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Well, actually learn about social marketing. (Our radio show, though short-lived was a lot of fun, and even though it’s offline now, there’s some good stuff in this post) So read on…
Ben Stone gave us a lovely compliment, “Two Baby Boomers (three actually counting our producer Anne Larson) doing an Internet radio show gives me hope.” Ben owns RPO Consulting, and though he considers himself an HR guy (I know), he finds himself working more and more on helping people use social media effectively. The nuggets I’m still chewing on (along with my GORP) are these–
Facebook and Twitter are about relationships, not eyeballs.
When you use social media, imagine yourself traveling in another country; you have to learn the customs, the geography. You have to try the food and explore the culture to get the most from the experience.
I’ll keep those thoughts in mind as I develop my blog, content on my YouTube account and figure out how to make Twitter work for me and Next Step. We also discussed generational differences in how we use social media. Three generations of entrepreneurs were represented on the show–Ben Stone (Generation X), Talia Leman (Gen Y), Bruce Lehnertz and me (Boomers).
Talia is a sophomore in high school, but has accomplished more already than I ever hope to. Well, I can hope! About six years ago, she was inspired to start the wildly successful organization RandomKid.org after she organized a trick-or-treat event to raise money to help victims of a storm in Ghana. That experience showed her the power of young people, and now she is unleashing it on the world . The global (20 countries with about 12 million? members) uses the Internet to provide youth the opportunity to safely collaborate with kids at other schools, and with people on the ground who work on behalf of their fundraising efforts, and help them achieve their goals.
Collaboration again emerges a high priority for entrepreneurs in all kinds of endeavors, whether agriculture and retail or cooking. Our conversation with Talia and Ben cemented my impression of the younger generations–they will find and create and enact solutions for the many problems that confront us. That gives me hope.
We just did our fifth, Internet-based radio show–We’re Entrepreneurs. We Can Help–Women on the Edge. For several months, I played around with the idea of a weekly radio show. Then last fall I asked my friends Anne Larson and Bruce Lehnertz if they were interested in collaborating with me on it. They both trust me way more than they should, and said “sure!”
Well, two months and a lot of gray hairs later (not mine, mind you. at least I’m not admitting it), we’ve got a few not-so-great, and two very good shows under our belt and on Des Moines Amplified. The concept is to facilitate a discussion with local folks who are stepping out on the edge–starting businesses, hatching new ideas, solving problems, offering resources. In short, doing the deal. I described the concept to a friend at lunch yesterday, and she said, “It sounds progressive.” That’s what we’re going for.
Progressive. Creative. Upbeat. Fun.
Today I visited with two women entrepreneurs in areas traditionally dominated by males–LeAnn Ely owns Terre d’Esprit Farm, where she raises meat goats. One of her mentors told her not to do it, and that just made her want to prove she could. She said the challenges often come from unexpected sources–her customers, who may not be accustomed to dealing with businesswomen. And the government, which often insists on talking to her husband! In addition to her goat farm, LeAnn is raising a family and working a full time job. Talk about multi-tasking!
Kenna Neighbors recently opened Seed, an urban garden shop in the Des Moines’ East Village. It’s her second business, and she is wildly successful! She started her landscape business a while ago, and now has 27 employees (LeAnn has about 27 goats. hmmmmm) After trying jobs in retail, Kenna decided, “I’m just not a pantyhose kind of girl.” Like many women, she started her company after fleeing a wreck of a marriage and wondering, “How am I going to feed my kids?” along with a love for digging in the dirt. She blew a horse manure source’s mind by lifting a handful up to her nose. “This is what I want!”
Talking with Kenna and LeAnn made me even more excited about doing the show, and about my own business. I’m still not sure what radio has to do with Next Step, but I’m pretty sure that more will be revealed. I think I was a frustrated entrepreneur for all those years I worked for Iowa State University, and I’m grateful they put up with me. But I was always on the edge of the organization, and now I’m learning why. In yoga, we talk about pushing the edge. Women start about twice as many businesses as men; maybe we’re just more compelled to go out on that edge.
Yesterday I did 108 Sun Salutations with about a dozen other women at Shakti Yoga Shop. It was challenging, but went by surprisingly fast. One of the first things we asked was the significance of 108. The answer took up about 3 pages, and included–
…which brings us back to saluting the sun. Winter solstice is less than 2 weeks behind us. It is my favorite day of the year: it marks the day when daylight begins to lengthen. I can only imagine our earliest forbears watching the dwindling light and heat, fearing it was the end of the world, developing ceremonies and bargains to make the sun return for a year.
We continue many of those traditions around the holidays. Lighting candles, bringing in greenery, putting up Christmas lights. On this first day — 1/1/11, I hope for a lighter year, for peaceful, brighter days. I hope for clarity on the problems facing our planet. Perhaps by saluting the sun, still the source of life, we can perhaps begin to mend the earth.
I lost a dear friend a month ago, and what I thought was a lifelong relationship fell apart the next day. To say the least, I was reeling for about a week. The first morning after the breakup, I went to yoga. Paula met me with a box of tissues, saying she had seen my Facebook status change to “single.” She found me a spot in the back row and told me to just do whatever I needed. I practiced my yoga and cried off and on. Afterward, one of the other students listened with sympathy to my tale of woe.
I have practiced yoga most days since then. It’s making me strong, inside and out, and I am becoming part of the kula. I’ve enjoyed dinner, breakfast and coffee with other members, and am feeling a closer bond with everyone. I’ve long preferred to attain spiritual growth through physical practice, and yoga is again confirming that preference. During 2010, my “year of good health,” I’ve lost nearly 20 pounds, and developed a much healthier body image. I’ve become stronger, more balanced and bendier.
I tried a couple of places before I settled on Shakti Yoga Shop in Des Moines. The instructors focus on Anusara Yoga, and offer two to three classes a day most weekdays, and at least one class on weekend days. I love the continuing encouragement, the small corrections that help you get the most out of every pose. Next month I plan to attend my first workshop, and take my practice to new levels next year. If you are in need of a “year of good health,” try yoga in 2011.
I’m on a news break right now. All the bad news from around the world and around the nation was getting me down. It’s overwhelming when you are just one person, and you don’t see how the little bit you can do will make any difference at all. But then I found Amiya. She is changing the world, one dance step at a time!
When she was ten, Amiya Alexander woke her mother at 1 in the morning–“I need a pink bus!” She already had a business plan and a design for her mobile dance studio. Her single mom found a way to give her that bus for Christmas, and she has been providing affordable dance lessons in it ever since. Her motivation–attacking the obesity epidemic.
This morning’s Des Moines Register ran a story about Joanne Schafer and her trips to Haiti. She has traveled there more than 100 times since 1991. Along with antibiotics and education, she is giving “A Little Piece of [Her] Heart” to the people of Haiti.
A few weeks ago I wrote about Katie Spotz, the young woman who rowed her boat across the Atlantic Ocean. Now she is riding her bike amazing distances. Having her bike stolen didn’t stop her either. She is raising money for clean water in developing countries. Rachel Naomi Remen says, “What if the small things that you can do are exactly what is needed to heal the world?”
If you are inspired to heal the world, here are some possible places to start–
I was actually sad when I attended my last school conference nearly nine years ago. As my daughter grew up, each passing semester offered a new adventure. The year she changed her name, I introduced myself as “Kate’s mom.” The blank stare was followed by, “Oh! You mean Lucy!” By the way, she’s still Lucy!
Spring semester that same year, she was having a little trouble in Spanish class. I believe she may have gotten a referral to the office, or walked out of class one day. She’s always been a big doodler, and one day Mr. Takalo asked her what she was doing, drawing on the palm of her hand. “I’m stippling my eggs.” I can’t blame him for dropping that one like a hot potato.
Doodling is a good way to keep the creative, right side of our brains busy so our left brains can deal with the facts that we need to focus on. This study says doodling may help us remember things better because it requires just enough attention to keep our minds from daydreaming. And daydreaming, that’s the real enemy of attention! I came across this video–Learn How to Draw Snakes and Graphs; it’s really fun to watch and offers some legitimate math related information. I’m still not enough of a numberhead to understand it alll
Enjoy!
I got my water bill today. For a little over $70 a month, I get clean, safe water delivered to my sink, shower, tub, yard and toilet. I also get my garbage picked up, recycled, composted and dumped, and my sewage disposed of safely. How much do I even think of water? Not so much. But I am in a small minority of the world’s population that doesn’t worry about water.
In 2005, I visited Zambia, a butterfly-shaped country hugged by Botswana, Zimbabwe, Angola, South Africa…We started in Lusaka, the capitol, where my niece and daughter lived in a modern flat. We did laundry in the bathtub and hung it to dry on a clothesline strung across the bedroom, but we had running water. Oh, we boiled or filtered the water before we drank it. Or was that boil AND filter? But we had a flush toilet. We used the old motto–If it’s yellow let it mellow; if it’s brown flush it down. Still, we counted ourselves among the privileged.
We never quite erased the term “bathroom” from our vocabulary, even out in the bush where the “toilet” was a walk behind a bush or even a tall clump of grass! The term bathroom or restroom evokes a blank stare from most Zambians. I saw some ingenious solutions for these bodily functions, and learned to feel fairly comfortably without the comforts of home.
At Kabwata Cultural Centre, I visited a very unique toilet; when I asked one of the women where it was, she escorted me to a round, concrete structure behind the restaurant. It was concrete inside as well, with sink, shower stall and toilet molded of concrete.
The other unusual toilet we saw was built inside a giant Baobab tree at the Kayila Lodge where we stayed on the last night of our canoe safari. If you’ve been peeing behind a bush for 4 days, it borders on decadent. Electric lights, running water, a mirror (to be avoided at all costs!) and a little nicknack shelf with feathers and quills in a pot of sand. Who could ask for anything more?
We visit Monze village, and turn back the clock at least 100 years. This is how most of the world deals with water. Toilet facilities are holes in the ground. When the toilet is full, the family fills it in and digs another nearby. Privacy appears to be valued above other amenities. Outhouses are built in the shape of a backward G so that when you squat, no one can see in from the outside. Usually there is a slit or a keyhole shaped hole in the floor.
The shower enclosure was ingenious, with a platform made of branches about 1 inch thick, suspended about a foot above the ground. This requires careful balance and planning so your feet don’t go through the space between the branches where the water drains onto the ground. Mr. and Mrs. Victor’s expansive hospitality included a shower to which they fetched water from about 2 kilometers away (about 2.5 miles round trip), and heated over an open fire.
The trip to Zambia was my first experience with the way most of the world gets their water–they carry it. Each day, women across the world spend more than 200 million hours collecting water for cooking and washing. It’s so easy to take for granted the things we receive with so little effort, and often difficult to improve the standards by which the developing world lives. But one young woman is doing something, and she’s been recognized for it. Glamour Magazine named her one of their 2010 Women of the Year. She is the youngest person ever to cross the Atlantic Ocean, solo for 70 days in a row boat.
When Katie Spotz was only 22 years old, she set out from Dakar, Senegal to raise money to provide safe drinking water projects for people around the world. She has extreme courage and single mindedness, and explains that the solo row was just something she had to do. She didn’t think about the danger. She is just passionate about completing the journey. Since her row, Katie has turned to biking; I am inspired by following her progress, and I hope you will be too.
During the year I taught school in the early 1970s, some of the kids in my 8th grade homeroom became good friends, and often stayed after school to talk. A couple years later one of them, Sammie, joined the 4-H teen programs we were starting–helping with the newsletter and planning programs. We took the kids on campouts, held workshops on everything from drama, the arts, feminism and juvenile justice to the American Indian Movement.
Eventually Sammie came out to me, admitting to be gay. I doubt that I responded appropriately; it was my first experience with such a confidence and I didn’t know where to find resources for handling it. We continued to talk about what was going on for several years and eventually, I had to visit Sammie in the psych ward after a suicide attempt. It broke my heart; unfortunately problems like Sammie’s are still so common today. We have a long way to go.
I’ve worked in the field of sexuality education for a long time; along the way I found out I had to examine my own attitudes before I could help anyone else. I’m very proud of my stepdaughter, Denise Stapley, who is currently the ONLY AASECT Certified Sex Therapist in Iowa. I like to think that the book I conspicuously laid around the house–What’s Happening to Me? back in the 1980’s may have had something to do with her choice of profession!
This post highlights some resources to help us take next steps toward a more supportive, helpful society where teens can trudge the path to healthy adulthood with courage and grace. Love Your Body is an earlier post that has a bunch of links you’ll enjoy.
I’ve developed a number of programs over the years–
This morning I came across Doctor: Teen girls misinformed on body image, sex in USA Today, and it describes some indicators and guidelines for sexual education. As a woman and mother, this is a most baffling issues in raising healthy children. The article makes some great points about realistic expectations for sexual activity, establishing a relationship with a gynecologist, and reviews the book by Dr. Jennifer Ashton, The Body Scoop for Girls: A Straight-Talk Guide to a Healthy, Beautiful You; it sounds like a great resource.
You’ll find a review here in the Comments section as soon as I read it!
With this Clean and Green Second Grade Program Guide, the first phase of the Keep Iowa Beautiful service learning, litter-free schools, environmental education, character building program is officially ready for piloting! With help from the Waste Commission of Scott County, Character Counts! in Iowa, Davenport Public Schools, we are ready to send teachers and kids out to the playground and community to find ways to make them better while they are learning the essential concepts of the Common Core Second Grade State Standards for Mathematics, Life Science, Social Studies, Literacy and 21st Century Skills. The Second Grade Matrix of 20 activities is based on the Core and the Four Keys of Character Education-safe, challenging community, self study, other study and public performance-to assure that we help teachers incorporate best practice in their classrooms.
The guide is flexible; it has engaging activities for the classroom, afterschool and summer programs. Each of the activities can stand on its own, but it will be more powerful if used as a comprehensive unit. During this pilot year, we’ll collect feedback from as many of you as possible, and change the program guide in response to that feedback. Watch this Web Site for online surveys, send feedback to Martha McCormick, or add your comments to this post itself.
I am excited to present the Clean and Green First Grade Program Guide. Thanks to Keep Iowa Beautiful, the Waste Commission of Scott County and Character Counts! in Iowa, we are ready to pilot it in Davenport schools. The guide is flexible; it has engaging activities for the classroom, afterschool and summer programs. Each of the activities can stand on its own, but it will be more powerful if used as a comprehensive unit. During this pilot year, we’ll collect feedback from as many of you as possible, and change the program guide in response to your feedback. Watch this Web Site for online surveys, send feedback to Martha McCormick, or add your comments to this post itself.
The Clean and Green First Grade Matrix of 20 activities is based on the Common Core First Grade Standards for Mathematics, Life Science, Social Studies, Literacy and 21st Century Skills. We used the Four Keys of Character Education-safe, challenging community, self study, other study and public performance-as the other axis of the matrix to assure that we help teachers incorporate best practice in their classrooms.
Please check out the Clean and Green First Grade Program Guide; here are some of the lesson plans you’ll find–
