established a nonprofit foundation, Antenas Por Los Ninos, supported by grants, to disseminate the work. The impetus was a comment made by her daughter Juli, who is now 27 and is also a clinical psychologist. Juli had been born without a right ventricle in her heart, and as an infant and child she had undergone repeated surgeries and hospitalizations. Borbolla recalled: “She told me, ‘If I had had Antenas in the hospital, I would have asked the character many things I never asked because I was afraid of saying things that might hurt you or my father. I wanted to know if I was going to die. I wanted to know what else was going to happen to me.’ ” #

One of the first times Borbolla used the Antenas character was with a five-year-old girl whose parents brought her in because she had been wetting her bed. Antenas asked the girl, “Who do you live with?” She replied: “My father, my mother, my little brother, and the maid.” When Antenas asked: “What’s a maid?” the girl replied “It’s a woman who helps mother with the house and when your father goes out, she hurts you.” Another time Antenas asked a young boy, “What’s a driver?” and the boy said that a driver is a man who uses the car and touches you in the guest bathroom when your parents go out. Borbolla explained that these disclosures ─ spontaneous responses to general questions ─ are highly reliable, especially when they come from young children. But therapists also follow up with the child and the family to confirm facts. #

In such cases, therapists have to handle the information carefully. One principle of the work is that a therapist must not reveal that she knows something that was said to an Antenas character privately. The character must first ask permission of children to share any information with a “good adult.” This preserves the trust and integrity of the child’s relationship with the character. In the case of the boy and the driver above, Antenas said he should tell what he said to “Julia, that lady who brought you here.” The boy replied, “If I tell someone the driver will kill my mother.” Antenas said, “She will know how to protect you and your mother.” The boy gave permission for Antenas to tell Julia and she made sure the child’s parents, who happened to be wealthy, came directly to her office to pick up the boy (the driver was waiting for him outside) to deal with the matter. #

Over the years, Borbolla has gained insights into children simply by having a character  ask basic questions like “What is a mother?” or “What is a father?” With children in hospitals, the character may ask: ‘What is a doctor?’ If the child responds ─ as many do, in effect ─ “A mean person who makes you suffer,” then Antenas can help the child handle his fears and adapt to his treatment. #

The psychologists I spoke and emailed with said they loved the tool. Ana Zarina Fiorentini Cañedo, who supervises the psychological program at Tacubaya, wrote that she highly recommends the program for hospitals because of its efficacy in helping children heal from the emotional pain of illness. Some psychologists have concerns about children being deceived into thinking they are confiding with a character when they are in fact talking to human adults. Borbolla acknowledges it, but says that it’s an extension of the established practice of using puppets. And she is careful to add that Antenas is no substitute for therapy. (She likes to limit its use to six sessions.) “It is a simple tool, but it can be enriched with the personality of each expert,” she says. #

To date, Antenas hasn’t been rigorously studied, and Borbolla is working to engage researchers to examine its impact. She is developing an Internet-based application to reach children who are immobile. And she dreams of having the resources to bring the tool into disaster areas, like Haiti. “After an earthquake, everybody thinks of food and blankets, but what are the children feeling? How are they faring?” Her biggest fear is that the tool will be co-opted for negative purposes. “I see how powerful it is,” she told me. “It can be used to get into the souls of children.” #

This column was originally published in The New York Times. Fixes appears every Tuesday in the Times Opinionator section.
#

Photo credit/caption: Photo 1: Antenas por los Ninos, Talking about abuse to Dulas, instead of an adult, has been therapeutic for some traumatized children; Photo 2: Antenas por los Ninos, The original Antenas; Photo 3: Antenas por los Ninos, Bompi. #]]> http://dowser.org/a-safe-haven-in-cartoon-confidants/feed/ 0 http://dowser.org/fighting-bullying-with-babies/ http://dowser.org/fighting-bullying-with-babies/#comments Mon, 08 Nov 2010 20:53:33 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=7763 Imagine there was a cure for meanness. Well, maybe there is. #

Lately, the issue of bullying has been in the news, sparked by the suicide of Tyler Clementi, a gay college student who was a victim of cyber-bullying, and by a widely circulated New York Times article that focused on “mean girl” bullying in kindergarten. The federal government has identified bullying as a national problem. In August, it organized the first-ever “Bullying Prevention Summit,” and it is now rolling out an anti-bullying campaign aimed at 5- to 8-year old children. This past month the Department of Education released a guidance letter to schools, colleges and universities to take bullying seriously, or face potential legal consequences. #

Stop Bulling Now Campaign The problem of bullying has attracted federal attention. Above, an excerpt from a cartoon in the government’s bullying prevention guide for children. To see the entire cartoon, click here. (pdf)

We know that humans are hardwired to be aggressive and selfish. But a growing body of research is demonstrating that there is also a biological basis for human compassion. Brain scans reveal that when we contemplate violence done to others we activate the same regions in our brains that fire up when mothers gaze at their children, suggesting that caring for strangers may be instinctual. When we help others, areas of the brain associated with pleasure also light up. Research by Felix Warneken and Michael Tomasello indicates that toddlers as young as 18 months behave altruistically. (If you want to feel good, watch one of their 15-second video clips here.) #

More important, we are beginning to understand how to nurture this biological potential. It seems that it’s not only possible to make people kinder, it’s possible to do it systematically at scale – at least with school children. That’s what one organization based in Toronto called Roots of Empathy has done. #

Roots of Empathy was founded in 1996 by Mary Gordon, an educator who had built Canada’s largest network of school-based parenting and family-literacy centers after having worked with neglectful and abusive parents. Gordon had found many of them to be lacking in empathy for their children. They hadn’t developed the skill because they hadn’t experienced or witnessed it sufficiently themselves. She envisioned Roots as a seriously proactive parent education program – one that would begin when the mothers- and fathers-to-be were in kindergarten. #

Since then, Roots has worked with more than 12,600 classes across Canada, and in recent years, the program has expanded to the Isle of Man, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the United States, where it currently operates in Seattle. Researchers have found that the program increases kindness and acceptance of others and decreases negative aggression. #

Here’s how it works: Roots arranges monthly class visits by a mother and her baby (who must be between two and four months old at the beginning of the school year). Each month, for nine months, a trained instructor guides a classroom using a standard curriculum that involves three 40-minute visits – a pre-visit, a baby visit, and a post-visit. The program runs from kindergarten to seventh grade. During the baby visits, the children sit around the baby and mother (sometimes it’s a father) on a green blanket (which represents new life and nature) and they try to understand the baby’s feelings. The instructor helps by labeling them. “It’s a launch pad for them to understand their own feelings and the feelings of others,” explains Gordon. “It carries over to the rest of class.” #

I have visited several public schools in low-income neighborhoods in Toronto to observe Roots of Empathy’s work. What I find most fascinating is how the baby actually changes the children’s behavior. Teachers have confirmed my impressions: tough kids smile, disruptive kids focus, shy kids open up. In a seventh grade class, I found 12-year-olds unabashedly singing nursery rhymes. #

The baby seems to act like a heart-softening magnet. No one fully understands why. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, an applied developmental psychologist who is a professor at the University of British Columbia, has evaluated Roots of Empathy in four studies. “Do kids become more empathic and understanding? Do they become less aggressive and kinder to each other? The answer is yes and yes,” she explained. “The question is why.” #

C. Sue Carter, a neurobiologist based at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who has conducted pioneering research into the effects of oxytocin, a hormone that has been linked with caring and trusting behavior, suspects that biology is playing a role in the program’s impact. “This may be an oxytocin story,” Carter told me. “I believe that being around the baby is somehow putting the children in a biologically different place. We don’t know what that place is because we haven’t measured it. However, if it works here as it does in other animals, we would guess that exposure to an infant would create a physiological state in which the children would be more social.” #

To parent well, you must try to imagine what your baby is experiencing. So the kids do a lot of “perspective taking.” When the baby is too small to raise its own head, for example, the instructor asks the children to lay their heads on the blanket and look around from there. Perspective taking is the cognitive dimension of empathy – and like any skill it takes practice to master. (Cable news hosts, take note.) #

Children learn strategies for comforting a crying baby. They learn that one must never shake a baby. They discover that everyone comes into the world with a different temperament, including themselves and their classmates. They see how hard it can be to be a parent, which helps them empathize with their own mothers and fathers. And they marvel at how capacity develops. Each month, the baby does something that it couldn’t do during its last visit: roll over, crawl, sit up, maybe even begin walking. Witnessing the baby’s triumphs – even something as small as picking up a rattle for the first time — the children will often cheer. #

Ervin Staub, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, has studied altruism in children and found that the best way to create a caring climate is to engage children collectively in an activity that benefits another human being. In Roots, children are enlisted in each class to do something to care for the baby, whether it is to sing a song, speak in a gentle voice, or make a “wishing tree.” #

The results can be dramatic. In a study of first- to third-grade classrooms, Schonert-Reichl focused on the subset of kids who exhibited “proactive aggression” – the deliberate and cold-blooded aggression of bullies who prey on vulnerable kids. Of those who participated in the Roots program, 88 percent decreased this form of behavior over the school year, while in the control group, only 9 percent did, and many actually increased it. Schonert-Reichl has reproduced these findings with fourth to seventh grade children in a randomized controlled trial. She also found that Roots produced significant drops in “relational aggression” – things like gossiping, excluding others, and backstabbing. Research also found a sharp increase in children’s parenting knowledge. #

“Empathy can’t be taught, but it can be caught,” Gordon often says – and not just by children. “Programmatically my biggest surprise was that not only did empathy increase in children, but it increased in their teachers,” she added. “And that, to me, was glorious, because teachers hold such sway over children.” #

When the program was implemented on a large scale across the province of Manitoba – it’s now in 300 classrooms there — it achieved an “effect size” that Rob Santos, the scientific director of Healthy Child Manitoba, said translates to reducing the proportion of students who get into fights from 15 percent to 8 percent, close to a 50 percent reduction. “For a program that costs only hundreds of dollars per child, the cost-benefit of preventing later problems that cost thousands of dollars per child, is obvious,” said Santos. #

Follow up studies have found that outcomes are maintained or enhanced three years after the program ends. “When you’ve got emotion and cognition happening at the same time, that’s deep learning,” explains Gordon. “That’s learning that will last.” #

It’s hard to envision what a kinder and gentler world, or school, would truly look like. But Gordon told me a story about a seventh grade student in a tough school in Toronto that offered a glimpse. He was an effeminate boy from an immigrant background who was always the butt of jokes. “Anytime he spoke, you’d hear snickers in the background,” she recalled. Towards the end of the year, the children in Roots are asked to write a poem or a song for the baby. Kids often work in groups and come up with raps. This boy decided to sing a song he’d written himself about mothers. #

“He was overweight and nerdy looking. His social skills were not very good,” Gordon recalled. “And he sang his song. The risk he took. My breath was in my fist, hoping that no one would humiliate him. And no one did. Not one youngster smirked. When he finished, they clapped. And I’m sure they all knew that they were holding back. But, oh my God, I was blown away. I couldn’t say anything.” #

She added: “When they talk about protecting kids in schools, they talk about gun shields, cameras, lights, but never about the internal environment. But safe is not about the rules – it’s about how the youngsters feel inside.” #

Have you seen or do you have ideas about effective ways to diminish bullying in school and elsewhere? We’ll discuss them in Saturday’s follow up – and also look at a critical step that teachers can take to make their classrooms more peaceful. #

This column was originally published in The New York Times. Fixes appears every Tuesday in the Times Opinionator section. #

Photo caption/credit: The problem of bullying has attracted federal attention. Above, an excerpt from a cartoon in the government’s bullying prevention guide for children. To see the entire cartoon, click here. Credit: Stop Bullying Now Campaign
#]]> http://dowser.org/fighting-bullying-with-babies/feed/ 1 http://dowser.org/filling-the-gap-between-farm-and-fair-trade-2/ http://dowser.org/filling-the-gap-between-farm-and-fair-trade-2/#comments Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:34:53 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=7746 We’ve all seen the ads for fair trade coffee with the beautiful photos of villagers hand picking coffee cherries in exotic regions around the globe. Fair trade is one of those ideas that’s always in the air, but we don’t often consider what it means. What does it really take to connect rural producers in the developing world with consumers in wealthy countries — so that everybody benefits? #

Willy Foote is an American banker who has spent the past decade answering this question. In the early 1990s, Foote worked for Lehman Brothers doing corporate finance in Latin America, where he fell in love with the culture and learned to play dozens of revolutionary songs on guitar. In 1996, he left Lehman to pursue a business journalism fellowship in Mexico, and he and his wife spent two years traveling around the country in an old pickup truck, interviewing villagers. What he found was that the missing link between small producers in the developing world and middle-class consumers who like to buy their morning coffee at Starbucks is a special kind of banker. That’s why, in 1999, Foote founded Root Capital, a not-for-profit organization that helps environmentally sustainable grassroots businesses gain access to capital, skills and markets. #

Of the 2.6 billion people who live on $2 a day or less, three quarters live in rural areas, and many are small producers — which is why the World Bank says agricultural businesses are the most effective vehicles to reduce global poverty. The problem is that their businesses, even when they form associations, are too small and risky to be served by banks and too big for Grameen Bank-style microfinance. To succeed, they typically need access to loans between $10,000 and $1 million. This is a banking no-man’s land — often called the “missing middle.” While the global market for natural goods is booming, millions of small producers who dream of accessing it are shut out. Every day, we hear politicians trumpet free-market solutions as a cure for economic ills, but few have worked out the messy details to make the slogans real — especially for people in the countryside. #

Root Capital Rolando Lazo works with SOPPEXCCA, a coffee cooperative that receives loans from Root Capital.

Today, Lazo and his family have a small plot of land and a house — plus electricity, TV and access to potable water. How did this happen? #

Lazo joined a coffee farmers’ cooperative that linked up with a larger association of 19 cooperatives called SOPPEXCCA. Over the past six years, after struggling financially, the association received nine loans from Root Capital ranging from $70,000 to $450,000 to build an export business that would benefit all its members. #

Most of the credit went to cover costs between the time when the association’s 700 farmers harvest their coffee and the payments come in from buyers. This ensured that farmers wouldn’t be forced to sell at fire-sale prices to middlemen. Some of the loans were extended to Lazo and others to buy their own land. And $280,000 was used to purchase a warehouse and a dry mill with machines for hulling, sorting and packing, which ensure consistent quality coffee. The investments reduced processing and transportation costs and allowed SOPPEXCCA to earn profits that would otherwise have gone to private millers. #

As a result, SOPPEXCCA now sells much of its coffee at specialty-grade prices to retailers in Germany, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United States, where Peet’s Coffee carries its beans. According to the association, sales have increased from $531,000 in 2003 to $1.7 million this year. #

While traveling through Mexico, Foote had met hundreds of farmers who had good products to sell. “I came across leaders wherever I went,” Foote said. But hardly any could get access to credit. Without opportunities, many resorted to illegal logging or slash-and-burn agriculture, practices that eroded the soil, destroyed biodiversity, and made their communities vulnerable to flooding — all of which deepened poverty. #

One day Foote found himself in the Chimalapas jungle surrounded by 100 vanilla farmers in cowboy hats. The farmers had organized themselves and taken back their land from narco-ganaderos (narco-ranchers) who grew marijuana and poppies for the drug trade. “ ‘We’re organized now,’ ” Foote recalled a young leader declare. “‘We have our cooperative. We will find markets for our vanilla and we will make money!’” #

They didn’t. The cooperative failed. Foote returned to the United States. He had planned to attend business school, but he never went. Instead, he started EcoLogic Finance (later renamed Root Capital). If farmers were courageous enough to resist the drug trade, he said, the least the world owed them was a decent shot at building honest businesses. #

His timing was good. At the time, high profile companies like Starbucks, Whole Foods, and The Body Shop were looking to source more of their products from small producers, a trend that has accelerated — and will continue to accelerate the more customers pay attention to ethical and environmental considerations. #

But a big bottleneck is the banking sector, which has yet to adjust its business practices to make markets work the way they could — and should. Only a quarter of the world’s bank branches are located in rural areas. “Nobody has figured out how to get commercial banks to focus on these rural markets,” said Foote. Even when they do, traditional banks are uncomfortable lending to people who lack hard collateral. The rural poor often have no land, buildings or legal titles. And government rural credit schemes have been riddled with corruption and waste. #

Root Capital Maraba, a coffee cooperative in Rwanda, has been a Root Capital client since 2005.

How has it achieved such success? Root Capital’s investment officers spend a third to half their time visiting clients, walking along dirt roads, discussing harvests, inquiring about whether farmers’ kids are attending school. Their intimate knowledge of their clients allows them to approve new loan applications in four to six weeks and renewals often in days. The organization raises money from investors at 2.5 percent interest — Starbucks is one of its biggest investors — and lends it out at 9.5 to 12 percent interest. This year, it expects to cover 73 percent of lending costs with interest income. Foote says the lending business will break even in three years. #

Typically, in agricultural trade, small producers bear most of the risk while export companies and retailers reap most of the profits. What is most innovative about Root Capital is the way it has “derisked” an inherently risky business while shifting some of the profits from the big guys in the supply chain to the little guys. In addition to helping small producers add value, which boosts their revenues, the organization secures its loans by arranging fixed-price forward contracts from buyers. This insulates small farmers from the risk of price drops. And to further stabilize its borrowers, the organization works with companies like Green Mountain Coffee Roasters which provides grants to train leaders of rural associations in things like managing cash flow, account reconciliation, and financial decision making. #

Root Capital also gets paid back directly from importers and retailers, rather than from its borrowers. “We think we have a very compelling risk mitigation strategy,” Foote said. “As long as product ships we get paid back. So we get very good at asking ‘Why wouldn’t product ship?’” #

There are lots of reasons: droughts, frosts, labor strikes at port, civil wars. But that’s not usually what goes wrong in rural credit. What usually goes wrong is what caused the mortgage crisis in the United States: bankers make loans without getting to know their borrowers. #

Root Capital can’t afford to make that mistake; it is trying to prove that rural producers represent a serious “asset class” for lenders. “If we lose a lot of money in the early days then the whole thing is over,” Foote said. So they have gotten good at finding bankers who are motivated to redeploy their skills to attack poverty. And they have no shortage of applicants. #

Root Capital is now expanding into new market segments — seed companies, agricultural processors, staple foods, like sorghum, beans, and maize, and high-nutrient foods like plumpy’nut. It is helping farmers invest in “leap frog” technologies like drip irrigation, which can multiply crop yields and efficiencies. #

In the coming years, Foote plans to standardize Root Capital’s work — to turn it into a “plug and play business” so other lenders can adopt its model. Some of its borrowers have already “graduated” to mainstream banks, a mark of success. But Foote is not expecting commercial banks to dive in anytime soon. Rather, he envisions something similar to what occurred in micro-finance over the past 15 years. #

“I think we’re going to see the catalyzing of an entirely new industry of specialized financial institutions that are 100 percent dedicated to this market,” he said. “Because it’s such a massive opportunity — and it’s so grossly underserved right now.” #

This column was originally published in The New York Times. Fixes appears every Tuesday in the Times Opinionator section. #

Photo captions/credits: 1. Rolando Lazo works with SOPPEXCCA, a coffee cooperative that receives loans from Root Capital. Credit: Root Capital. 2: Maraba, a coffee cooperative in Rwanda, has been a Root Capital client since 2005. Credit: Root Capital. #]]> http://dowser.org/filling-the-gap-between-farm-and-fair-trade-2/feed/ 0 http://dowser.org/health-care-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/ http://dowser.org/health-care-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/#comments Tue, 19 Oct 2010 01:00:53 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=7453 Welcome to Fixes. #

This is a series about solutions, or potential solutions, to real world problems.  It focuses on the line between failure and success, drawing on the stories of people who have crossed it. #

Most of us tend to be better informed about problems than solutions.  This presents two challenges: if we rarely hear about success when it occurs, it’s hard to believe that problems can, in fact, be solved.  Also, knowledge about how to solve problems ends up being concentrated in too few hands.  It needs to circulate more broadly so that it can be applied where needed. #

We are both journalists who have spent more than two decades reporting on social problems around the world, and where possible, exploring new models to address them.  Here, we’ll be looking at examples of success in fields such as health care, education, employment, political change and environmental protection.  The projects can be as specific as fixing motorcycles or as broad as improving the way we finance vaccines globally.  Examples will come from all over — the poorest parts of Africa and South Asia, but also middle-income countries like Mexico and Poland and rich ones like Canada and the United States.   In each case, we will look at what the people behind them did differently — what led to success in a world where plans so often end in disappointment.   And we will explore what we can learn from their experiences. #

Today, we will examine one solution to a vexing problem:  many diseases that we know how to prevent and cure remain widespread.  For nearly all of human history, lives were short and miserable because there was little anyone could do about disease.   Now we know what to do.  The science is there.  The technology is there.  But we have a different problem ─ a happier one, but no less challenging:  how do we get these interventions to people everywhere?  And this problem doesn’t just apply to health care, it applies to almost every modern good or service, whether it’s education, energy, clean water or job opportunities. As the science fiction writer William Gibson has said, “The future is here ─ it’s just not evenly distributed.” #

That’s why we’re beginning Fixes with the story of a health assistant named Tsepo Kotelo, whose job is to take care of people in remote mountain villages in the Maseru district of Lesotho.  Kotelo’s story shows the critical need for something not usually on the global to-do list for Third World health:  motorcycle maintenance. #

Lesotho has some of the world’s highest rates of AIDS and tuberculosis, and much of Kotelo’s time is spent counseling and testing people for these diseases, giving talks about AIDS prevention, and helping people stick to their treatment plans and deal with side effects. He also checks the water supply, helps villagers improve sanitation, weighs and immunizes babies, examines pregnant women and treats basic diseases. #

Until 2008 Kotelo could visit only three villages a week, because he had to reach them on foot, walking for miles and miles.  But in February of that year, Kotelo got a motorcycle ─ the best vehicle for reaching rural villages in Africa, most of which are nowhere near a real road.  Just as crucial, he was given the tools to keep the bike on the road:  he received a helmet and protective clothing, he was taught to ride and trained to start each day with a quick check of the bike.  His motorcycle is also tuned up monthly by a technician who comes to him.  Now, instead of spending his days walking to his job, he can do his job.  Instead of visiting three villages each week, he visits 20.  Where else can you find a low-tech investment in health care that increases patient coverage by nearly 600 percent? #

It was the first of several trips for Mamola and the Colemans.  In Somalia, they saw a woman in distressed labor being pushed towards the health clinic in a wheelbarrow.  They visited villages and heard that no one had ever come to vaccinate children.   Yet they also saw a graveyard of dead motorcycles and ambulances behind the clinic, some of them discarded for want of a $3 part and a little know-how.  “Some of them were relatively new,” said Andrea Coleman.  “This was crazy.  It’s been 100 years since the internal combustion engine was invented and nobody knew how to deal with these vehicles.  What a waste of money and lives.”  Today the Colemans run Riders. #

There’s nothing new about donating vehicles for health care in Africa.  Many organizations do it.  But often these vehicles fall apart.  Barry Coleman says that unmanaged, a vehicle in Africa will usually have a major breakdown after 8 months of use and be junked entirely by 15 months.  This is a classic problem in development:  everybody wants to play the white knight coming to the rescue with the quick fix — the water pump, the $100 laptop, the motorcycle.  But the tougher challenge is developing a cost-effective system to keep things working. #

In some countries, Riders provides vehicles ─ for example Gambia’s health system leases all its vehicles from Riders.  But what makes Riders different is that in all of the seven countries it works in, it focuses on keeping the vehicles running.  Riders charges a fixed cost of about 18 cents per kilometer for motorcycles, which includes fuel, and keeps vehicles in constant use for years with no breakdowns.  It trains and hires local technicians to do monthly tune-ups.  The predictable fees help governments and aid groups incorporate maintenance in their budget planning.  Riders currently manages about 1,200 motorcycles, ambulances and four-wheel drive vehicles used for health care in Africa.  The vast majority are motorcycles ─ even some ambulances are motorcycles with sidecars. #

We’re not suggesting that motorcycles will solve Africa’s health problems ─ not even its health delivery problems.  The continent is facing a severe shortage of health care workers.  (Thousands are poached each year by wealthy countries; we’ll write about some fixes for this in future columns.)  But it’s within easy reach to multiply the scope and efficiency of the people who are already on the ground. #

We already mentioned that Tsepo Kotelo’s motorcycle allows him to serve almost seven times as many villages as before.  Kotelo can also respond to emergencies, so he can provide better care as well as more of it.  And visiting villages more frequently, he can catch illnesses in their early stages or prevent them entirely.  A woman with a breach baby can make it to the hospital in time — by sidecar ambulance, no wheelbarrow necessary.  People now give sputum samples for TB diagnoses because they trust that their samples will actually reach the laboratory unspoiled.  All these changes save lives.

Riders dramatizes the importance of paying attention to the scruffy and mundane parts of a system, especially delivery. Businesses understand this.  If Federal Express didn’t maintain its trucks, it would go bankrupt.  The same applies to social interventions.  It doesn’t matter how many billions have been spent on life-saving drugs or how well-trained the nurses are if a clogged fuel line prevents the treatments from reaching the patient. #

Riders for Health’s focus on motorcycle maintenance is an example of the creative and practical ideas we look forward to debating with interested readers as this column develops.  We hope these ideas will also lead to discussions of the big questions about social change. #

We look forward to your comments — and also hearing about the creative fixes you’ve come across. #

This column was originally published in The New York Times. Fixes appears every Tuesday in the Times Opinionator section. #

Photo captions/credits: 1. A peer mentor for H.I.V.-positive pregnant women and new mothers travels through Lesotho on a motorcycle maintained by Riders for Health. Credit: Tom Oldham/Riders for Health. 2. A health officer speaks with a mother and her child in Mucheni village, in the Binga district of Zimbabwe. Credit: Tom Oldham/Riders for Health #]]> http://dowser.org/health-care-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/feed/ 0 http://dowser.org/how-to-pursue-an-encore-career-%e2%80%94-a-meaningful-alternative-to-retirement/ http://dowser.org/how-to-pursue-an-encore-career-%e2%80%94-a-meaningful-alternative-to-retirement/#comments Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:02:46 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=6611 Every day thousands of Americans turn 55 years old with no plans of retiring anytime soon. (If retirement is still decades away for you, then consider reading on for a parent or a friend.) Many people today are looking for ways to have a social impact during an age that once was thought of as the "golden years" — a time of life when the glossy magazines say you're supposed to be content to spend your final years luxuriating on a golf course. The problem is, for millions of people, the so-called retirement years are going to last upwards of three decades! That's why many people are pursuing encore careers, purposeful work in the second half of life. #

The world has no shortage of problems in need of experienced fixers, but the pathways to this new stage of work are unclear; they are just being forged. One organization that has been leading the way helping people to navigate this new terrain is Civic Ventures. [Disclosure: I am a senior fellow at Civic Ventures.] Next week, Civic Ventures, in partnership with the New York Times Knowledge Network, will be offering an online seminar, which I will be participating in, to help people prepare for their encore careers. The interactive two-part class, held on Friday, Oct. 22 and Friday, Oct. 29 from 12:00-1:15 EST, will explore such questions as: #

• What kinds of job opportunities exist to do meaningful work in the encore years?
• How do you make the transition into a field where you might not have experience or contacts?
• What work is available for those who don't want to work full time?
• What steps should you take if you want to create your own organization?

If there's someone in your life who's ready to explore a new life direction, this could help them make a start. #

Photo: Civic Ventures #]]> http://dowser.org/how-to-pursue-an-encore-career-%e2%80%94-a-meaningful-alternative-to-retirement/feed/ 1