The Heidelberg Project is an open-air art environment in Detroit’s East Side. I first encountered it when I was maybe 10 years old. My father’s company maintained several properties in Detroit. Each weekend we would drive from site to site to check the progress of the previous week’s work. With its famous polka dot house and other colorful attractions, Heidelberg Street was like something out of my imagination. At the time, I had no idea about The Heidelberg Project and its mission to improve lives and neighborhoods through art. Heidelberg Street was merely the highlight of my weekend.

Now, some 20 years later, I can say I recently had the opportunity to meet with Jenenne Whitfield, Executive Director of The Heidelberg Project, and to tour the art studio of Founder and Artistic Director, Tyree Guyton. In this interview, Jenenne and I discuss the importance of using art to rebuild the fabric of under-resourced communities and, as they say at The Heidelberg Project, “create a way of living that is economically viable, enriches lives, and welcomes all people.”

NPi: Can you tell me about how The Heidelberg Project began and your role within it?

Executive Director Jenenne Whitfield

JW: Heidelberg will be 25 years old next year. I’ve been involved with The Heidelberg Project for 17 years, and it’s because I took a wrong turn down a street.

I was born and raised here in Detroit. I was a banker, climbing the corporate ladder. I was driving back from work through the area where Heidelberg is now, and I remember having a feeling of nostalgia. I remember being a little girl and my father—most African American people have roots in that community—I was trying to turn down a street to get a closer look at the neighborhood because it was sad, it was so beat down.

I tried to turn down Benson, but a car was on my tail and forced me down Heidelberg Street. My mouth just dropped open. This was in 1993. Unbeknownst to me, the artist, Tyree Guyton, was sitting on the curb. I rolled down my window and asked him, “What in the hell is all of this?” I remember thinking: I want to help this guy because he obviously has way too much time on his hands. Help him get a grip on the real world. Taking a turn down Heidelberg Street changed my life.

As for why Tyree started The Heidelberg Project, what he may tell you is that he wanted to take his artwork off the canvas and do something to affect change in his community. He is a product of that neighborhood. He watched the 1967 riots as a kid at 12 years old. He says, “The city of Detroit has been burning ever since.”

He watched the neighborhood go from what he called a very diverse mixed neighborhood to one with abandoned house after abandoned house. In 1986, he said he had an epiphany. He looked out on the porch—at this time he was painting in the basement of his grandfather’s home, which is the polka dot house—and decided he would paint the house next door. He said the house spoke to him.

Founder & Artistic Director Tyree Guyton with Visitors

One house became two, two became three. By 1991, he had literally transformed four abandoned houses into these giant works of art—this most ridiculous thing that he had the audacity to call art. He was setting a course for himself that changed the way people look at art today.

I had no idea what Tyree was actually doing when I met him in 1993, but I recall seeing him—not on the Oprah Winfrey Show—he was on Oprah in 1991—on the news when the city of Detroit had destroyed his work. I thought, finally. I didn’t know him.

When I drove down Heidelberg Street and rolled down my window, that scene of him being on the news came back to me. He ended up autographing a postcard with an image of one of the houses that he had created that was destroyed in the 1991 demolition. I thought this was just amazing, but what really stuck with me was all these little children around him vying for his attention. Some of them didn’t even have shoestrings in their shoes. These kids were in need.

The kids just wanted to paint… That touched me. He asked me a question that day—and the reason I’m telling you this is that it set the course for changing my life—he asked how I was giving back to the community. It kind of pissed me off because I couldn’t answer it. It bothered me and stayed with me. But I eventually began to go back to that neighborhood. I think I went back and forth for about four months, and I’d bring people with me each time. I became a regular.

One day Tyree asked me if I would help him, and I said no. I told him, “I don’t understand what you’re doing.” I was basically bringing people there for a laugh. But there was still something in my heart about those kids. Then Tyree handed me a letter from the Oprah Winfrey Show asking him to come back on the show because of the way he had been treated when he was on the show in 1991. I asked him, “Who is responding to these requests?” He showed me other requests from around the world and said, “Nobody.” So I blew the dust off of my computer and began typing a response to the Oprah show letter, and that’s how it all started.

OJ House (Photo by Michelle Figurski)

This is a story of a man who literally built a house without a foundation. What he needed was someone to build a foundation for his vision. That’s what I brought to the table in 1993.

I brought in the business savvy, and we wound up making a good team. There was a kind of electricity between us. I lived on the west side of Detroit, he lived on the east side—that was a problem from the very beginning. We were just two completely different people who taught each other something. I came to respect art in a way that I had never known before, and he came to respect the need for structure. Together we developed the work.

What are we doing? The whole concept and idea of The Heidelberg Project is that combination of arts education and community development.

For arts education, we’ve developed a comprehensive program that aims to teach children about the principles of community and environment. From the community development perspective, our goal is to transform that two block area—the 3600 blocks of Heidelberg and Elba Streets between Mt. Elliott and Ellery—into a functioning cultural village with artist residencies, green space, gardens, sculpture, you name it. Heidelberg already exists as a cultural village, but we want to polish it a bit more so it can become an economic engine for the community.

The magic of this project is the same reason it’s been hard for us to write and receive grants. Our work has always been different from, for example, a campaign aimed at feeding people or assisting people at a homeless shelter. Our work is more abstract. We call our work “abstract advocacy.” We’re introducing new information and energy that in the short-term changes attitudes and in the long-term changes behavior.

NPi: That’s a great definition.

JW: Isn’t it? It’s phenomenal because we have the stories to back it up. For example, we’ve only been here five months. We used to be in the community center. Friends of ours made this space available to us because there was no way we could afford it on our own. But they love our work and so they didn’t want anybody else to be here.

We looked at this place, and it didn’t look like this. We got people to help us remodel it. The gentleman who laid the floor in my office was a homeless man in the community who had been watching Tyree for a very long time.

View of Heidelberg Street (Photo by Michelle Figurski)

Tyree has said people in the community used to complain that his work is junk. He would say, “Yeah, but it’s bringing people here from around the world. Now, what can you do with that?” It took him, and all of us, a long time to figure that out.

It took a young man, Steve Snead, 18 years to finally start thinking “Maybe I could build a water booth on Heidelberg Street and sell water to all of these people coming in to our community.” He started getting people to think about what was possible. Sometimes when life beats you down, you begin to hunch over. You begin to literally wear what you’re going through inside. But Steve’s back started to straighten up. He takes the doo rag off his head now. He’s discovered that he carves canes now. That, to me, is the most important kind of work you can do—to affect change in a person’s mind, make them get up and do something different. Then they can take that energy and [transfer it]. Steve can transfer it to his seven-year-old daughter.

Our work changes people’s minds. It helps children understand that they don’t have to leave their neighborhood to make something happen. Tyree is an example of someone who never left his neighborhood, and yet he’s a world famous artist.

NPi: Just to be clear, what communities do you serve? How do people become involved in your programs? Are there requirements? You talked about working with youth. Is there formal programming?

JW: Sure, some of it is. We look at community in a couple of different ways. We look at it from a geographical perspective, the people in the community we’re trying to serve. We’re trying to uplift the community. But then there’s another larger community that wants to be a part of what we’re doing so we open our arms to other communities as well. Mostly, it’s a lot of students from the colleges that see this as a real life example of something they can get involved with.

Our children’s programs [take place within] Bunch Elementary school in our neighborhood—they’re sort of our poster school—but we extend our programs to all the schools in the area. That’s the symbolism of the polka dots. We don’t make a distinction necessarily between races.

Tyree says when you look at any of the faces he paints, a lot of times you can’t tell what color they are. He just sees people. All people need this type of energy in their life. It’s under the disguise of art, but it’s really about this energy of connecting with people. We welcome everyone. There is no prerequisite [for getting involved]. We can find a place for anybody.

NPi: What solution would you view yourself a part of in the larger scheme of things?

JW: That’s a good question! Where did you get that question from? I think we’ve lost something through technology… I like to think that we’re touching the heart and soul of a person [through our work]. I don’t mean to sound ethereal, but there is something to be said for inspiration and motivation.

What makes you get up in the morning? I’ve had butterflies in my stomach in the 17 years since I’ve known Tyree. What the hell is that about?! That’s motivation and energy keeping you excited.

Fear and excitement are the same emotion. How can you transfer energy to somebody else to make them want to get up and do something, be committed to something—opposed to this malaise that we see, most particularly in underserved, underprivileged communities. Sometimes you find more riches in communities of people who don’t have because they’re forced to think beyond [material things].

NPi: What do you think is changing locally and globally that affects the work of The Heidelberg Project?

JW: What’s changing locally is that we’re no longer the automobile industry, are we? Detroit has to search for its new industry. I think Detroit has historically been a great forward thinking, pioneering city. It still is, but it’s as if it’s the dark before the dawn. It’s beautiful because we have this wonderful clean canvas now that we can use to rebuild. The whole world is watching us. Everybody is watching Detroit because of its history. I think that’s exciting, as opposed to some of the depressing articles you see being written, asking what Detroit is going to do. What we have here is opportunity.

What is it going to take to get people to really think and come together and make the world better? How do we do that? I think that the challenge now is that we’ve been the greediest people in this country. That [way of living] fell though. Our environment is crumbling around us. We’ve done a lot of damage, and now we’ve got to do some repair work.

That repair work, as Tyree says, starts on the inside. You cannot heal the land until you heal the minds of the people who are screwing up the land… The challenge is just being able to reach people, but we can do that. It’s a time of opportunity.

NPi: I used to work for a company that had a slogan, “Problems are treasures.”

JW: As a Doctor of Metaphysics, you might say I think differently. People say, “Don’t start singing Kumbaya or something,” but I want to say, “What are you so afraid of?” The things that you can’t see are the most important. Like air. People say if they can’t see it, they can’t believe it. Well, let somebody put his or her hand over your nose and mouth and you will fight for something you can’t see.

In life, in order to get shoes to shine, you have to buff and polish them. To get clothes clean in a washing machine—that process is called agitation. To get light, you need negative and positive charges. It just depends on what lens you’re looking through. If you choose to view things negatively, that’s what chases you. All of this is incorporated in the work we do.

People say that Heidelberg is like a magnet. There’s a reason for that. And it’s not only about the art; it’s about the people involved. That’s what is more important than anything else.

NPi: How do you think you or your organization can change people’s thinking about the connection between arts education and social change?

JW: We’re doing it already. The beautiful thing about The Heidelberg Project is that it attracts people like me. I’m a convert if you will. It attracts people who love classical music, people who love sports. You come to Heidelberg and see that it attracts all these different people.

We had a festival in 2008 on Heidelberg Street. You’ve got the CEO of Daimler Financials talking to a girl who’s got big hair, big earrings, popping bubble gum. They’re having a conversation. That’s profound to me. That’s what Heidelberg does. I can only explain it by saying it has something to do with the energy and the power of art. The way Tyree has been moved and inspired to create art, to stand up to controversy and have his project twice destroyed, to keep coming back—you have to ask what is it in him that allows it? Sometimes you’re driven by something you can’t see. I call it energy. It’s an intelligent energy though.

I lost the question. What was it?

NPi: How are you changing people’s thinking about the connection between arts education and social change?

JW: It has to do with the connection we make with people. I wanted to connect with you when you came in here… I know when you walk out of here you will be different than when you walked in. What do you do with [this conversation]? Maybe you recycle it through your faculties and pass along that energy to somebody else.

NPi: Our mission is building prosperity by connecting people. I don’t know if you know that.

JW: I like the word prosperity. That’s why you’re sitting here. I’ve turned down interviews with news programs, all of these big names—I don’t want to be played with. I don’t want to fit into somebody’s agenda.

NPi: Where could your organization use help?

JW: It’s always the green stuff. I have worked without a salary for 16 years… I work very hard. I manage Tyree. We sell art. We do projects in different parts of the country and the world. This has been a true sacrifice and a major labor of love, but it shouldn’t be. In other words, the work that we’re doing is just as important, probably even more important, than what a doctor does for others, and it deserves to be funded. We could do so much more.

What we’ve managed to accomplish on a shoestring budget is amazing, but we could do so much more if we could get people to understand sometimes that it’s more important sometimes to teach a person how to fish than to stick a fish in his mouth.

NPi: That’s true. It seems to be a recurring theme in many of the interviews we do. Everyone is doing such great work.

JW: I’m glad to hear it.

NPi: The money issue is the common thread.

JW: But historically, nonprofit organizations have always been expected to work on a small budget. Now our corporate for-profit structure has fallen. Maybe it’s going to shift now. I hope so.

NPi: I hope so, too. So what keeps you coming to work every day?

JW: I truly love getting up each day not knowing what the day is going to bring. Because you don’t. You know how you have your life all mapped out, and it always goes a different way? I open my heart to that now. I have things planned in my little Franklin planner, but I’m open for what will actually occur in the real world… It’s also like you go to school for something and then you’re given a real world example to work on. The Heidelberg Project is my real world example.

My mother used to say I was her “why?” child. When I worked in corporate America, I would learn a job and then have to move on. I couldn’t stay. My mother used to say, “This is the challenge that will take me to my grave.” We’re making history though. I guess it was a great work that I was supposed to be involved in. I like my work. It gets me up and keeps me going. It just doesn’t pay.

NPi: Neither does mine. [Laughter] You do it for the love, I guess.

JW: And let me just say this. This is important. When it does start to pay, that’s not a bad thing. It’s a good thing. People say when you start getting money you’re spoiled. But that’s because you forget your priorities. When the money starts coming in, you start rethinking and shuffling things in a way that you hadn’t before. You just have to stay focused.

NPi: That leads me to my next question. Is there a particular lesson you would pass on to other leaders, perhaps in the nonprofit sector?

JW: Keep your eye on the prize and stay focused. Also, people always talk about collaborations now and partnerships. But if you have not been taught how to collaborate and how to build partnerships, you don’t know how to do that… You have to keep your eye on what you’re trying to accomplish. [People lose focus] when money starts to come in. Instead of looking at money as a tool to help them do the work, people try to manipulate it. Keep your eye on the prize.

NPi: Is there anything else you would like to share or let us know about The Heidelberg Project?

JW: Yes, that The Heidelberg Project is global.

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How to Get Involved:

For more information, to read about current programs, see more photos, or watch short videos about Heidelberg, please visit: http://www.heidelberg.org.

Click here to make a secure, online donation.

To contact Jenenne Whitfield or schedule a tour, call their offices at (313) 974-6894 or email information@heidelberg.org.

Sign up for The Heidelberg Project’s mailing list by clicking here.

Moving From Debt to Assets' 29th Graduating Class

On June 30^th, the 29^th graduating class from the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization’s Moving from Debt to Assets (MFDTA) program wore colorful scarves instead of caps and gowns. With hennaed fingertips, palms and soles, 25 Somali-American women celebrated their first step on the road to financial freedom.

Whether they joined the class to learn how to save for the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), for their children, or for a home, these women—most of whom are single mothers and all of whom are refugees from the Somali civil war—are an inspiration. Theirs is a story of uncertainty and of hardship, of learning and of joy.

“I am happy tonight,” said Lul Isak. Like the other Somali women who fled from their war-torn country to seek refuge in the United States, Isak was scared, fluent in neither English nor our economic system. Her daughter Deeqo sums up her experience as a new immigrant: “You arrive and you are given this card. You say, ‘Whoa, God Bless America. This card has money on it?’ And you spend and spend without knowing the late fees and how it all multiplies.”

“It has always been my dream to help my people navigate the system,” Deeqo says, who arrived in this country with her mother when she was 12. She is working to build a Somali market in Dorchester with a prayer room and tea room as well as a place Somali women can rent for their businesses. She also plans to create a clinic for Somali women in hopes of providing better access to healthcare for the women in her community.

GBIO is the only provider of financial education for the Muslim community and particularly, Somali women. These women face unique challenges as they are caught between two very different cultures and are trying to define a new role for themselves as Somali-American women.

“Life here is different because back [in Somalia], men are in charge of money… Here, we have to be in charge. We have to learn, and we have to save.”

Many of the graduates recently opened bank accounts for the first time in their lives. “I have been living in a shelter for four years,” says Halima Ahmed. “Because my income is such a small amount, I thought, ‘How can I save any money?’ Before this class I had $0 and no bank account. Since joining, I have saved $200.” After several cheers from the audience, Halima proudly told us: “I have a dream. My dream is to own a house, and I hope you all dream with me.”

For Siraad, that dream is becoming a reality. She applied for a house through Habitat for Humanity after learning how to complete a key part of the application: a budget. She’s since been approved for a two-bedroom apartment.

What’s most exciting about Moving from Debt to Assets is that it’s a program that works. MFDTA empowers people across all religious, ethnic, and neighborhood lines to create meaningful personal and social change. Since 2005, there have been 552 total graduates from the program. Watching the newest graduates receive their certificates on June 30^th, I wondered, how did GBIO get it so right? Then it hit me: they listened.

GBIO is made up of more than 50 churches, synagogues, unions, and other nonprofit and community organizations. Back in 2004, they held community meetings to hear what issues members were concerned about. As Program Manager Joel Schwartz said, “All people could talk about was debt.” “I’m drowning in debt!” “I can’t seem to save anything!” So they listened and then created a program that would suit members’ needs.

Teacher/Financial Counselor Fadumo Maow translates from Somali a speech by graduate Rahma Farah

To this day, GBIO is grounded in what the participants themselves identify as what they want and need. It is an approach emphasizing with instead of for. This is a simple and yet revolutionary concept: listen to the community, and then identify and cultivate leaders from within.

Joel jokingly calls the 29^th class “Deeqo’s class.” “She is a leader in the Somali-American community,” he told me. “Without her, we never would have had this class. She has an incredible gift for bringing people together.” Within three minutes of meeting Deeqo, I understood exactly what Joel meant.

“What Somali women would accomplish if they had the right resources provided to them is beyond your imagination,” Deeqo tells me. “If [women in my nation] were educated, Somalia would prosper. I think of the men who have been fighting the last 20 years—they were husbands, they were sons. If women were more educated, they would help give their families a better life. There can be no peace without education.”

By offering the class in their native language and making childcare available during the three-hour seminar, GBIO provided the right resources and made MFDTA a reality for those who typically would not have access to this kind of adult education. With just six weeks of financial literacy in a place where they felt supported and safe, the women in the 29^th class have opened bank accounts, saved for future homes, and become active members of the Somali-American community and the larger Greater Boston community.

Deeqo is right. These women can accomplish anything and have inspired more than just each other. Several men sat around a big, round table on one side of the room in support of the graduates. Bilal Kaleem, Executive Director of the Muslim American Society of Boston, was among them: “If all of [the women] can do it, all of us can do it, too.”

The reality is that the road from debt to assets is a long one. But these women have proudly taken a very strong first step. As Deeqo affirms, “We will keep going.”

How to Get Involved:

Learn more about the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization and the Moving from Debt to Assets program on their website: http://www.gbio.org/index.php/debt-to-assets

Ellen Lempereur is a peace educator by day and a member of NPi’s Editorial Review Board and NPi contributing writer by night. Contact Ellen at elempereur@gmail.com.

Photographs by Hashim Siraji.

Interview by Alexis Schroeder

Prosperity Candle invests in women entrepreneurs in distressed areas of the world—places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, and Rwanda—who are excited to start their own businesses producing candles for local and international markets. The company was founded to empower women entrepreneurs in places of conflict so that they may not only survive, but thrive.

In May, I sat down with two founding members of the Prosperity Candle team, Siiri Morley and Amber Chand, to learn more about the company and its unique “shared prosperity” model. In so doing, we ended up talking about changing social enterprise and nonprofit funding models, the significance of candles as consumer products, and the emergence of women’s leadership across the globe.

NPi: How is what you’re doing different than what is already being done in your field?

SM: I’ve worked for years with women’s craft businesses and initiatives that aspired to empower women, and I usually saw these groups come up against a wall. They reached a point where they couldn’t scale anymore, and had trouble becoming sustainable. Part of the reason I pursued an MBA was to figure out how to build things that were more scalable—models that could truly empower people instead of just talking about it.

Prosperity Candle is different for a lot of reasons, but the scalability is what [drew me]. I was intrigued by the fact that both Prosperity Candle, as a business, and the women entrepreneurs’ businesses are able to go to a larger scale.

At first I was somewhat hesitant about candles as the product because I’m really into fiber arts and textiles. I love working with weavers. But when Amber and Ted explained the scalability of a candle business—you can read about why candles are different on our website—I completely understood. The ability for women to invest in new molds and grow their businesses was very appealing to me. This and the shared prosperity model.

AC: Yes. I think what we were really interested in was looking at the possibility of a future in which women are offered the opportunity to rebuild their lives and engage in entrepreneurial activity. Rather than framing this from the context of alleviating poverty, we are interested in the vision of creating prosperity… This is a time to imagine the possibilities.

The question we asked ourselves was how do we create a model based on shared prosperity?  Since we partner with women entrepreneurs who are survivors of war, we see them not simply as beneficiaries or as producers in a very complex supply chain. We wanted to make sure that in addressing this question we were creating a model that was authentic, credible, and practical. From our perspective, shared prosperity means that a woman will get 20-25% of the retail price of the candle, no matter what price it is, just for producing a high quality candle (with an emphasis on high quality).

We encourage and incentivize a woman so that she feels she is a true partner in the company’s success. The more she grows her business through the candles she produces, the more she is able to prosper… Taking fair trade a step further, we felt that our model of shared prosperity goes beyond a woman simply making a living wage. We are interested in seeing her create a thriving business.

SM: Another differentiating factor is that we have a very holistic, integrated approach to our relationship with our stake holders. The social mission is the absolute foundation of the company, but the brilliance in what Amber and Ted have developed over the past few years is that the model offers compelling value to each stakeholder in a way that reinforces the entire cycle.

We offer compelling value to the customers—the quality of the candles, the meaningful gift option that they provide, the price range and the fragrance. There’s value to investors and to our nonprofit partners. This integrated approach to meeting the needs of all stakeholders is something that I rarely see in companies. The value keeps itself churning, so to speak, as the value to an investor reinforces the value to the women entrepreneurs, and so on. Instead of feeling like you’re battling for social versus financial returns, the two priorities reinforce each other.

AC: We see ourselves as mission-driven company, one that transcends the division between non-profit and for profit structures. There are two elements to our mission. One is the company as a social enterprise based on a structure called LC3, a hybrid legal model that prioritizes social benefit over profit. But at the same time, we’re a foundation that empowers women entrepreneurs through trainings and resources. These two go hand-in-hand. We, of course, expect to be a sustainable company, one that is self-financed in the long-term.

SM: And as an L3C, the idea is that you can access PRIs (program-related investments) from foundations, but no one’s really doing it yet. We’re leading this movement of L3Cs coming out, the hybrid model. It’s somewhat confusing to people. As a leader in this arena, we take on an added responsibility of educating people about a new way of doing business.

NPi: Where do you see Prosperity Candle in the larger shift of social change that is happening right now?

AC: I think we’re living in a very exciting time on the planet. The shift that’s happening globally, regionally, locally seems to be one that suggests the dissolution and collapse of a paradigm.

What’s emerging, in my point of a view, is a very strong feminized/feminine voice one that is being heard all over the world. And when I say feminized voice, I am not talking about gender differences because this shift is not about men versus women but rather about creating a balanced worldview that affects us as a planet, a society, a people. It incorporates a feminine principle. And it is about sustainability and leadership, about finding ways to benefit the community. It’s about invoking the protective Mother, you might say.

Women around the world are beginning to show up in powerful ways and insisting that our voices are heard. There’s a sense of urgency about it… Prosperity Candle absolutely is part of that conversation. It’s the woman in Iraq sitting in her kitchen making a candle, celebrating her resilience. It’s the connection and connectedness that is happening because people are purchasing her candles. It comes together in this very feminine and practical way.

Photo by Heber Vega

SM: I think there is a shift in thinking around women in the world in general. There’s all this momentum around thought leaders like Muhammad Yunus, Nick Kristof, and Sheryl Wudunn. It suddenly seems common knowledge that of course you should invest in women, or at least in some circles [Laughs]… All of a sudden society is catching up with this concept.

Hilary Clinton just announced a new fund. We’ve been tweeting about it [Laughs]. The fund is designed to support women’s entrepreneurship in all different parts of the world. It feels like it was designed for Prosperity Candle. It feels like things are being designed for us, even using the language that we’re using… There are some interesting things shifting.

AC: There is also the fact that we focus on candles—it all comes down to a candle… From a production standpoint, it’s inherently scalable as Siiri suggests. When we look at universal symbols we see that war mongers have symbols that are very strong and powerful: guns, landmines, bombs. What are the symbols for peace builders? I think it is a candle. Where ever you go in the world, a peace builder lights a candle with reverence. Candles are more than just a consumer product.

NPi: Some people understand the significance of your work, some do not. For those who don’t, how would you like to change people’s perceptions, if at all, about this work?

SM: I think we often get segmented into this poverty alleviation, women’s vocational training sector where people think, Oh, it’s handmade. It should be in a small craft store, it’s a feel good product, but it’s probably not a high quality product…We don’t want to be perceived in this way because we’re doing this work differently and have a different mindset.

A lot of handmade products have a small market so the product is viewed as a niche product very quickly. We want to find ways to elevate the products and get them into different environments where people don’t necessarily love handmade things, but love our candles because they’re looking for a meaningful gift and feel good about the social mission.

AC: What I’m interested in is how business has such a terrible reputation. Business has obviously done a lot of harm to the world with large corporate mindsets, but we want to show that business can be a compassionate, humanitarian, loving presence on the planet. Business can be a transformational agent of change.

When somebody buys a candle from Prosperity Candle, it’s not a transaction, it’s a transformational moment, something shifts. We’re reframing the entire way social business is done and what it’s about.

In Iraq or Afghanistan or Rwanda, wherever we go, we’re not looking at a woman as the survivor. That woman, the survivor, is there and we honor her, but it’s the woman who says, “I am ready to step into my power.” She will be the one who we’ll work with and support. So when people say vocational skills through candle-making? No. We’re talking about empowering women.

NPi: What organizations or kind of organizations would you like to collaborate with?

AC: My favorite today is Avon. We’re going to be building our distribution network, and partnering with an organization that is very resonant with women globally like Avon—that would be a great partnership for us.

SM: There are a lot of groups doing incredible work with women. Groups like WorldPulse, Vital Voices, Women’s Funding Network, CARE, Women for Women International. I would like to connect with more people in the social entrepreneurship space as well. It would be great to be an Echoing Green fellow at some point. We’re also exploring some microfinance work, and we’re beginning to work with Kiva and one of their partners in Iraq.

What’s interesting with our business model is that it resonates with so many different communities. There’s social entrepreneurship, women’s empowerment, the international development field, socially-responsible business in the broader sense, and then the military connection. With military families, we’ve had a lot of anecdotal evidence so far that a lot of people who have spent time in Baghdad, or who have family members who have, are really moved by what we’re doing in a powerful way. That’s something we’d like to explore.

AC: We launched our year long pilot in Baghdad, Iraq with the understanding that if it didn’t work, we would go back to the drawing board. We’re happy to report that the pilot has been successful. The idea that a woman can make a high quality candle and it can get shipped out the week of the bombings is incredible. I think what Prosperity Candle offers is a market-driven and practical solution to dealing with the issues of women’s empowerment, social responsibility, and entrepreneurship.

The Prosperity Candle team in Northampton, Mass.

NPi: What are your obstacles right now?

SM: We’re starting our first round of financing, looking for individual lenders to come in. We have a growing grassroots community of lenders, but raising capital can be challenging. We’re both an L3C and a nonprofit (with the Prosperity Foundation) and while we have many funding options in theory, it’s hard to find the right funding from the right types of investors when we need it. I think this is a common struggle for most socially-oriented enterprises.

AC: Now that we have proved our model, we are ready to expand our business… I am particularly excited about reaching out to circles of women funders who resonate with the idea of investing women’s money to support women’s work. We invite funders to join our Prosperity Circle through interest bearing loans of $10k or more.

We will then be looking at funding sources through larger institutions and foundations. But we want to be careful with how fast we grow… It’s important to our integrity as a company that we stay true to where we are and who we are.

One of other challenges is global logistics especially in a place of conflict. How does a company transport thousands of candles out of a place that’s being bombed? That’s certainly a challenge… but, in true entrepreneurial spirit, we see each obstacle as an opportunity to problem-solve, to find a way to make it happen.

SM: Two personal challenges for me are that I’m used to working with women entrepreneurs face-to-face directly, as I did in Lesotho, Kenya, Croatia, and Afghanistan. Not being able to travel to Baghdad—this is something that will happen eventually—is hard… Being able to connect on a more personal level with the women we’re working with is something I would love to do.

Another challenge that any founding team has is the work/life balance. [Laughs]. We all love what we’re doing. That’s why I’ll get home for dinner and then work until 2 AM in the morning. [But it can take a toll] on your relationships, your health, your quality of sleep.

AC: We also want to ensure that we create a healthy culture in this company. This is a priority. One of my visions is of starting every meeting with a few minutes of silence, because out of silence comes a sense of clarity and balance. This is critical for a startup company.

NPi: What is a message you would pass on to leaders or would-be leaders?

SM: I hear so many young people say they’re not ready to do something because they don’t have enough money or haven’t yet had the right experience. I see this in a lot of MBA programs when people accumulate all this debt and say they’ll go into investment banking for five years and then they’ll do the feel-good stuff they may really want to do. I just think you never know what life will bring, and you should dive into what you’re passionate about as soon as you possibly can.

My career took a winding path… It took me a while to get a Master’s degree. But I’m so glad that it did because I kept following my gut and doing what I wanted to do and now it’s led me into this company that feels like such a natural fit… I realize now that I never would have arrived in this place if I had done the logical, “correct” thing to do.

AC: I think it’s important that we do things because we love to do them rather than because we’re expected to do them. We don’t spend much time as a culture, as a people asking ourselves, what is it that I love? And honoring that, not dismissing what we truly love as a hobby or a [part-time endeavor]. It’s actually critical to our health and sense of well-being. Over the course of our lives, if we don’t pay attention to that, we can become bitter, depressed, lonely, and isolated.

When I think of my life right now—I feel so happy! [Laughs]. I have a sense of meaning, I’m in love with life, with my work. I feel this sense of a calling doing what I love to do most. So to young people, I would say, honor what you love. Life will take care of the rest!

NPi: What drives you both to do the work?

SM: My passion for working with women and handmade products is part of it, but another piece is the creativity of being able to work on things as we go and invent new ways of doing things.

AC: I think of the archetype of the healer and the warrior. I am drawn to business for its potential to heal. Business reflects warrior energy—directed, strong, strategic, focused, driven. But it has to be tempered and balanced with the energy of the healer, compassionate, contemplative, and receptive. I seek a way to bring these two archetypes together in my work.

A Sample Prosperity Candle

SM: First, you can buy candles. We’re also developing a concept of having prosperity ambassadors where we have people come on board and commit to sharing the story of what we’re doing.

Then we have the Prosperity Foundation where people can make a donation and enable a woman to buy a candle-making kit so she can start her business. And yes, we are looking for lenders. We’re also open to partnerships, whether it’s around women’s entrepreneurship training or on the sales and business development side.

We could use help with marketing, sales, customer service, public relations, and design. People should get in touch!

AC: When a customer buys a candle, you can give feedback to the woman who created your candle (her name accompanies each candle) by going onto the website and sharing it with her and supporting her to be a better businesswoman.

NPi: What have you learned from doing this work?

AC: I have learned so much from these women. First, they’re not looking for charity or pity, but rather an opportunity to thrive. They seek to create something of beauty from this place of darkness and fear. Many of them are mothers, widows, and single providers. That instinct to protect their families is so deep that these women will do anything to make sure they nourish their families through their spirit of resilience, strength, courage.

SM: I’ve been so humbled learning about these women and reading their stories. When I think about the struggles I have in my own life and compare it to the remarkable strength and confidence in these women… It’s inspiring. I think there are a lot of stereotypes that I had about women in Iraq, not understanding what a sophisticated society Iraq is. Iraqi women have incredible skills and abundant human resources. We want to help unleash those things.

AC: I think that speaks to the fact that what these women seek is an opportunity to prosper under extremely challenging circumstances. Prosperity Candle celebrates women as a force for peace and prosperity.

How to Get Involved:

To learn more, buy candles, hear from Prosperity Candle’s women entrepreneurs themselves, or find contact information, click here.

In this video, Herb Gleason shares lessons on leadership and community organizing, discusses his time working with community activist Mel King while at United South End Settlements, and tells the story of the founding of one of Boston’s first community health centers (one of the most energizing decisions he says he’s ever been involved with).

If you value this content, please consider making a donation. We aim to keep our content free and easily accessible, but we also depend on the support of those individuals and organizations who can afford to support us. Any donation, large or small, is greatly appreciated.

This is an open event. Please bring your friends and colleagues. Plus you could win giveaway prizes! Cash bar. Event runs from 6:00 to 8:00 PM at Globe Bar & Cafe, 565 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02116

Southside view of the newly renovated JP Greenhouse

It’s been a long time coming, but the transformation of the abandoned Jack’s Store into a super-insulated, energy efficient home on the corner of Bourne and Catherine Streets in Jamaica Plain is complete. Earlier this month, Andrée Zaleska, Ken Ward, and their three children Kuba (age 11), Eli (9), and Simon (8) moved into the so-named ‘JP Greenhouse.’ But what really sets this home apart is that the family welcomes others to come by and learn about the ongoing experiment Zaleska calls “being an active witness to climate change.”

“We want to demonstrate a better way of living and be prepared for a world with fewer resources,” said Zaleska, who like Ward, has built environmental activism into both career and personal life. Zaleska is currently a community organizer with the Institute for Policy Studies in Boston; Ward is a climate activist, former Deputy Director of Greenpeace, and co-founder of GreenCorps and the National Environmental Law Center. When the couple wanted to build a sustainable, green home that was both affordable and aesthetically pleasing, they found few examples open to the public and none in New England. The JP Greenhouse will be—as it’s been since construction began—an inviting model for others to follow.

“The house will be an evolving demonstration of how we live,” said Zaleska. “We are constantly giving tours, showing the house to others who are interested in taking on similar projects of their own.”

The JP Greenhouse was built according to Passivhaus standards, meaning the interior temperature is maintained without heating or cooling systems; rather, its efficient design allows the house to heat itself with little more than the body energy of those inside or that of a few lightbulbs. The JP Greenhouse is the second such Passivhaus project undertaken by the Roxbury-based, design/build firm Placetailor, a company that specializes in creating super-insulated, sustainable homes.

Now that the family has moved in, the JP Greenhouse and its occupants begin the next phase: modeling sustainable living and providing a home for local organizing and education around green initiatives. The house will also serve as the unofficial hub for 350.org, a grassroots global movement dedicated to helping solve the climate crisis.

The JPGH sits on the corner of Catherine and Bourne Streets

To the older generation of neighbors, this welcoming corner locale was the site of Jack’s Store for most of their lives, a place to buy “Wonder bread and bologna,” said Zaleska, until it closed in mid-1970s. Years later, after the building had housed a family, a mysterious new owner took over the property and let it fall into disrepair.

“He owned many properties and rarely spent any time at the house,” said neighbor Peg Preble who has lived two doors down for the past 15 years. “One year, on a night when the temperature dropped to 20 below, a pipe broke and flooded the basement, spilling sheets of ice out the windows. The fire department came, shut off all the water and electricity, and boarded up the building. The next morning, I saw smoke coming from the chimney and thought, ‘Oh good, someone is there.’ Actually, the boiler had run dry and overheated. The firemen had to break back into the building. So the place wound up in pretty bad shape.”

Some neighbors hoped the ravaged building would be torn down, yet many stayed loyal to its history in the neighborhood. Despite the magnitude of their task when they purchased the property in July 2008, Zaleska and Ward knew the house still meant something to the community.

“We want to reclaim this area as a public space,” said Zaleska. “We will keep this front portion [site of the original storefront] open for the community as a public meeting place.”

“This is an interactive neighborhood with lots of sharing going on,” Preble said. “We have a community snow blower. I have keys to the neighbor’s house, in case I run out of milk. It’s a good place for the [JP Greenhouse].”

During the build, Zaleska and Ward kept the house open to visiting architects, activists, neighbors, students, and others curious to learn more about the work being done. As interest grew, so did a small army of volunteers eager to lend a hand. To date, over 600 people have signed up for the JP Greenhouse mailing list. During construction, the team was able to summon upwards of 30 to 40 volunteers when needed to help with tasks like clearing debris or putting up insulation.

Preble was drawn to the project, too, and provided her expertise as an electrician. To date, Preble has spent 80 hours rewiring the house “for cheap,” according to Zaleska.

“[As a Passivhaus], it was challenging to wire,” Preble said. “The walls are a foot thick, and you can’t put holes in them to run the wire through. [Placetailor] saves lumber in some places by making ‘toothpick walls,’ which are 2x4s sawed in half. But that’s too thin to run wire through, so we had to run it on the outside surface and protect it with pipe or wire mold. I’ve been an electrician for about 20 years and I learned a lot with this project.”

“I did it because I wanted to see the building rescued,” Preble said. “I knew [JP Greenhouse] was a gamble considering the history of the property. It may not have worked. But if people don’t take a chance, then nothing changes.”

What’s the impact of such widespread participation? As volunteers lend a hand, concepts like green building and sustainable living are quickly demystified. Zaleska and Ward hope the JP Greenhouse will inspire others to believe that they, too, can adopt green choices into their lifestyles. As Zaleska said: “This isn’t anything radical… We’re just super-insulating a home. Volunteers come here and see how it can be done.”

Nor is the Passivhaus building standard particularly revolutionary, despite being little known. Declan Keefe is one of the dually talented designer-builders on the Placetailor crew that began renovation of the house in May 2009. At age 21, he’s now helped produce two Passivhaus buildings in Boston: the JP Greenhouse and another home in Roxbury.

“The truth is, any construction crew can do this,” said Keefe. “With respect to the technical skills, there’s nothing new here. [The other Placetailor builders and I] didn’t even realize Passivhaus was so innovative because energy efficient homes just make sense.”

The walls of the JP Greenhouse are insulated with eleven inches of cellulose (shredded newspaper) and another two inches of recycled foam board donated by a Western Massachusetts school. Insulated walls in a standard home are typically only five inches thick.

Sunlight pouring in from the south-facing windows

A continuous air seal throughout the house keeps heat from escaping and cold air from entering, though fresh air does circulate through an HRV (heat recovery ventilator), which pulls heat from the outside air—even on days as cold as 4° Fahrenheit—and circulates it through the house. In warm weather, the windows can be opened at any time.

Since the JP Greenhouse gets maximum sunlight from the south, airtight, triple-glazed windows cover the southern walls, spilling natural light into the first-floor community gathering space and family room. Placetailor builders were resistant to install any windows on the north side, but Zaleska and Ward insisted on proving that green can be aesthetically pleasing, too. There are five north side windows, significantly smaller than their southern counterparts.

“The strict requirements of Passivhaus can turn people off,” Zaleska said. “I think it’s great to shoot for [Passivhaus certification], but it’s also just a label. Passivhaus doesn’t mean anything to most people, whereas not having to heat a home is impressive.”

What also impresses is that Zaleska and Ward managed to build the JP Greenhouse on a modest budget and with surprisingly little difficulty.

“We hardly had any problems meeting standards or regulations at a state level,” Zaleska said. “The builders think our public image helped us get things through. We did, however, expect state funding and some of that green money stimulus. We tried to get it, but we haven’t been able to thus far. It makes me wonder if that money is really as available as they say, although perhaps our activist past is a barrier.”

After renting a house just a short walk away during the long construction process, Zaleska and her family are glad to finally be home. The children are especially glad to have their own rooms. For Zaleska, the completed house speaks to the quality of her relationship with Ward.

Kuba Zalesky, Andrée Collier Zaleska, Simon Zalesky, Ken Ward, Eli Ward, and Lucas Wikstrom-Ward (L to R)

“In most relationships it’s hard to get both partners to agree,” said Zaleska. “But Ken and I have the same view of where the world is going. We put most of our savings into that house. Even as the economy fell, we didn’t give up, because honestly, we could think of no better investment. We’ve gone to the extreme [with Passivhaus]. But anyone can insulate from the outside. It’s amazing what can be done.”

At last, Zaleska and her family are looking ahead from the inside out. Envisioning an ideal day in the future life of the JP Greenhouse, Zaleska said:

“I would love to spend half my time at a job and the other half visible at the house, either puttering around in the garden or doing home-schooling, leading tours or workshops, working with volunteers. We’ll have community composting where neighbors can bring scraps and get soil. I’d like for the place to be bustling.”

Learn more about Andrée Zaleska, Ken Ward, and the JP Greenhouse at their website: JPGreenHouse.org. More photos from the project coming soon.

Aaron Devine is a freelance writer and NPi contributor based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Visit his website at www.aarondevine.net.

Photographs by Leise Jones. View more of her work on her website at www.leisejones.com.

NPi stories take the shape of interviews, photo essays, videos, and podcasts and are distributed both in print and online. The Video Production Volunteer will assist NPi staff primarily with short video production. Estimated time commitment is about 10 hours a month.

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Responsibilities include:
• Working closely with NPi Editorial Review Board Team to fulfill production editing needs and goals
• Quality control of edited material
• Processing video (color correction, noise reduction, etc.)

The ideal candidate should have a passion for social justice, community change, the non-profit community, and media.

As well as:
• Knowledge of audio editing and the audio recording process
• Willingness to think critically and solve problems
• Strong organizational ability and detail-oriented approach
• Proficiency in video editing software
• Ability to work independently

If interested, please email or fax resume along with a brief description of why you think you’d be a good candidate to jeanne[at] thenewprosperity [dot]org or 617-533-7885

The mission of Cultural Agents is simple: to promote the arts and humanities as social resources. Through arts education, Cultural Agents expands citizens’ imagination and resourcefulness so that together, people are more capable of solving community problems. The initiative identifies creative agents of change, reflects on best practices, and inspires their replication. Prior to conducting this interview, Faculty Director Doris Sommer invited me to participate in two Cultural Agents programs: Paper Picker Press (La Cartonera) and Pre-Emptive Acts (training sessions in the technique of “forum theater”). Initially, I was unsure why my participation was considered a vital part of the interview process. Looking back, I understand exactly why. I had the opportunity to see first-hand how these programs are able to break down conventional social barriers, getting to the core of whatever challenge the community as a whole hopes to overcome. It was a powerful experience, and one I would recommend to anyone interested in the arts or social justice, or how the two complement each other. After spending some time as an active participant in the work, I met with Doris Sommer again to learn more about the Cultural Agents and its larger purpose.

NPi: Could you tell me a little bit about yourself and about Cultural Agents? How was Cultural Agents founded? What are some of its goals?

Doris Sommer

DS: I’m Doris Sommer, the Director of the Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard University. I’ve found during my years as a professor that my best graduate students were going off to law school, medical school, or social work school in order to be more prepared to make social contributions to the world. That put me in a professional crisis because if I wasn’t preparing them to make important contributions to the world, then I didn’t know what I was doing. And so I had to make more visible to students and to colleagues, as well as to myself, the ways in which the arts intervene with social change. Our work started with a conference that we hosted in New York in 2001 and in Cuzco, Peru, the ancient center of the Incan empire.

One of our programs is called Paper Picker Press or Cartonera, an instructional program for teachers to adopt and adapt techniques that enhance higher order thinking through hands-on engagement with literature. In the summer of 2006 in Lima, Peru, while directing a course on Cultural Agents, we invited local “cultural agents” to a Cultural Agents fair for students. This provided American students with the chance to meet arts activists in Lima with whom they could apprentice for six weeks. There I met the people from Sarita Cartonera. Sarita is an informal publishing house that uses recycled cardboard to make books. They get unpublished literary material from very distinguished artists as well as up-and-coming artists, engage visual artists to help decorate book covers, and then sell the books. Sarita is the name of the patron saint of poor Andean migrants in Lima. It’s a brilliant project involving people who are garbage collectors whom they then partner with the most elite writers in the country. It’s replicated from a model in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The founding Cartonera house (cardboard publishing house) was founded in Argentina about a year after the economic crash of 2001. A poet and a painter set up shop to make cardboard covered books with unpublished literature donated by the best writers in Argentina.

Cultural Agents’ Paper Picker Press program in the United States offers units of instruction that invite economically disadvantaged students to explore literature as recyclable material, re-writing classic texts through creative techniques that incorporate visual and performing arts. We encourage students to display their work in public performances and art exhibits and to get involved in entrepreneurial activities in their local community. We feature dialogue between established writers and young people, and we engage the arts to measurably increase student performance in reading and writing. Literacy is still a very good indicator, if not the best indicator, for levels of poverty, violence, and disease worldwide. Targeting literacy is the most important work we can focus on from the Faculty of Arts and Science at Harvard University. We’re continually evaluating ways to improve what we do and further establish effectiveness of the program. Right now our most important outreach activity is to multiply variations on and expand the reading and writing workshop. We’re currently working with the Barr Foundation to develop creative literacy in out-of-school sites throughout Boston.

The expanded Paper Picker Press program now focuses on consolidating all of the art forms featured (photography, music, theater, dance) around a project of developing readers, and on creating the raw material for interpretation from a single difficult literary text… The program honors a variety of modalities of art and the concept of multiple intelligences in both students and teachers. Multiple intelligences isn’t simply the recognition that some people are talented at one thing and others at something else; it’s the acknowledgement that we are all capable of creating different forms of art… We achieve recognition and admiration for what we do very well and we can exercise recognition and admiration for people who do other things well.

I’ve spoken with the Paper Picker Press in mind, but about Cultural Agents as a whole—it’s a varied approach to creating venues for developing arts and arts interpretation as contributions to social development. We’ve hosted conferences on photography for youth, teaching them about perspective and composition so that they may learn about their own power to adjust the world and look at it differently. We’ve hosted conferences on popular music and theater—different areas where art engages issues of social justice and communication. It’s very interesting when we collaborate with partners outside the university, for example, the UN Safer Cities Project (part of UN-HABITAT). Partners want to know how we’ve developed our positions. What theories would support the expenditures of local, state, or federal governments on the arts rather than armed police? It’s our job to make those arguments deep and clear to decision-makers. We see ourselves as a bridge between the academy and the world of decision-makers and developing citizens.

NPi: Can you tell me more about your work with the UN Safer Cities Project and share some of your thoughts on the value of collaboration in general?

DS: Safer Cities has benefited most by shifting their perspective on the value of the arts. Before they worked with Cultural Agents, the experts engaged to develop programs for violence prevention among youth at risk had all of the bases covered except the arts. When we first met with them two and a half years ago, I noticed the youth leaders at the meeting were all artists. When I pointed that out, the directors began to consider the importance of this element.

What we can do at the academy is quite simple. We define art in many ways, including its connection with violence prevention. Donald Winnicott, a distinguished British child psychiatrist who changed the way doctors deal with children and psychiatric therapy, defines art as “symbolic destruction.” He says all children, all people, are normally aggressive. You push against the world and you see what happens. That’s the way we live. It’s not a pre-oedipal or sexual or developmental issue. Aggression is normal and we have to learn how to deal with it symbolically. If we don’t, we’re not socializing children or ourselves. And if the aggression doesn’t get sublimated, it acts out in a very primitive way and becomes violence. Saying that you acknowledge aggression rather than just trying to stop it—which is really impossible—opens up venues for expressing aggression in symbolic ways. Art has everything to do with violence prevention.

Some people mistake the arts as only a vehicle for expression. That’s a very limited view. Art is a vehicle for exploration, learning, and trying things out. If people are serious about reducing violence and educating youth to become productive citizens and more satisfied in their own lives, supporting and expanding art is a major opportunity for developing intellectual capacity. All of the rhetoric about empowerment gets immediately grounded when a youth is working on an art project. This person is authoring something that didn’t exist before.

NPi: Can you talk about one of your successes? or share some thoughts on what you believe will be the lasting impact of your work?

DS: The Paper Picker Press training that we did in Chalco, Mexico City, is something that we’re very proud of. We’re proud because the teachers in Chalco have appropriated the program in such an enthusiastic and creative way that they are multiplying training sessions and involving everyone else in the school. The first ripple effect of the Cartonera in the school “Mano Amiga” came when children who were involved in after school program workshops went home and played literature interpretation games with their brothers and sisters. Next, their neighbors and parents became involved. The next year the school decided to train 30 more teachers. The program now has a life of its own and is expanding. We’ve affected change for a whole neighborhood because people are enjoying playing with literature.

The evaluation following the first semester of implementation at the school included testimonies from kids. The one I like best is from a 6^th grader who says, “My mind is bigger. All of a sudden more things fit into it.” And a similar thing happened in another evaluation in Puebla, Mexico. A mother wasn’t sure what the program had done for her daughter, but said, “She asks more questions now. I can’t get her to stop asking questions.” These evaluations really keep us going, they keep us fired up.

NPi: Where could Cultural Agents use help?

DS: The first thing I’d say is advice about what we really need! We welcome advice. What we need in the short-term are more venues for the Paper Picker Press and money to enable trainings and follow-ups, as the training is a five-day intensive. For the program to work, we accompany the team that’s been trained over the 10 or 12 weeks of the implementation and listen to members of the team troubleshoot. We try to say as little as possible, which is the general principle of the Paper Picker Press: invite people to do and then reflect on what they did. If you talk too much you’ve killed the lesson. We encourage people to troubleshoot for one another.

Another need is for resources, for more conferences and publications, engaging more academics and graduate students in the field. The good recent news is that Cultural Agents has a new center in Bogota, Colombia, where a doctoral program was initiated in April 2010. Other possible regional centers are also being considered. My hunch is that through centers, conferences, and publications, we can begin to engage a broad base of leaders. However, I may need advice on how to ensure a growing base of academics for Cultural Agents, catching students at the point when they are still interested in the arts before they’ve gone off to some other professional school. [This may happen] because they don’t understand how working in the arts will make them responsible citizens. We need to catch them at that critical point and make their work in the arts count for social change.

NPi: We’ve talked about the importance of treating problems at their root cause. Can you speak about how you do this at Cultural Agents?

DS: By reducing violence and redirecting aggression into creative, even non-conformist, education. One of the ambitions of the Paper Picker Press is to create “Cartonera Crews” or “Paper Picker Press Packs.” A way of redefining (not undoing) a gang because young people who join gangs need these families, these collective structures. Otherwise they wouldn’t join them. But when a gang reaches the point when it considers its life at a dead-end and is ready to make a turn, members can continue to work as a collective of artists capable of improving literacy in their neighborhoods. Controlling the violence isn’t enough; you have to redirect it. That’s why I said symbolic aggression is redirected aggression. Young people also need a stream of income or they go back to stealing. If we can channel that aggression into art that produces a salary, we’ve really made an impact. If there’s one thing I’m eager to develop through your readers, it’s a network of young people involved with this program.

It’s very shortsighted to think you’re going to stop violence or get women to speak up for themselves, for example, while not developing economic streams to sustain those advances. I would like to see boards of education open up to this little bit of risk capital, gather a bunch of teenagers whom they may not have located as their best pedagogical vehicle and start working with them. Let’s see what happens. There’s a great model for this in Medellin, Colombia where a lot of ex-combatants (paramilitary or guerrilla) are being trained in prisons and schools to return to society without guns. If they don’t have a job that’s waiting for them, they certainly can’t stay legal. The city of Medellin has developed a program providing jobs for these ex-combatants with local businesses, guaranteed by the city. A local businessman agrees to hire an ex-combatant because he/she doesn’t have to worry about whether that person will come to work or steal as the city covers the damages. The program works, the new workers respect their jobs. That’s something people need to hear.

How To Get Involved:

Click here to make a donation to Cultural Agents or learn more about internship opportunities. If you’re interested in becoming involved with the Paper Picker Press program, find contact information here. To sign up for Cultural Agents’ newsletter, click here.

Read More:

In August of 2009, Doris Sommer also participated in NPi’s community dialogue, “Building Community Online and Offline.” To read excerpts from the dialogue, click here.

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2010 NPi Event Calendar

Community Dialogues on Social Change (These events feature 3-5 local organizations and are a mix between a formal panel discussion and an open dialogue)

• August, 2010: Violence prevention and Peace
• November, 2010: Integrated Education / Arts / Music

Networking Events (Networking nights aimed at connecting Boston’s socially responsible for-profit, nonprofit, and media-making professionals)

• October, 2010: “Social ChangeUp 5″

In return, you will have your logo and URL posted on the NPi website, a write up on the NPi blog thanking you for becoming a sponsor with a brief bio about your company, a Twitter mention with a link back to the thank-you post, as well as your logo and URL in all outgoing invites for the sponsored event.

Please email jeanne [at] thenewprosperity [dot] org for more details or download our Event Sponsorship document.

Preference will be given to socially responsible /civic-minded companies, but all are encouraged to apply.