My team thought the wording of the priority judgmental. They took out “responsibility” and raised the bar from “maintaining” to enhancing. Their proposed priority reads, “Empower more people to enhance their health.” By building on strengths, people can leave stymied life roles behind, and move forward through trust-based relationships.

Of the ten Healthy Polk 2020 goals identified in 2009, this is the broadest, and the only one that addresses lifestyle and behavior. That’s where Switch comes in. It’s by Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick, a book I’ve loved, shared, and used as reference for several years. Switch frames research about how change happens around a metaphor of elephant and rider.

All that Priority #8 of Healthy Polk 2020 seeks to change is, well, just the way we take care of our health, not just our physical health. My expert team defined health in broad terms, not just metabolic risk factors or healthy weight, but in terms of mental, spiritual, cultural and financial health. That’s where Thrive comes in.

Dan Buettner has conducted research all over the world, traveling to communities where people live the longest, happiest lives. One result is Thrive. Another is the Blue Zones Web site where it’s easy to spend a chunk of time, learning about yourself, and the things you can do to be healthier and happier. The Expert Team aligned their definition of health with the research of the Blue Zones project, addressing community, flow, meaningful work and other life style choices.

One of the cool things that happened with my Healthy Polk work is that about the same time we were wrapping up our work, Governor Branstad launched the Healthiest State initiative, and Wellmark announced funding for the Iowa BlueZones Project, through which ten Iowa communities will be able to develop tools and programs to live longer, happier lives.

Another gap my team identified was that neighborhoods and communities are not empowered to support and promote health. The action needed to close this gap needs further definition, but the vision is for churches, schools and neighborhood associations to develop networks that support healthy habits. Which is where the third book comes in. Connected explores the profound effect that our friends have on us. The research that caught my eye first is that people who hang out with obese people tend to gain weight. It makes sense, but surprised me nonetheless.

As my team discussed what “more people” meant, they envisioned a ripple effect, beginning with us, and spreading through our community organizations and friends. What do YOU think we need to do to start that ripple? Do you want to be a part of it? Let’s do it!

But it’s not just about doing projects that help communities. For service learning to be valuable to young people as well as to the people they work with, we have to involve them in every step of every project—investigation, planning, action, reflection, demonstration and celebration.

After Global Youth Service Day last spring, Jessica Krough, Melissa Simmermaker of the Iowa Commission on Volunteer Service, and I talked about innovative ways to reflect on the state-wide day of service. We decided to experiment with Internet based radio to bring kids together from different GYSD projects around the state. About eight kids joined me on my show, “We’re Entrepreneurs—we can help.” Three of my Earth Heroes, and two students from the Hoover High School STARS program came to the studio. Two students from Lamoni Middle School and their facilitator joined us by Skype.

The Earth Heroes talked about the ongoing project they’re doing for Global Youth Service Day. Jessica visited the garden, and helped them read the Governor’s Proclamation. They were still clearing the garden, building their dragon, and planting vegetables.

As Kyla, Terrance, I work with the Earth Heroes at the Des Moines Botanical Center, we talk about

• What happened?
• So what?—How did you feel? What did you learn?
• Now what?—What’s next? How can you use this experience in the future?

Here is some of their wisdom—

• “When I’m special, I work really hard.”
• “I didn’t know broccoli grew on a plant.”
• “Digging is fun!”

The Earth Heroes walk down the hill from Boys and Girls Club at Carver Community School to the Botanical Center, and we form a circle. The kids know the FIRST thing we do is the “Name Wave.” The kids lead the Wave, starting with everyone yelling out their name as loud as they can. Then come “compliments and appreciations,” a chance for everyone to say thank you, and talk about what we like.

It’s September, and the 2nd through 5th graders are harvesting squash, pumpkins, watermelon, beans, tomatoes, okra, onions, potatoes, peppers and sunflower seeds to take home. Any gardener knows fall is time to reflect on what worked and what didn’t, what got done, and what didn’t. What was lost? Where did the summer go?

So, they’re taking photos in the gardens, and next week we’ll create a map of each of the 20 ten-foot X 10-foot raised beds, making notes about what grew, crops that worked well together, and what the Heroes learned from experiments with okra, mulching, and fall planting.

Service learning is a powerful way for young people to find relevance in education, dream about the future, and change the world.

The garage is organized enough to find the snow shovels, but the kayak REALLY needs to learn to hang from the rafters. Is there still time to plant some of those seeds that didn’t make it into the ground last spring?

An irresistible urge to buy new notebooks and pencils. Can I rationalize a new computer and cellphone? When IS that next iPhone coming out???

I am seeking visual order. I tend to be a big-picture person, and very field dependent. so it’s hard for me to function amidst clutter. My daughter moved much of her four-bedroom farmhouse into the Hostel Taco (my house) this summer. She worked hard to put it away, but there seems to have been an explosion in the studio, and I don’t know where to start! I was sorting old photos when spring arrived, and they are still strewn over the red tables. Now other layers are encroaching. Remnants of sewing projects. Candidates for EBay and Craigslist. Ironing??? It’s time to get the house ready to spend more time in. Sort, toss, and drive loads to the DAV.

My grandparents’ lives depended on “putting things by.” I have potatoes to dig, and tomatoes that will surely stay green forever. I hope my tiny volunteer butternut squash will grow to eating size before the first killing frost. Is there still time to put in some fall lettuce and kale? Oh boy! There’s still time. For a couple more days!

I need to establish a new routine after this chaotic summer. Start with morning pages? That feels good. A walk or yoga? Maybe. Time for spiritual connection. I started my painting class with a self portrait I’ve worked on for nearly a year. The Martha looking out at me is angry. I have plans for her.

This morning I had a flash of realization as I wrote the marketing brochure for the program. This new program does have the capacity for system change. Perhaps we can stop blaming the victims, and take steps to “provide a decent standard of living for all mankind,” in Norman Borlaug‘s words.

I’ve spent a little time in Zambia, where I stayed with a family much poorer than any I know here. Their generosity touched my heart deeply, but they are not my neighbors. There is a limit to how much I can help them. Here in Iowa, within a few miles of my home, there are thousands of people barely getting by day to day in the richest country in history. Yet, we show little generosity to them. In fact, we often hold them in contempt. John F. Kennedy said, “The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.” Even nearly 50 years after his death, we have made little progress toward abolishing poverty. Indeed, we have gone backward.

I offer this post as a resource for connecting with knowledge and research, opportunities to help, and opportunities to advocate. Please help me build it, with links and ideas I have missed.

• Community Housing Initiatives, a non-profit affordable housing organization
• Move the Food, working toward the day when everyone in central Iowa has enough to eat
• Iowa Community Action Association
• Iowa Workforce: County Poverty Estimates
• Losing Our Way, by Bob Herbert, about the disparity between the wealthy and the poor
• Poverty, Wikipedia
• An online challenge–Play Spent
• Struggling to Make Ends Meet
• The Iowa Independent: Iowa’s Children Living in Poverty
• Unemployed in Des Moines, a resource for people going through the difficulties of looking for work, by Suzanne Hull

If you don’t have a bicycle, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get one. The Des Moines Bike Collective, at 617 Grand Avenue, repairs used bicycles and sells them at a reasonable cost. They also offer classes on bicycle maintenance.

Where can you ride? The streets are okay, if you ride carefully, but the Des Moines area has about 300 miles of wonderful trails for riding. Some of them lead out into the countryside where you can glide through wooded areas and between cornfields. Some of the trails lead to small towns where you can stop and rest in a park or get a snack at a store.

If you get started and decide that you really like riding, you might want to think about riding your bike across Iowa. The Des Moines Register sponsors a ride across the state every year, called RAGBRAI. As part of RAGBRAI, the newspaper also sponsors a group called The Dream Team, where experienced bicyclers are paired with at-risk teens. The group trains together during the spring and summer, preparing for the big ride across the state in late July.

Women across the world are into bicycle riding and racing; last spring I watched young women in Paris riding their bikes to work in skirts and heels! Find out more about women and cycling and see if it’s for you.

I woke up a college graduate with no MRS degree in sight and started the somewhat baffling task of supporting myself. Through a career of nearly 40 years in education, justice and finally business, I’ve developed a theory that  women will never be treated equally until we carry our own stuff.

However, in my travels to Mexico, Zambia and eastern Europe, I’ve see women carrying huge loads and still being beaten down. We’re very lucky here in the US, though we seem to be stalled and perhaps even losing ground. Every war begins with our own small battles, though, and there are certainly some we can fight on the home front–

• Find out how GIRLS can change the world
• Weigh in on a women’s happiness index
• Learn more about gender equality at UNFPA
• Find out how the United Nations Development Fund for Women is making a better life for all women
• Word has it that the best way to fight HIV/AIDS and other modern problems is through women’s education and financial independence
• Read this recent article–”Lift and Separate” from the New Yorker about the sharp divide between Americans, and women in particular, on the subject of feminism, and figure out how you feel about it
• Find out What a Feminist Looks Like by watching this great video
• Work for affordable child care through Moms Rising, and learn about other issues too!
• Read the latest about cheerleading and the Title IX debate by my favorite sports writer, Frank Deford

And finally, listen to Sister Joan Chittester on “Speaking of Faith” talk about how she “backed into feminism.” She shares the following quatrain in answer to the question–

“Mama what’s a feminist?

A feminist my daughter

Is anyone who thinks or dares

To take in charge her own affairs

When men don’t say they oughter.”

–Alice Duer Miller, 1928

She worked with us on creating paintings and stories in the safe, respectful environment of Culture Inc. Afterward, one of the facilitators said she always becomes anxious when she is in a situation where she has to create. I think a lot of people feel that way, as we have had the products of our creativity judged and sometimes gotten little support.

I think it might help me to use James Prosek’s metaphor of connecting to the creative pipeline when I sit down to create. At times, I’ve experienced that connection when I’ve painted, written grants, facilitated groups. I think it comes more from letting go than from trying really hard. And again, it’s a process and learning experience.

Then there is the discipline required for creativity; I’ve found I need order. Stephen King requires himself to write 2,000 words each day before he does much else. The Artist’s Way recommends morning pages–two pages of writing first thing in the morning in a stream of consciousness mode.

So creativity is a sum of at least two parts–tapping into the pipeline and discipline–available to most of us.

At customer service training I am doing for the Iowa Community Action Association, I’ve been using the Chinese Zodiac. I made up nametags with the pictures of the twelve Zodiac animals–

Brody Girls at HerStory 2007

• Rat
• Ox
• Tiger
• Rabbit
• Dragon
• Snake
• Horse
• Lamb
• Monkey
• Rooster
• Dog
• Pig

Then I made pages with the corresponding pictures, descriptions and years of birth for each sign. I put these on the tables, automatically dividing the group as they arrive. I have small groups form by combining different signs. Here is a Web site that tells you which signs go together best; you could base another grouping on those recommendations.

Here are some other quick ideas for forming small groups randomly–

• Have the girls line up by one of these methods; then divide the line into the size or number of groups you want– (Shoe size, Height, Birthday)
• Divide by eye color, kinds of shoes or shirt color
• Divide by month of birth or season of birth–
  (Winter = December, January, February, Spring = March, April, May, Summer = June, July, August, Fall = September, October, November)
• Play the game Mingle Mingle, ending with the number you want in your small groups.

Michelle Cummings of Training Wheels has published a book–Playing With a Full Deck–that has lots of ideas for activities for groups that only use card games. Download Dividing a Group for a taste. Or borrow the book from Next Step and try out several of the games.

So many articles have been written about how she has overcome her origins. But I wonder if those origins have actually helped her become the person she is.Certainly the injections required to survive juvenile diabetes taught her discipline. Her childhood in a Bronx home raised by her widowed Latina mother, taught her independence and gave her strength.

The Perry Mason television show inspired her to become a judge; she realized the judge was the most important person in the courtroom. That’s what she wanted to be. Patience and determination to survive law school, the prosecutor’s office and the federal approval process are certainly traits that any woman must learn to break the invisible barriers to achievement that still exist.

Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

• Look back on today. What struck you most strongly?
• What happened?
• What images stand out in your mind? What sights, sounds and smells?
• What experiences and conversations do you especially remember?
• What is it about these images that make you remember them?
• Who did you meet and work with during the day?
• Who did you relate to most easily? Who did you find it hardest to talk to?
• Why?
• What did you learn about the people you met? How are they like you?
• How are they different?
• What needs did your service try to meet? Did it succeed? Why or why not?
• What information or skills did you learn today?
• How did you apply what you knew before to this project?

What does it mean?

• What was happening in your heart? What did you feel? Were you upset?
• Were you surprised? Confused? Content? What touched you most deeply?
• Why?
• What did you find frustrating? What did you find most hopeful?
• What would it be like to trade places with the people you worked with?
• What did you learn about yourself?
• What do you like about what you learned? What would you like to change?
• How did the experience change or challenge your convictions and beliefs?

Now what?

• How were justice and injustice present in the situations you faced today?
• Did you learn anything new about what causes suffering?
• What did you learn about how you can make things better?
• How are you part of the problem? How are you part of the solution?
• What did you learn today that will help you in your future service work?
• What needs to change in the world to make things better?
• What needs to change in you?
• What hopes and expectations do you have for those you served? For yourself?
• How did the service experience affect how you would like to live?
• How did it affect what type of job or career you might choose?

Adapted from An Asset Builder’s Guide to Service Learning, A Search Institute Publication, 2000, page 96